0) Introduction
1) Why protection?
2) Talent Spec + Glyph Choices
3) PvP Priority Rotation
4) Stat Priority
5) Proper Enchanting and Gem Choices
6) Know Your Role
7) General Play-style Tips
8) Useful Macros
9) Recommended Addons
10) Special Thanks
0) Introduction
Oi! Names Kueson, and this is my oddly worded introduction! ... ... ... ... .......... ... .. . ( b ^-^)b
In this guide I will be talking about the ins and outs of a PvP focused protection spec for the warrior, as well is sticking to a more, battleground focused bias. As I sit here enjoying, well, my usual meal of ham, cheesecake, and, of coarse schnapps. I think to myself that there have been guides on this in the past about protection specs in PvP settings, but I feel that most did not capture the heart of the PvProtection spec, and I could do a better job... But there wasn't any motivation too before, because I could just hog all the fun to myself, and continuing being that elitist yelling at you to do things the right way, you laugh at me and then smack talk my prot spec, then I come out at the end of a BG top damage, third on heals and the most killing blows you have ever seen... But now there's prizes on the line! ^-^
1) Why Protection?
The first, and most important, thing to stress here, is that protection is not for those of you that want OMGWTF HUUUUUGE NUMBERS! Protection is a thinking mans spec. You are a battle technician, you are designed to control the battlefield with your unbelievably massive artillery of crowd control, enemy debuffs and player buffs.
- Protection has insanely high damage reduction (10% Damage Reduction from defensive stance, 10% Bonus Armor from talents, Spell Reflection spam leads to very mitigated caster damage, and resilience is your highest valued stat!)
- Protection has unbelievably high amounts of self healing (Field Dressing, Second Wind and Blood Craze talents all keep you well toped of and ahead of anyone who would attack you 1v1. Not to mention every killing blow you land is basically an extra 20% of your health from Victory Rush, effected by Field Dressing!)
- Protection has some of the best survival cool-downs of any defensive spec (Shield Wall, Shield Block, Last Stand, Spell Reflection all have there places on the battlefield, two of them on relatively long cool-downs, the other two can be damn near spammed)
- Protection has moderate amounts of mitigation (-6% Chance to be crit, and 15% Block Chance lead to a huge drop in a physical damage champions damage output onto you. As well, a well timed Spell Reflection can completely stop a caster champions DPS cold.)
- Protection has more health! (15% More Stamina is more then welcome, the bigger the health difference between you and your enemies, the harder you will be to take down)
- Protection has godly amounts of crowd control (Charge, Intercept, Concussive Blow, Shockwave and Shield Bash, all on extremely low cool-downs, make for an easy time locking down not just one, but multiple enemies at once!)
- Protection has a fair amount of debuffs (Thunder Claps 20% Attack Speed reduction, and Demoralizing Shouts 10% physical damage reduction further lead to melee champions having a real hard time taking you down)
2) Talent Spec + Glyph Choices
Below is the link to what I believe to be the ideal protection PvP build. There is a slightly more offensive variant you can go, skipping the self healing talents to go 5/5/31 or even 4/6/31, taking Battle Trance and Cruelty and either 1 Point into Blitz and Piercing Howl, or maxing Blitz. In most cases you will not miss these talents however, there damage gain is very minor, and you must remember, your not a full time DPS champion out on the battlefield. You control your targets so your allies can charge in and quickly finish them off, this is why all the self healing is preferred as it keeps you alive on the battlefield just that much more.
Talent Spec Link: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LG0bZh...ozru:0oVfobzkM
Other Optional Talent Specs: (If you really have to be a special sunflower.)
Other Optional Talent Specs: (If you really have to be a special sunflower.)
Talent Explanation:
So right there, we have a few things to talk about. There are actually a lot of optional talents here, and I will cover them as well as why exactly we chose what we chose!
- Incite: A relatively weak talent, at least for us. In a general PvP situation, you will likely not find many openings to Heroic Strike often, due to the fact that you will have unreliable amounts of rage generation happening. Still, it easily beats out Blood and Thunder in general usefulness, so its maxed.
