Protection Warrior: Midnight Expansion Preview

There are a lot of noticeable changes on the Class Tree. The main thing being that there is a bigger focus on utility rather than just plain damage-focused nodes. There has also been a re-shuffle of the node locations inside the tree. Below you can find some of the more important changes.

• New talents being added:
  • Resonant Voice
  • Blood and Thunder
  • Deft Strikes
  • Retaliation
  • Battlefield Commander
  • Fearless
  • Field Dressing
  • Javelineer
• Talents being removed or moved to Spec tree:
  • Avatar moved to Protection tree
  • Berserker's Torment
  • Immovable Object
  • Piercing Challenge
  • Seismic Reverberation
  • Thunderous Roar
  • Thunderous Words
  • Unstoppable Force
  • Uproar
  • Cacophonous Roar
  • Concussive Blows
  • Sidearm
• Modified talents:
  • Anger Management reduces cooldowns of Avatar and Shield Wall per every 20 Rage instead of 10;
  • Last Stand is now a passive which procs automatically based on health;
  • Honed Reflexes reduces cooldowns by 10% and also increases your damage if you Interrupt a cast;
  • Piercing Howl also increases your allies movement speed;
  • Barbaric Training no longer increases Thunder Clap damage and has had its modifiers reduced;
  • Champion's Spear chains enemies to the spear dealing damage and allows you to leap to the spear dealing even more damage;
  • Intimidating Shout no longer has a target cap;
  • Thunder Clap damage increased by 100% and it now applies Rend to all enemies, if talented;
  • Crushing Force is now a 1-point talent;
  • Bolster reduces the cooldown of Last Stand and grants Shield Wall when it triggers;
  • Rallying Cry now increases your health by 50% when not in Raid.

The biggest issue right now with the Class Talent tree is that there are too many 2-point nodes at the bottom of the tree. In addition to this, all the capstone talents on the last row are arguably pretty bad. Last Stand, Anger Management, Battlefield Commander and even Champion's Spear are all lackluster.

One of the more crucial changes here is the Anger Management one. It has been severely nerfed, now requiring 20 Rage instead of 10 Rage per one second CDR. This means that we will take a big hit to our offensive capabilities due to Avatar up-time being lower. In addition, Shield Wall up-time is also affected, meaning that it will not be available as often.

The second bigger change is the removing of Unstoppable Force from the Class Tree and adding it to the Mountain Thane Hero Talents. This has been a Protection staple for a while now, increasing our APM and the ease of gathering packs of mobs during Avatar. While the change makes sense, it is still questionable as it could have been baked into the Mountain Thane baseline to provide us with a new fun talent instead.

Thunder Clap has gained a massive 100% damage increase. On the other hand, we are losing several other damage modifiers for the ability — such as Seismic Reverberation, Outburst, and as Colossus also Unstoppable Force. Taking all of this into account, it appears the damage buff is simply compensating for the removal of those talents.

There are some great changes as well, namely Thunder Clap now applies Rend to all enemies it hits. Previously it only applied Rend to 5 targets, so this is a great change. With all of the above, Thunder Clap will still remain one of our priority abilities to use on cooldown.

Last Stand being moved here and made a passive just gives more survivability to the Arms and Fury warriors. It is still a fairly bad defensive ability, seeing as it has hefty a 4-minute cooldown, and we already have access to Battle-Scarred Veteran. As there are

Piercing Howl grants movement speed! This makes the talent actually worth picking up as re-positioning quickly is something that often plays a big role in Raid encounters.

Javelineer causes Heroic Throw, Shattering Throw, Wrecking Throw and Champion's Spear to apply a 50% slow on targets hit. The previous iteration of this talent caused Heroic Throw to silence the enemy, but this new iteration makes it a fairly useless talent.

Protection talent tree got a recent overhaul in Patch 11.2, so the Midnight changes are not that big. That said, there are still some new additions, like Apex talents, and some modified nodes worth mentioning.

Apex talents

These are a new set of talents within your Spec tree, which focus on enhancing one of your core abilities. For us, this ability is Shield Slam.

