Protection Warrior Shadowlands 9.1.5 guide

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, 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 Reflectable 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. One of the biggest pitfalls of protection warriors 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.

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.

Domination Sockets

In the Sanctum of Domination there are special types of gear which drop with “Domination Sockets” in them, these sockets grant powerful bonuses from Shards of Domination which you obtain from killing the raid bosses. If you have 3 of the same type of shard you are able to obtain a powerful set bonus that works in both the raid and torghast, the 3 set bonuses are as followed:

• Unholy - Chaos Bane grants you a stacking main stat buff based on the level of your shard, at 15 stacks you gain a massive main stat buff for 15 seconds before it resets and starts stacking again.
• Blood - Blood Link places a DoT on your primary target which leeches health from them healing you for the amount of damage it deals, it heals an ally if you are full health.
• Frost - Winds of Winter makes it so your critical strikes start storing up a % of the critical hits damage and after 20 seconds it will explode and deal all the stored up damage, you are then granted an absorb for 100% of the damage dealt by the winds.

Our 4 new covenant legendaries are as followed:

• 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.

Overall the only legendary that has any potential to see play is Glory and that is only in an environment where you and your allies are able to fully utilise Conqueror’s Banner otherwise it is not worth taking over the current recommended legendaries in the legendary section.

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.