- Toughness: Tier 1 protection isn't that great for your general PvP usefulness. You take this talent simply because staying alive longer is a good thing.
- Blood and Thunder (Or Lack Of): Your job in PvP is not to AoE things down. Protections AoE damage output is weak. Don't try to bolster it by having an AoE DoT. unless your an unholy Death Knight o Affliction Warlock, you wont have enough dots to put down to make any kind of dent in a players health pool, before a healer just tops them off in one cast.
- Shield Specialization: This will be a massive source of your rage generation in PvP, as well as the whole reason your rage generation is unstable. Against a physical champion there's not a whole lot of net rage gain here. The options were (excluding dodge and parry chances) you take full damage, and partial damage. On a full damage attack, you would have generated more rage then a blocked attack since the blocked attack reduced the damage you took. This talent simply "fixes" it so even tho you blocked, you will generate roughly the same rage from a full damage blow. The real reason we take this talent however, is its Spell Reflection counterpart. Generating 60 rage whenever you successfully reflect a spell? yes please. Spell Reflection cost only a mere 15 rage, and is OFF OF THE GLOBAL COOLDOWN! Glyphed and talented, its a 6 sec cool-down and a 5 sec duration. Spam the holy hell out of this ability, and enjoy not taking caster damage, gaining massive amounts of damage and there own crowd control effects being flung hack at there face, and generating a net 45 rage in the process? Yes, please!
- Shield Mastery: The Shield Wall reduction is great an all, a very welcome addition to this talent, but not what we care about in PvP. Reducing the cool-down on Shield Block and Spell Reflection is this talents reason for being a main stay in any and all PvProtection specs. Flinging more spells around, not taking magical damage, and blocking more physical attacks and utilizing double damage Shield Slams more? God yes.
- Hold the Line (Or Lack Of): In PvP, you will have an next to no chance to parry an attack. So this will likely never proc in most short fights, and in a long fight, will proc at times considered unreliable to make use of. Skip it, not worth it.
- Gag Order: Makes your ranged silence (and gives you a ranged silence for that matter) a shorter cool-down, already were off to a great start. But now we see that out low rage cost spell interrupt, now also silences them!? Hellllll yeah! Who cares if you just barely missed your chance to interrupt there current spell-cast, for the next 3 sec, they are worthless! A great addition to our already CC heavy spec.
- Last Stand: In a raiding situation, you would use this in a period of large incoming damage where your healers would need to have you with a much larger pool of health, so there's extra time to cast heals ad top you off. In a PvP situation, you will likely pop this any chance you are getting focus fired, just to improve your own self healing. 30% More health means your heals from Blood Craze, Second Wind and even Victory Rush heal you for just that much more. GG Percentage based healing!
- Concussion Blow: A moderate single target damage ability, loaded with a 5 sec stun? Why not! its not like we didn't have enough stuns as it is!
- Bastion of Defense: 6% Reduction to melee crits received is more then welcome, (take that rogues! ) But the real reason to take it is because of its Enrage effect. Dodge Block or Parry something, and gain a 10% damage buff for 12 sec. Chances are once this spell finally activates, it will not fall off until the battle is finally over.
- Warbringer: A staple talent if there ever was one. Your ability to get around the battlefield is unmatched by any other class/spec combo, period. You have 3 abilities on short cool-downs that travel at maximum ~25-30 yards at a time. Being allowed to use them all in combat, and in defensive stance, the only stance that matters to you, is priceless. The CC breaking ability of the Intervene aspect as well will prove to save your life more then you know.
- Improved Revenge: Wait, increase the damage of one of my 2 hardest hitting spells, by 60%, and it hits a second target....!? Where do I sign!?!?!?
