Dragonflight Protection Warrior Tanking Guide

Overview of Protection Warrior

The initial tank spec in World of Warcraft is Protection Warriors. They are one of the two tank types that utilize a shield and a one-handed weapon, along with Protection Paladins. The class most closely resembles the typical "tank" position from other RPGs and tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons

The Protection Warrior spec is ideal for gamers seeking a traditional tanking experience.

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Protection Warrior Talent Builds

For a more raid oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout.

You can import the Raid talent build with the following loadout code: BkEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIkEAAAAIJJSSCSLpkkkWDRgUUEQJJBIikkQDJJA4AhAAAAAAAARAAKaAgA

For a more Mythic+ oriented talent build, you can use the following talent loadout.

You can import the Mythic+ talent build with the following loadout code: BkEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIQAAAAgkkEJJk0SKJJpUQEIUkIRJJBIQSQDJJICECAAAAAAAEBAoUaAgA

 

Protection Warrior Stat Priority

Strength is a crucial survivability stat for Protection Warriors, passively boosting Armor through  Vanguard.  It is a pretty valuable stat because it immediately increases armor and helps with damage reduction through  Ignore Pain. The relative difference between Strength and secondary stats hardly ever arises because there are very few pieces (trinkets, especially) where you actually have to pick between Strength and a secondary stat. For what it's worth, it's your best DPS stat point for point.

Here are Protection Warrior's preferences for secondary stats:

  • Haste reduces the global cooldown, which increases Rage generation, DPS, and damage reduction with  Ignore Pain. It also increases the availability of  Shield Block. It is the best secondary stat, hands-down.
  • Versatility is an effective damage and damage reduction stat. It’s consistent and passive. That's great, but a little dull. It's also extremely reliable (unlike Mastery and Crit), which is good.
  • Critical Strike A useful stat for improving DPS. It improves the chance of parrying and provides useful damage mitigation, but it is less dependable than other stats. Over time, Critical Strike can be the most effective damage reduction stat if you are mostly absorbing autoattack damage, but its instability significantly restricts its effectiveness. Moreover, it is completely useless as a defensive measure against strikes from range, boss abilities, bleeding, and spell damage, which cannot be parried. It also has no defensive synergy other than to increase the possibility of a parry. It's debatably the worst secondary stat for Warriors because it's the least trustworthy. It's excellent for damage output.
  • Mastery improves both the base block probability and the chance to critically block. As a result, more damage can be mitigated overall. Although simple and uninteresting, it is a useful defensive stat. The biggest drawback is that, despite increasing your Attack Strength, which strengthens  Ignore Pain, it does not directly boost your ability to reduce damage from unblockable sources (such as spell damage or DoTs/Bleeds).

Discover the ideal stat priority for your Protection Warrior in World of Warcraft and optimize your tanking capabilities. If you're looking to excel in raid encounters and want to bolster your character for maximum effectiveness, consider our specialized WoW Raid Carry services. Our skilled team will assist you in navigating challenging raids, ensuring you're well-prepared to fulfill your tanking role effectively with the right Protection Warrior stat priority.

Protection Warrior Best Consumables

Best Protection Warrior Enchants

Below is a list of the recommended enchants to use on your Protection Warrior gear in Dragonflight.

Explore the top-tier consumables for your Protection Warrior in World of Warcraft, enhancing your durability and performance. If you aspire to dominate in arena battles and want to ensure you're well-equipped with the best consumables, consider our specialized WoW Arena Carry services. Our experienced team will guide you in the arena, providing you with valuable strategies and the right consumables to elevate your Protection Warrior's prowess and secure victory in arena combat.

Slot Best Enchant Cheaper Version
Weapon (Damage)  Frozen Devotion -
Weapon (Defense)  Sophic Devotion  Sophic Writ
Cloak  Regenerative Leech  Writ of Leech
Chest  Sustained Strength  Waking Stats
Bracers  Devotion of Leech  Writ of Leech
Legs  Fierce Armor Kit  Fierce Armor Kit

Boots

 Watcher's Loam  Plainsrunner's Breeze
Ring  Devotion of Haste  Writ of Haste

Protection Warrior Phials in Dragonflight

 Phial of the Eye in the Storm can provide a ton of stat budget when tanking in AoE, such as in Mythic+.

 Phial of Glacial Fury is an offensive option that provides no stat budget, only a damage proc. It's not good defensively, but will deal a lot of damage.

 Phial of Static Empowerment provides great stat budget when standing still for longer periods of time, and the burst of speed is nice for occasional movements. This is a good defensive option for some raid fights, but not as good for fights with consistent movement phases.

 Phial of Elemental Chaos is a decent fallback option in situations where the alternatives above are not good.

Protection Warrior Combat Potions in Dragonflight

There are a couple different potions that have different useful scenarios for Protection Warriors:

Protection Warrior Weapon Buff in Dragonflight

Protection Warriors should always use  Howling Rune as their preferred weapon buff item.

Best Protection Warrior Food in Dragonflight

Best Protection Warrior Gems in Dragonflight

You will want to equip gems that grant Haste in any available gem slots.

Here are the best examples:  Fierce Illimited Diamond Energized Ysemerald Quick Ysemerald Energized Malygite.

 

Pros and Cons

 Strengths Weaknesses
  • Strong offensive cooldowns and high AOE damage.
  • Extremely strong cooldowns, favoring Physical damage.
  • Strong mobility with Charge and Heroic Leap
  • Raid Cooldowns such as Rallying Cry and strong personal defensives
  • Spell Reflect occasionally proves to be more than a defensive, providing large bursts of damage on some abilities
  • Downtime in active mitigation can easily cause extremely high damage intake
  • Cooldowns are more involved than other classes, requiring better awareness and knowledge of the encounter
  • Occasional rotational downtime
  • Self sustain is a bit lower than classes like Blood Death Knight or Vengeance Demon Hunter

Protection Warrior Rotation

Protection Warrior Opener

  1.  Charge into melee range.
  2. Use  Avatar,  Taunt, and  Shield Block before you are in melee range.
  3. Cast  Demoralizing Shout once you are in melee range
  4. Continue the rotation as normal.

Protection Warrior Rotation Priority

In the interest of making the rotation as simple as possible, consider these four instructions an always-on, fundamental component of tanking as a Protection Warrior.

  • Maintain  Shield Block!
  • Use offensive cooldowns on pulls and on cooldown, try to overlap them to maximize your damage.
  • Use defensive cooldowns to mitigate predictable damage or to stay alive in emergencies.
  • Use  Ignore Pain to spend Rage defensively. If you’re struggling to stay alive, this should be your #2 Rage spender after  Shield Block.

For an actual priority list, use your abilities in the order as follows.

  1.  Impending Victory when you need healing
  2. Consume  Violent Outburst with  Shield Slam in ST/small AoE, or  Thunder Clap against 5 or more targets
  3.  Shield Slam on cooldown
  4.  Thunder Clap on cooldown
  5.  Execute to spend Rage offensively during the Execute phase.
  6.  Revenge to spend Rage offensively outside the Execute phase, or in AoE, or when it's free.
  7.  Execute to finish off priority targets.

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How to Spend Rage

In both single-target and AoE, the decision-making remains the same: If you need more defenses, spend your Rage on  Ignore Pain. If you need more damage, spend your Rage on  Revenge, or  Execute in the Execute phase.


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