Protection Warrior Tank Easy Mode — Dragonflight 10.2
On this page, we explain how to easily play Protection Warrior in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2, using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.
Foreword
This page is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous subtleties and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.
The Basics of Protection Warriors
Protection Warriors have great mobility and a diverse toolkit, both in terms of utility and defensive options. Due to their ability to block attacks, Protection Warriors have a predictable and smooth damage intake, making them relatively easy to heal.
Your primary goal throughout fights will be to maximize your Rage generation and then use this Rage on your active mitigation abilities in order to keep yourself alive. Making good use of your defensive cooldowns and utility is also an integral part of proper play.
Talents for Protection Warrior
Below, you can find 2 different builds depending on what content you plan on doing. Both of them are beginner-friendly and can be modified further to fit your own playstyle.
While the Talent builds below should cover your needs, there can be niche situations that require specific talent nodes not taken in these builds. To fully understand where each Talent shines and when to pick what, take a look at our talent page, where we explain all of them thoroughly to make your decision-making easier.
Best Generic Raid Talents for Protection Warrior
This build is a decent combination of offensive and defensive talents, making
it a good all-around raid build. It assumes that you have access to the
Warrior Protection 10.2 Class Set 2pc.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best AoE Talents for Protection Warrior
The below build is a solid example of an overall good Mythic+ build. It should
provide you with more than enough Shield Block, interrupt tools, and
damage output.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Stat Priority for Protection Warriors
Currently, you want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:
- Haste;
- Versatility >= Critical Strike;
- Mastery.
Another important thing to note when choosing what gear to wear is item level. Generally speaking, the stat priority should only be followed when comparing gear of the same item level. A piece of gear with a higher item level than what you currently have should be equipped regardless of its secondary stats.
While the stat priority mentioned here will work well everywhere, you can still optimize your stats depending on the content you are doing. To understand the value of each stat in specific content, take a look at our Stats page.
Basic Ability Priority for Protection Warriors
To understand the ability priority listed below, you first need to understand what all the abilities do. For in-depth information regarding all the abilities mentioned here, as well as many more, you can look into the Spells Summary guide linked below.
The basic rotation as a Protection Warrior is based on the following priority. As said, this is a priority. It is not the exact sequence in which abilities should be cast, but rather, for each time you are able to cast an ability, you should start at the top of the list and cast the first available ability.
Below, you can find various talent choices, with the default ones already picked. Modify the choices according to your own build.
-
Avatar
-
Thunderous Roar
-
Spear of Bastion
-
Shield Charge
-
Ravager
-
Blood and Thunder
-
Booming Voice
Our most gameplay-changing talent combination is Avatar and
Unstoppable Force, there is a separate section in our rotation page for this combo all altogether!
- Cast
Avatar on cooldown
- Cast
Demoralizing Shout on cooldown (only with
Booming Voice).
- Cast
Ravager.
- Cast
Thunderous Roar
- Cast
Shield Charge.
- Cast
Shield Slam on cooldown.
- It can be reset anytime you cast
Devastate,
Thunder Clap,
Revenge or
Execute, so watch out for these procs.
- It can be reset anytime you cast
- Cast
Thunder Clap on cooldown.
- Cast
Execute if you do not need Rage for survivability.
- Cast
Revenge, if you do not need Rage for survivability.
- Cast
Devastate.
Against multiple targets, using the above priority will still generate the
most Rage, thus allowing for the most active mitigation usage and best
survivability. If you are interested in simply dealing more damage against
multiple targets, then you should use Revenge even when you do not
have a proc.
As an additional priority, make sure you are buffing yourself and your group
with Battle Shout before entering combat.
While the above briefly explains how and when to use each ability, there are a lot more specific things and interactions going on between various spells. Understanding all of these is crucial as a Protection Warrior. All of the interactions are explained in the Rotation guide below.
Active Mitigation Abilities for Protection Warriors
Your rotation is only there to generate Rage for you, which you should then
invest into your active mitigation abilities, Shield Block, and
Ignore Pain.
Shield Block is your primary active mitigation ability. It should
be used anytime you are actively tanking an enemy and should be kept up as much
as possible. Using this takes priority over using
Ignore Pain. While
you are not tanking, you should generally spend a charge if you are about to be
at 2 charges (which is the max). Even when not tanking, Shield Block increases
Shield Slam's damage by 30%.
Ignore Pain should be used in addition to
Shield Block. While Shield Block is limited by its cooldown, Ignore
Pain is simply limited by the amount of Rage you have available. As such, once
you have Shield Block up and on cooldown, spend your remaining Rage on Ignore
Pain, making sure you save enough Rage to use Shield Block once it comes off
cooldown. If you know a large amount of damage is incoming, it is worth pooling
your Rage in order to cast Ignore Pain right before the damage goes out,
increasing the likelihood that you survive.
Cooldown Usage for Protection Warriors
As a Protection Warrior, you have a number of defensive cooldowns that you can pick up via talents.
Last Stand can and should be used in two different ways, depending on the situation. With
Bolster, Last Stand gives you
Shield Block for its duration. As such, if you do not have Shield Block available but are actively tanking and need to block for survivability purposes, then Last Stand should be used in this situation. If there are many high-damage mechanics or if you are able to have Shield Block up for the majority of your active tanking time, then Last Stand should instead be used if your health drops to a dangerously low level or in preparation for receiving a large amount of damage.
Shield Wall should be used before you receive a large amount of damage. It decreases all the damage you take by 40% for its duration. Since it lasts for a reasonably long time, you should try to use it for longer periods of high damage intake.
Demoralizing Shout together with
Booming Voice should be used as many times as possible during the encounter for Rage generation purposes as stated in the ability priority. However, it is absolutely worth not using it in that way and saving it instead if you need another cooldown for a period of high damage.
Spell Reflection reflects the next spell cast against you back to the attacker and reduces magic damage taken by 20% for 5 seconds (or until a spell is reflected). Most magic damage boss abilities cannot be reflected. As such, the primary use of Spell Reflection is for mitigating magical damage rather than reflecting spells. It is important to know beforehand where that magic damage is and use Spell Reflection accordingly.
Offensive Cooldowns
You might not have all of them, depending on which talents you choose to run.
- Cast
Avatar on cooldown. With
Unstoppable Force,
Thunder Clap is available every other global cooldown. Just be aware of this and make sure to continue to follow the ability priority. You may have streaks where you constantly rotate between
Shield Slam and Thunder Clap due to Thunder Clap resetting Shield Slam. In such cases, you should pay more attention to your Rage bar to avoid going over the maximum and using
Ignore Pain or
Revenge to spend some of that Rage.
Thunderous Roar,
Spear of Bastion,
Shield Charge,
Ravager are all various offensive cooldowns that we can opt into via talents. Generally, they are straightforward and do not need any specific pre-planning or positioning. Try to cast them on cooldown and during the
Demoralizing Shout and
Avatar windows to maximize their damage potential.
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed and updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 21 Jun. 2023: Updated Mythic+ talent build. Took Brutal Vitality.
- 05 Jun. 2023: Updated the raid talent build. Took Spell Block as a default talent.
- 11 May 2023: Prioritised showing talent build with tier.
- 01 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.0.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 15 Mar. 2023: Updated the Mythic+ talent build to default Battering Ram over Thunderlord.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Replaced Overwhelming Rage with Sidearm for the Raiding build.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Warrior Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Mwahi, a Protection Warrior theorycrafter and moderator of the Skyhold Warrior Discord.
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