- Devastate: As much a staple as Warbringer, this gives you your biggest filler attack. Glyphed and talented, this will have a 20% crit chance, plus crit rating from your gear, as well as every time you press it, there's a chance Shield Slam, your biggest nuke, will activate, and cost no rage? Yeah... If you don't take this, you need to rethink the idea of even playing WoW. lol
- Impending Victory (Or Lack Of): Sounds like a great idea at first, before re realize Victory Rush hits for nothing. And it does cap at 5%, period. Field Dressing will not buff this. As well, if you have a proc of Impending Victory active when you kill your target, it dose NOT bump up to a 20% heal because you killed something, it remains a 5% until you use it. Very, VERY bad talent in general.
- Thunderstruck (Or Lack Of): Again, your AoE damage is weak. Making weak damage stronger is still weak damage. ("Zero times eight million is still zero in the long run")
- Vigilance: Hmm, what? "But Kueson, taunts don't work in PvP!?" yeah, they don't. Not why we are taking this talent. This talent gives us a "buff" we sit on who we know is going to the be focus of all the enemies players. When your buffed target is hit, you gain attack power. Simple as that. More on Vengeance in PvP later.
- Heavy Repercussions: This will lead to you macroing Shield Block into Shield Slam. Shield Block making your hardest hitting spell, bit for twice the damage when its up is just insane.
- Safe Guard: With this talent, and the intervene glyph, your intervene will break all CC on you when used, "instantly" move you to targeted ally, then provide a 30% damage reduction buff to them for 6 sec, AND the next 2 attacks that would land on them, instead land on yourself! That's one hell of an emergency button if I've ever seen one.
- Sword and Board: Covered under the Devastate explanation, more crit chance on your spamable ability, yes. Chance when using said spamable ability to refresh your hardest hitting ability, YES!
- Shockwave: Just like Concussion Blow, yet another stun to add to our wtf stop doing stuff arsenal. This one however comes with some flavor, its a frontal AoE cone stun, that can easily stop a teams offensive or defensive line cold. Aim well my friends, aim well.
- War Academy: Again, like tier 1 protection, there aren't many good choices here outside of Field Dressing. We take this talent because rage in PvP shouldn't be a problem, and making your "opening ability" and rage dump ability hit harder aren't bad things you know.
- Field Dressing: Yay. Healers heal you for 6% more, and your self heals also heal for 26% more total! That's epic. Second Wind becomes a 6.3% heal, Blood Craze a 3.78% heal, and Victory Rush a 25.2% heal! Oh the difference one talent can make.
- Blitz (Or Lack Of): You don't have rage issues, so its not a very good talent in that regard. It can however be taken to make charge a semi-AoE stun. The problem is that charge's stun is such a short one, it can actually hinder your ability to lock someone down. Remember all CC effects are on a diminishing returns, so you would be stunning them for 1 sec, and ending up making your next 4-5 sec stun, a 2-2.5 sec stun due to it only begin at 50% effectiveness due to diminishing returns.
- Tactical Mastery (Or Lack Of): You will next to never be stance dancing. The only exception to this, is when you need to go Battle Stance to pop a bubble with Shattering Throw Other than that, Defensive stance provides you with more damage, more damage reduction, and the use of some key abilities, only use-able in defensive stance.
- Second Wind: Aside from the very nice heal provided here, every time you yourself get CC'd (oh the irony) you will then generate rage. More then welcome to our sources of rage regeneration, outside of giving and receiving damage.
- Deep Wounds (Or Lack Of): Again, your not a DoT class, so having more DoTs will not net more damage in most cases. This also being such a small DoT, due to it scaling off of your weapons damage, and your weapon isn't a Two-Hander, its damage is low, its proc chance is low, just skip it.
- Drums of War (Or Lack Of): its not a horrible talent, in fact its great. But there are other better talents, skip it.
- Blood Craze: When you take damage,there's a chance you will also start healing... With the high amount of damage reduction you posses, this will often times out heal a lot of DPS spec'd champions before you eventually just kill them with your lock down and burst.
- Everything Else In The Fury Tree (Or Lack Of..?): If you were a fury warrior, these are great options, otherwise however, these all provide minimal damage gains, and buffs to abilities you don't even use. Skip Battle Trance, skip Cruelty, skip Executioner, skip Booming Voice, skip Rude Interruption and skip Piercing Howl, even tho you COULD use a slow, its not needed with your amount of ground closing charge effects..
