#20 - Dec. 28, 2009, 5:45 p.m.
Prot in PvP is something we're keeping an eye on.
So far, it doesn't seem like Arena teams are stampeding towards Prot the way they did Ret and Unholy when those specs were overpowered. Now, representation is not a great way to balance, but it can be a good red flag. We're also likely to nerf specs even if they aren't highly represented when they are just really annoying to play against or are capable of success without a great deal of skill.
Nerfing Prot isn't something we'd do without a lot of thought. There are no easy knobs to tweak. We'd have to be very careful about nerfing their survivability to avoid PvE consequences. We could nerf their damage, though we've also taken great pains to boost tank damage overall as a way of making the dps stats on tank gear more attractive, letting tanks feel like they are contributing more to their group, and just because it's fun. (If you are asking yourself why tanking needs to be fun, you might want to ponder that question next time you're waiting for your Dungeon Finder group to fill.) Finally a lot of the utility we added was to make tanking more dynamic so that tanks were doing something besides just spamming their defensive and threat moves. Sure Warbringer doesn't have a big role on many boss fights, but it can be really useful on all of those encounters leading up to the boss fights. We don't want the tanking trees to be 25-30 talents of nothing but "you take less damage."
Furthermore, it's clear some players' reaction is just that "Prot has no place in PvP" even though we've been pretty consistent about saying we'd like to get all 30 specs viable. Make sure you're commenting on the actual effectiveness of Protection PvP and not just complaining because you see people using the spec at all.
