Prot

From Guild Wars Wiki

Prot, a shortened version of protection is a relatively unique concept to Guild Wars. Its name comes from the attribute line that specializes in protection, which was the only real source of prot at the release of Prophecies. As a concept, a skill that prots someone will prevent damage before it occurs, often in an uncapped manner, depending on the behavior of opponents. This is achieved by mechanisms such as blocking through skills such as Guardian, damage reduction with skills such as Shield of Absorption and max damage capping with skills such as Protective Spirit. A prot is a skill that can be cast on someone else in anticipation of damage, self protection skills such as Stoneflesh Aura are usually not considered prot.

Prot is often widely categorized into two types: Big (or hard) and small (or soft).

• Big prots are typically expensive, at least 10 energy, but last a long time or have very powerful effects that are likely to prevent death. Examples would be Spirit Bond which can almost completely nullify a spike or Protective Spirit which has a very long uptime.

• Small prots are typically much cheaper with a smaller effect and/or shorter duration, suitable for preventing a death during a spike or reducing pressure. Examples would be Guardian, typically used to reduce physical pressure or preprot physical spikes, and Shield of Absorption.

Prot usually comes in the form of enchantments or weapon spells, although some shouts and binding rituals can have prot-like effects.

Due to the uncapped or very high possible efficiency of prot, it sees much use in competitive play with eight man teams often including a dedicated prot monk. Protting rewards active play as predicting opponents actions will allow maximum efficiency to be achieved while preventing deaths which often could not have been prevented through healing alone.