Prot~Warrior Tank Pve(Updated 3.3.3)

There is, ultimately, only one thing warriors actually do.
We hit things. We don’t poison them, we don’t electrocute them, we don’t burn them or freeze them or hit them with diseases or the Holy Light. We just hit them.We don’t turn into anything, we don’t stand back and let an animal hit things for us, we just plain hit things. We hit things and get angry, and we get hit and get angry about that, too.
That being said, warriors can specialize in one of two ways to hit things. One is to heft a big two handed weapon (or two of them) and hit things to death. The other is to put on the heaviest armor we can find, strap a car door to our arm, and get things to hit us as hard as they can, and then hit them back.
This week, we look at protection, the “Is that all you got? Is that it? COME ON!” spec.
1. What is protection?
Well, read the above. Now we’ll go into more detail. The warrior protection spec is the oldest actively used tanking spec in World of Warcraft. Tanking is the role in a five man, 10 man raid, or 25 man raid (and originally 10, 15, 20 and 40 man raids as well) where one player deliberately attempts to hold a mob or multiple mobs attention so that they do not attack the healers and/or damage dealing players. To do this, tanks need to work on two separate but equally important aspects of play.

1. They must hold aggro. Aggro (derived from aggression) is the hostile attention of the mob or mobs in question.
2. They must survive the damage inflicted on them by the mob or mobs long enough to be healed.
3. No, really, you need to do these two things. Otherwise, you’re not tanking, you’re just a greasy stain on something’s fist and/or other means of killenating.
4. Yes, I said killenating. What, you’re too good for made-up words?

2. What are the benefits of protection?
Okay, now that we’ve covered what protection spec is meant to do, what are the benefits and disadvantages to choosing a warrior tank over another tanking class? Well, of course, there’s flavor reasons. Not everyone wants to be a bear, or harness dark evil forces of blood, ice and unholiness, or become a shining bastion of purity. For those of us who want to remain grounded in the grit and mire of the Warcraft setting, the warrior tank is an ideal choice.
From a mechanical perspective, what warriors lack in focus they gain in one of the most varied bags of tricks of any current tank. Warrior tanks can silence casters at range, interrupt spellcasting or even sometimes reflect damaging spells, can charge into combat or intervene to protect a friendly player. Depending on their talents selected a warrior tank can address a wide variety of tanking conditions.
3. What are its drawbacks?
Warrior tanks have the lowest damage output of any tank currently, and some argue that warriors are behind other tanks in terms of effective health, threat generation and panic button cooldowns. It’s fair to say that warrior tanks require more activity on the part of their players to generate area effect (AoE) threat on multiple mobs, but they certainly have tools to do so, and many warrior tanks say they prefer the frenetic pace of tanking on a warrior to other classes.
Of the three warrior talent trees, protection is most likely the hardest to gear for and the one most required to gear successfully. A damage dealing (or DPS, for damage per second) warrior can get away with being poorly geared much more readily than a tank. Until Cataclysm comes, a protection warrior must be able to stack enough defense rating to become immune to critical hits if he or she is going to tank in raids, although 5 man dungeons are not designed (especially leveling ones) with an uncrittable tank in mind.
4. What stats am I looking for as protection?

