Legion Protection - Shield Slam ALL the Demons!

[Estarriol 167]

 

Welcome. I am Estarriol and I've been tanking since about midway through the first tier of Cataclysm. I have played Protection Warrior since then except for a brief stint in Blackrock Foundry where I played a monk for Mythic Blackhand at the request of my guild. This class and this specialization are my passion in game. I love the ferocity of it and the challenge of optimization through various means. Feel free to ask any questions or point out any inconsistencies or errors.

Big thanks to Sajakain for section heading images and the permission to completely rip off his formatting.

 

 

What should I know about Legion Protection Warrior?

Legion brings a ton of changes that I'll be going over in depth in the guide. Unfortunately, there's no real TL;DR that I can give, but I do think it is worthwhile to note that your primary source of rage is now rage generated from damage taken and you get much less from abilities. Shield Barrier has been replaced by Ignore Pain and the cost of Shield Block has been massively reduced to the point of being trivial in comparison to other rage spenders. The other two critical things are that Defensive Stance no longer grants a baseline damage reduction which means that it is critical to get Shield Block up as soon as you pull a pack (which is very easy since you get 20 rage from Intercept and Shield Block costs 10) and Revenge is now a frontal cone. There are many, many more changes but I leave those for later sections.

What is my stat priority?

Haste>mastery>versatility>>crit

See discussion on stats below for more information.

Where did Execute, Heroic Strike, Intervene, Charge, etc. go?

Many of our abilities were either changed, removed, or rolled together into new abilities.

 

Tier 1/Level 15

• Shockwave: A frontal cone that does a low amount of damage, but stuns all enemies hit by it for 4 seconds.
• Storm Bolt: a single target stun with a range of 20 yards.
• Warbringer: Intercept does a small amount of damage to all enemies in a 5 yard radius and stuns them for 1.5 seconds.

Shockwave and Warbringer are both solid choices. Shockwave will likely be more useful in raids and mythic dungeons since it allows you to have better add control. Warbringer is nice for the instant AoE when pulling a pack of enemies or for picking up add spawns. Additionally, if you do not need Shockwave's stun, using Intercept on your cotank with Warbringer gives you slightly more DPS. Storm Bolt is nearly useless. Its 20 yard range is only 10 yards longer than Shockwave's 10 yard cone and if you're hitting 3 or more adds, Shockwave has a lower CD.

TL;DR Shockwave is my recommendation for most dungeons and Warbringer for most raids. 

 

Tier 2/Level 30

• Impending Victory: Replaces Victory Rush and you can use it once every 30 seconds even if you haven't killed an enemy. However, you heal only 15% of your health instead of Victory Rush's 30% and the ability costs 10 rage.
• Inspiring Presence: You give everyone in your raid 3% leech except yourself. It sounds unappealing, but it's actually fantastic.
• Safeguard: When you use Intercept on a party or raid member, you will take 20% of the damage they take for the next 6 seconds.

In any group content, you will mostly likely want Inspiring Presence.  3% leech may not seem like much, but it is constant, consistent healing on all raid members. It won't save anyone who gets nuked, but it will help your healers with maintenance healing. Only take Safeguard if your cotank (or another party member) needs the external CD. Impending Victory really only has a place in solo content for rares or for world PvP.

TL;DR Take Inspiring Presence for most group content. Take Safeguard if your cotank (or another group member) needs the CD. Impending Victory for world PvP or soloing elites.

Tier 3/Level 45

• Renewed Fury: Using Ignore Pain enrages you. This is the only source of Enrage for Protection Warrior now. However, it differs from MoP/WoD Enrage in that it does not give you 10 rage.
• Ultimatum: This ability used to be baked into Shield Slam. When your Shield Slam crits, you get a free use of Focused Rage.
• Avatar: This is a straight 20% damage increase for 20 seconds that also removes roots and snares.

Ultimatum plays very, very well with the Tier 6/Level 90 talent Vengeance. It is also a nice damage increase. Renewed Fury is most useful useful in content where you are taking enough damage to keep a high uptime on the buff. Avatar will perform best if you're up against a fight with phase where you need to burn the boss or add(s) down over a moderate timeframe. Overall, in high damage and high rage generation situations, Renewed Fury will give a respectable damage output that is up fairly often with no real effect on your survivability. Avatar is best for stacking CDs for burst. Ultimatum will give you good damage in low rage situations and when paired with Vengeance, is a slight survivability gain.

