Protection Warrior Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.0.2
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Protection Warrior, depending on the type of damage you will be tanking. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to maximize your survivability and DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.2.
If you were looking for WoW Classic content, please refer to our Classic Tank Warrior rotation.
If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell/ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.
While highly recommended to go over this whole page for a better understanding of how the class plays, you can also take a look at the Easy Mode guide linked below. Easy Mode will go over all the important information very briefly without going too in-depth. While this will provide you with a very basic understanding of Protection Warrior, you should aim to read through the other pages to get the most out of your character.
Single-Target Rotation for Protection Warriors
The single-target 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 for which you meet the criteria. This applies to all "rotations" hereafter.
This does not take into account usage of your active mitigation abilities (we cover this important topic in a subsequent section). Active mitigation usage is generally much more nuanced, and it would not be optimal to list them within an ability priority.
The overall goal is to generate as much Rage as possible by casting Rage-generating abilities, so that Rage can then be spent on active mitigation.
- Cast
Avatar on cooldown.
- Cast
Demoralizing Shout on cooldown (only with
Booming Voice).
Spear of Bastion /
Ancient Aftershock /
Conqueror's Banner
- Cast
Ravager if you are specced into it.
- Cast
Dragon Roar if you are specced into it.
- 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 (
Condemn)if you do not need Rage for survivability.
- Cast
Revenge only if it is free.
- Cast
Devastate.
Note that since Revenge costs Rage (unless it has a proc), it is not
worth using Rage to cast it, since Devastate also has a chance to reset
Shield Slam and is free. The only thing Revenge provides over
Devastate is extra damage. When playing
Devastator, there can
be a few empty globals when you have nothing to cast, but that is fine.
If you are in a situation where you do not need to put any Rage towards
Ignore Pain for survivability purposes, you can of course spend Rage
on
Revenge instead to slightly increase your damage or if the enemy
is below 20% HP then
Execute.
Avatar and
Demoralizing Shout should be cast on cooldown. It
is perfectly fine if either of these abilites become "desycned" with each other.
Maximizing their uptime is the most important factor.
Multi-Target Rotation for Protection Warriors
Against multiple targets, when playing defensively, the ability priority is exactly the same as the single-target priority. It maximizes Rage generation and therefore survivability.
In general, regardless of whether you are playing defensively, you should
cast Revenge (even if it is not free) early on in a fight to spread
Deep Wounds. Against 2-3 targets, you can instead switch targets and
cast
Devastate, which also applies Deep Wounds.
In dungeons in particular where there are often new enemies to gain aggro on,
it is worth casting Thunder Clap (or
Revenge if Thunder
Clap is not available, even if it costs Rage) over
Shield Slam in
order to pick up those enemies. Saving your allies is far more important than a
bit of Rage.
If, and only if, survivability is not an issue whatsoever and you want to do as much damage as possible, the following priority should be followed in multi-target situations:
- Cast
Spear of Bastion /
Ancient Aftershock on cooldown.
- Cast
Ravager on cooldown, if specced into it.
- Cast
Dragon Roar on cooldown, if specced into it.
- Cast
Revenge if you have the Rage.
- Cast
Thunder Clap on cooldown.
- Cast
Shield Slam on cooldown.
- Cast
Devastate.
Remember that you are still casting abilities like Avatar and
Demoralizing Shout in multi-target according to the above guidelines.
Whirlwind is not worth using, as
Revenge does everything
better.
Revenge applies
Deep Wounds, Whirlwind does not
Revenge has a chance to reset the CD of
Shield Slam, Whirlwind does not
Revenge is not capped at 5 enemies, Whirlwind is.
Opener for Protection Warriors
Generally, you will want to Taunt as you cast
Charge.
- Cast
Charge.
- Cast
Avatar as you Charge.
- Cast
Shield Block.
- Cast
Shield Slam.
- Cast
Demoralizing Shout only if
Booming Voice is selected.
- Cast
Thunder Clap.
- Proceed with the appropriate ability priority.
If there are multiple targets to pick-up, for example when pulling a pack in
a dungeon, cast Thunder Clap after you
Charge instead of
Shield Slam.
After executing the opener, you will generally be left with 65 Rage (plus a
bit more, since you have meleed and been meleed at this point). Since you are in
Avatar here, make sure you react to the amount of Rage you have
accordingly and do not cap Rage.
