Hello everyone, Maserock here. Today, I'm doing a beginner's guide to Protection Warrior. As of right now, we're a couple of days away from the Dragonflight launch. If anything major is going to change, I'll redo the video and post it again as Dragonflight goes on into the different patches. I'll be unlisting this video if any major changes occur. Today, we're going to be building an all-around, general-purpose build and we'll be doing it simultaneously with the class and the spec tree so I can talk about all the synergies that work with one another. There are Talent points that work with the class and spec tree, and I want to make sure everything is as crystal clear as possible. I'll also be doing Mythic Plus and raid guides with Talent builds. I'll be glossing over some very basics, like what does Shield Block do, because if you're doing Mythic Plus or you're doing a raid, you should already know what your basic defenses and main offensive abilities are. This video is going to cover those. Before we get into it, please like, comment, and subscribe. You guys are destroying the now 6K goal for the end of the year and it's absolutely incredible. Thank you so much everyone, from the bottom of my heart. Let's keep this rolling on and let's start Dragonflight off with a nice big bang. There is merch for sale. I have t-shirts available and the "I Want a Rage Shirt" Blood DK and "I'm the Healer Now" shirts are available at the Teespring link down below. I couldn't do this video without my patrons, so thank you so much everyone for all your support. If you wish to support me directly, there's a link down below. There's an add-on list for everything I like to use, Weak Aura packs, and documents. There are living documents on all the tanks as well. I already have Protection Warrior pretty thoroughly covered, so there's lots of fun stuff there as well. There's a twitch link down below if you wish to watch me stream, and a Discord link if you want to join the community Join a wonderful community full of people, come and hang out, talk, ask questions, and have fun. Let's get into Protection Warrior. When you start off at level 10, you get a few basic abilities right off the bat. The one we need to talk about the most is Shield Block. It's one of the best active mitigations in the game. You raise your shield, block all melee attacks against you for eight seconds, and these blocks can be critical blocks. It also increases your Shield Slam damage by 30% while active, so keeping Shield Block up is absolutely imperative and you want to keep it up as close to 100% uptime as possible. It's very, very important. Ignore Pain is your second active mitigation and you want to keep it up at all times. It allows you to fight through the pain and ignore 55% of all damage taken, up to a certain amount of damage prevented. It can stack up to two times and it's very, very important to do that. As you go through the tree, you'll want to grab Brutal Vitality, which adds 30% of the damage you deal to your active Ignore Pain, making it easier to keep up and allowing you to spend less rage on keeping that buff up. You'll also want to grab Demoralizing Shout, which applies a 25% damage reduction to everyone within range and generates 30 rage. The base ability doesn't actually generate rage, which confused me for a second. You'll want to grab Death Sentence as well, which increases your Rage generation by 10 and reduces the cooldown of Shield Wall by 1 minute. This allows you to use Shield Wall more often, which is a great active mitigation that reduces damage taken by 50% for 8 seconds. Revenge, Devastator, and Thunderclap all have a 30% chance to reset the remaining cooldown on Shield Slam, so you have two ways to do it: with one of those abilities or with your white swing. When you see your Shield Slam proc, it'll be one of those two things. You'll also want to grab Last Stand, which increases your maximum health by 30% for 15 seconds and instantly heals you for that amount. This is not bad on its own, but if you grab the Bolster Talent at the bottom left of Brutal Vitality, it reduces the Last Stand cooldown by 60 seconds, which is a three minute cooldown, down to two minutes. It also grants you Shield Block for the entire duration, so pressing Last Stand will give you 15 seconds of Shield Block. This is a really good button to press at the start of a pull or save it for when you know you'll have a lapse in Shield Block. Now we'll go over to the class tree. We'll bounce around a little bit because we have to talk about synergies as they appear. Don't worry, we'll go back and forth. We start off with two stances: Defensive Stance and Battle Stance. Defensive Stance reduces all damage taken by 20% but also decreases the damage you deal by 10%. Stance dancing is back. Battle Stance increases your Critical Strike by 3% and reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10%. The latter part of that isn't as important, but the increased Critical Strike is. You also don't have the damage reduction from Defensive Stance. In Mythic Plus, as you're learning and getting into the rhythm of things, it's okay to stay in Defensive Stance the whole time and learn how to tank first, Impending Victory is my default Talent point in here. It replaces Victory Rush, gives you a 30% heal, and deals damage. Whatever it heals you for is 30% of your maximum HP, which is insanely good on a 25 second cooldown. This is a better warlock hellstone and the cooldown still gets reset if you get the killing blow. You have to get the killing blow on something, but with all the bleeds and stuff that we're dishing out, this happens a little bit more often than you may think and is just a really good addition to our toolkit for self-sustain. War Machine will generate more rage from auto attacks, so increasing auto attack speed can be really good for rage generation. As we see going down, Leeching Strikes increases your leech by 5%, which is an excellent and easy point to put in. Warriors love leech because we don't have many ways to get ourselves back up, so the ways that we can improve that are very good. Rallying Cry is a great three minute cooldown. Always great to take. Thunderclap is also really fun, generates rage, and has a big lightning effect. Spell Reflection is also an insanely OP ability when used correctly. This is an ability that I used throughout Shadowlands to negate major boss effects and deal damage back to mobs. It's just a really good addition to our toolkit. In some dungeons, it was actually dealing anywhere from 15 to 20% of my damage when I was doing it right. Upper Karazhan was a big one - this was easily 40% of my damage on Glub Glub Rog in Plaguefall. There are lots of great things you can spell reflect there, but this is part of the kit of learning how to play a Prot Warrior. A Prot Warrior is a very proactive tank - you want to know when you need to use your abilities because if you're taking a 60% chunk of your max HP, then you're burning a defensive in panic mode. You've already screwed up if you're doing that. You want to make sure that you're ahead of the game and you're using your defenses before you take those big hits. Heroic Strike is an easy grab and Furious Blows increases your auto attack speed by 5%. It's really solid all around. This is a good basic setup for getting started. After that, Storm Bolt is great for any open world Mythic Plus content. It has a 30 second cooldown and lasts for 4 seconds. It's fantastic all around. Barbaric Training is one that is contested at the moment. When you learn how to manage your rage, Barbaric Training will be really good. But if you're not comfortable and feel like you don't have enough rage for what you're doing, flex out of this until you are more comfortable with the rotation, spec, and you're not just burning all of your rage and not having any left for when you need it. Your rage spenders are Revenge, Shield Block, and Ignore Pain. If you're burning all of your rage on Revenge, you won't have enough for Shield Block or Ignore Pain and you'll be in a lot of trouble. So do note that as you go on. Concussive Blows is actually secretly kind of really good. It reduces the cooldown of Pummel by one second. There are so many times when In Shadowlands, I was just a hair away from being able to get my kick cooldown off and causing big damage, but also successfully interrupting an enemy. This increases the damage you deal to them by 5% for 10 seconds, so it's a pretty easy pick in any environment where you're going to be kicking things. If there's ever a raid or something where you have to kick things, I'm going to opt for this and tell my raid lead that I want first on that kick rotation because of this ability. It's an extra 5% damage for doing good things. Up next, Thunderclap is back with Blood and Thunder. Thunderclap deals 10% increased damage if you have Rend. Thunderclap affects 5 nearby targets with Rend. Now, Rend is over here on the spec tree in the middle and it's an easy point to take. Hit Thunderclap, apply Rend, great damage all around and it will help with threat and also synergize with Blood Surge. Your bleed effects have a chance to grant you rage. All around, solid pick. These three things combined are a really good three-point synergy, but there are also more synergies with bleeds down the road. Going further into the class tree itself, Seismic Reverberation is great in any AOE environment in Mythic Plus or whatever. If Revenge hits 3 or more enemies, it hits them an additional time for 30% increased damage. This is a passive that does not increase rage or rage spending at all. All around, great ability to take. But in any single target environment, it's