TL;DR Ultimatum is best for survivability. Avatar is best for burst damage output.

 

Tier 4/Level 60

• Warlord's Challenge: This kind of replaces the infinite taunt that Vigilance gave. It's actually significantly better since it is useable once every minute and makes the taunted targets run faster, which can be nice for getting the boss or adds into position quickly.
• Bounding Stride: Heroic Leap has a shorter CD and gives you 3 seconds of 70% increased run speed. This would be good on fights with high movement requirements.
• Crackling Thunder: The radius of Thunder Clap is increased by 100%. This would be good for fights with adds that spawn spread out more than Thunder Clap can usually hit.

I have no strong, definitive suggest for talent choice for this tier. If there's any one in particular that you prefer, go for that one. None of them are essential. I prefer Bounding Stride for most situations.

TL;DR Take whatever tickles your pickle. I like Bounding Stride.

 

Tier 5/Level 75

• Best Served Cold: Revenge generates extra rage based on the number of targets it hits. For soloing or dungeons, this can give you far more rage to play with.
• Never Surrender: The size of your Ignore Pain is increased by the percentage of your health that you are missing. If you're at 66% health, your Ignore Pain will be 25% larger. If you're at 33%, it will be 50% larger.
• Indomitable: You have 25% more health and your Ignore Pain is consistently 25% larger.

Never Surrender is fantastic in that it makes your Ignore Pain stronger the harder the content is and gives you a bit of a panic button when you dip low due to the fact that you will have a massive Ignore Pain. However, Indomitable will net you more total Ignore Pain than Never Surrender if your health is staying consistently at or above 50%. Never Surrender's primary usefulness is that it is better able to help you compensate for spikes in damage and it increases the maximum stacked size of Ignore Pain. Usually, it's just under 3x IP, with Never Surrender it's around 5x. Best Served Cold is really only worthwhile in content where you will be relatively rage starved and have consistent large groups of mobs.

TL;DR I recommend Indomitable for most content, especially content that isn't hitting very hard. In most cases you will generally be able to avoid taking large spikes in damage through proper play. If you do find yourself staying low for longer periods of time or you are taking frequent spikes, then I would recommend Never Surrender.

 

Tier 6/Level 90

• Vengeance: Using Focused Rage makes your next Ignore Pain cost 50% less. Using Ignore Pain makes your next Focused Rage cost 50% less.
• Into the Fray: You gain 3% haste for every enemy within 10 yards, stacking up to 5 times.
• Booming Voice: Demoralizing Shout generates 50 rage and increases the damage you deal to affected enemies by 20% for its duration.

Vengeance is an extremely useful talent. Your first Focused Rage makes your first Ignore Pain cost only 30 rage maximum, leaving you at the same rage cost but with extra damage output. Your second Focused rage will cost 15 rage and your Ignore Pain will cost 30 rage again, for a total of 45 rage cost. This saves you 15 rage and nets you extra damage. Additionally, keeping your buffs such that you're always ready to cast your next Ignore Pain means you are more prepared for any damage spikes as it will take only 30 rage to get your maximum Ignore Pain up. Into the Fray gives you higher Shield Block uptime and Booming Voice will make Demoralizing Shout a bit more of an effective panic button or serve as a DPS CD. I will be using Vengeance in most content as it effectively gives you "more" rage and rage is key.

TL;DR Vengeance for survivability. Booming Voice for burst damage output.

 

Tier 7/Level 100

• Anger Management: Every 10 rage spent reduces the CD of Battle Cry, Last Stand, and Shield Wall by 1 second.
• Heavy Repercussions: Using Shield Slam while Shield Block is active extends its duration by 1.5 seconds and Shield Slam's damage is increased by another 30% (for a total of 60% increased damage which Shield Block is up since the baseline ability also has 30%).
• Ravager: Pulsing ground-based AoE for 6 seconds. 30% increased parry chance for 12 seconds.

Heavy Repercussions is incredible and is by far the favorite choice in nearly all situations. Anger Management will be a good choice in fights where you need extra CDs or where the boss doesn't melee and Ravager might be good if you really need AoE burst. In the majority of cases, stick with Heavy Repercussions. The extra uptime and damage is extremely good.

