Hehe, that's why warriors make or break the PvE guild. It's a whole vicious cycle. High Agro = High DPS = Faster Kill = Less Healing Issues. Good Healing = Living Tank = Longer DPS = More DPS Output. Either way works.

The protection tree doesnt give that much more damage mitigation, but what it offers is good agro generation. Imo that is more important than a good gear for 5man at least coz it means that the warrior will be able to root the mobs to him (considering if he does his job) and allows the healer a good time by just mainly focusing on the warrior instead of having to spread his attention over the 5 party members due to loose mobs. Healing will be more regulated and thus more efficient when it comes to healing.

However, if the gear is extremely advanced for the instance, I believe a dps warrior would be able to do it much better. 1) It effectively gives another 1/2 more dps (considering that he mix matches some tanking gear) to the group and it lets you blitz the instance. 2) Def warrior with too good gears will be hit so miserably that he doesnt generate enough rage to hold mobs down.

Hmm.. we always brought along a Fury warrior for the melee dps class group. Most cases 3 Warriors, 2 prot 1 Fury. 2 prot in the same group for one to give demo shout + keeping up tc. And the other commanding shout. While the fury warrior will battle shout his group. Groupings are important and individual dps doesnt mean jack. What is needed is the cummulative damage done by the group which matters, which is why certain classes are brought in eventhough they do not top the dps meter.

Priests do not dump agro. We just reduce X agro over Y amount of time, of which the same X amount will be added to the current agro after Y. So, no dump there but just short reduction to allow you to pray the the current agro holder will be able to build that much agro before your fade timer runs out. It's normally the 'oh shit' moment that it's being used (hopefully never coz it costs mana) or when during changes in phases when you want to boost some dps by fading then dpsing so that you can straightaway nuke, but you must have all the confidence in the agro holder to be able to do the latter.