You can also take a look at the Mythic+ page if you wish to see if there are any changes in rotation when it comes to specific content.
Active Mitigation Usage for Protection Warriors
Your rotation is there to generate Rage for you, which you should then invest
into your active mitigation abilities. As a Protection Warrior, you have two
abilities that are essential to staying alive: Shield Block and
Ignore Pain.
Shield Block
Shield Block is your primary mitigation ability. It takes priority
over
Ignore Pain assuming you are taking blockable damage
(which is almost always).
Using Shield Block is fairly straightforward. If you are taking
blockable damage you should be using Shield Block to reduce it.
There are a few things to look out for in regards to getting the maximum out of
your
Shield Block usage:
Shield Block works against all melee attacks (as in, auto-attacks/white hits), but there are also many boss abilities/mechanics that are blockable as well. Sometimes, things that you would expect to be blockable are not, and things that you would not expect to be blockable are. You simply have to have knowledge of what these blockable mechanics are. The point here is that if you do know a higher damage ability is blockable, you are much better off delaying Shield Block so that the last bit of its duration blocks that ability.
- For further benefit, you can time
Shield Block with the enemy's melee swings. Most enemies have a swing timer between 1.5 and 2 seconds. If you cast Shield Block right after a melee, you essentially just lost 2 seconds of effective uptime. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell when an enemy is actually melee attacking you, so this point is not super important, but can be beneficial if done properly.
- Also be aware of the enemy's spell casts/channels. If the boss is about
to spend 5 seconds casting a spell, you should delay
Shield Block accordingly.
- Similar to the first point, but if you know an enemy is about to deal
increased damage, you should delay
Shield Block for those periods as well. For example, in Mythic+, enemies deal significantly more damage once they hit 30% health if the
Raging affix is active. While this is not a specific ability, its a mechanic you should be aware of and adjust Shield Block usage around.
If you are not currently tanking, and there is a good amount of time before
you do tank again, use Shield Block to increase
Shield Slam's damage. Just be sure to time it in such a way that as
you are about to tank again, you have close to 2 charges of Shield Block, so you
can maximize effective uptime.
Last Stand
When using Bolster,
Last Stand should be used like
Shield Block assuming you do not need Last Stand for a specific
mechanic. Since Last Stand lasts 15 seconds, it gives you the time to gain very
close to, or a full Shield Block charge (depending on your Haste). So if used
when you have a charge of Shield Block available, you risk wasting a bit of
Shield Block cooldown time. Essentially, once you have used both charges of
Shield Block and the actual Shield Block buff has expired, further increase
your effective block uptime by using Last Stand.
Ignore Pain
Ignore Pain reduces damage by a flat amount, and with its current
tuning, is much weaker than
Shield Block. As such, it should be used
in addition to Shield Block, not in place of it.
Shield Block is limited by its cooldown, where
Ignore Pain is simply limited by the amount of Rage you have
available. So, 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. More or less, Ignore Pain should be used to
further smooth out your damage intake.
Just like Shield Block though, it can and should be used
intelligently if doing so provides a benefit.
- It is very important to track your current absorb amount so you are not
spending Rage on
Ignore Pain if you are at, or close to, the cap. Since Ignore Pain's cap is 2 times Ignore Pain on cast, you generally should not cast Ignore Pain again until your absorb is close to depleting. This WeakAura tracks your current absorb and cap.
- If you are not tanking, and are taking very little or no damage, do not
use your Rage on
Ignore Pain. Depending on how long you are not tanking for, it will simply expire, wasting that Rage. Instead, try to cast an Ignore Pain right before you start tanking again. If you are taking damage while not tanking, cast Ignore Pain as needed to help out your healers.
- While generally speaking you will want to use
Ignore Pain to smooth out your damage intake, it can also be very important to pool your Rage and cast Ignore Pain right before a large spike of damage, increasing the chance that you survive that spike.
The exception to the points above would be when you are close to Rage
capping. In such situations you should use Ignore Pain to spend
Rage even if it means going over the Ignore Pain cap.
Additionally, if you are ever in the extremely rare situation where there is
very, very little blockable damage, or none at all, you will of course
want to prioritize
Ignore Pain over
Shield Block.