Tl;DR Hail to Heavy Repercussions

 

Stat priorities always get a ton of attention, but realistically, they're one of the least important aspects of tanking. Most stats are useful, but the exact proportions of each stat is going to be dwarfed by the effect of your play. If you're having trouble in a fight, post your logs and I'll help you with those. I'll of course make gearing recommendations, but they will play a far backseat role to how you are playing.

• Strength: This is the main stat for warriors of all kinds. Strength gives attack power, which contributes to damage and survivability through Ignore Pain, which scales with attack power.
• Critical Strike: Critical strike provides more damage and parry. If talented into Ultimatum, you will get one free use of Focused Rage per Shield Slam crit. Unlike Warlords of Draenor, critical strike does not give you 10 rage when Devastate or Shield Slam crit. Critical strike is no longer a very good defensive stat for protection warriors, especially since our artifact weapon has a talent that increases your critical strike chance for Shield Slam while Shield Block is up (more on this later).
• Haste: Haste reduces our global cooldown as well as the cooldown of all of our rotational abilities and Shield Block. It greatly increases the maximum possible uptime of Shield Block and has some effect on rage generation, though it is a very small effect. Haste is now a very good stat for both defense (for physical damage) and offense. Notably, it is not a very good defensive stat for magical damage. Another thing to note is that 100% uptime on Shield Block simply isn't necessary or even particularly useful since you'd have to give up massive amount of other stats. The primary thing that haste provides for survivability is smoothing. After your damage is smooth enough, taking mastery for more total damage reduction would be more useful.
• Mastery: Mastery gives static block chance (your block chance outside of Shield Block), critical block chance, and gives a percent increase to your attack power. Naturally, mastery increases the effectiveness of Shield Block, but the amplification of attack power makes mastery one of our best stats for magical damage as well. Take note that critical blocks no longer proc Enrage.
• Versatility: Versatility is a very good stat since we actually get extra benefit from it for Ignore Pain. It is also nice for flat damage reduction and output as well.

Versatility is a very strong stat and mastery adds quite a bit through critical blocks and AP % gain. Haste doesn't add nearly as much as one might think, but it does help make the rotation feel better. Crit is good for damage output, but really isn't good for survivability. Thus, the stat priority is:

• Haste>mastery>versatility>>crit

 

Single Target Rotation

When the fight starts, Intercept to the boss and use Battle Cry. Pop Avatar and Demoralizing Shout if you have the Avatar (the talent) and Booming Voice. Then use Shield Block and start on the below rotation:

1. Shield Slam
   1. Focused Rage if you have an Ultimatum proc
2. Devastate spam for procs
3. Revenge if Shield Slam has not procced and is within 1 GCD of resetting

Using Focused Rage outside of Ultimatum procs will be discussed further below as it is very useful for survivability if you have the talent Vengeance. Otherwise, you would only want to use it for damage when you don't need the rage for survivability (very low incoming damage situations or off-tanking). Revenge is not worth using in single target unless it is right before Shield Slam comes off CD. Otherwise, you'll get far more damage and survivability fishing for Shield Slam procs via Devastate spam.

 

Multi-target Rotation

1. Revenge
2. Neltharion's Fury (artifact on-use ability)
3. Shield Slam
4. Ravager (if talented)
5. Thunder Clap (if there are many adds, 5+)
6. Devastate spam

Thunderclap has pretty poor damage and notably doesn't apply Deep Wounds. When you're picking up adds, you'll want to Thunder Clap to get initial control if adds are spread, but you will need to immediately follow it up with Revenge or your DPS will be able to pull the adds off you. Be mindful of your positioning! Revenge is a frontal cone. If adds are stacked tightly, use Revenge right off the bat.

Shockwave's damage is very low, but it is useful to mention for control purposes. It can be used both for the stun or for add pickup if you have nothing else for AoE.

 

Active Mitigation

Shield Block and Ignore Pain are our two options for active mitigation. In very brief, Shield Block is for physical damage and Ignore Pain should be used for all damage types. In most fights, you'll want to keep Shield Block on cooldown since its 10 rage cost is trivial and provides quite a bit of survivability per rage spent. If Shield Block is on cooldown, put the rest of your rage into Ignore Pain.