Glyph Explanation:
As Far as Glyphs, you pretty much just Glyph what you'll be doing:
Prime Glyphs:
- Glyph of Devastate: Make your filler ability have more crit chance? Yeah, sure.
- Glyph Of Shield Slam: Makes your biggest nuke bigger, and more nukey'er? I'll take it.
- Glyph of Revenge: Makes your second biggest nuke bigger, and more nukey'er? Yeah yeah, add to cart.
There aren't many choices here, because there are no choices here. These are the only 3 glyphs in the prime slot, that even effect spells you use. All three are staples.
Major Glyphs:
- Glyph of Intervene: Making your targeted ally damage reduction cool-down reduce even more damage they take is a no brainer.
- Glyph of Intercept: Making a stun last longer, when your job is to stun things, yes.
- Glyph of Spell Reflection: This glyph allows you to take less damage from casters, deal more damage to casters, add more CC to your rather long CC list, and generate more rage. Sounds to good to be true?
There are a few other options, including the Charge glyphs, Shockwave and Victory Rush glyphs, but the three above will prove to be of the most benefit most of the time.
Minor Glyphs:
- Glyph of Demoralizing Shout: Makes your debuffing ability hit more people and last longer, why is this a minor?
- Glyph of Berserker Rage: Slight rage generation on our main anti CC ability. Cool.
- Glyph of Command (or Battle): This really depends on play-style. Both make your chosen shout last longer. The options are more damage to nuke things, or more health to bolster your health pool and make your self heals heal more.
Oh how blessed we are. Where other classes (lawl paladin) only have worthless minors that will reduce mana cost, or make something no longer cost a reagent in the minor slot, warriors have minor glyphs that actually change a spell to make it more useful... Awesome! The only other glyph that could be subbed in here is Intimidating Shout But having your enemies run away is actually a good thing for you, it creates distance that for a melee class, they will have to walk back to there target, wasting precious DPS time, and the farther away they run, the easier it is to combo into a Charge or Intercept.
3) PvP Priority Rotation
Like most classes played in PvP, you cannot put a timed rotation on your abilities. Instead you opt for a, what do I need to do in this moment, kind of priority rotation. But the thing to remember, is that your job is simply to lock people down while either others swoop in and quickly finish them off, or you yourself slowly beat them down. Below is a list of what to do when the situation presents itself.
Priority Rotation:
- Nukes: Shield Slam > Revenge
- Filler Attack: Devastate > Heroic Strike
- Rage Dump: Spell Reflection > Heroic Strike
- Spell Interrupt: Shield Bash > Heroic Throw > Concussion Blow > Shockwave
- Melee Lock-Down: Concussion Blow > Intercept > Shockwave > Charge
All are very self explanatory. The only oddity here is the usage of Spell Reflection as a rage dump. Your not psychic. And if you are, call me, I have things for you to look into. There is a very high chance that someone can come in from off of your screen, casting random blarg at you and you would be none the wiser. Dumping your rage into a Spell Reflection will save your can more then you know.
Ideal Heat of Battle Lock-down Rotation:
Ideally you want to keep your opponent locked down for as long as possible, while minding the diminishing returns table to get near maximum effectiveness out of your stuns. A good way to achieve this is to weave your stuns into a damage rotation.
- 0.0sec: Intercept (4 Sec Stun)
- 1.5sec: Open Slot
- 3.0sec: Open Slot
- 4.5sec: Open Slot
- 6.0sec: Concussion Blow (2.5 Sec Stun - 50% Diminishing Returns)
- 7.5sec: Open Slot
- 9.0sec: Open Slot
- 10.5sec: Open Slot
- 12.0sec: Charge (0.25 Sec Stun - 75% Diminishing Returns)
- 13.5sec: Open Slot
- 15.0sec: Open Slot
- 16.5sec: Open Slot
- 18.0sec: Shockwave (4 Sec Stun - Diminishing Returns Reset)
- 19.5sec: Open Slot
- 21.0sec: Open Slot
- 22.5sec: Open Slot
It is also important to note, that charge was only used here mid combat, and on the largest diminishing returns slot. The difference between a 1 sec stun and a .25 sec stun is next to nothing. It did its job of stopping casting, stopping movement, and buying you just a little chunk of time not being hit.
