PVP Warrior Tank: A Tank PVP Guide - Can You PVP as a Protection Spec Warrior? YES YOU CAN!

Protection Spec warriors have long been written off by many in the PVP world as a liability to the group. While I have not been able to test the viability of a protection spec warrior in an arena setting just yet, I have tried and tested a protection spec warrior in 60-69 battlegrounds and Oh my! Not only is it a viable option it is an awesome honor grinder for honorable kills.

"To hell you say"

Oh yes it is a very awesome feat to have 4 ally pounding on you and not really hurting you or so focused on killing the guy who keeps disarming them that they aren't paying attention to the 2 ranged attackers pouring spell and arrows into them. Protection spec PVP is a lot like protection spec PVE your job is to TANK.

Playing to your tank strengths will always be your greatest tool, your greatest strengths as a tank are that you can take a lot of damage, you can stun people, you can debuff people, you can stop casters, you can disarm and you can take a lot of damage (yes I said it twice.)

Admittedly you don't really want to get into to many 1v1 fights, though once you get down the basic ideas of how to PVP in your other two specs and stances 1v1 is also a viable option though not playing to your strengths.

The strategy I've been able to employee the best and gain top honorable kills consistently in BGs is the strategy of pulling people from your DPS & healing teammates, again much like in PVE. The idea is that melee classes generally go after casters and casters generally attack people already engaged in fights...which is generally you. So when you see someone attacking a caster on your team, quickly switch stances from Defensive to Berserker to intercept and hamstring and then switch to defensive stance again. This stuns your target and allows your teammate to get away. In addition to freeing up your teammate the person you've attacked now has two options; one, to chase after a caster that has a 3 second head start while running at 50%, or to turn and fight you...Generally speaking they're going to turn to fight you. What his does is allows your caster to start dishing out DPS. As the caster is well out of range and most times the person you've drawn in doesn't realize they've just eaten two fireballs until it is too late.

That in a nutshell is the overall strategy you need to employee as a warrior tank in PVP to be effective and helpful to the team as well as rack up honorable kills.

In addition to pulling players off of other players when in large group combat of 5 vs. 5, 3 vs. 5 or 8 vs. 8 your goal should always be to annoy and cause havoc and draw as much attention to yourself as possible. If you see another warrior attacking one of your casters, disarm him, a warrior without a weapon just isn't the same. If you see a mage casting a spell, break his casting to mute him. If you see someone chasing a teammate hamstring him. If your stun is available hit someone while en route to someone else and always be ready to use intercept by switching stances for a moment. If you see two melee classes going at it, devastating strike to reduce your foe's armor so your melee has a better edge. If you get stuck in the ground by a mage and they start casting use your reflect spell to send that 3k fireball back to sender...then intercept. Demoralizing shout is also a must as well as your other major shouts. Also, thunderclap can often be the difference between getting hit 6 times in 5 seconds or 6 times in 8 seconds...and it does matter.

A Protection spec warrior is two things in PVP. A one man debuff/buff show and a tank.

Essentially a warrior tank in PVP has an answer to rescue just about anyone in the field and draw fire on themselves.

Once you start drawing attention to yourself you've done your job, but you've also just pissed everyone off and they are now gunning for you. Often I toss out my safety line for a quick escape.

What I mean by safety line is this. If I'm under attack by 5 foes and I see number 6 attacking a friend I will walk the group that's attacking me within range of their 6 man and then I'll intercept. This rushes me out of the middle of Smack on Warrior Lane and back onto Annoy Foe Road. Now the group that was attacking me, especially if they were largely melee has to try to catch me and at the same time number 6 is no longer attacking my friend and my DPS should be mowing a lot of these people down.

If you're doing your job right and your team is helping you theirs a good chance you'll die...but there's an even greater chance that all 6 of your attackers will be dead either before or shortly after you AND your AB flag is clear, or is being capped or the AV GY is now free to cap or clear of attackers or perhaps your flag runner was able to get a bit further down the road because you feared, hamstrung and stunned his attackers. The contribution your Protection Spec Warrior makes can be directly measured by your honorable kills as you've attacked someone and they've died not necessarily by your hand, but chances are they are dead because they were focusing on killing you and not the hunter, mage or warlock who was helping you attack.

If you see a healer, kill it. Why you might ask? Well what's the first thing you do when you see your healer being attacked? Yeah guessed, it you drop what you were attacking and you start saving your healer. This is the response from most people and as your overall goal should be to draw as much attention to yourself attacking a healer is like putting a big red target on your well armored back.

The rule still stands, if your healer is under attack save it a warrior tank with a healer can be just as devastating as a fury warrior or MS warrior with a healer.

One last bit of warrior tank advice for when you're in PVP mode. Use your shield wall and blocking skills as much as possible, 2 blocked attacks every few seconds is a great advantage as is 75% less damage and a reflected spell every so often.

A PVP Warrior tank should no longer be frowned upon and if you find yourself standing next to one and they are not leading in honorable kills or providing any real contribution to the PVP group, please, send them to this article and prevent the blatant mischaracterization of protection spec warriors as a liability when they should be the greatest strength in a battleground.