Season of Discovery Protection Warrior Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

We will present the skill rotation of a Warrior tank as a priority list. This is not an exact sequence in which abilities should be cast. Instead, whenever you must choose between using different skills, try to use the one at the top of the list first.

Our list assumes you are running one of the recommended builds from the talents page and are playing a max level 40 character. If you are still leveling, please refer to the leveling page for a leveling-specific rotation.

While they are extraordinarily powerful, explosives such as Heavy Dynamite will not be detailed in the rotation. Usually, you will want to use them on pull to generate threat on the target. The main exception is when you are facing multiple or particularly dangerous (such as enraged) enemies at some point in the fight. Saving explosives to carry you and your group through these moments, especially when you need to gain AoE threat, is very much worth it. The usage (on cooldown) of potions, such as Mighty Rage Potion, will not be specifically detailed in the rotation, either.

If possible, Charge to initiate combat and generate Rage. Dump your Rage with Heroic Strike and the new Rune ability Devastate (or Sunder Armor if not available), then swap to Gladiator Stance or Defensive Stance to begin your rotation as advised below.

If you are able to start with a significant amount of Rage, by stopping all ability usage once previous packs are almost dead for example, just shoot or body pull the next pack in order to be able to use that Rage, as stance dancing will cause you to lose a significant amount of it. Use Bloodrage to keep yourself in combat and generate even more Rage while lining up the next pull!

1. Let Rage pool above 80 frequently to activate Consumed By Rage (if runed) as much as possible;
2. If Flagellation is not active, use Bloodrage or Berserker Rage to activate it;
3. Apply stacks of Sunder Armor (with Devastate if possible) until the maximum 5 are reached;
4. Cast Battle Shout if missing its buff, Demoralizing Shout if the enemies are missing its debuff and consider using Thunder Clap on the hardest hitting enemies;
5. Activate Death Wish on cooldown, but try to save its last usage for the Execute phase while also not having the boss die while it is active;
6. Use Execute to continually dump Rage once the boss is almost dead;
7. Spam Devastate ( Sunder Armor) to build extra threat;
8. Queue Heroic Strike with any excess Rage.

Replace Heroic Strike with Cleave and use the single-target rotation on the available targets as needed to keep threat on as many as possible. If you have Furious Thunder active, make sure to also use Thunder Clap on cooldown.

As a Warrior, you have various offensive and defensive cooldowns at your disposal. Using your defensive cooldowns properly is often the difference between life and death, and as such, you should always be watching your health and be ready to use them if necessary.

Enraged Regeneration can be used to self-heal during emergencies, but make sure you activate Berserker Rage or Bloodrage first, as it will not be usable otherwise. If you have Rallying Cry instead, use it just before dangerous raid damage events.

Death Wish is a large damage increase cooldown which also makes you more vulnerable. It should ideally be used for burst threat at the start of a fight. Use it as many times as possible within a fight, but try to save your final usage for the Execute phase, as long as its effect ends before you run out of targets to hit.

Retaliation can be used to help establish solid threat when tanking multiple targets or fast hitting enemies. Alternatively, Recklessness provides an incredible DPS increase for 15 seconds, but at the cost of a large damage intake increase. Finally, Shield Wall is a great defensive you can use to live through emergencies.

Demoralizing Shout is much more powerful against most bosses than it is against players, as bosses gain damage much faster per point of Attack Power they have. If you have the Improved Demoralizing Shout talent (at the request of your raid group), make sure to keep its debuff on enemies.

As a flat 10% swing speed reduction Thunder Clap is weaker, especially considering its Rage cost, than Demoralizing Shout. Regardless of this, it might still be worth applying, especially to faster swinging bosses who might otherwise land three hits on the Warrior before Shield Block can be refreshed, opening up the possibility for a devastating critical strike.

Taunt is your single-target taunt ability. Casting Taunt instantly makes the enemy focus on you exclusively for 3 seconds, and increases your threat threshold to be equal to whoever had aggro when you taunted. Using Vigilance on the off-tank or someone else being directly attacked will reset its cooldown constantly.

Mocking Blow is an alternative, higher cooldown, single-target taunt ability. Unlike Taunt, it does not give you equal threat to the highest person on the aggro list, so be prepared to use Taunt at the end of its effect, if you want to maintain aggro.

Intimidating Shout should be used for crowd control or survivability purposes. Be careful with this ability, however, as the fleeing enemies can run into another pack of enemies and pull them, possibly resulting in a wipe.

Many players simply do not use their interrupt unless specifically instructed to. Interrupting enemies can stop potentially deadly casts from going out. Identify those dangerous casts and use your interrupt to prevent them.

In this section, we will dive a bit deeper into the core mechanics and various abilities of Warrior tanks. Understanding these topics is an important step to truly mastering the specialization.

Warrior's primary resource is Rage. It is important that you understand how Rage is generated, so you can effectively manage and use it.

Rage has a maximum capacity of 100, and is empty by default. Rage decays at a rate of 3 per second while out of combat. In combat, Rage does not decay and may even slowly tick up, if you have the Anger Management talent.

You generate Rage in two main ways, by hitting enemies with auto-attacks (white hits), and by being hit by enemies. The amount of Rage you generate depends on the damage dealt and the damage sustained.

It is important to understand that you do not have to spend Rage as soon as you get it. Pooling your Rage in order to maximize survivability or damage is an important aspect of playing a Warrior. For example, the Consumed By Rage rune only works if you allow your Rage to pool above 80 frequently.

You can, however, also lose potential threat if you cap out on Rage. Once you hit the max of 100 Rage, any further Rage generation is lost.