Now for some details. Ignore Pain's tooltip can be rather confusing, but just think of it as an absorb shield. Keep in mind that you will still take a fairly trivial amount of damage through Ignore Pain, so you're still in danger if you're at low health but have a big, beefy Ignore Pain on you. A fairly big detail about using Ignore Pain is that you don't really want to use it at full health unless you're about to cap your rage or you're about to take a damage spike. If you allow yourself to take some damage before using Ignore Pain, you buy your healers some time to heal you up while you're in a stable position. If you use it at 100% health, then your healers have (essentially) nothing to do until Ignore Pain is used up. This means any spells they were casting in preparation of you taking damage will either need to be cancelled (IF they have enough time to react and do that!) or will be wasted. Any HoT ticks you get will be mostly or entirely wasted. When you take a bit of damage then use Ignore Pain, what you're doing is manually smoothing your damage intake. If you use it at full health, then your damage intake will appear more spiky. Smoothness is a good thing.

Okay, so what about those conditions I talked about earlier? If you're about to take a big hit, you will want to use Ignore Pain whether or not you're at 100% health. If you don't, you risk dying. In preparation for big hits, you'll want to pool enough rage for a couple of Ignore Pains. Of course, you don't want to hoard to the point that you're in danger from melee damage, but be prepared appropriately. Also keep in mind that Ignore Pain has its own GCD. You can't spam two Ignore Pains in the second before the hit.

So what about rage capping? Rage capping is bad. When you max out your rage bar, you lose any further rage you generate until you use an ability. Every point of rage you generate translates into damage or survivability (and sometimes both!). I use a color-coded rage bar to make sure I know when I'm in danger of capping my rage. At that point, I'll either use Focused Rage if I'm not taking damage or Ignore Pain if I am.

One of the most important subjects regarding Ignore Pain usage is the interplay of Vengeance. The talent will give you one of two buffs, both of which have the same icon and name. I recommend tracking which buff you have via weakauras. When you start the fight or at any point where you do not have either one of the buffs (I.E. neither Focused Rage nor Ignore Pain will be discounted), it is critical that you use Focused Rage before you use Ignore Pain. This way, you will spend 30 rage on Focused Rage which gives you the discount on Ignore Pain, which then costs 10-30 rage. I recommend using maximum value Ignore Pains unless you're in an emergency situation and need an Ignore Pain immediately. So assuming you use a max value Ignore Pain, you have spent 60 rage for a Focused Rage and an Ignore Pain. If you do the opposite, you will spend 20-60 rage on Ignore Pain. If you spent less than 60 rage, you now have no rage whatsoever. If you spent 60 rage, you may or may not have enough rage for the following Focused Rage. This will cost you 75 rage in order to have both abilities and a max value Ignore Pain.

After you use that first combo of Focused Rage for 30 then Ignore Pain for 30, I highly recommend using another Focused Rage immediately. This leaves you with the buff for a discounted Ignore Pain which leaves you in a much better position for dealing with unexpected damage spikes since you'll be able to put up a large Ignore Pain for a fairly trivial amount of rage and lowers the bar for a minimum value Ignore Pain in a truly desperate situation. From here on, an Ignore Pain - Focused Rage combo will cost you only 45 rage. That 15 rage savings per maximum Ignore Pain is extremely significant over the course of the fight.

Similarly to how you want to keep your Ignore Pain and Focused Rage rotation up in a way that allows you to use Ignore Pain immediately if you need to, you also don't want to entirely rage starve yourself. Essentially, you want to use Ignore Pain (or the Ignore Pain - Focused Rage combo if you have Vengeance) around 80 rage if you do not have Vengeance or 60 rage if you do have Vengeance. You want to keep yourself somewhere in the middle of your rage bar to both prevent yourself from capping rage or running out when you need it. This, of course, assumes you're not taking dangerous spike damage. Don't hold your rage to prevent yourself from running out if you're going to die from the next melee hit.

 

Cooldowns

To make the best use of your CDs, you must research fights well. You should not wait until you have an emergency before you start using your defensive cooldowns. Intelligent use of your CDs will almost always prevent emergencies. That said, should you end up in a bad spot, make sure to use a healing potion, Healthstone, or Impending Victory/Victory Rush if they are available. Be aware that healing potions and Healthstones share a cooldown.