Rotation during Avatar
This section only applies if you are using Unstoppable Force and
assumes you have
Avatar active.
With Unstoppable Force, when you cast
Avatar, your
ability priority stays the same, but you have to approach it in a different
way.
During Avatar,
Thunder Clap is available every other
global cooldown. This means that you will be rotating between Thunder Clap and
another ability based on the ability priority. For example, if you get lucky and
many of your Thunder Clap casts reset
Shield Slam, you will find
yourself alternating between Thunder Clap and Shield Slam.
As another example, you might have a cast sequence that looks like this:
Shield Slam,
Thunder Clap,
Shield Slam,
Thunder Clap,
Revenge (free),
Thunder Clap,
Devastate...
Again, your ability priority does not change. Shield Slam is still
above
Thunder Clap. Just be aware that during
Avatar,
Thunder Clap has a significantly reduced cooldown and adjust accordingly.
Also, it is very easy to Rage cap during Avatar, so be ready to
dump Rage into
Ignore Pain /
Revenge.
Cooldown Usage for Protection Warriors
As a Protection Warrior, you have a number of defensive cooldowns. Using your defensive cooldowns properly is extremely important. You want to plan out your cooldowns before going into an encounter and maximize their usage as much as possible. Outlined below are your various defensive cooldowns and how they should be used. For more info on cooldown usage in general, see the how to improve page.
Last Stand
Last Stand can and should be used in two different ways depending
on the situation. With
Bolster, Last Stand should be used to extend
effective block uptime as outlined above in the
Shield Block section.
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 as an emergency cooldown - if your health drops to a dangerously
low level unexpectedly - or as a pre-emptive cooldown to prepare for a large
damage spike.
If you are not running Bolster, then simply use it as an
emergency or preemptive cooldown.
Shield Wall
Shield Wall should be used to prepare for a large damage spike, or
during periods of high damage. This is especially useful against non-blockable
damage. It is not recommended to use it if your health suddenly drops low, as
it does nothing to get your health back up, but in situations where you have
nothing else, you want to use it if it increases your chance to survive.
Demoralizing Shout
With Booming Voice,
Demoralizing Shout should be used
on cooldown and for damage purposes. More often than not you will have it up at
a good time, helping you smooth out damage.
Now, there are definitely situations where you will want to delay the usage
of Demoralizing Shout if you know there is heavy damage upcoming and
you do not have anything else available.
Without Booming Voice, simply use it as you would a normal
defensive cooldown.
Spell Reflection
Spell Reflection can be used in two different ways. Either as a way
to reflect a specific spell cast at you, or as a magic damage reduction
cooldown. The vast majority of spells cast by bosses are not
reflectable, but the damage reduction portion still works of course. Rarely,
some boss abilities are reflectable, and in these cases reflecting them can be
extremely powerful, both in terms of damage reduction and dealing damage to the
boss.
Most of the time, you will be using it as a magic damage reduction tool.
However, in dungeons and similar content, reflecting particularly powerful
spells is a great use of Spell Reflection. Remember that when you
reflect a spell, you lose the Spell Reflection buff, meaning you lose the damage
reduction as well. Be mindful of this if you are in a situation where you need
the magic damage reduction but there are also reflectable spells being cast at
you.
Mastering Your Protection Warrior
In this section, we will dive a bit deeper into the core mechanics and various abilities of Protection Warriors. Understanding these topics is an important step to truly mastering the specializaztion.
Rage Generation
Warrior's primary resource is Rage. It is important that you understand how Rage is generated, so you can effectively manage and use it.
Rage has a maximum capacity of 100, and is empty by default. Rage decays at a rate of 1 per second when out of combat. In combat, Rage does not decay.
You generate Rage in two main ways. Passively, and through abilities.
Passive Rage Generation
There are two sources of passive Rage generation.
- 2 Rage is gained every time you auto-attack. Note that this
scales with attack speed. Equipping daggers, for example, is not for better
Rage generation.
- More specifically, you generate 1.75 * weaponSpeed * 0.44 Rage per auto-attack. 1-handed weapons are 2.6 speed, which equates to 2 Rage per auto-attack.
- 3 Rage is gained every time you are hit by an enemy
auto-attack.
