Protection Warrior Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents (BfA 8.0.1)

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 8.0 Changes for Protection Warriors
    • 2.1. Mechanical Changes
    • 2.2. Ability Changes
      • 2.2.1. Removed Abilities
      • 2.2.2. New Abilities
  • 3. Contents
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. Foreword
  • 2. The Basics of Protection Warriors
  • 3. Talent Choice for Protection Warriors
    • 3.1. Recommended Build for All Content
    • 3.2. Passive Build for Brand New Players/Tanks
  • 4. Stat Priority for Protection Warriors
  • 5. Basic Ability Priority for Protection Warriors
  • 6. Active Mitigation Abilities for Protection Warriors
  • 7. Cooldown Usage for Protection Warriors
    • 7.1. Offensive Cooldowns
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Core Rotational Abilities for Protection Warriors
  • 3. Baseline Passives for Protection Warriors
  • 4. Active Mitigation Abilites for Protection Warriors
  • 5. Cooldowns for Protection Warriors
    • 5.1. Defensive Cooldowns
    • 5.2. Offensive Cooldowns
  • 6. Threat Abilities for Protection Warriors
  • 7. Movement Abilities for Protection Warriors
  • 8. Crowd Control Abilites for Protection Warriors
  • 9. Group Buffs from Protection Warriors
  • 10. Utility Abilities for Protection Warriors
• ×Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices
  • 2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Protection Warriors
  • 8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Protection Warriors
• +Artifact Traits and Relics
  • 1. Artifact Changes in 8.0
• +Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Single-Target Rotation for Protection Warriors
  • 2. Multi-Target Rotation for Protection Warriors
  • 3. Opener for Protection Warriors
  • 4. Active Mitigation Usage for Protection Warriors
    • 4.1. Shield Block
      • 4.1.1. Last Stand
    • 4.2. Ignore Pain
  • 5. Rotation during Avatar
  • 6. Cooldown Usage for Protection Warriors
    • 6.1. Last Stand
    • 6.2. Shield Wall
    • 6.3. Demoralizing Shout
    • 6.4. Spell Reflection
  • 7. Mastering Your Protection Warrior
    • 7.1. Rage Generation
      • 7.1.1. Passive Rage Generation
      • 7.1.2. Rage from Abilities
      • 7.1.3. Rage Management
    • 7.2. Block Rating
    • 7.3. Abilities
      • 7.3.1. Taunting
      • 7.3.2. Heroic Throw
      • 7.3.3. Intercept
      • 7.3.4. Heroic Leap
      • 7.3.5. Shockwave
      • 7.3.6. Intimidating Shout
      • 7.3.7. Rallying Cry
      • 7.3.8. Battle Shout
      • 7.3.9. Berserker Rage
      • 7.3.10. Victory Rush
      • 7.3.11. Pummel
    • 7.4. Rotations with Other Talents
      • 7.4.1. Punish
      • 7.4.2. Best Served Cold
      • 7.4.3. Dragon Roar
      • 7.4.4. Vengeance
      • 7.4.5. Devastator
      • 7.4.6. Heavy Repercussions
• +Common and Worst Mistakes
  • 1. Cooldowns
    • 1.1. Using Defensive Cooldowns Reactively
    • 1.2. Not Using Cooldowns Enough
    • 1.3. Not Using External Cooldowns
    • 1.4. Stacking Cooldowns Unnecessarily
  • 2. Thinking Damage Does Not Matter
  • 3. Not Timing Active Mitigation Correctly
    • 3.1. Ignore Pain
  • 4. Capping Ignore Pain
  • 5. Capping Rage
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. Basics
  • 2. Getting a Better Understanding of Protection Warrior Stats
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems for Protection Warriors
  • 2. Enchants for Protection Warriors
  • 3. Consumables for Protection Warriors
    • 3.1. Flasks
    • 3.2. Potions
      • 3.2.1. Health Potions
    • 3.3. Food
    • 3.4. Augment Runes
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Warriors
      • 1.1.1. Mouseouver Interrupt Macro
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Protection Warriors
      • 1.2.1. Mouseover Heroic Throw Macro
      • 1.2.2. Mouseover Taunt Macro
      • 1.2.3. Intercept Macros
  • 2. Addons
    • 2.1. Generic Addons for Warriors
      • 2.1.1. ElvUI
      • 2.1.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs
      • 2.1.3. GTFO
      • 2.1.4. WeakAuras
      • 2.1.5. Details! Damage Meter
      • 2.1.6. KuiNameplates
      • 2.1.7. Angry Keystones
      • 2.1.8. Exorsus Raid Tools
    • 2.2. Specific Addons for Protection Warriors
      • 2.2.1. Basic Threat Bar
• +Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot
  • 1. Gearing Strategy for Protection Warriors
  • 2. Trinkets for Protection Warriors
  • 3. Tier 21 Set Bonuses for Protection Warriors
  • 4. Legendary Items for Protection Warriors
    • 4.1. Tier 1 Legendaries
    • 4.2. Tier 2 Legendaries
    • 4.3. Tier 3 Legendaries
  • 5. Protection Warrior Loot Competition

