Protection Warrior PvP Best Arena Compositions — The War Within (11.1.7)

Playing 2v2 as Protection Warrior is tough to win with. Your goal as Protection Warrior is to protect your team and reduce the enemy's pressure long enough for you to win on Mana or dampening. Because you do not have access to abilities such as Word of Glory, like a Protection Paladin has; you cannot sustain another DPS for long. It is also not worth pairing up with a hybrid class and trying to play the long game that way. They generally need more healing power to sustain both of you, even with your damage reductions and disruptions.

Generally, we recommend you not play 2v2 as Protection Warrior. Instead, stick to 3v3, where you can use your toolkit more effectively.

Here is a list of the best team compositions for 2v2:

• Protection Warrior + Restoration Shaman
• Protection Warrior + Restoration Druid
• Protection Warrior + Holy Paladin

Protection Warrior in arena tries to play the long game. Your job is to constantly disrupt the enemy team from getting any pressure on your team by utilizing your damage reductions and CC. You need to play together with a high-damage output specialization that does not get shut down by the enemy too quickly. If played correctly, your team will eventually run the enemy team over, with your team being high on Mana and theirs being low.

Remember to apply as much damage as you can while you play defensively. A single DPS is not enough to apply pressure, and as a Protection Warrior, you can do significant damage as well, especially if you can cleave area of effect abilities.

We strongly recommend you learn every offensive and defensive cooldown for all specializations and get addons like Flyplatebuffs, BigDebuffs, and Gladius, so you have an easier time knowing when and how you should react. Alternatively, WeakAuras are a good way to customize your UI and alerts. These addons will give you an easier time identifying when an enemy uses cooldowns that can be difficult to spot visually, like Icy Veins and Vendetta. See our Protection Warrior PvP Macros page for more information on the subject.

This will also help you understand when you should break off from your target, and peel for your healer with Intervene, Disarm, Rallying Cry, etc.

It is important to make use of cross-CC, meaning you should try to time CC with your healer onto the enemy healer and DPS to not only stop their healing output, but also stop them from disabling your damage output with abilities such as Disarm, Mortal Coil, Polymorph, etc. Mastering this strategy is key to closing out games, but you should not focus solely on it, as it can be equally good to stun an opponent out of line of sight of his teammate, or to ruin major cooldowns like Avenging Wrath.

The best compositions will each be explained in detail below.

Tier	Composition
S
A	WMPala | WLS
B	Protection Warrior + Havoc Demon Hunter | TSG ( Unholy Death Knight) | Protection Warrior + Windwalker Monk
C	Kitty Cleave | Thunder Cleave | African Turtle Cleave (Marksmanship Hunter) | Man Cleave | WPPala
D	Batman Cleave (Outlaw Rogue) | Protection Warrior + Balance Druid |
Not viable/ Not seen on ladder	TSG (Frost Death Knight)

In a general 3-letter composition, the last letter represents the healer class of the composition, which alters depending on the meta. A composition like WLS, indicates that the healer in this composition would be a Restoration Shaman. If a healer is undefined, the last letter is simply replaced with 'X' to (WLX).

Class letter codes:

• D = Druid
• DH = Demon Hunter
• DK = Death Knight
• E = Evoker
• H = Hunter
• M = Mage
• WW / MW = Windwalker Monk / Mistweaver Monk
• P = Priest
• P(ala) = Paladin
• R = Rogue
• S = Shaman
• L = Warlock
• W = Warrior

Compositions:

• WLX: Warrior + Warlock + Healer
• Kitty Cleave: Warrior + Feral Druid + Healer
• WMX: Warrior + Mage + Healer
• Turbo Cleave: Warrior + Enhancement Shaman + Healer
• Thunder Cleave: Warrior + Elemental Shaman + Healer
• African Turtle Cleave: Protection Warrior + Hunter + Healer
• TSG: Warrior + Death Knight + Healer
• WPX: Warrior + Shadow Priest + Healer
• Batman Cleave: Warrior + Rogue + Healer
• WEX: Warrior + Evoker + Healer
• Man Cleave: Protection Warrior + Warrior + Healer