• Stamina: You don’t want to die. Stamina translates into health, and the more health you have, the less likely you are to die from any one hit. Every point of stamina past the first 20 provides 10 points of health (the first 20 points of stamina provide 1 health per point). The talent Vitality increases a protection warrior’s base stamina.
• Defense. Defense is a catchall skill with two separate but equal results. First off, defense skill reduces your chance to be hit or critically hit: 540 defense is the amount needed for a level 80 to push critical hits off of a level 83 like a raid boss (skull level bosses in raids are effectively level 83 for this purpose). In a heroic or 5 man dungeon, 535 defense will suffice. Note that I’m saying the defense skill itself, as seen on the image to the right, and not defense rating, which converts to defense based on level. At level 80, you will effectively need 690 defense rating on gear to remove the chance for a raid boss to critically hit you. It’s important to note that defense never ‘caps’ exactly. While it’s true that you only need 540 defense at 80 to remove any chance to be critically hit, defense will continue to contribute dodge, parry and block: for every point you have in defense skill you gain .04% chance to dodge, parry and block. In addition, it also adds a flat .04% chance to be missed by an attack as well. So every 25 points of defense adds 1% chance to dodge, parry, block and not be hit even after critical hits are no longer a factor. It should also be pointed out that while the chance to dodge, parry and be missed granted by defense suffer from diminishing returns (that is, the higher you stack them the less they contribute) the chance to block granted by defense does not suffer from DR in this fashion.
• Defense rating at level 80 – 4.92 rating equals 1 defense skill point. A standard level 80 character will have 400 defense skill once it is maxed, the same as weapon skills and so forth. It takes 540 defense skill to reach uncrittable for raids and 535 skill for heroics. So you need 689 rating on gear to be uncrittable for raids, and 664.4 defense rating to be uncrittable for heroics.
• Armor: Unlike Dodge, Parry and Block (the first two of which are avoidance stats and the third a hybrid stat worth discussing on its own) armor on your gear is a mitigation stat: the higher your armor, the higher the percentage of incoming physical damage reduced. Unlike avoidance stats, armor has no effective diminishing returns, due to how it functions. While it’s true that as armor increases it takes more armor to reduce incoming physical damage, as your armor value increases each percent of damage reduction becomes more valuable. (This is an important part of a concept called ‘effective health’ but for a primer like this one, you don’t need the full detail.) Basically, you want as much armor as you can get. While this EJ post on prot warriors is out of date the math on armor and DR is pretty solid still.
• Dodge: Unlike armor, dodge is an avoidance stat. It either completely reduces the damage of an incoming attack to zero, or it does nothing. Also unlike armor, dodge is actually subject to diminishing returns as you stack more and more dodge rating. Like armor, dodge works only on incoming physical damage.
• Parry: Another avoidance stat that works on incoming physical damage and is subject to diminishing returns.
• Block: Block is actually two statistics, Block Rating (shown there as a percentage) which tells you how often you will block (like an avoidance stat) and Block Value, which tells you how much damage you’ll block for.

In addition to the defensive stats, you should also pay attention to the offensive or threat stats of Hit and Expertise. For a tanking warrior, hit rating’s value depends on whether you’re trying to cap spell hit for taunts or not (almost no warriors do) and Expertise is generally considered to be the far more valuable of the two. You want at least 5% hit (163 hit rating) and 26 expertise (enough to eliminate boss dodges) which would be 214 expertise rating unmodified by talents.
So these are the stats you want, but how do you want them? Well, you want to get defense to the point where you will not be crit. Once you’ve reached that point, Stamina becomes very attractive, and is potentially your best stat to stack. Then armor and dodge can be considered to be ‘too close to call’ and you’ll want to get both of them, keeping in mind that armor never diminishes but dodge completely avoids damage. After that, get your expertise to 26, then worry about hit to at least 5%. (Higher will mean less missed taunts, but is not crucial.) Finally, Parry and Block round out the tanking arsenal.
Okay, so that’s it for stats. But there’s more to a warrior tank than the gear she or he wears and the stats it gives him or her.
Before we move on to talk about talents and leveling specs, let me first say that if you remember protection as the worst leveling spec in all of WoW, those days are dead. Leveling as prot works very, very well, as it has pretty much since Wrath launched. For the leveling prot warrior, a few suggestions.

• Gear for as much strength as possible. It will give you AP for Devastate, Shockwave and Thunder Clap, Block Value for Shield Slam, and generally is pretty easy to get on plate. A lower level prot warrior leveling as prot, if not decked out in heirlooms, should look for ‘of the bear’ greens until Outland. Once you’re there, you can mix it up (‘of the Champion’ plate should more than suffice to tank most leveling Outland dungeons while ‘of the Beast’ is a prett solid alternative for soloing and grinding.
• You can’t use Devastate without a shield equipped. You can’t Shield Slam or Shield Bash without one. Get a shield. You’re not going to be a DW prot warrior, accept it. Part of leveling prot is hitting things in the face with a refridgerator door you found inside a boar’s stomach or something. I don’t know how it got there either. Sadly, there’s no heirloom shield.
• You’re at your best when you can take one two or three (more depending on level and gear, the better your gear the more you can take down) at once. You’re still a warrior, though: health, and not a resource like mana, is your limiting factor while soloing. Make sure you have food, bandages, and pots available. As you gain abilities like Damage Shield and Shockwave, AoE grinding gets better and better.

