Protection Warrior Tank Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5

1. Protection Warriors in Mythic+

Protection Warriors, while not the best in Mythic+ due to their lack of utility, have extremely high damage output and very respectable survivability. At the moment, when played properly, Protection Warriors have the highest DPS out of all the tank specialization on AoE.

1.1. Mythic+ Rotation for Protection Warriors

The single-target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Protection Warrior rotation, refer to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

1.2. Abilities and Utility

• Heroic Throw is important for gaining aggro on distant enemies, particularly because there are many enemies that cast at the group and do not immediately move towards you.
• Your movement abilities, Intercept and Heroic Leap are extremely important tools in Mythic+. Using them to position yourself, get out of dangerous mechanics, or to move to enemies that need to be picked up are essential parts to playing effectively.
• Intimidating Shout is primarily used as an interrupt, because the disorient it provides it easily broken by damage. You can also use it as crowd control by using on a group of enemies, and pulling a specific enemy out of that group to focus it down.
• There are many, many interruptible abilities in dungeons. Identifying the dangerous interruptible abilities and using Pummel to interrupt them is key.
• Shockwave is your AoE stun. Use it to delay or cancel dangerous abilites, or use it as a survivability tool to stun enemies when your defensives are down.
• While Spell Reflection is primarily used for the magic damage reduction, in Mythic+ in particular there are many spells that can be reflected back to the caster. There are some spells that hit very hard, and if you are able to reflect those, you can deal a lot of damage to the enemy. Additionally, sometimes you are able to apply debuffs to the enemy that normally would have been applied to you had you been hit by the spell.

1.3. Mythic+ Talents for Protection Warriors

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. These talents are recommended for all affixes and keystone levels. For more information on particular talents and when to use them, refer to the Builds and Talents page.

Level	Choices
15	✓ Into the Fray	✗ Punish	✗ Impending Victory
30	✓ Crackling Thunder	? Bounding Stride	? Safeguard
45	✗ Best Served Cold	✓ Unstoppable Force	✗ Dragon Roar
60	✗ Indomitable	✗ Never Surrender	✓ Bolster
75	? Menace	✓ Rumbling Earth	? Storm Bolt
90	✓ Booming Voice	✗ Vengeance	✗ Devastator
100	✓ Anger Management	✗ Heavy Repercussions	✗ Ravager

1.4. The Importance of Kiting

In higher level Mythic+, it becomes extremely important to kite enemies when needed. That is, running away from enemies in order to stop taking damage. Doing so gives your healer a chance to catch up, allows your defensive to come off cooldown, etc. There is no hard rule as to when you should kite; it is something you will get a feel for as you do more Mythic+. Just know that doing so is a necesarry strategy in many cases.

Remember not to turn your back to enemies if you do decide to kite, since you can not mitigate attacks; doing so is a sure-fire way to get killed.

2. Mythic+ Affixes

In Battle for Azeroth, there are three tiers of affixes, and one seasonal affix. Every keystone will have at least one affix, with new affixes being added at keystone levels 4 and 7, and the season affix being added at level 10.

2.1. Tier One Affixes

• Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.
• Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. These affixes shift the focus of Mythic+ from boss to trash depending on the week. Protection Warriors are capable at both affixes, being slightly better at Fortified due to their strong mitigation against multiple targets and high AoE damage.

2.2. Tier Two Affixes

• Raging increases the damage dealt by enemies below 30% health by 100% until they die. It is important to play around this and save defensives for when enemies Enrage.
• Teeming adds additional trash mobs to certain packs throughout each dungeon.
• Bolstering causes dying enemies to increase the maximum health and damage of other nearby enemies by 20%. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus on the highest health pool enemies first.
• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when a mob is slain. This pool will heal remaining enemies who stay inside the zone and also damage players.
• Bursting causes enemies to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer 10% of their maximum health in damage every four seconds. When handling the Bursting affix, make sure your group knows how many stacks the healer can handle at a given point and try to save healing cooldowns for larger pulls, which will cause high Bursting stacks.

2.3. Tier Three Affixes

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer 50% of their maximum health in damage. The more enemies you are in combat with, the more volcanic plumes will spawn.
• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking damage over time effect when they fall below 90%. Make sure to have your healer quickly remove the debuff with focused healing / cooldowns if needed, or it is likely you will fall behind and deaths will occur.
• Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 20% maximum health in damage to each player caught in the zone and interrupt any casts being finished during the shockwave.
• Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period of time or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not cleavable and the amount of orbs that spawn scales with the amount of enemies pulled. Protection Warriors are particularly good at dealing with this mechanic, as the spec has frequent availability of high-damage, single-target abilities.
• Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and a minor damage over time effect. Using Heroic Leap to get away from enemies in order to drop your stacks of Necrotic is very important.
• Skittish reduces the amount of threat generated by tanks throughout the dungeon. Rogues and Hunters are good for this week as they have tools to redirect their threat generation to you. Protection Warriors have a very easy time with Skittish due to our high damage output.

2.4. Seasonal Affix

Reaping is the seasonal affix for Season 2 of Battle for Azeroth. Reaping causes Souls to rise from the dead and attack the party every time 20% of the Enemy Forces count is completed. There are three different enemy types to be aware of.

• Risen Soul — They will apply Reap Soul to their current target, dealing 2% maximum health in damage every 3 seconds, per stack. This can be dispelled.
• Tormented Soul — They will cast Grave Bolt, which deals 25% maximum health in damage to the cast target. This cast can be interrupted. These mobs are also stunnable, so use that to your advantange to interrupt Grave Bolt casts.
• Lost Soul — They will cast Shadow Smash at their current target, a frontal cone ability that can be sidestepped. If you are hit by this, your maximum health will be reduced by 20% for 1 minute. Additionally, when Lost Souls die they will cast Expel Soul, spawning swirls on the ground that must be dodged. If you are hit by this, your damage and healing done will be reduced by 10% for 30 seconds.

Careful planning is required to deal with Reaping effectively. Be sure you keep track of when and how a Reaping will occur, and try to plan your pulls so that they end just as you hit the 20% interval. If Avatar and/or Demoralizing Shout come off cooldown just before a Reaping, make sure to save them for the Souls as Protection Warriors' high AoE damage output is important for quickly dealing with the waves.

Once the Souls spawn, you will want to group them together for maximum AoE and cleave. If your Reap Soul stacks are getting out of hand, you should start kiting to allow your healer to catch up and dispel you, or let your stacks expire naturally. Be sure to tank the Lost Soul facing away from the group so as not to hit them with Shadow Smash.

Note that the Souls enter combat immediately upon spawning, although they can reset if in-combat stealth techniques such as Shadowmeld are used. Any Souls remaining from the previous wave will re-enter combat during the next wave. Like other trash mobs in dungeons, Souls will drop combat once the dungeon completes (all bosses are killed and Enemy Forces is at 100%), so you may want to kill the last boss before finishing off your trash count to avoid the final Reaping wave.

3. Changelog