PvE Protection Warrior Tank Guide

Protection Warrior Tank

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

Welcome to our PvE Protection Warrior Tanking guide for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King!

Cladded in heavy armor and wearing the scars of thousands of battles, Protection Warriors are behemoths that intimidate even the fiercest monsters. Training their whole lives, mastering the art of shield and sword, these individuals can withstand any malicious blow thrown their way. Stalwart and proud, they carry themselves with little care for their own well-being — always having a vigilant eye over their battle-born allies at all times, ready to intervene in case of impending danger.

This guide will teach you how to play a Protection Warrior in PvE encounters, no matter if they are difficult dungeons or terrifying raids. We will be covering everything from enchants and consumables, to talents, rotations, macros, and addons. By the time you finish reading this guide, you will be a masterful tank, capable of taking the front-line position and tanking in any raid!

Protection Warrior Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

• Strong survivability
  Protection Warriors have access to several strong defensive abilities. Besides those, they also have high overall armor and health pool. Since most of the fights involve blockable damage, it’s important that Protection Warriors are experts in using Shielfs, earning them a very high spot when it comes to survivability.

• Strong utility
  This specialization has several strong utility tools to share with their allies, such as disarming their opponents, reducing their overall attack speed, and even rushing to their allies when aid is required.

• Extremely good mobility
  Protection Warriors enjoy high mobility thanks to their Warbringer talent. It allows them to use charge, intercept, and intervene during combat! This strong ability lets them reposition themselves extremely quickly to counteract displacement effects.

• Strong Threat generation
  This specialization can generate insane amounts of threat in single-target fights, especially since their abilities are extremely spammable against single targets.

Weaknesses

• Weak AoE threat generation
  Protection Warriors struggle with AoE threat generation and AoE pulls. Although their abilities are extremely spammable, they struggle to maintain aggro if there is anyone else damaging the target, so their threat generation is much better suited for single-target fights.

• Heavily gear-dependent
  Protection Warriors are extremely gear-dependent, being quite weak without proper equipment. Equipment is the most important aspect of every RPG, and this is emphasized even further in tanking. Without the essential defensive stats offered by the equipment, your character runs the risk of getting one-shot very quickly.

• Low demand
  Protection Warriors are sadly in low demand, especially due to the lack of their self-sustain. Since other tanking specializations come with much higher self-sustain, Protection Warriors are, sadly, viewed as an inferior tank choice.

Protection Warrior Utility

• Vigilance
  This is one of the strongest threat-generation tools in the entire game. You can use this ability on your most powerful damage dealer to transfer 10% of the threat they generate to yourself while also shielding them, granting them a 3% damage reduction.
• Intervene
  This ability can be used to rush to an ally’s aid, fully absorbing the next melee or ranged attack targeting them. This ability is great for both mobility and for protecting your allies! Keep in mind that it’s better suited for dungeons than raids, but can still be used as a mobility tool for the latter.

• Sunder Armor
  This ability severely reduces an enemy’s armor, and is one of the greatest in the game. It’s available to all Warriors. Yet, Protection Warriors do an even better job at applying this debuff to an enemy, since their specialization allows them to both damage the target and apply the effect through Devastate.

• Commanding Shout and Battle Shout
  All Warriors can make use of these special buffs which inspire their allies, either increasing their health pool or their attack power. However, most of these buffs do not stack with others, such as the Paladin’s Blessings. Commanding Shout does not stack with Blood Pact, but most cases won’t have an Imp as only Destruction Warlocks use those, so it will fall to you to use this buff.

• Disarm
  Disarm is one of the most useful spells in your arsenal against mobs founds in dungeons or raids! You can use this ability to severely dampen any melee or ranged mob’s damage output, as long as they are not classified as “caster”. Furthermore, you can even use this ability against some dungeon bosses, effectively weakening them considerably if they use melee or ranged weapons!
  

• Demoralizing Shout
  This is a strong debuff which can affect multiple enemies at once, reducing their attack power by a considerable amount. Keep in mind that this effect is highly sought after, easily applied by a Protection Warrior (even if all other Warriors can also apply it)!

Conclusion

We hope this guide helped you decide if PvE Protection Warrior is the class/spec for you. Make sure to check out our other sections, such as talents, gear, gems, etc., to get more information on how to improve your performance as a Protection Warrior in WotLK!