Its been brought to my attention, many times in the first few pages of this thread, my understanding of the diminishing returns table is incorrect. This goes against how it feels when I'm in the heat of combat, but even if diminishing returns resets after the first stun used or if the timer starts after the last, it changes very little about the advice given. You still weave your stuns into your burst and control the combat, start to finish.
4) Stat Priority
If you were tanking in a PvE content, you would be right. But this is PvP yo! Stop stacking that stamina! There is actually a very basic way of stating which stats you want, in a general priority system.
Resilience Rating > Strength > Hit Rating (PvP Cap) > Expertise Rating (PvP Soft Cap) > Stamina > Critical Strike Rating > Expertise Rating (PvP Hard Cap) > Mastery Rating > Haste Rating
Generally speaking, if you are going to PvProtection spec, you will want to use PvP gear. Any and every item and can get your hands on that has resilience, get it. By the time your done you want to have so much resilience, your enemies will wonder why they are hitting you got 15 damage. Otherwise most of the stat priorities only come into play when choosing accessories and reforging. If you are reforging an item with a really bad stat, like haste for example, just reforge it to the best stat on that list and be done with it.
5) Proper Enchanting and Gem Choices
This section is largely incomplete, because I don't trust the wowhead.com and db.mmo-champion.com database for all current endgame gems and enchants. Once i have finalized exactly what actually exists in game, and what does not, I'll update this section with links, tooptips, and all the whatnot that will make your greedy information seeking hands happy.
Enchanting:
- Head: Arcanum of the Dragonmaw / Arcanum of the Wildhammer
- Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Jagged Stone
- Back: Greater Critical Strike
- Chest: Mighty Resilience > Greater Stamina or Peerless Stats
- Wrists: Precision > Greater Expertise > Critical Strike
- Gloves: Mighty Strength or Greater Expertise
- Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle + Mystic Amberjewel or Bold Inferno Ruby
- Legs: Charscale Leg Armor or Dragonscale Leg Armor or Earthen Leg Armor
- Boots: Lavawalker > Precision
- Weapon: ***Pyrium Weapon Chain > Landslide or Mending
- Shield: ***Titanium Plating or Pyrium Shield Spike
Gemming:
- Meta: Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond or Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond. There are other options that are crit+CC reduction, they wont generally be worth it.
- Red: Resplendent Ember Topaz or Bold Inferno Ruby
- Yellow: Mystic Amberjewel or Resplendent Ember Topaz or Inscribed Ember Topaz
- Blue: Steady Dream Emerald or Etched Demonseye or Sovereign Demonseye
Rating Caps:
A rating cap is simply a point in which a specific stat gains diminished, or flat out stops gaining in effect whatsoever. The important caps to know are expertise and hit, explained below.
Hit Rating: (Vs. lvl85 Player)
PvP Cap - 5% Total Hit.
Expertise Rating: (Vs. lvl85 Player)
Flex Cap - >5% Random Cap? Expertises value will change depending on who your attacking. Rogues and feral druids will have lots of dodge due to agility stacking, and plate classes will have some added parry due to the strength to parry conversion. So anything roughly at 5% or better will mitigate all of the base chance to dodge and parry, and anything else s subject to chance on who your killing.
6) Know Your Role
...and shut your mouth? Do you smell what I'm cooking, do you?
Warsong Gulch: Flag Runner. Ignore all those rogues druids and shaman that think they are the top of the top when it comes to choices for people to run around the field with the flag, just because they can run or sprint faster then you. In reality, that is the absolute last thing that defines a good flag runner. In many cases, there OMGWTF RUUUUUUUUUN, will end up getting them killed simply because they ran away from any and every teammate that was there to help them, making them an easy, single target on the battlefield.
