The protective shield for your party also comes with decent damage potential.
Protective Warriors function as tanks in World of Warcraft. If you prefer to be a damage dealer, you can use the Arms Warrior or the Fury Warrior.
The most important changes
Your most important ability, Vengeance, gets a rework in Shadowlands. Vengeance now deals reduced damage against five or more targets, no longer has a cooldown, and only costs 20 rage instead of 30. Dodge and Parry now only has a chance to make the next use of Vengeance free, instead of guaranteeing it.
Also, Thunderclap now deals less damage to secondary targets, which means you’ll have to pay a little more attention to threat when tanking multiple targets than you did in Battle for Azeroth.
There are some new additions to the talents as well. War Machine is a new talent carried over from the two damage specializations. Your automatic attacks will generate 50% more rage, and killing an enemy will give you ten rage and 30% extra movement speed for eight seconds.
Double Keeps Better replaces the now-vanished Fuse talent and, as with the Furor and Weapon Warrior, also increases your Storm Attack recharges. There are also a few changes: Revenge is Sweet lets Vengeance deal 20% more damage, or 50% if the use was free. Menace adds the ability to push enemies away from the primary target to your Drohruf, freezing them in fear for 15 seconds instead of sending them running wild.
How to play the Protection Warrior
The attribute priority looks like this for the Protection Warrior:
- Strength
- Armor
- Speed
- Versatility
- Mastery
- Critical hit chance
The key word in Protection Warrior is active mitigation. This means that your built-up rage goes mainly into abilities that make you take less damage from attacks – such as shield block or grit your teeth.
| Stage | Talent | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Devastator | Replaces Devastate. Your automatic attacks deal an additional 206 physical damage and have a 20% chance to complete the remaining cooldown of Shield Strike. |
| 25 | Double Time | Increases the maximum number of charges of Storm Attack by one and reduces the cooldown by three seconds. |
| 30 | Booming Voice | Demoralizing Reputation generates an additional 40 Rage and increases the damage you deal to affected targets by 20%. |
| 35 | Crackling Thunder | Increases the radius of Thunderclap by 50% and reduces the movement speed of enemies hit with it by an additional 10%. |
| 40 | Indomitable | Your maximum health is increased by 10%, and for every ten rage spent, you are healed by 1% of your maximum health. |
| 45 | Unstoppable Force | Avatar increases the damage of Thunderclap by 30% and reduces the cooldown of the ability by 50%. |
| 50 | Anger Management | For every ten rage spent, the remaining cooldown of Avatar and Shield Wall is reduced by one second. |
Shield block is stronger in most situations and helps you against melee attacks from bosses, for example. Pay attention to the timing of the next blow, so that you don’t waste the casting time on an enemy spell.
If you are not the active tank at the time, you can use Shield Block to increase the damage of your shield strike. In multi-target situations, such as dungeons, you should often use Revenge and Thunderclap to bind enemies to you.
Devastator and Dragon’s Roar are also useful talents here. Your main defensive abilities are Last Stand and Shield Wall. With Spell Reflection, you can cast some spells back at a boss or an enemy if you time it right.
