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.

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).

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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.

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Slot

Best Enchant

Cheaper Version

Weapon (Damage)

Weapon (Defense)

Cloak

Chest

Bracers

Legs

Boots

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:

All Content: Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power

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

Feast: Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak
Personal Food: Fated Fortune Cookie, Timely Demise, or Aromatic Seafood Platter are good, inexpensive alternatives.

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

Charge into melee range.
Use Avatar, Taunt, and Shield Block before you are in melee range.
Cast Demoralizing Shout once you are in melee range
Ravager
Shield Charge
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.

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

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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Dragonflight Protection Warrior Tanking Guide