Your job in warsong is a simple one, get the flag, take it to your base, and wait. Sounds easy huh? Things to remember, you need to STAY WITH YOUR GROUP! You may be stacking 9 million resilience, be protection spec and have wtf-cooldowns, but you will still die to the enemy team if you are caught alone. You almost always have 1 healer per game minimum, talk with them, let them know your running the flag and to ignore the QQing squishes that want all the glory, and get them to stick with you at all times. Once you have done this, you could go 2v10 and likely stay alive.
Once inside, your hiding spot is on you. The 2 best choices however, are in your own graveyard and right on top of the flag capture point. If you know that your not getting your own flag back for a while, standing on your graveyard is a surefire way to know that every 30 sec, someone will respawn to help defend the flag if you get attacked. Otherwise just stand in the flag capture nook, and remember to keep your back to a wall and someone n front of you, just to prevent rogues from being rogues.
Arathi Basin: Oddly enough, you should not be defending here. You are a battle technician, and whats a battle technician without his battle! Get into the fight, and stun things into the ground! Fights in AB commonly are short and sweet, so even 1 person throwing around crowd control everywhere will likely turn the tides of battle. Lock-down the enemy healers, and victory is assured.
That's pretty much all there is to your role in an Arathi Basin match. What nodes you capture heavily depend on if your alliance or horde and what was available at the time/after the first 30 sec skirmish at each node, every game.
Alteric Valley: Yay, you get to tank things! lol. It should be obvious, you will be tanking Galv/Balinda and Drek/Vandar. But besides those obvious tasks, what do you do in the meantime? Oh the options!
Defend a tower/bunker/graveyard once capped. One of the 2 most commonly missing roles in every AV match. Once you capture something, someone NEEDS to stay there until it finally burns or turns. If nobody is there to keep them off the flag, there's nothing stopping 1 enemy character from waltzing up, gearing the flag for 10 sec and setting you back possibly minutes worth of game time.
Re-capture your tower/bunker/graveyard from the enemy. Probably a role 90% of PuG games don't even have, is the recapper. Why are you just letting your enemy take your stuff? Doing that is simply handing them the game. If yout team keeps your tower-captures perfectly defended until they burn, the simplest way to win is to turn one or two of your own bases, back. This will set them back to the point of not being able to catch up and defeat your boss before you do there's.
Find a nice little mine somewhere, capture it, and camp it. Games can turtle, this is a proven fact. What else is a proven fact, the team that controls both mines, usually wins the turtles. Controlling a mine yields extra reinforcement slots every couple of seconds. So if one team is getting none, and has a static number of reinforcements you need to kill while the other keeps getting more and more second chances, that team will more then likely come out on top.
If all else fails, stay where the battle is! It doesn't matter if your defending or attacking, stay in the battle and stun everything, once again, into the ground baby!
Eye of the Storm: Unlike Warsong Gulch, let your shaman and druid *I still hate you, rogues*, run the flags to your bases. There is no reason that the flag runner in an EotS match needs to be durable, the distance they travel is short, and if they are about to die, they can just quickly run onto the capture point and still some points.
No, you are once again at home in the battle. Wherever your main pushing front is, go there. Again, you will be dropping crowd control like its nobodies business. Tho here a nice way to help the team, is to graveyard camp. Even if your team is winning the push, enemy forces will be respawning from the graveyard right where you are, every 30 sec. So a god way to keep them rounded up, drop a Shockwave on them, right when they all spawn out in a nice little bundle.
Strand of the Ancients: Two very common roles here, siege pilot, and again, crowd control machine. Our damage is extremely low, so the idea of you taking a siege engine and beating things down, so the Death Knight who can drop crits that take people to half health doesn't have too, is not a bad one. Otherwise, just do what you do, and stay in the battle and make the enemy team wish they had never qued.
