Protection Warrior Tank Easy Mode — Dragonflight 10.2

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.

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.

Currently, you want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:

1. Haste;
2. Versatility >= Critical Strike;
3. 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.

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!

1. Cast Avatar on cooldown
2. Cast Demoralizing Shout on cooldown (only with Booming Voice).
3. Cast Ravager.
4. Cast Thunderous Roar
5. Cast Shield Charge.
6. Cast Spear of Bastion.
7. Cast Rend to maintain it on the target.
8. Cast Shield Slam on cooldown.
   • It can be reset anytime you cast Devastate, Thunder Clap, Revenge or Execute, so watch out for these procs.
9. Cast Thunder Clap on cooldown.
10. Cast Execute if you do not need Rage for survivability.
11. Cast Revenge, if you do not need Rage for survivability.
12. 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.

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.

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.

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.