Protection Warrior PvP Talents and Builds — The War Within (Season 1)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as an Protection Warrior and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Protection Warrior PvP Guide.
Talent Choices for Protection Warriors
The War Within PvP Talent Builds for Protection Warrior in Arena
Colossus - Champion's Spear Protection Warrior (recommended)
Colossus Protection Warrior focuses on delivering high burst damage with Demolish, making up for your otherwise low damage output, and giving you a window of opportunity to kill in. You want to lock enemies down with Champion's Spear and guarantee the burst damage.
There are several talents in the Protection Warrior tree that you will want to change regularly based on matchups, which are:
- Wrecking Throw / Shattering Throw: This node comes down to whether or not the enemy has magical immunities, such as Divine Shield or Ice Block. If they do, pick Shattering Throw, otherwise use Wrecking Throw for shield breaking, and if the enemy team has none of both, simply skip this node and pick something else in the talent tree.
- Immovable Object / Unstoppable Force: In general, you want to play aggressively, but should you find yourself in a situation where you need another defensive cooldown, then you can afford to give up Unstoppable Force to get another one through Avatar.
- Berserker Shout / Piercing Howl: Both are situational and really powerful. You should default to Piercing Howl, but choose Berserker Shout in situations where you can break fears with cooldowns on your healer, such as Intimidating Shout or Psychic Scream, reliably, or if you're confident you will have full uptime on your target.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Mountain Thane - Thunderblast Protection Warrior
Mountain Thane Protection Warrior relies more on sustained damage output and lacks burst damage. Thunder Blast does a lot of damage, especially against armored enemies, and can make you do well on cleave damage. However, since you lack burst damage to finish the fight, with Protection Warrior already lacking on damage output, this build may just prolong the fight into anything that is not a melee cleave.
There are several talents in the Protection Warrior tree that you will want to change regularly based on matchups, which are:
- Wrecking Throw / Shattering Throw: This node comes down to whether or not the enemy has magical immunities, such as Divine Shield or Ice Block. If they do, pick Shattering Throw, otherwise use Wrecking Throw for shield breaking, and if the enemy team has none of both, simply skip this node and pick something else in the talent tree.
- Immovable Object / Unstoppable Force: In general, you want to play aggressively, but should you find yourself in a situation where you need another defensive cooldown, then you can afford to give up Unstoppable Force to get another one through Avatar.
- Berserker Shout / Piercing Howl: Both are situational and really powerful. You should default to Piercing Howl, but choose Berserker Shout in situations where you can break fears with cooldowns on your healer, such as Intimidating Shout or Psychic Scream, reliably, or if you're confident you will have full uptime on your target.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each has uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. As Protection Warrior, your choices are limited as you will be running the mandatory PvP talent almost every match.
Mandatory PvP Talents
Morale Killer is incredibly powerful and should be picked in every match. The damage reduction for your team is huge, and extra Rage generation is always welcome.
Situational PvP Talents
Thunderstruck is great for peeling a teammate if your team composition features no roots to be affected by the Diminishing Returns.
Bodyguard gives a powerful Physical damage reduction to an ally, which gets redirected to you. Protection Warrior can handle Physical damage very easily, and this makes your partner very unlikely to die to specializations based around Physical damage, such as Subtlety Rogue or Arms Warrior. The downside of this strong talent is that it breaks if you move too far from your ally, and you must consider if you have to kite a lot or not.
Disarm has a short cooldown and can completely ruin the damage of weapon-based classes like Retribution Paladins or Subtlety Rogue. This ability can even be used offensively versus specializations that require weapons for their defensives, such as stopping an Arms Warrior from using Die by the Sword or a Death Knights from using Death Strike.
Shield Bash provides further damage reduction to the enemy and can be kept up permanently if used successfully on enemies casting spells, allowing you to significantly reduce the damage your team takes.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4
- 19 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 29 Jul. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 28 Feb. 2022: Page updated for Patch 9.2.
- 08 Nov. 2021: Page reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 04 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Karanze, an experienced Gladiator Warrior player who has been a Stormforged/trusted member in the popular Warrior class discord Skyhold. You can watch his stream on Twitch.
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