Isle of Conquest: Yeah..... Just mess around until the game is done imo. This battleground is a mess as it is. Grab a siege engine, capture some nodes... CC Stuff into the ground, whatever. Victory doesn't seem to depend on any one thing, this is a game where the most coordinated team wins, so just go with the flow and break stuff.
Twin Peaks: Yet another capture the flag style battleground. Everything about Warsong Hold, applies in here as well. The only difference between the two Battlegrounds, Warsong Hold is less people, and a smaller map, whereas Twin Peaks has a considerably longer walk between both bases, and slightly less protected flag rooms.
The increased distance only further hinders all those "I have sprint, I should take the flag!" classes, as by the time there sprint wears off, they will be in the middle of nowhere, not inside the friendly base *if they were lucky and didn't get stopped along the way*, and have left all manner of support in the dust. Really, running fast isn't everything, if you cant protect the flag with your life, don't pick it up in the first place.
Battle for Gilneas: Smaller version of Atathi Basin! Whoo! Exact same rules apply as Arathi Basin, its just 3 nodes instead of 5, and the bases are much more closely grouped together. This is done accommodate for the fact that its only a 10v10, which also makes for a neat little challenge for splitting the team properly in order to take all 3 bases at some point.
7) General Play-style Tips
Now here is where I tell everyone everything there doing is wrong, and I'm the only protection warrior out there doing it right...! >.> Seriously tho, I see a lot of protection warriors playing a game of square peg round hole, and it annoys me to no end how they give protections place on the battlefield a bad name.
Re-keybind your keys!: Dear god don't be a clicker! it may "work for you", but that doesn't make it any less bad. Human reaction time is already weak, adding in the need to also move your hand, as well as find your icon that you need to click, were talking your responding over 100 times slower then someone who is just going to press a key.
Force yourself do do it, get in the habit of it. Press your damn keys, and make use of local buttons! Your hand is already on W-A-S-D, use your 1-5 keys heavily, and make sure to keybind your ~ key somewhere! This will give you a nice 6 button setup, if you bind your core abilities to these 6 buttons, you will be able to react and respond to generally most situations faster then your opponent can counter-respond too.
Use your mouse: The only thing worse then a clicker, is a keyboard turner. In the time you spend turning around using your A and D keys, a mouse user will have been and gone. To run with your mouse, simply hold both left and right click down. Boom! You can now free-form run! just hold down both buttons and move your mouse, and you have free use of turning left and right, and at much faster speeds then your A and D keys could ever produce, and you gain full control over your camera.
Stay with the group: The lone wolf dies alone. If the enemy team sees a giant group of 6-7 people, and 1 guy off on his own, they are probably going to rush that 1 guy first and then pick off the rest of the group when they slowly come to your aid and march in single file.
Try and avoid opening with charge: Opening with a 1 sec stun is bad. It makes your next stun, what would be a 4 sec stun usually, a 2 sec stun. 3 sec of stun from just 2 moves is gimp. If you need to get into the fight quick, drop a shout and intercept in, this will give you a 4 sec stun, and then a 2.5 sec stun afterwards.
Don't be afraid to switch targets: By switching targets, you have eliminated all effects from diminishing returns. And this will effectively double how long you keep the enemy team locked down. Considering your job is just to CC things, using this to your advantage IS to your advantage.
Pilot siege engines: Your damage is low, so the best way to make your damage higher, is to get in a siege engine and instantly your damage is on par with what the battleground calls for.
Turn on your nameplates: Press V, do it... Do it! Boom! You just doubled the amount of information at your disposal! You can now see if any one enemy around you is low, and gankable, if there casting something you need to interrupt, ext. They also allow you to click the nameplate and target the player. This is infinitely easier then trying to find them in a giant crowd and click them.
Level your first-aid: Going into battle at less then full health is a nub mistake. If they see a team of nameplates at full, then 1 guy at anything less, you will get focused. level first aid, and when you end a battle, bandage up foo!
8) Useful Macros
It cant be stressed enough, you need to use your [~/`] key. You know, that one right before the [1/!] key. Your hands there anyway, make use of that button! Its better then stretching your hand way over to the [6]+ keys.
