Magic Damage - Protection Warriors

Hello all,

It has been known for a while that protection warrior struggles with dealing with magic damage. I have been trying to push keys in season 4 and have been struggling a lot in dungeons like Neltharus where there are a ton of casts. Spell reflect is cool, but losing the magic DR after reflecting feels pretty bad. I have resorted to running double absorb trinkets to manage this. I took a look at the TWW class changes for warrior and am stunned that this isn’t being addressed. I do not know the damage profile of the dungeons in the new expansion, but I do not see protection warrior going far without some dedicated magic damage reduction. Maybe I am not seeing something that others are that could give me some hope?

Let me know your guys’ thoughts on this.

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Bit hard to give you proper advice without you posting on the actual warrior you’re playing or some logs of how you press buttons, but with a little sleuthing and it being your ‘main’ when checking you on raiderio.

I’d start with the following from checking out your talents and logged keys.

Play more in defensive stance. - This one might be silly but you don’t really have any stance changing if at all during a key and one that you do (RLP) you’re only in a stance for ~68% of the key.
As prot you need to know when you’re able to dish out more damage in battle stance and when you need to hunker down in defensive stance to mitigate the incoming damage.

As a starter, maybe sit Defensive Stance on Trash packs and go battle stance for boss fights, while switching to defensive stance for tankbusters. This will give you more comfort in swapping your stance as needed.

Maybe set-up a WA that covers your screen with the wording of your choice, maybe something ‘mean’ to tell you if you don’t have a stance active. This is a pretty common occurrence if you’re always changing between specs as your stance likes to be removed when doing so.

Talents, begin with making the following changes.

Tough As Nails to Spell Block. (VERY good magic damage mitigation)

Impenetrable Wall to Defender’s Aegis. (two charges alongside a shorter cooldown to feed into with AM is pretty solid and allows for much better planning of defensives to survive bosses with ease on tyrannical weeks and even larger mob pulls on fort weeks)

Optional* Fueled by Violence to Brutal Vitality. (I say this one is optional as they’re both a little chop/change but i’d say BV has more value when you’re going ham in battlestance on a large pack as you’re able to benefit a fair bit from the aoe damage you’re dealing during burst).

Why? This will give you more magic defense which is something you’re admitting to struggling with.

Finally get back to basics.

Press your Shield Block on cooldown, your uptime is lacking really painfully. I cannot stress this enough Press Shield block.
You have a much larger % of unblocked melee attacks than blocked. This is a really bad thing as your block is your main mitigation tool with large packs of mobs, seeing this i’m doubting magic damage is the only issue you’re having.

Press your defensive cooldowns on cooldown.

You could be mitigating more damage by actually using defensives more often. You don’t need to hammer them all into a one shot macro, but you could do with staggering their use as a pack progresses. Opening with your Shield Charge into Demo shout, wait 10s then press shield wall once mobs start doing their tank busters, bleeds etc. All while spamming the living end out of your shield block/ignore pain.

TLDR:
Go back to the basics.
Make sure you’re using your defensives as often as possible.
Make sure to keep shield block up.

2 Likes

Thank you for the feedback, always room for improvement. I find that I fail to keep block up when I’m getting distracted trying to get threat on mobs that are at ranged on pull. Its pretty often that people rip when I charge in and try to play defensively.

excellent and positive post. We need a lot more like this! <3

I’m playing prot in the 5-6 key range right now, and the fyrakk trinket and BH trinket were both very strong pick ups for the magic damage.

For neltharus, I lean on shield wall and bank it for the magic damage pulls. Really it’s the last pull, and the trash before the forge boss that stings. Avatar and demo shout on the pull (get IP and block up asap), victory rush and 1st trinket absorb shortly after the first bump of damage, wall when trinket is down, victory rush/2nd trinket after that. Spell reflect in between. If you time it well, you’re at the end of the pull before you need any help plus wall CD should be soon for next pull.

For RLP, use reflect when the magic damage is at its highest (like 3 stacks of searing blows and not sooner). This way you get the full 5 seconds of DR during the highest periods of damage.

Wowhead prot warrior section has a great dungeon by dungeon guide. Some bosses have some great spell reflect opportunities. Like halls of infusion, you spell reflect squall buffet, and use shield wall and a trinket for the first tank channel. For the next one you use demonshout and your other trinket, maybe victory rush if you need a small bump in hp.