Season of Discovery Protection Warrior Tank Talents and Runes
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talents for your Protection Warrior Tank in WoW Classic — Season of Discovery, as well as advised runes.
Protection Warrior Talent Build
![Protection Talent Build](http://static.icy-veins.com/images/classic/sod/sod-protection-tank-warrior-60.jpg)
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.
Recommended Rune Engravings
- 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!
Notable Protection Warrior Talents
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.
Notable Arms Warrior Talents
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!
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
- 08 Apr. 2024: Removed Rampage based on new theorycrafting.
- 02 Apr. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 4.
- 07 Feb. 2024: Updated talents, runes and explanation text for Phase 2.
- 15 Dec. 2023: Minor text improvement.
More Classic Warrior Guides
More Season of Discovery Class Guides
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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