Protection Warrior Torghast Guide and Best Anima Powers — Shadowlands 9.0.2

This page will guide you on how to get the most out of your Protection Warrior in Torghast, Tower of the Damned. For more information about Torghast in general, check out our dedicated page below.

Playing Protection Warrior in Torghast is fairly easy as our tankiness and decent damage output provide us with the means to advance fairly easily. One of our greatest strengths is that we can pull big packs of enemies together and burst them down with our powerful AoE abilities like Ravager, Dragon Roar, Avatar. We do have to be careful though as some enemies are dangerous and we do not have any emergency recovery healing in our kit outside of Victory Rush / Impending Victory. While our AoE is great we are lacking a bit in single target department so choosing talents and Anima Powers that help with this is preferable.

1. Thunderlord
2. The Wall
3. Seismic Reverberation

Thunderlord is the best all around Legendary for Torghast when paired together with Booming Voice. It gets even stronger when picking Unstoppable Force and Anger Management. This makes it so you have a very high uptime on Demoralizing Shout and Avatar. There are also some Anima Powers that increase your damage to enemies while affected by any of your shouts so the increased uptime on Demoralizing Shout will be even more powerful then.

While not being so useful on lower floors The Wall will gain value in higher ones. Once the damage of enemies goes up we are in need of more defensive value and this is where The Wall comes in. Reducing the cooldown of Shield Wall while also providing a significant amount of extra Rage via Shield Slam makes it a desirable option. The cooldown reduction part can further be enhanced by picking Anger Management making this even better.Only pick this if you are really struggling with survivability.

Seismic Reverberation is another great option for Torghast. This one is mainly AoE focused as it only works on 3+ enemies. As Revenge deals a lot of damage getting another cast for free will make quick work of your enemies. It does come with the downside of having to use a lot of Rage for Revenge but there are plenty of Rage generation increasing Anima Powers that help resolve this issue.

If you wish to see about other available Legendaries or more in depth information about them please look at our Legendary guide.

Kyrian is the best all around option for Torghast. It provides us with a extra heal with Phial of Serenity and a 1-minute cooldown damaging ability that can further be empowered by Anima Powers.

While Kyrian is the preferred choice you can also freely do Torghast as any other Covenant. To get a better understanding of all 4 Covenants and what they provide us take a look at our Covenant guide.

Level	Choices
15	? War Machine	✗ Punish	? Devastator
25	✓ Double Time	? Rumbling Earth	✗ Storm Bolt
30	? Best Served Cold	✓ Booming Voice	✗ Dragon Roar
35	? Crackling Thunder	✓ Bounding Stride	✗ Menace
40	✗ Never Surrender	✓ Indomitable	? Impending Victory
45	? Into the Fray	✗ Unstoppable Force	✓ Ravager
50	✓ Anger Management	✗ Heavy Repercussions	? Bolster

? War Machine

✘ Punish

? Devastator

While War Machine is lackluster in most content it is really strong in Torghast due to enemies constantly dying. It will provide you with a lot of extra Rage and movement speed making clearing the floors a lot quicker.

Devastator is another great option as it also increases our Rage generation by providing us more Shield Slam casts. It is also better in single target situations where you do not have enemies constantly dying. In general if you need the extra single target damage then pick Devastator, otherwise keep using War Machine.

✔ Double Time

? Rumbling Earth

✘ Storm Bolt

Double Time provides us with 1 extra Charge which helps improve our mobility and chain pulling. As you can not mount up in Torghast having some extra mobility to get around is a big strength.

Rumbling Earth provides us with a lot lower cooldown on Shockwave. As we are in most situations fighting more than 3 enemies then it is almost guaranteed to get the effect from this talent. If you are at a high enough floor where enemies need to be crowdcontrolled more frequently then you should pick this up instead of Double Time

? Best Served Cold

✔ Booming Voice

✘ Dragon Roar

Best Served Cold provides you with a constant damage boost if you have the Rage to spend on Revenge. This becomes extremely powerful when paired together with the Legendary power Seismic Reverberation. Early on you do not need to put the extra Rage into Defensives as the damage does not warrant it so you should be able to cast plenty of Revenges.

Booming Voice should be your go-to talent. It is the highest Rage generating ability on this row meaning we will be able to use this extra Rage for offensive or defensive abilities depending on the situation. Using Thunderlord enhances the power of this talent even further. Since we are constantly fighting packs of 3+ enemies in Torghast we are guaranteed to get the maximum out of this strong synergy.

? Crackling Thunder

✔ Bounding Stride

✘ Menace

Crackling Thunder increases the range of Thunder Clap making it easier to hit all the enemies around us. In general most enemies should be in melee range of us regardless so the extra range does not always matter.

Bounding Stride provides us more mobility by reducing the cooldown of Heroic Leap and making it provide us a short movement speed boost. This helps us get out of sticky situations and recover while waiting for our cooldowns to come back up so we could charge right back into the action. Not to mention that running in the long halls of Torghast takes forever so having some extra mobility to help with this is good.

✘ Never Surrender

✔ Indomitable

? Impending Victory

Indomitable is a really solid choice in this tier due to the sheer amount of healing we can get from the Rage. Furthermore there are some Anima powers that increase our Rage generation making this talent extremely useful in Torghast. Another choice would be Impending Victory but when running solo we will be getting the killing blows on all the enemies regardless providing us with a lot of Victory Rush resets.

? Into the Fray

✘ Unstoppable Force

✔ Ravager

Ravager will give you another offensive ability that also provides a lot of Rage. This is on a 45 second cooldown so you can use it pretty frequently.