obviously a wasted point. Then you want to go with Double Time because having more charges of Charge feels good and it reduces the cooldown of Charge by 3 seconds as well. Up next, we have 6 points left to spend and work things around. There are a couple of flex options like Concussive Blows, Barbaric Training, or Storm Bolt. Some of the things you can grab with this if you need it is Berserker Berserker Rage is one of those abilities where if it's not needed, it's a dead button. But where it's needed or where it's useful, it is insanely useful. It grants you immunity to fear, sap, and incapacitation effects for 6 seconds. There are some fears in Temple of the Jade Serpent where this could be incredibly useful. Or, in Lower Karazhan, the maiden boss does an incapacitation effect. In Iron Docks, the first boss also does this if nobody purges the shield quickly enough. You could just use this and negate the mechanic. This is a really good tool where it is useful. It's one of those things where if you need it, it's the best thing in the world, but if you don't have it or don't need it, it's a dead button. So, know when you need to go for it. And obviously, if it's a party-wide fear, using the Berserker shout and applying it to your entire party in Mythic Plus could be really useful as well. But do note, you need to pick it where you need it, but don't pick it as a default. Intervene is also really good for protecting a melee ally or getting out of dodge really quickly. Let's say there's a ground effect that you absolutely need to leave and your movement speed isn't going to cover it. Heroic Leap down, intervene to your ranged target, boom, done, easy peasy, you're out of the mix. The way that I have been working this is I go with Fast Footwork and Frothing Berserker. So, Revenge has a 20% chance to immediately refund 50% of the rage spent. If you have Barbaric Training, that will be 15 rage. If you don't, it'll be 10 rage because Revenge's baseline is 20 rage. Then, up next, I go with Crushing Force. Shield Slam deals an additional 10% damage and has a 10% increased critical strike chance. I really like this because it shores up one of our single target weaknesses in dungeons, especially because you're going to be prioritizing Shield Slam casts as they come up. Shield Slam is going to be one of your best single target abilities in the game outside of Execute, so this is a really solid ability and it synergizes with some points that we are going to take later. Then we still have two more points. Reinforced Plate Plates increases armor by 20%. All around, insanely solid. And then you have a couple of other flex point options or things you want to work on. With this build, we're going to have one point that you can easily put into "Pain and Gain". Whenever you take damage, you'll heal for 4.5% of your maximum health. This can only occur once every 10 seconds. Now, when I was testing this with the way I play as a Protection Warrior, this was resulting in more over-healing than actual healing. However, in higher content, this passive will be more valuable. So, if you want some extra defense, take "Pain and Gain". That will be my base suggestion. There's also "Wrecking Throw". So far, I haven't seen any reason to take "Shattering Throw", but there probably will be some situations where it's useful. The difference between "Wrecking Throw" and "Shattering Throw" is that "Shadow Throw" has a cast time and it immediately pops any magical immunities, like "Ice Block" or "Bubble". This is more useful in PvP. In PVE, "Wrecking Throw" is probably the better choice, as it has a 45-second cooldown instead of three minutes and it deals the same absorption damage, but it doesn't pop those magical immunities. There are some absorb-shield bombs in certain dungeons where "Wrecking Throw" will be very valuable. "Bounding Stride" is another option, as it reduces the cooldown of your "Leap" and gives you a movement boost. "Titanic Throw" is another option that replaces "Heroic Throw". It deals damage to five nearby targets with a three-second cooldown, rather than being spammable like "Heroic Throw". I really like the spammable "Heroic Throw" because if I have to kite, I can generate high threat by using "Heroic Throw" on multiple targets. However, "Titanic Throw" generates high threat to all five enemies, but doesn't let you target specific enemies depending on the packs you're pulling. That's something to keep in mind. For our Capstone traits, we have "Specter's Challenging Shout", which is our AOE taunt. It's now down to a two-minute cooldown from four minutes in Shadowlands. This is fantastic and really useful. "Shield Wall" is a good option with a 3.5-minute cooldown that reduces all damage you take by 40% for 8 seconds. This is your "I'm about to take a big hit" button. "Anger Management" is another good