• New talents being added:
  • Apex talents — Phalanx, Phalanx, Phalanx
  • Sweeping Revenge
  • I Can Do This All Day
  • Avatar, moved from Class Tree
• Talents being moved to the Class Tree:
  • Anger Management
  • Last Stand
  • Rend
  • Red Right Hand has been removed
• Modified talents:
  • Avatar now also reduces your damage taken by 3% while its active
  • Deep Wounds is now a talent; it is only applied by Execute
  • Violent Outburst only buffs your next Shield Slam, not Thunder Clap
  • Bloodsurge now works off of Rend instead of Deep Wounds
  • Fueled by Violence now heals off both, Deep Wounds and Rend
  • Ravager now increases the damage of Thunder Clap and Revenge by 50% while active.

Outside of the changes to Anger Management, which were covered under the Class Tree changes, there are not many significant topics to go over.

Revenge now hitting 3 targets by default is noticeable, but we can still talent into Sweeping Revenge to make it AoE again. Violent Outburst now not working on Thunder Clap will also take some time to get used to, but it will make the usage of this talent a lot more accessible for majority of players.

Deep Wounds being made a talent and being applied only by Execute is also a bit of a weird change. Previously it was also applied by Revenge, making it a easy additional source of damage in AoE. Now it has transformed into a single-target bleed, which is only taking full effect once the enemy is in Execute phase.

Midnight introduces Apex Talents. These are located in each classes Specialization tree. For Protection Warrior, these talents work to enhance our Shield Slam ability.

• Phalanx is a throwback to Dragonflight Tier 2 set. Thunder Clap causes your next Shield Slam to create a shockwave of damage while reducing the damage enemies deal to you.
• Phalanx increases the damage dealt by Thunder Clap and the Phalanx shockwave.
• Phalanx enhances Shield Slam to deal even more damage while Shield Block is active and increases its critical strike chance by 20%.

These are decent passive bonuses which work just off of our basic rotation, no gameplay adjustments required. With Phalanx increasing the critical strike chance of Shield Slam, it seems to synergize well with Colossus due to Precise Might and other bonuses the tree provides to Shield Slam.

In addition to Protection Warrior's talent changes, Midnight also brings some modifications to the Mountain Thane and Colossus Hero trees. Both trees will gain new talents, which you can find below.

Mountain Thane only change in addition to the new talents so far is that Thunder Blast has its damage increased by 100%. This is a big damage boost, but warranted due to the removal of Seismic Reverberation and the fact that Outburst no longer increases the damage of Thunder Blast.

Removing Unstoppable Force and just adding it as a new Hero Talent with a different name, Storm Surge, is unfortunate. While Mountain Thane relied on Unstoppable Force, it could have been baked into Avatar so the tree could have gained a new exciting talent node instead of simply a renamed one.

• Mountain Thane new talents:
  • Storm Surge — it is just Unstoppable Force with a new name.
  • Conductivity increases the damage of Lightning Strikes.
  • Capacitance — it helps extend the duration of Avatar.

Colossus has two changes. One, Demolish now makes you immune to movement forces during the channel. Two, One Against Many no longer works on Whirlwind. Both of these changes are really minor and change nothing in how the tree performs or plays.

As Colossus revolves around Demolish, it is no surprise that all the new Hero Talents add additional effects to it. The increased Haste and Critical Strike chance modifiers for Shield Slam make it work really well with the new Apex Talent, Phalanx.

• Colossus new talents:
  • Decimator — causes Demolish to apply Deep Wounds with its final strike to all enemies hit.
  • Cut to the Bone — increases the damage of your bleeds if Shield Slam critical hits.
  • Celeritous Conclusion — Demolish provides haste and makes your next Shield Slam be a guaranteed critical strike.

Mountain Thane or Colossus

Considering the removal of Seismic Reverberation and the rework of Outburst, in addition to our new Apex talents, especially the Phalanx, it seems that we are leaning towards playing Colossus. The synergy between the Shield Slam crits from the Apex talent and the Precise Might, Celeritous Conclusion and Cut to the Bone from Colossus tree appears to be really strong.