Into the Fray is a solid consistent haste boost. You will more than likely have maximum stacks of it for the majority of the time. It will lose some value on bosses where you are fighting a single enemy.

✔ Anger Management

✘ Heavy Repercussions

? Bolster

Having Avatar up more often is a great increase in our offensive and defensive abilities. Choosing Anima Powers that increase our Rage generation will feed into this circle even more giving us a very fast phased gameplay. If you do not need the extra defensive benefits provided by Bolster you should be running Anger Management.

Bolster is the other more defensive option on the row. In lower levels the damage intake is not high enough to warrant using this talent. As you get higher and higher there might be places where you need more Shield Block uptime and that is when you should start looking into picking Bolster .

While in Torghast you have access to Anima powers which modify how the class plays and provides useful benefits to various skills. Due to there being so many options out there choosing the correct one can be difficult. Below you can find a tier list for Anima powers to help make the choice a bit easier

Do not blindly follow this tier list as a lot of Anima powers strenghts depend on your playstyle and talent choices. There is no point picking Anima Powers that increase the damage of Whirlwind if you never use it.

For a complete list of Anima Powers available to Warriors, please refer to the pages linked just below.

Twisting Corridors is a lot harder and more time consuming than your regular Torghast runs. The upside to this is that you will be provided with a lot more Anima Powers which makes for some significant stacking possibilities.

While the regular Torghast run does warrant the usage of defensive Anima Powers they are highly encouraged in Twisting Corridors due to the increased damage intake. There is one particular setup of Anima Powers that provides us with very high uptime on Shield Wall with little to no effort. This setup is highly recommended for Twisting Corridors.

• Unbound Fortitude
• Bladed Bulwark
• Gibbering Skull

Unbound Fortitude increases the duration of your Shield Wall, depending on how many Soul Remnants you have collected. Bladed Bulwark provides Ignore Pain a 50% chance to cast Shield Wall. Gibbering Skull makes getting hit have a 10% chance to grant you Ignore Pain. All of these Anima Powers together give you an insane uptime on Shield Wall reducing your damage taken by a significant amount. You can further increase the power of this build by taking Succulent Carpaccio, which increases the value of your Ignore Pain.

In general, you should aim to get as many single target enhancing powers as possible. Bosses take the longest time and are often the deadliest enemies in the run so killing them faster increases the chances of a successful run.

• Smoldering Inertia
• Scratched Knife
• Voracious Culling Blade
• Shrieking Flagon
• Spearheads of Eternity — Kyrian
• Overgrowth Catalyst — Night Fae
• Pridebreaker's Anvil

• Shadehound Tooth
• Edge of Hatred
• Livingwood Pommel — Night Fae
• Elysian Shoulderwrap — Kyrian
• Brawler's Brass Knuckles
• Zovaal's Warbanner
• Resonant Throatbands
• Warlord's Resolve
• Pleonexian Command
• Stonepiercer Signet
• Spattered Soles — makes navigating the Tower a lot quicker

• Petrified Wildseed — Night Fae
• Bloodstained Whetstone
• Writhing Noose — Venthyr (S-tier together with Voracious Culling Blade)
• Ancient Prolegomenon — Kyrian
• Fan of Longswords
• Kyrian Warhelm
• Signet of Tormented Kings
• Soulwrought Studs

• Repulsive Pennant — Necrolord
• Distillation of Sin — Venthyr
• Hateful Fetish
• Sinew-Sewn Tassels
• Umbral Ear Trumpet (A-Tier with Resonant Throatbands)

• Hurricane Heart
• Ragemote — Prevents healing from Indomitable and Anger Management cooldown reduction.(S-Tier on bosses together with Voracious Culling Blade).
• Champion's Decree

From the Talent providing Anima Powers these should be placed above B-Tier Anima Powers.

If the Anima Power you look for is not in the list above then it is because we have not been able to fully test it yet. The list will be updated as we get more experience with various Anima Powers.

There are some Anima Powers that either grant you Phantasma or provide you with a increase to your Phantasma generation. These are very situational and hard to rank as their strength depends on the Anima Powers you already have. You might want to get a few of them early on if there are no other solid options just so you can buy something from the vendors. Once you get to the higher levels these lose value.

Stable Phantasma Lure is a Legendary that increases your Phantasma earned. If your goal is to get as much of it as possible then you should definitely use this, otherwise it provides you with no real benefits.

Generally following the normal rotation in Torghast is all you need in order to be successful but below you can find some reminders to help you get the most out of your Warrior.

• Remember to keep Shield Block up when tanking enemies to reduce the incoming damage.
• When running multiple Brawler's Brass Knuckles keep a close eye on your Rage so you do not waste any.
• If you have your cooldowns up, pull big and burst all the enemies down. Due to being Tanks we can survive big pulls fairly easily.
• Remember to keep on using Victory Rush to heal yourself when running solo as it refreshes on enemy deaths.
• Spell Reflection can be very strong on certain bosses so be sure to test out which abilities are reflectable and which not.
• Pay close attention to your cooldowns as some Anima Powers reduce them significantly. Stacking multiple Shadehound Tooth makes it possible to cast Shield Slam every other global cooldown.
• There are various environmental traps inside Torghast, be sure to avoid these as they deal heavy damage.
• There is no need to rush in Torghast as there is no Timer. You can wait for your cooldowns between packs if needed and just move on then. No point in dying an unnecessary death.