Introduction
The Protection Warrior guide is written by Tokaine, and recently updated for Season 4 by Alex.
Hey! I’m Tokaine, the best tank you’ve never heard of and the number 1 advocate for T.D.M (Tank Damage Matters). I’ve been tanking since cataclysm, mainly playing protection warrior until legion where I branched out into other tank classes as I climbed the world ranks.
Protection Warrior Overview
Protection warrior is one of the two sword and board tanks, a class which basically has no magical powers they effectively just get hit in the face and hit just as hard back.
It’s a pretty strong class defensively. It excels in situations where you’re taking a lot of physical damage and due to the nature of block the damage intake is pretty smooth. You do suffer a bit with DoT effects and magic damage (Unless the ability is Spell Reflect-able then you feel amazing as you just launch a bolt back at the caster's face).
Additionally the class is highly mobile, utilising a wide array of abilities such as Charge and Intervene, allowing you to charge to friend and foe alike. Furthermore, you have Heroic Leap which lets you soar quite far through the air.
You also support your team in the means of shouts, Rallying Cry boosts your party/raids HP pool and Battle Shout increases their physical damage done.
However, one of the biggest pitfalls of Protection Warrior is that they lack in self healing; this means that if you do make a mistake you’ll need to rely on your healers to heal you up compared to other tanks that could do that themselves.
What has changed
Season 4 Protection Warrior Changes
- Ignore Pain’s absorption increased by 30%, and the absorption cap is now based on maximum Health (was twice the Ignore Pain absorb value).
9.2 Protection Warrior Changes
- Protection Warrior 2 set, will make it so consuming 30 rage will grant you a stack of Seeing Red which turns into Outburst at 8 stacks. This causes your next Shield Slam or Thunderclap to be 200% more effective and additionally grants you ignore pain.
- Protection Warrior 4 set, increases Avatars damage dealt bonus by 10% and now additionally decreases your damage taken by 10%. Avatar will also grant you Outburst.
Other than Tier sets there are no changes made to Protection Warrior.
9.1.5 Protection Warrior Changes
- Whirlwind and Ravager are no longer target capped and deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets
- Sinful surge now extends the duration of Avatar by 2.5 seconds when Condemn is used (It previously extended the duration of Last Stand). This is actually a considerable single target DPS increase, and if you were interested in doing as much single target damage as possible, you should be happy with this change
Patch 9.1
Not much changed for the actual class in patch 9.1. Execute received a 10% damage buff.
Our 4 covenant legendaries are as follows:
- Kyrian - Elysian Might, this legendary increases the duration of Spear of Bastion’s Tether by 4 seconds, it additionally provides you with 25% increased critical strike damage while you are near the spear.
- Necrolord - Glory, this legendary makes our Conqueror’s Banner effect 1 additional ally and additionally, every 10 rage we spend will extend the duration of the buff by 0.5 seconds just for ourselves.
- Venthyr - Sinful surge, this legendary causes Condemn to extend the duration of Last Stand by 4 seconds every time it is cast.
- Night Fae - Nature’s Fury, this legendary increases the damage and duration of Ancient Aftershock.
Of these, the only legendary that changes your gameplay is Glory, where you want to spend as much rage as possible in order to keep extending the Conqueror’s Banner buff.
Patch 9.0.5
- Fleshcraft became incredibly strong, increasing the shield amount as well as adding a 20% damage reduction buff while channeling. Additionally tanks are able to dodge, parry and block during the channel.
- Conqueror’s Banner gained a huge buff and became extremely viable. They changed it to now give 400 Mastery to yourself and your 2 closest allies as well as giving you a large amount of strength and movement speed. Certain specs such as Balance gain a huge amount of dps from Mastery so you are able to increase their burst by a lot when you coordinate this with your team.
- They buffed the legendary Reprisal to now give us 4 seconds of Shield Block and a free Revenge when we either Charge or Intervene as well as generating an additional 20 rage.
- Additionally our damage was increased across the board by 10% with Thunder Clap gaining an additional 10% on top of this.
Patch 9.0
- Not much changed for Protection Warrior from Shadowlands. Avatar was removed from the GCD and both Revenge and Thunder Clap now deal reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
- Some talents were moved around but mostly remained the same. Anger management was nerfed to no longer reduce the cooldown of Demoralizing shout or Last Stand.