- There is a cooldown on this. It seems to be around 1 second, but the exact cooldown is unknown at the moment.
Rage is not gained from avoidance events (that is, if the enemy parries/dodges or if you parry/dodge).
Because Rage is gained when you are hit by an auto-attack, Rage generation tends to be much higher in dungeons or encounters with multiple enemies.
Rage from Abilities
In order of most Rage to least:
Ravager generates up to 60 Rage (if it hits every time).
Demoralizing Shout generates 40 Rage (only with
Booming Voice).
Avatar generates 30 Rage.
Dragon Roar generates 20 Rage.
Charge generates 20 Rage.
Shield Slam generates 15 Rage.
Thunder Clap generates 5 Rage.
Rage Management
It is important to understand that you do not have to spend Rage as
soon as you get it. Pooling your Rage in order to maximize Rage generation,
survivability, or damage is an important aspect of playing Protection Warrior.
For example, if you are in a fight and trying to maximize damage, and are
casting Revenge to do so, and you reach a part of the fight where
additional enemies join, then you will want to save your Rage/Revenge cast and
cast it on those additional enemies. As another example, during
Avatar,
you may get a long streak of
Shield Slam resets. Capitalizing on those
resets immediately, rather than delaying them by a global cooldown by casting
Revenge, will result in more Rage and more casts of Rage-spending abilities. You
do not lose casts of Revenge by waiting, since it is limited by the
total amount of Rage you have available.
You can lose casts however if you cap out on Rage. Meaning you hit the max of 100 Rage and any further Rage generation is lost.
On single-target, you will generate a decent amount of Rage, but you will rarely ever get close to capping out on Rage unless playing incorrectly.
On multi-target however, specifically when you have multiple enemies auto-attacking you, is where proper Rage management is necessary to avoid capping.
You should follow your ability priority as usual unless you hit a point where
following it would result in wasting Rage. In those situations, Revenge
and
Ignore Pain become your highest priority abilities. If you are about
to cap out on Rage, and have very little or no Ignore Pain absorb left, then
make sure to cast Ignore Pain to stop yourself from capping. If going for damage
or you already have Ignore Pain up, use Revenge. Generally, you should still
prioritize
Thunder Clap above Revenge as wasting 5 Rage is minimal and
the extra damage gained from doing so is worth it. As an example, say you are at
96 Rage. Casting
Shield Slam at that point would provide you with 4
Rage, not 15. On average, you will gain more overall Rage by delaying
Rage-generating abilities by a global cooldown to avoid capping.
Sometimes, there are situations where you are unable to burn Rage quickly
enough with Revenge. In these cases, simply spam
Ignore Pain,
even if your Ignore Pain is capped and you are wasting absorb. Doing so still
allows you to benefit from
Anger Management, which is far better than
capping Rage.
Additionally, as you repeat content and gain more experience with different
encounters/situations, you should switch to a DPS ability priority (that is,
prioritize higher damage abilites over Shield Slam) if you know that
normally in that situation you will have to "dump" Rage as outlined above. That
way, you deal more damage and generate slightly less Rage, reducing your risk of
capping and increasing your overall throughput.
Block Rating
You may notice that there is a "Block" stat on shields. The character sheet has Block rating, and all of that rating comes from the Block on shields. So if a shield has 2000 Block, the character sheet will show 2000 Block. Currently, the amount of Block on your shield is always 2.5 times the amount of Armor on your shield.
The damage reduction from blocking is calculated based on your total Block. It is calculated in the same way damage reduction for Armor is: blockRating / (blockRating + k). The k value changes depending on the difficulty or type of content you are doing. Generally speaking, more difficult or newer content has a higher k value, and a higher k value results in lower damage reduction. Block damage reduction is entirely separate from Armor and having more Armor does not affect it.
Critical blocks are simply double the damage reduction. For example, if a regular block provided 40% damage reduction, a critical block would provide 80% damage reduction. It is worth noting that just like Armor, there is a cap of 85% on the damage reduction from Block. If a shield were to provide 50% damage reduction on normal blocks, critical blocks with that shield would only be 85%.
This system incentivizes Shield upgrades heavily. Getting a good shield is a significant increase to survivability, way more than a similar upgrade to another piece of gear would be.
