One thing that hasn’t been mentioned about Prot for PvP is magic mitigation…
All that fancy parry/dodge/armor/defense is useless against casters. So you’ll do fine against rogues and other warriors, but ranged classes will just destroy you.
As someone planning on rolling warrior, my plan is to OT in raids so I can spec something that will have a pulse in PvP
without basic common sense, you won’t do good in any PvP scenario, and I’d doubt your ability to be MT aswell… altho, it doesn’t take much to spam sunder/heroic strike in vanilla.
Very informative. Thank you. 
Please don’t be that tank that spams Heroic Strike and Sunder like it is all you have lol. Yes a lot of people played that way sadly, and why the “wait for 5 sunders” meme exists.
In 5 mans your single target priority is:
Mortal Strike, Revenge, Sunder Armor, Heroic Strike if you have the rage.
In 5 mans your multi-target priority is:
Mortal Strike, Revenge, Demoralizing Shout, Battle Shout, Sunder Armor, Cleave if you have the rage. Tab through targets about every other global cooldown but save Mortal Strike and Revenge for the target the group is killing.
Thunderclap is optional, but I like to toss one out after I’ve cycled through them some. It is a big rage dump even with 5/5 Tactical Mastery so keep that in mind.
Main differences in raids is that you need to Shield Block on CD religiously and you can drop Mortal Strike because it is a major debuff and will probably push off something else important to the raid DPS.
Who says you have to play on a pvp server? If this is a concern of yours, play on a pve server. I played through all of vanilla on a pvp server and most of TBC. But with the addition of battlegrounds, you are missing nothing by choosing to play on a pve server.
There’s an element of danger present in the world on pvp server that pve server can never provide. I enjoy it more that way.
Why would you level in prot if you are soloing?
You can tank instances just fine with arms/fury before 60. Just level as another spec then change specs to prot afterwords.
Not sure if you mean prot warrior specifically, or warrior in general. Prot warrior isn’t really much of a contender in PvP(To my knowledge). Arms and Fury can manage, and do pretty well 1v1 if they’re skilled. But warrior is enabled by having a healer. Solo, warrior is mid-low tier. With a healer, S+ Tier. That’s the main difference.
That is why the best Warrior in BFA is Prot. My friend Memphisrains is on top of the ladder as Prot. True champion. So you should play Prot which is the only real warrior spec left in retail.
With that said why even play retail?
Not true you can either be a wrecking ball Arms/Fury or the all around demolisher Prot. I personally will only be Prot PvP like I always am. You have more than enough tools to counter the wide variety of people to make them not want to gank you or fight.
Prot is a hard counter to any melee especially rogues. Especially if Orc. The fact you have more stuns than rogues that don’t go on DR as well as other tools, disarm, fear etc. You are good to go.
Prot is the most rage inducing spec in the game when played right in PvP. Since you can literally render the other players unable to play their character mainly melee. However with interrupts, silences and the fact you also have a dispel. Casters or healers can die easily if they never get a spell off and they are dispelled from Shield Slam.
Early on going full avoidance. Since the more avoidance I have the more stuns I have. Just stun lock to death. Melee just will stay away after the first encounter.
I only play Prot. I leveled this guy from level 1 as Prot and will be doing the same in Classic. There is only one way. Way of the Shield. Early classic will be doing a stun build then switching to big damage Shield Slam Spec with Naxx Shield Block value gear latter.
One plus for tank minded people in PvP is Alterac Valley. Lots of hardcore PvPers without any raid experience were horrible at tanking the elite NPC’s and the DPS had no idea how to manage threat which leads to chaos and wipes.
This wouldn’t be bad if you are actually tanking and getting tank gear from raids. Leveling… yeesh, no I’d do Arms and be able to Truck fools instead of whittling them down and relying on Revenge procs etc. YMMV.
I just enjoy Sword and Board and Tank specs that much. I love leveling them. To me playing a Warrior means having a Shield. It’s super fun game play. Don’t think it is bad between quests and dungeons not to mention the fun of WPvP. I just enjoy all the tools it has to offer as well. Just overall super fun with the gearing options as well. The game was so much better back then.
I was a long time SS Barb in Diablo then came to WoW and needed a Shield and Warrior to play.
Sure, if that sounds fun to you. I plan to be a full time raid tank myself and having to fight people as Prot is inevitable.
OP should know that if we are talking advanced tiers of raid gear, Arms in Conqueror’s with Dark Edge of Insanity or Might of Menethil will kill people in an Intercept stun. I mean literally Intercept > MS + Swing and delete 'em. I highly recommend setting aside some gold to respec once in a while if you get your hands on that kind of gear.
That is definitely fun. Although a lot of times I like playing with my prey. Breaking their will to fight with long CC chains. The rage wispers after you chain CC someone to death is equally amusing.
Late game will be interested how much burst I can get with my Shield Slam spec though with stacked block value. Should be pretty bursty too while maintaining the joys of Prot.
However sure a 2 hander with a pocket healer and BiS gear is fun too. Depends on the mood really or type of player. Think the OP should realize though there are tons of options.
Trust me, when I have that kind of Block Value, I am definitely going to try it ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I can’t speak for the guy who wrote the comment, but I did like it.
WoW is a game. There are no life and death decisions. You play it and learn and experiment and eventually you might get good at the parts that you really like. So much hand wringing and worry about this thing. Just play it man. You like warrior, you will be fine. Maybe you will change specs now and then. Maybe not. Maybe you will roll another class. Just relax.
If I say yes will that mean there will be less warriors for me to fight? Because if so I will say yes.
My irl friend was on a pvp server and hit rank 14 with his Warrior. He seemed pretty happy with warriors and it was fun to watch him pvp. (I had no idea what rank 14 meant back then because I was a bit clueless about such things, but I look back now and go woooah. O.o). But he also didn’t pvp as prot, he respec’d for pvp the same as most serious pvpers of any class would. He didn’t think the leveling was too bad, but it was his first character and he came from EQ which tended to skew ones perception. I don’t know what spec he leveled as. I just know he was Prot for raids and Arms (I think?) for pvp. The only class I ever saw him lose a duel against was a hunter.
I don’t know if the story about my Vanilla Warrior friend will help you or not, but figured I’d share.
No. Arms and Fury with dips into Prot do fine in PVP.
All of your damage mitigation talents come from low Prot, you don’t need to go full prot to MT. Full prot just makes it a little more noob friendly to use because by the patch they are using, shield slam was buffed to actually be a useful ability.
Warriors are a quite capable solo pvp class once you have some gear on you.