Protection Warrior Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

This page will go over all the talents, explaining each and every one of them in detail. Regardless of whether the talents are passive or active, they can change how we play the class entirely. To get to know if any of the talents influences Protection Warrior's rotation, you can look into our Rotation guide!

There are also some talents that are good in certain environments while lacking in others. For more information regarding talents that are good in Mythic+ or Raiding, respectively, you can take a look at the guides below.

It is crucial to mention that our talent trees are very well put together and we have various choices to be made depending on the content and personal preference!

Before digging into the details, it is important to mention that you no longer need any special item in order to swap around your Talents! This is a great quality of life change.

Under the next section, you can find different example builds. Your talent choices depend on the content you are doing and which gameplay you prefer.

2.

Best Talents for Protection Warrior

Mountain Thane Raid Colossus Raid Mountain Thane AoE/Mythic+ Colossus Mythic+

2.1.

Mountain Thane Raid Talents

This build is a decent combination of offensive and defensive talents, making it a good all-around raid build.

Deep Wounds and Enduring Alacrity can be treated as flex points and placed elsewhere to suit the encounter.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

2.2.

Colossus Raid Talents

Solid all-around Colossus raiding build, which offers an alternative gameplay to Mountain Thane.

Deep Wounds and Enduring Alacrity can be treated as flex points and placed elsewhere to suit the encounter.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

2.4.

Mountain Thane AoE Talents

The below build should be the basis of a standard Mythic+ build as Mountain Thane.

From the class tree, Storm Bolt, Rumbling Earth and Pain and Gain and can be treated as flex points and moved around. From the Protection tree, Heavy Handed, Bloodborne and Enduring Alacrity can all be moved around.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

2.5.

Colossus AoE Talents for Protection Warrior

The build below is a solid example of an overall good Mythic+ build for Colossus. It should provide you with more than enough Shield Block, interrupt tools, and damage output.

If mobility is required, Double Time can be picked up at the cost of Stance Mastery or Battlefield Commander. Bloodsurge, Brutal Vitality and Battle-Scarred Veteran can all be treated as flex points and placed elsewhere to suit the dungeon.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

Mountain Thane Hero Talents focus on amplifying your already existing abilities. The core of the tree is turning Thunder Clap into a much more powerful Thunder Blast. The design of the talents themselves gives us a fun feedback loop that is described below.

• Burst of Power allows Lightning Strikes to proc Shield Slam;
• Strategist can proc Shield Slam;
• Shield Slam can proc Thunder Blast;
• Thunder Blast can proc Lightning Strikes thanks to Flashing Skies;

As shown in the list above, the whole tree creates a positive Rage feedback loop while maintaining our rotational fluidness. The better Rage economy is what mainly sets Mountain Thane and Colossus apart.

Colossus tree revolves around Demolish and amplifying the damage of your bleeds, Revenge and Shield Slam. While Demolish does not provide any Rage generation, it hits like a truck and enhances our other abilities. It has a different, more methodical flow than the spam heavy Mountain Thane. You need to put slightly more thought into where to spend the Rage you generate while also trying to maximize each and every cast of Demolish.

Opting into War Mode makes you eligible for open-world PvP but also grants you the following benefits:

• World Quests at maximum level have 10% increased rewards.
• You gain 10% increased experience while leveling.
• Grants you the use of PvP talents in the open-world.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended that you enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself eligible for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

Below are the recommended PvP talents for leveling and PvE content. You are able to choose 1 general PvP talent and 3 spec-specific talents.

• Morale Killer reduces the cooldown of Demoralizing Shout by 15 seconds, bringing its cooldown to 30 seconds, and causes enemies to deal reduced damage to all targets, not just you. This allows for extremely high uptime on Demoralizing Shout.
• Dragon Charge causes you to charge a long distance at high speed in the targeted direction. It does not require a target. It deals damage and knocks back any enemies that are hit by the charge. The movement that this talent provides is extremely useful for questing or getting out of dangerous situations. It is almost like having another Heroic Leap in terms of movement.
• Bodyguard is a great tool to help you reduce the Physical damage dealt to your allies.
• Disarm is another extremely strong option you can take. This allows you to significantly reduce the damage output of classes that rely on weapon damage.

These are simply recommendations. You may find other PvP talents more useful depending on your playstyle. For a more in-depth guide about Warrior Warrior take a look at our dedicated PvP guide.

While PvPing as Protection Warrior can certainly be fun, you might also want to try out PvPing as either Fury or Arms Warrior. Both of these specs will deal a lot more damage while being squishier.