Abilities
Taunting
Taunt is your single-target taunt ability. Casting Taunt
significantly increases your threat generation for its duration. If you are
having trouble building threat, deal as much damage as possible in this
window.
A potentially important mechanic with taunting that not many people know about is the fact that there are diminishing returns on the duration of taunts. If an enemy is taunted enough within a certain timeframe, they become immune to taunts.
There is a 20-second reset window on the diminishing returns on taunting. That is, if 20 seconds go by without a taunt being cast on a particular enemy, the diminishing returns resets.
For each taunt after the first, the duration of the taunt is two-thirds of the previous duration. The enemy is immune to a sixth taunt.
The first taunt lasts 3 seconds, the second 2 seconds, the third 1.4 seconds, the fourth 0.9 seconds, and the fifth 0.6 seconds.
Being aware of this mechanic and knowing when you may be affected by it is important when planning how to approach a particular encounter.
Heroic Throw
Heroic Throw deals little damage, but generates a decent amount of
threat. It has no cost and no cooldown. Use it to gain aggro on distant enemies.
Also, if you are ever out of range of an enemy and cannot get back into melee
range for whatever reason, you can spam Heroic Throw for a tiny bit of extra
damage.
Shattering Throw
Shattering Throw deals damage to enemies with a 1.5s cast time and
3-minute CD. Deals a lot more damage to absorbs and removes any magical
immunity. Mostly useful in PvP, but can also find uses in PvE, if the enemy
has an absorb on them.
Intervene
Intervene is a strong defensive CD that can have a variety of uses.
In Raiding, it can be used on our co-tank to reduce their incoming damage, while
in Mythic+, it can be used on party members that have fixate effects on them.
Knockback mechanics can be almost entirely negated by Intervene, if reacted
to quickly. Using it to move quickly to another area by casting it on an ally
, perhaps to get out of environmental damage, can be extremely useful.
Heroic Leap
Heroic Leap can be used to jump over ground effects or other
various mechanics that you would normally have to run around. It is not 100%
consistent in that sometimes when you jump over something you might still take
the damage, but more often than not you can use Heroic Leap to your advantage in
this way. More simply, Heroic Leap is great for getting into position or out of
dangerous mechanics.
Heroic Leap also resets the remaining cooldown on
Taunt. This means that you can easily Leap towards a new add that
spawned and immediately use Taunt to grab aggro even if you had used Taunt a
second ago.
Shockwave
Proper use of Shockwave can be extremely important, both from a
crowd control perspective and a survivability perspective. It can be
used to stun enemies that are casting to interrupt those or to keep enemies in
place, but, arguably more importantly, it can be used to completely stop damage
for its duration. Say
Shield Block runs out and you have no major
defensive cooldowns left to use. Using Shockwave on enemies (assuming they are
not immune) completely stops their damage. Timing its usage around your active
mitigation can prevent deaths.
Intimidating Shout
Intimidating Shout should be used in the same way
Shockwave is used; for crowd control purposes or survivability
purposes. You do have to be more careful with this ability though. The enemies
that flee can run into another pack of enemies and pull them, possibly resulting
in a wipe.
Rallying Cry
Timing Rallying Cry well can be the difference between a kill and
a wipe. It is a fairly significant survivability increase for your group, so
plan its usage well.
Battle Shout
While not actually used in combat (unless to give the buff to a recently
resurrected ally), make sure you cast Battle Shout on your group or
yourself before entering combat.
Berserker Rage
Berserker Rage is a fantastic ability in the right situations.
There are a fair share of enemy abilities that fear, and being able to completely
stop those is a huge advantage. Identify where Berserker Rage can be used, and
take advantage of those situations.
Victory Rush
While generally useless on boss fights, it can save your life you get it to
proc. For pure survivability, it is your highest priority ability (assuming you
are low on health). In dungeons, in particular, make sure you are maximizing
usage of Victory Rush.
Pummel
Many players simply do not use their kick unless specifically instructed to. Interrupting enemies can stop potentially deadly mechanics from going out. Identify those dangerous mechanics and use your kick!
Changelog
- 24 Nov. 2020: Added Covenant abilities to Rotation order.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Removed mentions of Azerite.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
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This guide has been written by Mwahi, a Protection Warrior theorycrafter and moderator of the Skyhold Warrior Discord.
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