General Information

On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Protection Warriors in World of Warcraft BfA 8.0.1. We detail what each of the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.

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. Talent Choices

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

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Protection Warriors

✔ Into the Fray

✔ Punish

✘ Impending Victory

• Into the Fray gives 3% Haste for each enemy or ally within 10 yards, up to 15% Haste (a maximum of 5 stacks).
• Punish causes Shield Slam to deal 20% more damage and apply a debuff to the enemy that reduces their damage against you by 3% for 9 seconds.
• Impending Victory replaces Victory Rush. It costs 10 Rage, deals a bit of damage, and heals you for 20% of your maximum health. It is on a 30 second cooldown.

Into the Fray provides a significant Haste increase, increasing the uptime on Shield Block. Not only do you gain stacks from allies and enemies, ally pets and similar units give stacks as well, making it relatively easy to gain max stacks.

Punish is essentially a permanent 3% DR on single-target (it can also have 100% uptime on 2-3 targets with good Shield Slam procs). The debuff is applied to the enemy, not the player. In other words, when Shield Slam is used on an enemy, that enemy deals 3% less damage to the player for 9 seconds.

Impending Victory is not competitive from a damage or survivability standpoint when compared to the other two talents. Its niche use as a reactive heal will rarely turn out to be useful.

In most situations, Into the Fray is better than Punish for survivability as long as you are able to consistently keep 4-5 stacks up on the buff. This is pretty much always the case in dungeons. In raids, it can be a bit hit or miss. It depends on the boss' hitbox, the position of your melee/co-tank, whether or not adds are present, etc. On fights where it is difficult to keep up stacks of Into the Fray, Punish is the better choice. Punish also has increased value on fights where the majority of damage taken is not blockable.

3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Protection Warriors

? Crackling Thunder

? Bounding Stride

? Safeguard

• Crackling Thunder increases the radius of Thunder Clap by 50%, bringing its range from 8 yards to 12 yards.
• Bounding Stride reduces the cooldown on Heroic Leap by 15 seconds, and it also increases your movement speed by 70% for 3 seconds when you land.
• Safeguard causes Intercept, when used on an ally, to also transfer 30% of the damage they take to you for 6 seconds.

Each talent in this tier is situationally useful. Generally speaking, Bounding Stride will be the most universally useful, however, you may find yourself in need of the increased Thunder Clap range in dungeons or find a great use for Safeguard on a particular encounter. Safeguard, in particular, has the potential to be extremely helpful since it more or less acts as an external cooldown.

4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Protection Warriors

✘ Best Served Cold

✔ Unstoppable Force

✘ Dragon Roar

• Best Served Cold increases the damage of Revenge by 5% per target, up to 5 targets (25%).
• Unstoppable Force increases the damage of Thunder Clap by 100% and reduces its cooldown by 50% while Avatar is active.
• Dragon Roar deals a large amount of damage to enemies withing 12 yards, and slows those enemies by 50% for 6 seconds. It generates 10 Rage and it on a 35 second cooldown.

