In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Protection Warrior (WoW MoP 5.2). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Protection Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Sco, Guild Master of Method and one of the best Protection Warriors in the world. You can watch his stream on Twitch. For frequent updates on his streaming schedule, make sure to check out his Facebook page.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer you a choice between 3 improvements to your Charge.

• Juggernaut reduces the cooldown of Charge by 8 seconds (down to 12 seconds).
• Double Time removes Charge's cooldown, instead making it operate on a charge system. You can have a maximum of two charges. Each charge has a 20 second recharge time. Note that, in this system, Charge only generates rage every 12 seconds, so you cannot use two Charges in a row to get a burst of rage.
• Warbringer causes Charge to stun the target for 3 seconds, and to reudce the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.

Currently, your choice of talents in this tier will be based on the encounter mechanics, and you should adapt your talents accordingly.

Juggernaut is great if you can make use of the lowered cooldown to handle certain encounter mechanics better.

Double Time is better if you need to Charge more often than every 12 seconds.

Warbringer will be the ideal choice when you need to stun adds, although we do not see this as being used very often.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 self-healing talents.

• Enraged Regeneration instantly heals you for 10% of your maximum health, and also heals you for another 10% of your maximum health over the next 5 seconds. It costs 30 rage and has a 1-minute cooldown, but its rage cost is removed if you use it while enraged.
• Second Wind causes you to heal yourself passively for 3% of your maximum health every second, while you are below 35% health. Also, each time you are the victim of a stun or immobilize effect, you regenerate 15 rage over 10 seconds.
• Impending Victory is an improved version of Victory Rush, which it replaces. Impending Victory has a 30-second cooldown and costs 10 rage. It heals you for 15% of your maximum health, and does a bit of damage to the target. After killing an enemy that yields experience or honor, Impeding Victory acts just like Victory Rush: its cooldown is reset and it heals for 20% of your maximum health.

We feel that the best choice is Second Wind. The talent provides you with healing when you most need it as a tank (when you are low on health), and requires no action or resources from you.

Impending Victory costs a global cooldown that could be used on much more valuable abilities, so we do not advise taking it.

Enraged Regeneration might be a good alternative if you want control on when you receive the healing, but we do not find it preferable to Second Wind.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd-control talents.

• Staggering Shout causes all snared enemies within 20 yards to become rooted for 5 seconds. It has a 40-second cooldown.
• Piercing Howl snares all enemies within 15 yards, slowing them by 50% for 15 seconds. It has no cooldown.
• Disrupting Shout interrupts all spellcasting within 10 yards, and locks out interrupted players for 4 seconds. It has a 40-second cooldown.

Choosing one talent over another here will be based on the kiting method which you may have to employ in the encounter, or on the need to have an AoE interrupt.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 important, damage-dealing abilities.

• Bladestorm deals damage to all enemies within 8 yards for 6 seconds. While Bladestorm is active, you cannot perform any actions except for using your shouts. You are, however, immune to disarms, and movement-impairing and loss of control effects, and you continue to dodge, parry and block attacks. Bladestorm can be stopped prematurely by being disarmed. It has a 1 minute and 30-second cooldown.
• Shockwave deals damage to and stuns all enemies in a 10-yard cone in front of you for 4 seconds. It has a 40-second cooldown, but if it hits 3 or more targets, the cooldown is reduced to 20 seconds.
• Dragon Roar deals damage to all enemies within 8 yards, knocking them back and stunning them for 3 seconds. It ignores armor and it is always a critical strike. It has a 1-minute cooldown.

None of these talents offer any survivability or damage mitigation, so you are mostly looking at their DPS contribution. Dragon Roar is the better choice, in our opinion, but Shockwave is also quite good, and it remains a valid option. Shockwave is also excellent if you wish to stun the target(s) you are attacking (which will temporarily stop their damage output).

Bladestorm is ideal for moments when you want to avoid being the victim of movement-impairing effects or effects that cause loss of control of your character, but its damage is quite a bit lower than the other two.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 abilities that help you protect raid members.

• Mass Spell Reflection reflects the next spell cast on you and on all party and raid members within 20 yards for 5 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown and, unlike its single-target counter-part ( Spell Reflection), it does not require that you have a shield equipped.
• Safeguard is an improvement over Intervene, which it replaces. It allows you to intercept the next melee or ranged attack (not spells) made against the targeted raid member (the attack is done to you instead), and it reduces the damage they take by 20% for 6 seconds. In the process of doing so, you charge the targeted raid member, also removing any movement-impairing effects that may have been on you. Safeguard has a 30-second cooldown.
• Vigilance allows you to transfer 30% of the damage taken by the targeted raid member to yourself, for 12 seconds. While Vigilance is active, your Taunt has no cooldown. Vigilance has a 2-minute cooldown.