choice, as every 10 rages spent reduces the remaining cooldown of "Avatar" and "Shield Wall" by 1 second. This may not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. With "Barbaric Training", each "Revenge" cast has a 3-second cooldown reduction on each of those abilities. "Impenetrating Wall" is also a solid choice, as it generates 3 additional rage when you use "Shield Slam" and reduces the main and cooldown of "Shield Wall" by 5 seconds. This gives you "Shield Wall" on a very short cooldown. "Enduring Defense" is a good choice, especially for beginners, as it makes "Shield Block" last 2 seconds longer. This may seem like a boring passive, but it's actually really good for "Shield Block" uptime. "Thunderlord" is also making a return and is a solid pick, as it increases the radius of "Demoralizing Shout" by 5 yards and reduces the remaining cooldown of "Demoralizing Shout" by 1 second for each enemy hit by "Thunderclap", up to 3 seconds. In AOE, when you hit "Thunderclap" with 3 or more targets, you'll immediately reduce 3 seconds off the cooldown of "Demoralizing Shout", which already has a 45-second cooldown. "Storm of Fury" is also a great AOE option. "Revenge" increases the damage of "Revenge" and "Revenge" increases the damage of your next "Thunderclap" by 20%. "Thunderclap" is back to hitting really hard and "Storm of Fury" is returning as an upgraded version of the conduit that it was. With this build, we only have one point left, so there isn't a lot of flexibility. If you need an AOE kick, you can go for "Disrupting Shout". As a beginner, I would personally recommend replacing "Storm of Fury" with "Disrupting Shout", as it taunts all enemies within 14 yards (instead of 10) and reduces the cooldown to 1.5 minutes (instead of 2 minutes). It kicks everything it touches, making it a really solid choice for taunting multiple enemies. There are a few dungeons where this is an insanely good button to have, as wrangling casters as a tank can be difficult for a Protection Warrior, who doesn't have many movement-displacing effects. With that said, "Storm of Fury" is the baseline choice. Then, you have the choice between "Heavy Repercussions" and "Into The Fray". As you get geared and your haste breakpoints get better, and you feel like you no longer need "Into The Fray", "Heavy Repercussions" will be the better choice. It makes "Shield Slam" generate more rage and extends the duration of "Shield Block". The problem is that you want high haste (around 27-33%) to play Protection Warrior effectively, and that may not be easy in season one. If you have a baseline haste of 15-20%, you'll have trouble. You need higher haste to get the most out of "Heavy Repercussions" Higher haste than that, and "Into The Fray" is the best way to get it. You gain 2% haste for each enemy and ally within 10 yards, up to 10% easy haste gain for one talent point. However, as you get better geared, "Heavy Repercussions" will be the better choice. Do note that you'll have to make that decision for yourself. In the "Class" tree, we have "Armor to the Teeth", which gives you strength equal to 4% of your armor. The more high-level pieces you get, the more armor you get, and the more strength you get. It's a self-feeding buff that's wonderful. Then, we have "Avatar", with a 1.5-minute cooldown (reduced by "Anger Management"). As a beginner, you might be interested in "Imovable Object", which activates "Shield Wall" when you cast "Avatar", reducing its effectiveness. This means that whenever you cast "Avatar", you'll get a "Shield Wall" on you. It won't be the most optimal "Shield Wall", but it's adding an extra layer of defense. If you're still learning the rotation or feeling a little squishy, you could sacrifice some damage for "Imovable Object". However, "Unstoppable Force" is generally the best choice because it reduces the cooldown of "Thunderclap" by 50% while "Avatar" is active. This allows you to use a "Revenge, Thunderclap, Shield Slam, Thunderclap, Revenge, Thunderclap" type of rotation, and every time you hit "Thunderclap", you also reduce the cooldown of "Demoralizing Shout", giving you easier access to defenses while still building rage and ignoring pains and all that fun stuff. "Anger Management" works towards "Shield Wall" CDR (cooldown reduction). The next point we'll put is in "One-Handed Specialization", which increases damage with one-handed weapons and leech, "Increased by 5%", "One-Handed Specialization" will give you 10% leech baseline, with no tertiary stats on gear. Just 10% leech baseline is insanely good and an easy talent point to take. Next, you need to think about where you want to play. There are two different styles: "Team Shockwave" and "Furious Blows". With "Team Shockwave", you go with a full Shockwave build and put everything in "Endurance Training", "Shockwave", "Rumbling Earth", and "Sonic Boom". "Sonic Boom" makes "Shockwave" a monster of a DPS ability, "Rumbling Earth" increases the range by 6 yards, and when you strike at least 3 targets, its cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds down to 25 seconds. As mentioned earlier, with "Thunderlord", we're able to get "Demoralizing Shout" down to an easy 20-25 second cooldown. As we take points in "Shield Specialization", an easy passive, we go down to "Booming Voice", which makes "Demoralizing Shout" generate 30 rage and increases all damage you deal to affected targets by 20%. So, hit "Demoralizing Shout", hit "Shockwave" for very big damage. I've been running the "Shockwave" build quite a bit in Mythic+ as a more offensive-oriented ability, and it did really well in heavy AOE dungeons. "Shockwave" is easily my top damaging ability. You're not even hitting it for the stun, you just want to smash it to deal stupid amounts of damage. There was one pull in Shadowland where I peaked at 321k or something like that, it was absolutely stupid how much damage this can do. However, "Shockwave" doesn't offer a lot of defensive benefits. One thing we can do here is put two points in "Wild Strike", which you'll be putting in all the time because it increases your haste by 2% and your auto attack critical strike increases your auto attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds. With this baseline, the two points in "Wild Strike" and "Furious Blows", you'll have a 25% auto attack speed increase on the "Wild Strike" procs, which will give you more "Shield Slam" procs, more rage, and everything will feed into one another. The two points here are actually insanely good, "Thunderous Roar" build, you can choose "Uproar" to have "Thunderstorm" cooldown reduced by 30 seconds, or "Thunderous Words". "Thundering Swords" is the better of the two options here because it increases the duration of "Thunderstorm" bleed effects by 2% and increases the damage of your bleed effects by 15% at all times. So, this is "Deep Wounds", "Rend", "Thunderous Roar", three bleeds all around that are insanely solid and very defensive. If you're adding another bleed into the mix, you'll get more rage with "Blood Surge", which means you'll get more spenders to use with "Anger Management" and "Ignore Pain" and all the fun stuff you need to live, have fun, and do damage. This is the more defensive-oriented class tree. Next, we'll go with "Focused Vigor" in the "Inspector" tree, which increases your strength and armor by 5%. We have "Armor to the Teeth", so more armor means more strength, and it all feeds into one another. Then, I always opt for "Shield Charge", which is another stun with a 45-second cooldown. It stuns the primary target for 4 seconds and also deals good AOE damage. We'll be opting for some picks here, but I want to talk about "Indomitable" and "Violent Outburst" first. "Indomitable" is one of the best talents in the tree. Your maximum health is increased by 10%, and every 10 rage you spend heals you for 1% of your maximum health. So, hitting "Ignore Pain" at 35 rage is a 3% max HP gain, and hitting "Revenge" with "Barbaric Training" is a 3% max HP heal on top of that. If you're hitting "Revenge" to get that back with "Indomitable", you're also getting leech off of that. It's a self-sustaining self-feeding talent. This is one of the ways that Warriors can "cheat death." When their health falls below 30, they gain an 80 damage reduction and all healing received is increased by 100%. This effect has a three minute cooldown. In Mythic Plus, I've found that this proc has a chance to trigger anywhere from 0-3% of the time, with an average of 3 procs per dungeon. This talent is especially useful if you're struggling in challenging content or if you're undergeared for the current difficulty. You can choose between two talents to complement this effect: Battering Ram or Champion's Bulwark. Champion's Bulwark deals more damage, grants a Shield block, and generates additional rage, making it great for AOE situations. Battering Ram, on the other hand, is better for single target fights and generates a lot of rage when combined with Wild Strike. Ultimately, it's up to personal preference which one you choose. I have a living document on my Patreon page about the best times to take the ability Spellblock. This ability is especially useful in challenging Keys, where every kick matters, rather than in easier content. For example, if you're in a plus three or four in the Halls of Atonement from Shadowlands and you're being hit with Wicked Bolts, it won't hurt you as much as it would if you were in a plus 20 or 25 in Dragonflight. If you want more detailed information about certain abilities and why I choose certain talents, check out my Patreon page where I explain everything in great detail. Thank you very much for listening and happy tanking!