Unlike the other two talents on this tier, Unstoppable Force is the only one that provides a survivability increase. More Thunder Claps mean more Shield Slam resets, which means more Rage, etc.

With the amount of Rage generation that Protection Warriors have, constantly casting Revenge is not feasible, so Best Served Cold will really only be good on sustained, heavy AoE where Revenge is constantly getting reset. Not only is Unstoppable Force more consistent in its strength, but its a survivability increase, where Best Served Cold is not. There are very few situations where you would take Best Served Cold over Unstoppable Force. Dragon Roar can be powerful in situations where you specifically need the slow that it provides, but otherwise the go-to here is Unstoppable Force.

5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Protection Warriors

✘ Indomitable

✘ Never Surrender

✔ Bolster

• Indomitable increases your health by 10%.
• Never Surrender increases the size of Ignore Pain by up to 100% based on your missing health.
• Bolster reduces Last Stand's cooldown by 60 seconds, and for the duration of Last Stand your block chance is increased by 100%.

Indomitable is not bad, but it will only ever be used in situations where the raw health is needed to survive.

Never Surrender is simply far weaker than both of the other talents in this tier. It scales linearly with missing health, so you need to be at basically 0% HP to get the full 100% increase out of it. It is not a consistent talent, and you are much better off picking something else.

Bolster turns an already powerful cooldown into an even more powerful cooldown. With Last Stand lasting 15 seconds, it essentially gives the time to gain a full Shield Block charge as well. Compared to the other two talents, this is absolutely the go-to, as long as Last Stand is used correctly.

6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Protection Warriors

? Menace

? Rumbling Earth

? Storm Bolt

• Menace causes Intimidating Shout to disorient enemies for an additional 4 seconds, and instead of those additional enemies fleeing, they will remain stationary.
• Rumbling Earth reduces Shockwave's cooldown by 15 seconds when it hits at least 3 targets.
• Storm Bolt is a single-target ability that deals a bit of damage and stuns an enemy for 4 seconds. It has a 20 yard range and is on a 30 second cooldown.

These talents will find use mostly only in dungeons. You will mainly want to use Rumbling Earth. The vast majority of pulls in dungeons will have at least 3 targets, and as such having a 2-second stun on a 25-second cooldown is very powerful.

Storm Bolt can be useful in situations where you need an extended stun for a particular enemy, but outside of that it does not have much use.

Menace can be extremely powerful if used correctly. The disorient provided by Intimidating Shout is broken if you deal a decent amount of damage to the enemy, however, say there is a trash pack with a couple particularly dangerous enemies. You could use Intimidating Shout on that pack, pull the enemy you want to kill away, and remove those two enemies from the fight for 12 seconds. This is very situational, and in most cases, you would be better off with Rumbling Earth.

7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Protection Warriors

✔ Booming Voice

✘ Vengeance

✘ Devastator

• Booming Voice causes Demoralizing Shout to generate 40 Rage and increase the damage you deal to targets affected by Demoralizing Shout by 15%.
• Vengeance causes Ignore Pain to reduce the Rage cost of your next Revenge by 33%, and causes Revenge to reduce the Rage cost of your next Ignore Pain by 33%.
• Devastator replaces Devastate. It makes Devastate passive by moving the ability to your auto-atttacks, and instead of having a 30% chance to reset Shield Slam it has a 20% chance.

All three of these talents affect the same thing: Rage generation. As such, the choice here comes down to what provides the most Rage.

Booming Voice is the default choice for this tier. Not only does it provides the most Rage in most situations, it also deals the most damage.

Vengeance works in such a way that the cost of Revenge + Ignore Pain is more than just Ignore Pain on its own. There are a few important details that you must understand about Vengeance to see where this talent is good and why.

