Protection Warrior Tank Easy Mode — Shadowlands 9.0.2

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 specialisation 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 maximise 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.

This build provides a familiar playstyle and is capable of doing most of the content out there — it lacks behind the Bolster / Ravager build in Mythic+ and other places where increased defensive value is needed.

• Level 15: Devastator
• Level 25: Double Time
• Level 30: Booming Voice
• Level 35: Crackling Thunder
• Level 40: Indomitable
• Level 45: Ravager
• Level 50: Anger Management

There are times where you would need more defensive options, like higher Mythic+ where enemies live longer. In such cases you should use the following build.

• Level 15: Devastator
• Level 25: Double Time
• Level 30: Booming Voice
• Level 35: Crackling Thunder
• Level 40: Indomitable
• Level 45: Ravager
• Level 50: Bolster

By taking Bolster you will be gaining a lot of extra Shield Block uptime which makes your damage intake a lot smoother.

To get a better understanding of how the talents work together and when to pick which one, you should take a look at the Talents guide linked below. This will give an in-depth explanation as to why certain talents are better than others, as well as going over the various benefits and drawbacks of each.

Currently, you want to prioritise secondary stats as follows:

1. Haste
2. Versatility
3. Critical Strike
4. 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.

In general, any of the 4 Covenants are usable but we suggest using Kyrian together with Pelagos. Spear of Bastion and Phial of Serenity are both extremely powerful abilities that find use in any type of content.

The following Pelagos tree is the safest bet for overall performance.

While not all of our Conduits are powerful, we do have some from each category that stand out more than others. Below you can find 2 Conduits of each type: Potency, Endurance, and Finesse, that you should look to use.

1. Piercing Verdict — Potency
2. Show of Force — Potency
3. Brutal Vitality — Endurance
4. Stalwart Guardian (with Anger Management and The Wall) — Endurance
5. Inspiring Presence — Finesse
6. Safeguard — Finesse

If you wish to get more in depth information about all the Covenants and Soulbinds/Conduits take a look at our Covenants guide where everything is covered thoroughly.

1. Thunderlord — best in AoE situations paired together with Booming Voice
2. The Wall — best in single target situations

Thunderlord and The Wall are 2 best legendaries that we can get our hands on. These provide us with reduced cooldowns on Demoralizing Shout and Shield Wall. They also increase our Rage generation by a significant amount. Both of them are further enhanced by talents like Anger Management and Unstoppable Force.

All the other Legendaries and their explanations can be found on our Legendary guide.

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.

The ability priority is the same for both of the above talent builds.

1. Cast Avatar on cooldown.
2. Cast Demoralizing Shout on cooldown (with Booming Voice talented).
3. Spear of Bastion, Ancient Aftershock, Conqueror's Banner when available.
4. Cast Shield Slam on cooldown. Watch out for resets from Devastate, Thunder Clap, Revenge, and Execute.
5. Cast Thunder Clap on cooldown.
6. Cast Execute ( Condemn) if the enemy is below 20% HP.
7. Cast Revenge only if it is free.
8. Cast Devastate — you will not have this if you picked Devastator.

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.

Covenant abilities like Spear of Bastion, Ancient Aftershock, and Conqueror's Banner should be paired together with Demoralizing Shout (if running Booming Voice) and Avatar for increased effectiveness. Do not delay them for too long, as you might lose a cast over the course of the fight. Since Condemn just replaces Execute, the priority of this ability does not change.

If you picked Ravager and/or Dragon Roar, then these abilities should be placed in the priority list right above Shield Slam.

While not part of the ability priority, make sure you are buffing yourself or your group with Battle Shout before entering combat.

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.

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.

As a Protection Warrior, you have a number of defensive cooldowns at your disposal.

• 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 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.

• 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.