As well, all of the key mod commands will be using Alt in this guide. Its just the modifier I myself prefer. other modifiers include Shift and Ctrl.
Intercept/Charge Macro
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt] Intercept; Charge
/cast spell reflection
/cast [mod:alt] Intercept; Charge
/cast spell reflection
Shield Slam Macro
#showtooltip Shield Slam
/use 13
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam
/use 13
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam
Retaliation/Recklessness Macro
#show Retaliation
/cast [stance:1] Retaliation; Battle Stance
/cast Defensive Stance
/cast [stance:1] Retaliation; Battle Stance
/cast Defensive Stance
#show Recklessness
/cast [stance:3] Recklessness; Berserker Stance
/cast Defensive Stance
/cast [stance:3] Recklessness; Berserker Stance
/cast Defensive Stance
Shattering Throw Macro
#showtooltip
/cast [stance:2/3] Battle Stance
/castsequence reset=5 [stance:1] Berserker Rage, [stance:1] Shattering Throw, [stance:1] Defensive Stance
/cast [stance:2/3] Battle Stance
/castsequence reset=5 [stance:1] Berserker Rage, [stance:1] Shattering Throw, [stance:1] Defensive Stance
9) Recommended Addons
Below are the recommended addons I would (and do!) use for pvp. I wont go into detail about what each does, if you want to know jsut what its capable of, read there official pages on curse.com
Power Auras: The "Hey, stuffs happening!' addon. You can configure this to display information on just about everything. The main uses would be to display sword and board procs, and the ability to cast spells such as Victory Rush. You can also set this addon to show things such as your PvP trinkets cooldown, cool-downs and or availability of all of your cool-downs, ext ext. A very handy addon that will likely be able to be messed with, to create that visual display for something you couldn't otherwise find an addon for.
Gladius: PvP enemy targeting frame that will give you the health, mana and casting bars of every enemy in an arena match. As well as useful information like spec, and if there pvp trinket is on cool-down. It can also be set to announce events into party, raid or battleground chat, such as a rogue vanishing, someones pvp trinket going on cooldown, a friendly player getting CCed, ext.
Ice HUD: Adds a secondary player and target health/mana bars the the center of your screen, as well you can turn on n a Vengeance tracking bar that will show just how much attack power vengeance is giving you at any given time, and how much in % you have as compared to your active cap. I myself almost strictly use this addon for its vengeance tracking properties, but for those of you that like all of the information you need about you and your enemy to be directly in the center of your screen, where you are already looking anyway, this addon is a must.
HUD Map: Adds an overlay to the center of your screen, that will display ground targeted AoE effects and totem radius for you, and the enemy. Might as well know exactly if your standing in something or not. This is probably the least practical of the addons I will suggest, yet when combined with the IceHUD addon, this addon turns your UI into a tactical radar of useful information!
Roth UI: The last addon I would suggest, is merely one of personal preference. The Roth UI is the best fully functioning Diablo 3 style UI on the market. It yields 2 giant working globes to display your health and mana, styled action bars, reworked party and raiding systems, you name it. It will turn WoW, into Diablo 3 the MMO.
10) Special Thanks
First of all, special thanks to myself, for being awesome, everyone i have ever battled with, or against the past 6.... 7(?) years of playing World of Warcraft. I may be taking a break from my warrior, in favor of my new found Tauren Paladin, but i look forward to much PvP in this coming expansion.
As well, a very special thanks to Zork, the maker of the Roth UI. Just when WoW was looking horrible with the release of patch 3.3, I discovered the Roth UI addon and it made me want to play again! Ever since, i have not been playing WoW, I've been playing Diablo 3 the MMO! Get with the program noobs, WoW is sooooo yesterday!
Video Credits:
Power Auras: mattroguesmith youtube channel.
Gladius: moyxx030 youtube channel.
Ice Hud: sfjuocekr youtube channel.
Hud Map: antiarc youtube channel.
Roth UI: ognarb youtube channel.
