A Guide to the Protection Warrior (in PvP)

[Artega]

II. Talents

For the sake of brevity, this guide will only be discussing a single core talent build, though it will cover optional talent placement for those of you who wish to be a bit more distinctive.

The Core Talent Build

Protection Talents – 31 Points (31 total)

• Shield Specialization – 5/5
• Improved Bloodrage – 1/2
• Toughness – 5/5
• Improved Shield Block – 1/2
• Improved Revenge – 3/3
• Defiance – 5/5
• Improved Shield Wall – 2/2
• Improved Shield Bash – 2/2
• Concussion Blow – 1/1
• One-Handed Weapon Specialization – 5/5
• Shield Slam – 1/1

Arms Talents – 9 Points (40 total)

• Deflection – 5/5
• Tactical Mastery – 4/5

Fury Talents – 11 Points (51 total)

• Cruelty – 5/5
• Unbridled Wrath – 5/5
• Piercing Howl – 1/1

This core build scoops up the critical talents in both the Fury and Arms trees (Piercing Howl, Cruelty, and Tactical Mastery), and also gets every major talent in the Protection tree. Piercing Howl gives you an additional snare (as well as allowing you to use a snare in Defensive Stance), Cruelty increases your overall DPS and Rage generation, and Tactical Mastery is a no-brainer, allowing you a good deal more maneuverability and variation in combat. While Defiance has no bearing on PvP performance, it’s so useful in PvE combat it’s in this build.

Some common substitutions:

• 2/2 Improved Taunt, in exchange for 1/2 Improved Shield Block and 1/2 Improved Bloodrage. It reduces your PvP abilities, but increases your PvE abilities, especially for PUGs (where Taunt will see a lot of use.)

• 5/5 Anticipation instead of 5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization or 5/5 Defiance. Losing One-Handed Weapon Specialization will significantly hurt your damage output (and, thus, Rage generation) and is not advised. Losing Defiance will make you have to work harder at tanking in PvE, but will improve your defensive performance.

• 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout for 5/5 Unbridled Wrath. This increases your Demoralizing Shout to -196 Attack Power, changing the DPS loss from -10 to -14. Not recommended, but it’s doable if you’re obsessive about mitigating incoming damage.

• 3/3 Improved Sunder Armor, in place of 3/3 Improved Revenge. Before the 1.9 change that removed all forms of diminishing returns from Improved Revenge, this was how this talent build went. It’s still very effective, especially if you don’t see a need for an occasional stun when fighting melee opponents. It can help increase your effectiveness against casters, but will probably hurt your performance against melee targets.

• 2/2 Improved Bloodrage and 1/1 Last Stand in place of 3/3 Improved Revenge. Like some of the other options, this reduces your offense in favor of defense. Last Stand can be used like an extra Major Healing Potion, and with both talent points, Bloodrage will cost next to no HP (not that it costs much now.)