Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Mountain Thane and Colossus have slightly different general rotations, where Colossus only presses Thunderclap to refresh rend or as a filler, and otherwise prioritizes Revenge. Outside of cooldowns your general rotation is something like this:
Single Target
- Shield Block if it’s not up or you are about to cap charges
- Ignore Pain if you have more than 75 rage and are about to cap on rage
- Shield Slam
- Revenge (if playing Colossus)
- Thunder Clap (if playing Mountain Thane)
Multi-Target
- Shield Block if it’s not up or you are about to cap charges
- Ignore Pain if you have more than 75 rage and are about to cap on rage
- Revenge (if playing Colossus)
- Thunder Blast (if playing Mountain Thane)
- Shield Slam
- Thunder Clap
Opener
Your opener for Single and Multi-targets as protection is the same, with a small deviation depending on Hero Talents.
Single Target:
- Ravager from range
- Charge + Avatar + Shield Block
- Demo Shout
- Demolish (if Colossus Hero Talent)
- Spear (if playing Mountain Thane)
- Shield Charge
- Thunderous Roar (if playing Colossus)
- Proceed to general rotation
General Playstyle
A few rules need to be adhered to when playing Protection to maximize your damage and survivability. First, use Shield Slam the second it comes off cooldown, either naturally or via a reset from Devastator. Second, your Violent Outburst procs should ALWAYS be spent on Shield Slam. The extra rage generated from Shield Slam with a Violent Outburst proc allows you to super feed into Anger Management. Third, Shield Block is also an offensive buff; it increases Shield Slam damage by 30%. That means it’s beneficial to keep it up even when not actively tanking just for the damage boost to Shield Slam.
Surviving as a Protection Warrior
Surviving as a Protection Warrior is actually fairly straightforward. You just need to do a couple things and you’ll be golden.
Keep Shield Block up while you are actively tanking
Between Shield Block blocking all melees and Ignore Pain providing passive damage reduction, you won’t be taking a lot of passive white damage. This will negate the largest amount of damage you take as a tank, especially in keys.
Don’t starve yourself of rage
Starving yourself of rage is one of the easiest ways to get yourself killed as a Protection Warrior. If you have no rage, you can’t Shield Block, or Ignore Pain. Likewise, your cooldown reduction of Avatar and Shield Wall gets reduced, which means less rage, damage, and damage reduction overall as well.
Use your cooldowns and use them often
Because Protection has so much upfront damage reduction, one of the biggest mistakes people make when playing it is not using their big damage reduction cooldowns.
Shield Wall has a 60-90 second cooldown between Anger Management and Impenetrable Wall. Having a 40% damage reduction on that short of a cooldown is incredibly strong. Use it often. The same goes for Spell Reflect and Spell Block. Use them often, but not together. A Weak Aura linked below will tell you when Spell Reflectable damage is incoming.
Cooldown Usage
A general rule of thumb that’s easy to follow for Protection Warrior offensive cooldowns is to just simply use everything on cooldown. You have so much cooldown reduction that it’s not often you’ll ever hold a cooldown and should just use it immediately when it comes up for the most value.
Avatar - 1.5 minute Cooldown that causes you to deal 20% increased damage for 20 seconds, and removes all roots and snares when activated. This is your big button as Protection Warrior. With the Unstoppable Force talent it increases the damage of Thunderclap and Shockwave by 50% and reduces the cooldown of Thunderclap by 50%. Your rage also reduces the cooldown of Avatar significantly through Anger Management, meaning you have it up very often. A side not for this too - As Mountain Thane when you Avatar the cooldown of your Thunderclap is immediately reset and Thunderclap is empowered to Thunderblast, meaning you can clap into clap for big AoE damage.
Ravager - 1.5 minute cooldown where you throw a whirling blade at a target location that spins and chases nearby enemies for 9 seconds. It generates Rage each time it deals damage, so during this you may find you have a lot of excess rage, be sure to spend it for Avatar cooldown reduction!
Shield Charge - A simple short range charge with a stun component and multi-target damage on a 45 second cooldown. If you talent Champion’s Bulwark it deals 20% increased damage, makes your next revenge free, provides shield block and additional rage. Press this on cooldown, preferably inside Demo shout or Avatar windows.
Thunderous Roar - 1.5m cooldown ability that deals large AoE damage that applies a potent bleed to your targets for 8 seconds. Use it on cooldown, preferably buffed by Avatar. You can talent into Thunderous Words to buff it significantly, not only increasing the duration and damage of the Thunderous Roar DoT, but ALL of your bleeds (deep wounds and rend) permanently by 30%. An additional talent point you can take is Uproar, slashing its cooldown in half down to 45 seconds.
Champion’s Spear - Spear is a 1.5 minute cooldown where you throw a spear at a target location, and it deals significant damage to mobs hit, generates rage, and tethers the targets to that location for 4 seconds. You can buff this by talenting Piercing Challenge which increases its damage done by 50% and rage generation by 100%, and you can buff your critical damage to the speared targets by an additional 25% with Champion’s might.
Defensives
Impending Victory - One of our only self heals. It’s only 20% of our max health but don’t be afraid to use it as it resets when we get the killing blow on enemies.
Spell Reflection - Honestly this is used more for offensive purposes than defenses but I’m putting it here anyway as regardless of the reflect effect, it still reduces magic damage taken by 20% for 5 seconds. Once you learn how to utilize this ability effectively, it’ll almost never be used to solely mitigate damage taken.
Demoralizing Shout - A 20% damage reduction for 8 seconds that generates rage and when you talent Booming Voice, makes you deal 20% additional damage to enemies affected as well as generating more rage. As previously mentioned, if you have Thunderlord talented, it drastically lowers the cooldown of this ability, making it fairly safe to use it on cooldown in most scenarios. There are times where you’ll want to hold this ability for a tank buster but I wouldn’t wait too long.
Last Stand - Our largest self-heal we have, tied to a 30% max health increase for 15 seconds. If you talent bolster this cooldown is reduced from 3 minutes to 2, and it provides shield block for its full duration.
Shield Wall - Our biggest all around defensive. A flat 40% damage reduction for 8 seconds on a 3.5 minute cooldown. You can reduce this cooldown through talents such as Honed Reflexes (5%), Anger Management (1s per 10 rage you spend), or there is a choice node giving you the option between a flat 60s cooldown off the top, and an additional charge, or additional rage generation and cooldown reduction with shield slam. Don’t be afraid to use this, and if you’re less comfortable on the spec I’d recommend talenting double shield wall (Defender’s Aegis).
Spell Block - The ability to block spells for 20 seconds on a 90-second cooldown is incredibly powerful. With how blocking works and the Critical Blocking mechanics, Protection Warriors can mitigate up to 99% of damage from magic spells while Spell Block is active. When used correctly, it can make the player nearly invincible.