5. Basic protection PvE talent spec
Here is a level 80 spec suitable for raiding or running heroics. This level 70 spec with 10 points unspent is aimed at ease of use with talents like Puncture and Focused Rage that aren’t really needed for tanking endgame.
A protection spec warrior who wants to generate decent threat for groups as well as single target will be almost forced to spec down the arms tree for Impale and Deep Wounds. Since you’re going up there anyway, there’s absolutely no reason to avoid picking up Improved Heroic Strike, Deflection (a must have for tanking, since 5 talent points buys you 5% avoidance that completely avoids diminishing returns) and Improved Charge. These 15 points are about as deep as you’ll want to go in arms.
For fury talents you probably won’t go any deeper than the first tier’s Armored To The Teeth, which you’ll take because it’s free threat considering how you’re likely to have as much armor as you can anyway. If you’ve decided not to spec as far down the arms tree as to pick up Impale/DW for group threat, talents like Cruelty (while 5% crit is nice, you’ll have higher than usual crit on most of your threat abilities if you spec properly in protection), Booming Voice, Improved Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Presence are all attractive to protection. You most likely won’t go much deeper than that: you want at least 51 points available for protection, so a spec with more than 15 points in fury will basically have Deflection from arms and not much else.
6. Talent overview
Obviously, if you’re leveling as a protection warrior you’ll spend the majority of your talents in the protection tree, and if you intend to tank anything beyond a 5 man as a warrior protection is the talent tree to focus on. There’s a whole host of good talents here for those purposes.

• Shield Specialization: Useful not only for the 5% block chance when maxed, but the 100% chance to generate rage on a block, dodge or parry.
• Improved Thunder Clap: At lower levels and when gearing up the rage discount is very welcome, and even as you no longer have rage issues while tanking the hardest content the increased attack speed reduction and higher damage make it a worthwhile ability.
• Incite: 15% crit on Heroic Strike, Cleave and Thunder Clap is why you don’t need Cruelty over in fury.
• Anticipation and Toughness: Remember when I told you that after Stamina, Armor and Dodge were too close to call? Well, here’s more armor and more dodge. Toughness even removes movement slowing effects.
• Last Stand: 30% of your maximum health for 20 seconds, this is one of our two cooldown abilities, and it’s a must have for any serious tanks.
• Improved Revenge: More damage for one of your best threat moves and a chance at another stun.
• Shield Mastery: Worth it for the reduction in your Shield Block cooldown alone.
• Gag Order: Increases Shield Slam damage and gives you a ranged silence. I’m not seeing the down side.
• Concussion Blow: A stun with solid damage. (So solid it’s being nerfed in 3.3.2 but it’s still a stun.)
• Improved Disciplines: You won’t use Retaliation or Recklessness all that much, but shaving 60 seconds off of your Shield Wall is totally worth it. (Retaliation’s not bad for AoE tanking if you can lock down your attackers.)
• Improved Defensive Stance: Reduces all spell damage you take in defensive stance and gives you a means to enter an enraged state pretty much at will, meaning that you can use Enraged Regeneration. It’s also nice for threat.
• Vigilance: Not only an excellent means to lower someone else’s threat while increasing yours, but a means to ensure that you have taunt available when someone is threat happy. Simply a must have for tanking.
• Vitality: 6% more strength for threat. 6% more stamina for survivability. And 6 expertise for threat and survivability.
• Warbringer: Charge! While in combat! It’s why you wanted Improved Charge from the arms tree.
• Devastate: The bread and butter of the protection warrior. Does good damage, applies sunder armor (you’ll never even need to have sunder on your bar once you have this ability).
• Critical Block: This ability guarantees that you won’t need to stack ridiculous amounts of block value. Combined with Incite and Sword and Board, it means pretty much all your threat generation has an additional 15% crit to boot.
• Damage Shield: You hit me, I hurt you for it.
• Sword and Board: One of many abilities with multiple synergies, this not only increases your Devastate crit chance by 15%, it also has a chance to refresh the cooldown on Shield Slam and lower its rage cost to zero. Really an excellent ability for burst threat.
• Shockwave: Not only is this ability named after one heck of a cool Decepticon, but it’s also possibly the best snap-aggro ability in the game. Helpful in grinding groups of mobs, it really shines when it can be combined with an immediate Thunder Clap afterwards to maximize immediate burst threat. The stun makes it a nice semi-panic button to have when a healer gets aggro.

