I am a 70 prot pally, and I work my pretty little tail off trying to get gear to tank the high lvl raid instances with. Every other spec of every other class (except prot wars) have a Season 1 set that works great for raids and is relatively easy to get by running battlegrounds. Prot Pally S1 set on the other hand SUCKS. No defense, no parry, no dodge, no bock....nothing. Comon Blizz, let's see some changes to the S1 prot pally set.

I agree.  I have just come to the conclusion that i will always have to carry two sets of gear at all times - my pvp gear with resilience and then my raid gear with defense and mitigation.  There are some exceptions, my Boots of the Protector(that I am currently making) work well in both and the Vindicator's Lamellar Bracers can also be made to function in both(to fill in the gaps you have with gemming and enchants).  Even some of the high level raid gear doesn't provide the bonuses that are needed for high level pvp.  Just not a lot of crossover for prot pally gear(excluding my Gladiator's Gavel, it travels with me everywhere). My strategy was to get some good pvp gear that I could run in regular dungeons but as I acquired more, my defense has gone down considerably and it's tougher to main tank.  Mostly I just off-tank Heroics with 560 bonus spell damage - if I can run with folks that is - most people are still skeptical about taking a non-ret pally along unless it's a healer.  Judgements easily hit for around at least 700 which is nice, but the moment I load up on defense in my gear(and consequently give up resilience and good spell damage) is the moment I can't step on a battle ground(and live long).  If anyone has any suggestions on good crossover gear(high level), please post it, because I am still lookin - and in the meantime grindin'!!

Not to critize you guys but u sound like u have no experience when it comes to pvp.

First thing to do is ask urself this... do you ever NEED a tank in pvp? If you have a human player (human as in an actual person), are u gonna be able to "taunt" him to you so that he doesnt attack ur healer/squishy's? If you answered yes, then theres no point in explaining anything to you. If you answered no, then continue.

Now if theres no way for u to taunt a player onto you and not someone in ur raid, what good are you? Tanks have no DPS, no healing, no anything. All they can do is tank. Now someone mentioed that prot pallies get no "tank" gear... but other classes do. So druids an warriors, lets take a look. The war gear, is there def on there? how about mitigation stats? I think u just answered ur own questions. Now how about druids? Ok, druids tank as feral. Feral also = dps for them. So if u get feral gear, you can dps. Now look at their specific stats... u think those are good for tanking? There u go.

Now lets cover healing... im sure ur prolly wondering why do "healers" get pvp gear. Well again, have u SEEN the gear? pvp gear generally has a ton of stam, lower +heals, lower mana regen, and has a good amt of resilience. Do you think these stats are useful in a raid? If you answered yes, then again... gg. If not and you answered no, then theres ur answer. Why does a healer need that much HP? Is (s)he gonna get hit? Then why is there a tank? Does the healer need max healing? I think so... how about the ability to regen and LAST thru the fight... Now this next part you wont be able to configure... but how long does an average battle last in pve. How about in pvp? Theres no "right" answer to this but generally, pvp battles take less time. This almost means that each battle is like their last. Pve, you continue and push. If that doesnt make sense, then do not continue reading.

DPS, so they have GREAT gear right? Yes n no... the thing is, stats wise (raw stats) theyre great... same for he AP. BUT, do they normally have any sort of +hit to the gear? No. Why is this? Cuz in pvp, u need much less to "hit" ur opponent vs a 71+ elite mob. Do u see serious raiders with no +hit doing top dmg? NO. You need a specific amount of hit for each class to maximize ur dmg. If u dont meet that mark, ur dps will reflect the lack of it. Case in point? PVP gear does NOT work as well as pve gear.

Now i know this whole post wasnt as clear as some of you might want. Reason for this is that this post isnt geared for complete unexperience players. You need to know SOME knowledge for you to understand whats been said. If you get it, well if u get it now, then im glad you did. Im sure the complaints will stop. If you still dont get it, the id suggest doing some research on why pvp gear is NOT the best for PVE. Dont get me wrong, you can mix n match both sets to maximize if u get the right enchants n sockets. but until its balanced, you will not be doin any better than a person with less gear as u in pve gear.

any spec should be able to pvp. should warrior tanks/paladin tanks be the ONLY spec in game that NEEDs to respecc only to be able to pvp? NO.
are tanks needed in pvp? not very much, but can be usefull sometimes. AV is one example. atm there are 2-3 tanks in every AV (premade) but they have o pvp kills. they are just needed to tank the PvE bosses. would be nice to be able to bash some enemies instead of waiting those 10-15 min untill you can start tank the boss.

Thank you retpally27 for your condescending remarks. Please get back to me when you get over yourself. Yes, I realize that the S1 gear is not nearly as good for pve as the tier4 5 6 gear, but all the same, other classes and specs can use the S1 gear as a stepping stone into heroics, where they are able to get even BETTER pve gear. All I'm saying is that prot pallys and wars have no stepping stone to work off of. I spend much more time than the dps and healers in my guild trying to get good gear to tank with, all because of S1 gear sucks. I realize that prots really don't do that much in pvp, but It would be nice if Blizz Made a set specifically for prot pallys and wars that worked ok in both pvp AND pve. Personally, I carry a full set of healing gear for pvp, because that's all i do in there anyway. I would love to be able to kick some ass, but i just don't have the dps needed. Maybe if they gave the prot set more gem slots, idk. Anything would be better than what's available. Thanks for your comments guys, it's all very helpful.

i agrre that there should be some pvp prot gear as prot spec we could be fairly affective in pvp if we had the gear with resilence in it as we do a fair bit of dam. though our blocks a good pallui tank will be up in the dps in groups not the top but second or third fairly consistally depending on the group.  so why would the pvp gear take away one of use major sources of being effenctive in BGs.  if pvp gear had avoidence built into them then we would be able to hold our own in bgs.

I can see your point but think of it, I think tanks should have to go out to instances and get their gear. I mean think of it, what is one of the hardest roles in any group? It certainly isnt dps. Tanks need the gear and the tanking experience that comes with it, and either way, i always think twice(sometimes three times) about bringing along any class in full or any s1 gear into anything I'm doing.

Gosh! You rly dont get it do u?
You play PvP and get PvP items!
You play PvE and get PvE items!
Srsly dont understad what do u want? 3746278346 hours some noob farming BGs and take nice tanking set and then u wipe coz of him in some heroic?
On the other side if he play normal instances and get rly nice tanking gear for the same time that he would be farming honor, well he maybe become a descent PvE player (in that case tank) and u will be able to make that damn heroic without 50g for repair

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Cheers