Protection Warrior

Overview

Talents and builds

Level 60 and raid build

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Key talents

• Shield Specialization5/5More Block chance, and every Block pays Rage. A block is no longer only mitigation: it feeds the Rage that Shield Slam, Revenge and Heroic Strike spend
• Anticipation5/5Defense Skill, which raises avoidance and lowers the chance to be critically hit
• Improved Revenge3/3Improved Thunder Clap3/3Improved Sunder Armor3/3Cheaper or harder-hitting versions of the three abilities that make most of a tank's threat
• Last Stand1/1A short burst of health, then it is lost again. An emergency button, not a damage-taken talent
• Master of Defense2/2Rage whenever you Dodge or Parry with a shield equipped, the avoidance counterpart of Shield Specialization
• Defiance3/3More threat in Defensive Stance while a shield is equipped, added on top of the stance's own threat bonus
• Focused Rage3/3Cheaper offensive abilities, so the Rage the talents above produce goes further
• Bastion5/510% more damage from everything you do while a shield is equipped, and so 10% more threat from your damage (the flat threat on Shield Slam, Sunder Armor and Heroic Strike does not scale with it)
• Improved Bloodrage2/2Half again as much Rage from Bloodrage
• Concussion Blow1/1One point, because Shield Slam requires it
• Shield Slam1/1The capstone: a shield hit that adds your Block Value, with very high threat

This build spends 14 points in Arms and 37 in Protection: Shield Slam, with Bastion at its full five ranks. It is the build this site’s tank simulator is run on, so everything below is what the simulator models, taken from the client’s own talent text.

Arms, fourteen points: Deflection for Parry, Improved Heroic Strike for cheaper Heroic Strikes, and Improved Rend into Deep Wounds. Improved Tactical Mastery and Anger Management are gone: six points for one Rage every three seconds bought less than four more ranks of Bastion and Improved Bloodrage. The change measured about +5% threat and +8% damage in our level-60 tank run, with damage taken unchanged.

What is left out, and why. Iron Will, Improved Disarm, Vanguard and Improved Shield Bash change nothing against a boss that stays in front of you and neither stuns, fears, silences nor disarms, which is the fight this site simulates. Improved Shield Wall shortens a cooldown the simulated fight never needs to use. Devastate exists in the client’s spell list but is not a learnable ability in this build, so no rotation and no talent here depends on it.

Open the planner at /planner?class=warrior to build this out.

Rotation and priority

This is the rotation the simulator runs, and each line in it was kept because taking it out made the tank worse in the simulator’s tank fight (a level 63 boss that swings at you every two seconds, with healers assumed). You stand in Defensive Stance with a shield for the whole fight.

1. Shield Slam on cooldown. It is your highest-threat button and the one whose damage grows with Block Value.
2. Revenge whenever it is available. It becomes castable after you dodge, parry or block, so the better your avoidance, the more often it is up.
3. Shield Block whenever its buff is down. Of everything you press, it is the one whose removal costs the most damage taken.
4. Thunder Clap held on the boss. Its attack-speed slow is worth the Rage for the damage it removes, at a small cost in threat.
5. Sunder Armor as the filler for every other global cooldown. Stacking it is the biggest single source of threat outside Shield Slam and Revenge.
6. Heroic Strike with spare Rage. At this gear a Forever tank is limited by cooldowns rather than Rage, so the exact threshold you queue it at barely matters.

Last Stand and Shield Wall are for a fight the healers are losing; the simulator fires them on low health and they cut the chance of death on a harder boss, but they never fire on the standard fight. Demoralizing Shout is not in the list because it lowers the boss’s attack power and the simulated boss has none to lower; against a real boss with attack power it earns its place. Taunt, Disarm and Concussion Blow do nothing in a fight with one stationary enemy and are left out.

Rage comes from your swings (a fixed amount per landed swing from the weapon’s speed, more on a critical strike), from the damage you take, and from Shield Specialization and Master of Defense, so a tank that is being hit and is avoiding well is never short of it.

Stat priority

1. 1Expertise
2. 2Defense
3. 3Dodge
4. 4Agility
5. 5Parry
6. 6Stamina
7. 7Strength
8. 8Critical strike
9. 9Armor
10. 10Attack power
11. 11Block
12. 12Hit

A tank is scored on one number that rewards, in this order, effective health (how much of the boss’s damage your health pool can take once armor and avoidance have done their work), then a risk index that punishes spiky incoming damage, then threat. Each stat in the table is how much one point of it moves that score, shown in the same convention as every other spec: against the stat the table is anchored to.

Why the stats land where they do is mechanical, and stays true when the numbers move. Stamina is health, and health is a straight multiplier on effective health. Armor lowers every physical hit by a fraction that shrinks as you stack it. Defense Skill, Dodge and Parry take hits out entirely, and Defense also lowers the chance to be critically hit and crushed. Block takes a flat amount off the hits it catches, so it depends on your Block Value. Expertise lowers the boss’s chance to dodge or parry you, which is threat and Rage, not survival; no item carries it yet, so it is a stat for the day one does. Strength and Attack Power add threat and, for Strength, Block Value.

Two things the table cannot tell you. The item tables used here fold a shield’s Block Value into its Block line, so a shield’s Block Value is not weighed apart from its Block chance.

Best in slot

Enchants and consumables

Races

• Human
• Orc
• Dwarf (Recommended)
• Night Elf
• Undead
• Tauren (Recommended)
• Gnome
• Troll
• High Order Skyborne
• Windshaper Skyborne

Dwarf is the Alliance pick: Stoneform. Tauren is the Horde pick: Endurance.

Professions

Blacksmithing and Mining is also the standard convention for a tanking Warrior, with an extra reason beyond the DPS specs: Blacksmithing’s socket-adding recipes let a tank add Stamina or Defense gems to gear that doesn’t already have a socket.

Leveling

Outlined: points added in this level range.

Protection is not generally the leveling spec of choice for Warrior — Fury, or Arms to a lesser extent, clears trash faster while leveling solo, and Protection’s strengths show up in a group or raid tanking role instead.