While the choice here depends heavily on what the encounter mechanics are, Safeguard is your default choice in most situations. The reason is that Safeguard is very good for providing a mild damage reduction to a non-tank during times of raid damage, making it much more useful than the other two choices.

Mass Spell Reflection is useful in the event that there are important spells that can be reflected. Since most boss abilities can not be reflected (and those that can be generally do not pose problems), this talent will not be used very much.

Vigilance is useful if one or both of its benefits can come in handy to you. Do note that you must keep your own survivability in mind when you cast Vigilance on someone to reduce the damage they take (since the damage is transfered to you).

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents provide you with a choice between 3 powerful, gameplay-altering abilities.

• Avatar is a DPS cooldown that increases your damage done by 20% for 24 seconds. It also removes movement-impairing effects when activated. It has a 3-minute cooldown.
• Bloodbath is a DPS cooldown that causes all your special attacks to place a bleed on the target, equal to 30% of the damage of the respective special attack. The ability lasts for 12 seconds, and the bleed lasts for 6 seconds. Each new special ability cast while Bloodbath is active will refresh the bleed duration, and update its damage. Bloodbath has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Storm Bolt is a 3-second single-target stun, that also deals a moderate amount of damage to the target. If the target cannot be stunned (as is the case with raid bosses), the damage it deals is much increased. It has a 30-second cooldown.

None of these three talents improve your survivability. The only exception to this is Storm Bolt, which can be a survivability increase if you are able to stun the mob that is attacking you (although bosses are not stunnable, and in a raid, there should be plenty of stuns available anyway).

In terms of DPS and threat output, all three talents are nearly identical, but we find Bloodbath to be best. Choose based on your preference.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

As a Protection Warrior, Major Glyphs offer you various damage (and threat) improvements, but they do very little for your survivability. We will first look at the only glyph that affects your survivability, before exploring the other options.

The following glyphs improve your damage and threat.

• Glyph of Heavy Repercussions causes your Shield Slam to deal an extra 50% damage while Shield Block is active.
• Glyph of Hold the Line increases the damage of your next Revenge, following a successful parry, by 50%.
• Glyph of Incite grants you a 10-second buff each time you use Devastate while Demoralizing Shout is active. This buff reduces the cost of Heroic Strike and Cleave by 20 rage.

Several other glyphs can, in some situations, increase your DPS and threat.

• Glyph of Death From Above reduces the cooldown of your Heroic Leap by 15 seconds. If you have a chance to make use of Heroic Leap more often than its standard cooldown allows for, then this glyph is a solid option. That said, this glyph should pretty much always be taken.
• Glyph of Unending Rage increases your rage pool by 20, giving you a maximum rage amount of 120. This glyph will probably be beneficial in every possible scenario, making it much easier for you to manage your rage. Additionally, it allows you to pool up rage (even if only slightly), which you can then use in a time of need.
• Glyph of Recklessness increases the duration of Recklessness by 50%, but reduces the benefit of the spell by 12% (that is to say, Recklessness will provide you with 18% increased critical strike chance, instead of 30%). The glyph is not a DPS increase on its own. However, in some situations, it can prove beneficial, for example when you want to benefit from increased DPS for a longer period of time.
• Glyph of Rude Interruption causes your successful Pummel interrupts to increase your damage by 6% for 20 seconds. If you are part of your raid's interrupt rotation, or if you can otherwise interrupt mobs during the encounter, this glyph will be excellent.
• Glyph of Bull Rush increases the amount of rage generated by your Charge by 15.

Finally, Glyph of Enraged Speed increases your movement speed by 20% while you are enraged.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

Minor Glyphs do not provide you with any worthwhile benefits. Many of them offer cosmetic improvements that you will probably want to check out. Two glyphs, however, are worth mentioning.

• Glyph of Bloody Healing increases the amount of healing you receive from bandages by 20%, while you have Deep Wounds (passively applied as part of your normal rotation) up on at least one target. Since bandages are seldom used, its benefit will probably be very minor.
• Glyph of Intimidating Shout changes your Intimidating Shout to no longer cause the enemies to run around in fear. Instead, they will simply stand still for the duration of the fear. This is very useful when you wish to avoid the feared mobs aggroing other packs.

10. Changelog↑top

• 24 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Reworded the Tier 2 talent discussion, giving top priority to Second Wind.
  • Refined some of the other talent discussions.
  • Removed Glyph of Shield Wall, since it is not desirable.
• 04 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Changed cooldown of Shockwave to 40 seconds.
  • Added immunity to disarms granted by Bladestorm.
  • Changed the amount of rage granted by Second Wind from 20 to 15.
  • Added slowing effect of Warbringer.
  • Removed the damage increase granted by Glyph of Death From Above.
  • Changed the explanation of what triggers Glyph of Incite from Deadly Calm to Demoralizing Shout.
  • Changed rage cost of Enraged Regeneration from 60 to 30.
  • Changed the amount of health granted by Impending Victory from 10% to 15%.