First time prot

[Malakier-area-52]

So I’ve always ran arms, came back and wanted to roll a warrior, had this guy mostly leveled. So running with it into protection.

Want some advice though. Good kinda DPS rotation.

What are my current constant mitagation and oh crap buttons.

I figure a lot has changed since avoidance and CTC isn’t so much a thing anymore

Note:ran a pally in wrath, cata, but haven’t tanked since. Lay the new stuff on me

[Fleboo-area-52]

I would recommend looking up wowhead/icyveins to get the basic knowledge of the spec. The rest will come with practice.

There a few prot thread you can find on the warrior forum with good prot info with it for you to read, just have to make sure they are for current patch!

[Malakier-area-52]

Been reading the new stuff, but it’s still fun to get info from peeps who run the class regular. Hints and tips, tricks of the trade, etc

[Fleboo-area-52]

I get that, you can find some nice info from the people that you wont get from guides. I’m no prot expert, but i can say that you will have to be ready to handle threat on pack of mobs, since the dps can agro them out really easily with their cds and you can see it happening regularly when the dps gear is way higher then you and they go crazy instead of letting you build threat first. Just have to taunt a lot and try to weave your damage from target to target to keep up threat on all of them.

The person in the warrior forum that could help you the most on current prot stuff would be Hateclap, hes really knowledgeable on that spec. I’ll drop a quote of him about prot war in keys since the info about it is excellent:

@Hateclap-kiljaeden

The general consensus from top m+ tanks is the following (so far) in S2 for M+:

Guardian Druid>Prot Warrior/DH>Monk>Pala>DK

What sets Guardian druid apart is that has 30 seconds of invulnerability via their leggo which allows pulls no other tank can do… they are also extremely tanky. If playing NF they can call for trees, go into Boomy form and convoke for massive damage. Their downside is that they are boring AF to play and have low Single target dps outside of convoke.

Warrior, on the contrary, is super fun to play. It’s high paced, has a lot of buttons, and is really satisfying to play. The new reprisal legendary has enabled nearly 100% uptime on shield block, which is the best physical mitigation in the game (make sure you craft if on feet). Warrior threat gen and aoe is great, but they lack single target dps (but they’re on par with bear).

Warriors downfall is they have minimal self healing and are weak(er) to magic damage then other tanks. They specialize in mitigating damage vs self healing. As a result, you need to know the types of damage you’re going to take in each scenario and have a strategy planned to cover your weak spots. However, once you understand what mobbs are going to wreck you you can cover with other defensives and healer externals. For this reason, warrior has a higher skill ceiling then other classes.

Spell reflection is a 20% magic DR + reflect on a 25second CD. There are many abilities that are completely nullifyed by spell reflect. For example, Peircing barb from hakkar, Reaping sycthe from the last boss of TOP, and the slam from the last boss of DoS. You can literally mitigate 100% of nearly half of these abilities - and then cover the others with demo shout (20% dr on 45 sec cd), trinket, or wall. You can also reflect tons of mob abilities for big dps. In spires, you can reflect etherdiver casts. Pull → shockwave → spell reflect all their casts at once → enjoy 30k dps on the meters.

So to answer your question, yes, I’d definitely recommend prot warrior. Warrior was the king tank in S4 BfA and lost all the things that made them OP coming into SL. Community perception was they are a trashcan (and they were at the start of SL). Since then, they’ve had multiple tuning passes and have had the introduction of the reprisal leggo which has thrusted them up the M+ tank hierarchy quickly. But they’re still flying under the radar because they were in such a bad spot at the start of SL.

Edit: About the kyrian/NF question.

I play kyrian and the 1 min on spear means it’s up every pull. It accounts for about 10% of my overall damage and is excellent for threat gen.

NF does more damage (if played correctly)) and is on a 1.5min CD, so it’s up for every-other pull or so usually.

Personally, I prefer kyrian because of the shorter CD, comparable dps, and most importantly, phail. Phail is huge and allows you to remove all sorts of nasty dots in m+. Warrior has ton’s of mobility so soulshape is not needed at all.

I’d recommend Kyrian, but NF is a strong alternate. Neither are going to make or break you.

[Hateclap-kiljaeden]

Ilvl is king until you’re in all heroic/m+15 gear or above.

Once you gain the ability to start going to specific secondary stats, stack haste until the class doesn’t feel clunky (IMO this is ~19% before any buffs or into-the-fray benefit) and grab as much verse as you can. Crit is a dps stat only so while learning go haste>vers>mast>crit.

From there, make the reprisal leggo immediately (on feet).

Playing the class effectively revolves around maintaining mitigation (shield block). Generally, while shield block is up, you’re going to be very tanky to physical damage (which is the majority of damage you’re going to take in most situations). Use demo shout and IP regularly, use last stand to recover from a big unexpected hit to buy your healer time to catch you up, and use shield wall to cover the big scary situations. Farm the scale from DoS for an extra oh crap button.

As you learn the dungeons and what hurts warriors and what doesn’t you can start to use shield wall offensively, IE, doing larger multi pulls and using shield wall to survive while your dps blows up the trash instead of saving it for strictly oh crap situations.

While starting out, definitely go into-the-fray and heavy repercussions. This will give you 10% haste which will significantly increase your shield block uptime. Once you get enough gear and/or more familiar with the class, you can opt for ravager and anger management if you choose to do so. (Personally I think ravager is a garbage trap talent) but that’s just my take. More haste means more attacks, more dps, and most importantly, more survivability. Dropping ITF for ravager (which is on the gcd) makes the class feel awful.

Early on ravager was nice for gaining and maintaining threat. With threat no longer being an issue, it’s only worth it to take if you have enough haste without ITF and you enjoy playing without the extra haste.

Other then the above, practice. Use spell reflect liberally since the CD is so short. Definitely go download targeted spells so you can see which person the mob is targeting with their casts, this will increase the effectivity of you spell reflect usage.

Glhf