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Protection Warrior Tank Mythic+ Tips in Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.0.1

Last updated on Sep 29, 2018 at 09:15 by Marok 31 comments

Table of Contents

General Information

On this page, you will various tips and pieces of advice for clearing high Mythic+ content with your Protection Warrior.

The other pages of our Protection Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author

This guide has been written by Marok, a Protection Warrior theorycrafter, owner of the Skyhold Warrior Discord, and owner of skyhold.gg, a Warrior community website. He raids in Potent on Mal'Ganis-US. You can follow him on Twitter.

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 Icon 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 Icon Intercept and Heroic Leap Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon Pummel to interrupt them is key.
  • Shockwave Icon 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 Icon 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 ✔ Into the Fray Punish ✘ Punish Impending Victory ✘ Impending Victory
30 Crackling Thunder ✔ Crackling Thunder Bounding Stride ? Bounding Stride Safeguard ? Safeguard
45 Best Served Cold ✘ Best Served Cold Unstoppable Force ✔ Unstoppable Force Dragon Roar ✘ Dragon Roar
60 Indomitable ✘ Indomitable Never Surrender ✘ Never Surrender Bolster ✔ Bolster
75 Menace ? Menace Rumbling Earth ✔ Rumbling Earth Storm Bolt ✘ Storm Bolt
90 Booming Voice ✔ Booming Voice Vengeance ✘ Vengeance Devastator ✘ Devastator
100 Anger Management ✔ Anger Management Heavy Repercussions ✘ Heavy Repercussions Ravager ✘ 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.

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

Fortified Icon Fortified and Tyrannical Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon Teeming adds additional trash mobs to certain packs throughout each dungeon.
  • Bolstering Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon 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 Icon 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.
  • Necrotic Icon Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and a minor damage over time effect. Using Heroic Leap Icon Heroic Leap to get away from enemies in order to drop your stacks of Necrotic is very important.
  • Skittish Icon 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

Infested Icon Infested is the "seasonal" affix. Enemies afflicted with the Infested debuff will be scattered throughout each dungeon once you reach key level 10. These mobs will heal enemies around them and, when slain, will spawn two Spawn of G'huun that will attempt to infest remaining enemies. Saving Shockwave Icon Shockwave to stun these adds can be extremely helpful.

There are several ways to handle Infested Icon Infested mobs depending on pack size, which mob is infested, and group composition. The first way to handle an Infested enemy is to burn down the infested target and the subsequently spawning Spawn of G'huun while either crowd controlling or ignoring the other mobs in the pack. The second way is to crowd control the Infested mob and burn down all the other enemies.

⋘Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
Common and Worst Mistakes⋙

3. Changelog

  • 29 Sep. 2018: Added note about kiting.
  • 13 Aug. 2018: Page added.
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