I think Protected with Armor tends to be way too strong especially since the shield only pops once the damage gets past the armor threshold. Even the much-hated/loved pre-nerf Guild Enforcer can be dealt with 1 high-attack card, Protected with Armor would almost certainly require 2 cards to remove.

That being said, a 2/3 with conditional armor does seem much better! Is there a reason why it had to be adjacent creatures as opposed to just having any other friendly creature though? Since once you have two or more creatures on the field, every creature will have at least one adjacent creature.