Protection Warrior Guide - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Level 30 Fury "Prot" (5,16,0)

The idea here is to reduce the cost of Cleave as much as we can so you can charge into packs and Cleave them constantly to build threat. You'll be tearing through packs of mobs much faster, essentially having a 4th dps in your party, thus having shorter fight times and taking less damage!

1. 5/5 Cruelty first, 5/5 Unbridled Wrath next.
2. Get 3 points into Improved Cleave and 2 points into Boundless Rage.
3. Pick up Raging Blows then put your last 5 points into Deflection to finally get some actual avoidance on this spec.

Raging Blows might be a bit troll to pick up, you're going to be usind a two-handed weapon and you aren't going to be casting Whirlwind anyway. You're solely taking this talent to reduce the cost of Cleave by 2 more rage.

Level 30 "Deep" Prot (0,5,16)

If you're going deeper into protection you're going to wear a one-handed weapon and a shield.

1. Put 5 points into Cruelty to start since the extra damage will be important.
2. 5/5 Shield Specialization and Anticipation next.
3. Finally get 3 points into Defiance, 2 points into Master of Defense and 1 point into Improved Sunder Armor.

Master of Defense should be helpful even without having 5 points to put into Deflection. On launch when you do have more Talent points to spend this talent will likely be essential to tanking as a Deep Protection Warrior.

Level 60 Fury Prot (5/20/26)

Here's a look at what we think the level 60 Protection Warrior Talent Trees will look like. As mentioned above this guide will be updated as we go through the beta and during launch to include any other Endgame Protection Warrior Talent Trees, along with all the other information you need to excel in the endgame and Raids as a Warrior.

Level 60 Deep Prot (5,5,41)

Playable Races

Alliance - Human, Night Elf, Dwarf, Gnome & Skyborn

Horde - Orc, Tauren, Troll, Undead & Skyborn

Recommended Races

Dwarf provides 3 useful abilities and is probably the best race for leveling to 30 as Alliance. Mace Specilization gives you 1% crit when using a mace. Stone Form grants you immunities and Physical Damage Reduction and Big Game Hunter increases you damage to beasts (which you'll see a lot of while leveling up)

Troll is great since you’ll be fighting a lot of beasts in the early game and they have 5% increased damage to beasts. Their Berserking buff grants you 10% attack speed for 10 seconds and they also have Rapid Regeneration which allows you to restore 50% of your health every 3 minutes. Add in Regeneration which allows 10% of health regen to continue in combat and you have an incredible race for tanking on your Warrior.

Orc is the other competitive horde race choice. Blood Fury boosts your Attack Power by 10% for 15 seconds. Shatter Curse grants immunity to Curses, Banes and reduces Magical Damage taken. They specialize in Axes, gaining 1% Critical Hit Chance and have Hardiness to decrease stuns by 20%

For every race's full racial kit side-by-side, see our WoW Forever racial abilities breakdown.

Fury Protection

The idea behind Fury Prot is to be able to Cleave multiple enemies with every swing to generate your threat on groups of enemies. Unfortunately you won't unlock Cleave until level 20. Until this point you're going to have to tab target each enemy in a pack and use Sunder Armor, Revenge and Heroic Strike strike as your primary sources of threat. Disappointing I know, we have to actually play like a normal tank. :(

One essential thing to this going well is to let your Rage pool up when you are finishing off the last 1-2 enemies in pack. This is exactly why we took Boundless Rage so your new rage cap is now 120! Simply stop using your abilities and try to get your Rage to fill up as much as possible. Save your Bloodrage for in-between packs to keep your Rage full. This is going to allow you to walk into the next pack with maximum Rage and start using your Cleave, Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap right away. Keep doing this from pack to pack and you'll be absolutely unstoppable.

When fighting bosses you'll switch to a more traditional approach and stack Sunder Armor on them and spam Revenge and Heroic Strike to build your threat. If a boss is smacking you super hard, have a one-hander and shield ready to go, it's very possible you'll need them in some encounters.