• Casting Revenge + Ignore Pain normally costs a total of 70 Rage.
• With Vengeance (assuming one is cast after the other), casting both costs ˜47 Rage (20 Rage for Revenge, 27 Rage for Ignore Pain), saving you 23 Rage.
• If you are in a situation where you would have already been casting Revenge without Vengeance (for example, due to excess Rage), then with Vengeance you are saving 23 Rage every time you cast Revenge then Ignore Pain (or vice versa). This is saving you a large amount of Rage, allowing for more casts of Revenge/Ignore Pain than you would have normally had in that situation.
• When playing for survivability, you do not cast Revenge other than when you get a free Revenge proc (via parries/dodges). The only thing Revenge provides over say, a Devastate, is increased damage. Both Revenge and Devastate have a 30% chance to reset Shield Slam. Revenge costs 30 Rage, Rage you could be putting towards Ignore Pain.
• As such, in situations where you are not casting Revenge (outside of procs), then rotating between Revenge and Ignore Pain is a survivability loss. You are spending 47 Rage to cast for an Ignore Pain which only costs 40 Rage on its own.

With that said, the proper usage of Vengeance for survivability purposes is to only cast Revenge when you get a free proc. That way you are spending ˜27 Rage for those Ignore Pains, and the normal 40 Rage for all the other Ignore Pains. Essentially, for every Revenge proc, you save ("gain") 13 Rage. If you look at the average amount of Revenge procs over the course of a typical encounter, the total Rage gained is less than Booming Voice. However, that is again only in situations where you are not casting Revenge. The more you cast Revenge (only if it is necessary to do so), the more value you get out of Vengeance. Generally speaking, the only situation where Revenge is cast out of necessity due to increased Rage generation is dungeons, but even with that said Vengeance is still not the recommended talent in this tier. More on that just below.

Compared to the other two talents in this tier, Devastator is simply worse for overall Rage generation. Even if you assume that 20% of your melee swings result in a full Shield Slam reset, which would be 15 Rage per reset, this talent is on par with Vengeance or Booming Voice at best. Realistically, most Shield Slam resets from Devastator would not be close to full value. Some resets would overlap with a reset from another ability, or a reset may line up where Shield Slam has a GCD left on its cooldown, meaning that reset did absolutely nothing for you. With that said, it should be clear that Devastator is not competitive when it comes to Rage generation.

In short, for overall Rage generation and therefore survivability, Booming Voice is the best for most content. Vengeance will generally provide the most Rage in dungeons, but that really depends on the pulls and the enemies you are up against. With the way most pulls are, the fact that mobs can be stunned/crowd controlled, and considering that you will generally have cooldowns to cover the entirety of a trash pull, the burst damage and immediate Rage gain from Booming Voice is much more valuable for dungeons. You do not need that bit of extra survivability from Vengeance in dungeons. You are way better off with the increased damage from Booming Voice. Vengeance may have a place in very high level Mythic+ with Fortified, where you are tanking trash packs for an extended period of time. But outside of that, Booming Voice is the go-to.

8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Protection Warriors

✔ Anger Management

✘ Heavy Repercussions

✘ Ravager

• Anger Management causes every 10 Rage you spend to reduce the remaining cooldown of Avatar, Last Stand, Shield Wall, and Demoralizing Shout by 1 second.
• Heavy Repercussions causes Shield Slam to extend the duration of Shield Block by 1 second when there is already a Shield Block buff active. It also causes Shield Block to increase the damage of Shield Slam by an additional 30%.
• Ravager is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown. You throw your weapon at the targeted location, where it will spin in place for 7 seconds, dealing damage to all enemies within 8 yards every second. Moreover, using Ravager increases your Parry chance by 35% for 12 seconds.

Anger Management is the go-to talent in this tier, mainly due to the synergy it has with many other talents. When taken with Bolster and Unstoppable Force (Anger Management reduces Avatar's cooldown), and because Demoralizing Shout has such a short cooldown, uptime on those cooldowns in addition to the high uptime on Shield Block/block makes Anger Management very powerful.

Heavy Repercussions, while good, does not provide the same amount of benefit that Anger Management does, particularly because Anger Management provides so much flexibility in the way of cooldowns. Not only that, but with Bolster, uptime on Shield Block/block is not that much less compared to Heavy Repercussions anyway.

Ravager is still significantly weaker compared to the other two choices on this row. It does not provide a consistent survivability increase, but rather it relies on the RNG nature of parry. Heavy Repercussions and Anger Management both provide a consistent, "guaranteed" survivability increase.