7. Protection rotation
Prot warriors lack a ‘rotation’ as such. Unlike other tanks who have certain abilities that have cooldowns that suggest their use, protection warriors have two fairly long cooldown abilities, two spammable abilities (or three in certain situations), and one ability with a cooldown that can be reset by a talent proc. At 80, this non rotation can become quite intense.
When making a trash or AoE pull, a prot warrior will ascertain which (if any) of the mobs in question require a silence to pull them into a useful position. Often this will lead to a Heroic Throw pull using Gag Order’s silence to good effect. If, however, there seems to be no need to pull anyone out and a pack looks as if it can be tanked where it stands, a protection warrior will simply charge a mob and begin attempting to build Area Threat. Thunder Clap and Cleave (especially with the Glyph of Cleaving) will be the primary means, although it’s certainly helpful to put Vigilance on a high aggro target (either a healer or a ranged DPS with little to no threat reduction) as well. Using the older technique of tab targeting (this is when the warrior uses the tab key to cycle between mobs in a pull and applies Sunder Armor to each, most likely using Devastate) can sometimes be useful depending on how many mobs are in a trash pull.
Devastate can be spammed, or hit repeatedly, as long as the warrior has rage. It’s an instant ability. Heroic Strike, the other single target threat ability, is a ‘on next use’ ability that does not fire immediately but instead takes the place of the warrior’s next melee swing. As a result it not only costs rage to use, but costs the warrior the rage he or she would have generated with that melee swing. This isn’t a tremendous concern after a few seconds but it means that warrior threat is highly dependent on the rage generated by being hit, and as such, is most vulnerable to aggro loss in those first few seconds. For AoE pulls Cleave often takes the place of Heroic Strike.
Revenge, an ability that becomes usable after you dodge, parry or block an attack, is one of the higher threat moves in the tanking warrior arsenal and should be used when it lights up. Shield Slam is the ‘big instant’ of the tanking warrior and with Sword and Board can refresh more rapidly and cost no rage to use. (Sword and Board rewards a tank using Devastate and Revenge as it has a 30% chance to activate off of those abilities) Combined with Thunder Clap to slow mob attack speed, Demoralizing Shout to lower their attack power, and Shield Block to increase block chance warriors have quite a few means to not only hold aggro but also reduce incoming damage.
Almost all tanking warriors will use the Glyph of Shield Wall and Glyph of Last Stand. This sadly takes up two major glyph slots, which means that excellent glyph options like the Glyph of Cleaving, Glyph of Vigilance, Glyph of Taunt (if you’re low on hit rating), and Glyph of Devastate end up being situational. A lot of prot warriors actually carry stacks of these glyphs and use specific ones for specific fights now that you can switch a glyph anywhere.
As for gems, stamina is king: you’re going to gem the Solid Sky Sapphire or Solid Majestic Zircon wherever you can. (If you’re JC you’ll use the better ones you can make whenever possible). You’ll probably gem for dodge/stam, hit/stam, or exp/stam if it helps you get a set bonus that happens to be stamina or if you’re ridiculously low on one or all of those stats. But stamina will be your first thought as a tanking warrior. (Some tanks like agi/stam for the little extra armor.)

When i get more info on prot ill release more this is all for now

Thank you for your time