1. Charge in to a pack if you don't have Rage pooled, or if you are certain that you're already in Battle Stance with your pooled Rage. You can figure out whether you need to be playing in Defensive Stance or can stay in Battle Stance, depending on how well your healer is doing. If you're having to stay in Defensive Stance you can just forget about Charge all together and simply walk from pack to pack with your Rage pool.
2. Cast Cleave right away and keep spamming it so every swing is a Cleave, you can tab target each time as well to make sure you're hitting different enemies and aren't just building threat on the same 2 with every swing.
3. Once you get your first Cleave queued up cast Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap, these will not only build more threat, but will reduce the damage you're taking considerably.
4. Rinse and repeat. Keep your Rage as full as you can without wasting it and become an unstoppable Cleaving machine.

Remember you have talents like Taunt and Mocking Blow to taunt enemies back on to you if you somehow lose threat on something. Intimidating Shout can also be used to get enemies off you if you're about to die, keep in mind some enemies wont be affected by Fear, and you have to be careful that you don't Fear a pack of enemies into another one and wipe your group.

Deep Protection

When playing deep protection you're really going to follow the same principles in the Fury Prot section. The only real difference is you're trading off the power of a two-hander for quite a bit of survivability with a Shield and talents in the protection tree.

Check our WoW Forever tier list to see how other classes are comparing to each other.

Visit your Class Trainer often to get your new skills, levels 4, 14, 20 & 24 will unlock, Charge, Demoralizing Shout, Cleave and Execute respectively. Level 30 is the real treat a new rank of Cleave!

In both group and single target settings make sure to get up your Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap on every pack. This is going to help you a lot being a no shield kinda guy.

Keep your Battle Shout up at all times, letting this fall off is a big mistake a lot of Warriors make when they're first starting out on the class.

A Protection Warrior's Favorite Stats are Strength, Stamina & Agility. Strength gives you a huge Attack Power boost, nearly 2 Attack Power per point of Strength. Stamina gives you more health, which you'll need with this aggressive tanking style. Agility increases Critical Hit Chance and gives you Armor as well. Always look for items with Strength/Stamina/Agility on them.

The one thing to point out here is that as the tank in a group you are the leader and often expected to guide your team through dungeons. Keep up a good pace, keep an eye on your healer and other casters mana bars, and try to set the tone for how your group will progress through the content.

• Food and First Aid are you best friend on this class. Make sure to train First Aid early and keep your bandages relevant to your level.
• Some cheap consumes can go a long way when tanking. Check the auction house for Strength, Armor and Stamina, Scrolls and Elixirs.
• Going Engineering can be extremely helpful for tanking. Even early on those small bombs and other explosives can help you with AOE threat quite a bit. Engineering and tanking are a hard to beat combination.
• Most of the time if your healer dies, you die, keep them up at all costs when you can. Taunt, Mocking Blow, you have to pull out all the tricks you have if you see your healer in danger.
• Always pull packs of enemies back and away from other packs, if a patrol comes by or you somehow end up pulling 2 packs at once it can end poorly.
• Pull packs that are questionable with something ranged like a throwing weapon or your bow/gun when needed.
• If something is hitting you really hard remember you can use Hamstring to slow them down and step away, just move in when you're able to swing then back out again. This wont work on bosses but in general "kiting enemies" and not taking hits when your swing timer is down can help you take a lot less damage when applicable.

The most important macro tip for Warriors it to add /startattack macros onto the abilities you use often. I even have it as a stand alone button for engaging with enemies. Here are some examples:

Heroic Strike/Start Attack

#showtooltip Heroic Strike

/cast Heroic Strike

/startattack

Cleave/Start Attack

#showtooltip Cleave

/cast Cleave

/startattack

Charge/Start Attack

#showtooltip Charge

/startattack

/cast Battle Stance

/cast Charge