Season of Discovery Protection Warrior Tank Talents and Runes

With the Rune and class changes in Phase 4, Protection and Shield Slam in particular are once again the way to go as a Tank Warrior. Make sure to have exactly one point into Improved Shield Block for the important second attack block capability per Shield Block used.

Pick up all the damage and threat increasing talents, but feel free to shift less important talents such as Anticipation and Improved Taunt around if you like other talents, such as Improved Revenge for dungeons or Improved Shield Wall for defensive purposes.

Using Gladiator Stance and more offensively minded gear, you will also be able to do some strong off-tank DPS while not actively tanking.

• Gloves — Devastate
• Pants — Consumed By Rage (ST) or Furious Thunder (AoE)
• Chest — Flagellation (extra Rage) or Warbringer (mobility)
• Waist — Focused Rage
• Feet — Gladiator Stance (giga damage) or Enraged Regeneration or Rallying Cry for extra defensives
• Head — Shield Mastery (damage) or Vigilance (infinite Taunt)
• Wrist — Sword and Board
• Back — Shockwave
• Ring — Mace Specialization or similar depending on your weapon
• Ring — Defense Specialization

Devastate is a great rune for single target tanking, adding significant damage to your Sunder Armor routine. Consumed By Rage can have almost permanent uptime if you manage your Rage carefully, making it a great damage and threat increase, but Furious Thunder is required for tanking multiple small enemies, such as the ones found in dungeons, especially as Thunderclap is now much stronger and hits 10 enemies by default.

The reworked Flagellation is much weaker, but can still be used for a bit more Rage generation while tanking. Otherwise, Warbringer provides great quality of life for quickly moving during a battle and picking up stragglers, especially as Taunt is melee range in WoW Classic.

Focused Rage allows you to use Devastate even more freely, while also enabling spare rage for utility and Heroic Strike dumping.

Gladiator Stance provides a new stance which can be swapped to at will for higher damage while not actively tanking, as it also reduces your threat generation and defensive power while active. Alternatively, Enraged Regeneration is a rare Warrior self-heal ability and Rallying Cry can help your group survive high damage mechanics.

Shield Mastery is a straightforward damage increase, while Vigilance can potentially provide infinite Taunts, for fights where that matters. Sword and Board provides many more Shield Slams in your rotation, allowing for higher threat generation and utility from its magic dispels.

Finally, Shockwave is a great crowd control tool, Mace Specialization or any of the weapon-skill buffing Runes are nigh mandatory to drastically increase your Hit chance and reduce Glancing Blow chance and penalty against end game bosses, and Defense Specialization provides extra Avoidance for free on a Rune slot.

Make sure to check our Warrior Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!

Shield Specialization, besides being a requirement for the specialization-defining Improved Shield Block, increases your block chance and grants you Rage when you block.

Anticipation is not quite as good as it might look at first glance. While 10 Defense is a strong defensive boost, it comes at the cost of 5 precious talent points, which can occasionally be better spent elsewhere.

Toughness is another example of a talent that looks better on paper than what it actually is. Only your armor value from items is increased, yet you get much of your armor from raid buffs and consumables.

Improved Shield Block, ironically, is your best defensive one pointer, but is also one of the worst Warrior talents to place any extra points in, beyond the first. Being able to block two attacks every 5 seconds with Shield Block, instead of one, allows you to effectively become critical strike immune, without requiring good gear, against most bosses, since they will not be able to swing twice before you refresh Shield Block. Since Shield Block already lasts as long as its cooldown by default, and is removed once you take two hits, increasing its duration is effectively pointless.

Last Stand is a strong defensive cooldown, on a cooldown of 10 minutes. As it increases your current health immediately when used, it makes for a strong panic button.

Improved Revenge is another deceptively powerful defensive tool, as you should be able to cast Revenge on cooldown when facing the trash mobs that can be stunned by its effect to begin with. Its only, yet major, weakness, is that bosses are typically immune to stuns.

Concussion Blow is a strong stun that you can use to lock an enemy down, while you focus your threat-building efforts on a different enemy, allowing your party members to go all-out.

Shield Slam is a powerful attack that causes a lot of threat and also dispels a magic effect on the target 50% of the time. While this is rarely useful, it is good to have a passive magic dispel from enemies that self-buff.

Anger Management generates 1 Rage every 3 seconds, which is not clear at all from reading its tooltip. This makes it a decent Rage generating talent, but we will not have enough talent points in Phase 4 to pick it up.

Deep Wounds is especially powerful in Season of Discovery as multiple critical strikes will all contribute towards making the debuff tick for more, rather than just refreshing an existing debuff. This makes it one of the top damage contributors in the current level bracket!