One of the hardest balances to learn as a tank involves CDs. You cannot afford to blindly use them on CD nor can you afford to hoard them and wait for "ohshit" moments. Know your fights. Know where you will likely need them. Try to plan out in advance what you're going to use for the fight. Make sure to keep a CD in reserve in case of emergencies (but also make sure you're not hoarding that CD to your own detriment) and also keep your on-use trinkets in mind. If you do not have enough personal CDs for your needs, make sure to call for externals. In mythic, and even heroic, content you will often need to use externals, so make sure to pick up an addon to track external CD availability. This can be done through WeakAuras, Blood Legion Cooldown, Hermes (out of date and broken), or Exorsus Raid Tools (my current preference). You will also want to track when you have external CDs on you. I do this via WeakAuras.

 

Be aware of the length of time between hard-hitting abilities that you will need CDs for. This will help you plan out when you'll be using CDs to counteract mechanics. If you notice you would be able to use Demoralizing Shout, for example, for every hard-hitting ability, but the abilities are happening just a bit too fast (roughly 10 seconds), play around with Anger Management to see if the cooldown reduction will be enough to allow you to have a CD up for every hit.


Utility CDs

 

Spell Reflection is a powerful tool when you're facing caster mobs. Not all spells can be reflected and channeled spells typically can't. However, keep Spell Reflection in mind and try it out. Being able to prevent damage to yourself and do more to a boss or add is immense, especially in Challenge Modes. Even if the spell cannot be reflected, this ability will still reduce the damage you take. It's pretty great.

Intercept can be used to prevent someone else from taking a single melee hit as well as providing you with a sweet 20 rage. With the Safeguard talent, it's a 20% external CD with a 6 second duration and a 15 second CD and it has two charges. Basically, it can be a pretty great external CD. Even without the talent, taking at melee for your buddy can be helpful as well. However, be very careful about tank mechanics that stack from melee hits. If you're offtanking and you Intercept the active tank, you can end up refreshing your stacks! So on fights with mechanics like that, it is safer to Intercept one of the melee for the rage it generates.

Berserker Rage is now a 1 minute CD and no longer generates 10 rage on use. However, it now breaks and grants immunity to Fear, Sap, and Incapacitate effects for 6 seconds. It used to be only Fear, so it works out in the wash.

Shockwave (if talented) is an excellent AoE stun and will be very useful in mythic+ dungeons. You likely won't have a ton of uses for it in raids, but you may find uses for it on add fights. Make sure you position yourself to get all of the adds you're trying to stun within its cone effect.

Artifact Progression

Efficient artifact progression is very important. Traits cost more per point for every trait that you have. This means that the last traits you take will cost quite a bit. It is critical to focus on getting the golden traits first and the first golden trait you want to get is Dragon Scales.

Here is the path you should take to get to your first golden trait, Dragon Scales:

 

Once you have that, start moving towards the second golden trait, Scales of the Earth, by taking the trait Walls of Steel and then Leaping Giants. Your artifact weapon will then look like this:

 

After that, you'll work towards the golden trait Might of the Vrykul by taking the traits Vrykul Shield Training, then Will to Survive, then Rumbling Voice. Once you have those, your artifact will look like this:

 

Now you only have three traits left in the main path and that odd one out in the corner. You must fully unlock all other traits before you can put points into that trait. From above, you have the option of taking Thunder Crash, Rage of the Fallen, or Toughness. I recommend taking Rage of the Fallen, then Thunder Crash. This allows you to have a bit better AoE threat and damage a little bit earlier. I would recommend leaving Toughness for last as the 3% stamina will make little difference, especially since the talent Indomitable will give you 25% stamina if you happen to need more.

In summation, here's a godawful Paint job I did.

 

I'll be adding weakauras and such in future updates. In the meantime, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see!

Edit 12/16/16: Semi-half-updated. I still need to fix Focused rage numbers, but it still essentially works the same way.

[Murphyslaw 1]

Thank you for the effort, guide and opinions!

It's 3% "haste" instead of "rage" in the talent description of "Into the Fray".

[Harrisun 0]

just made an account to say thanks! So i should always have shield block up as much as possible and sprinkle in some max value ignore pains at key moments?

[Estarriol 167]

On 8/29/2016 at 10:27 AM, Murphyslaw said:

Thank you for the effort, guide and opinions!

It's 3% "haste" instead of "rage" in the talent description of "Into the Fray".

Ah! Thank you. I read right over that.

 

48 minutes ago, Harrisun said:

just made an account to say thanks! So i should always have shield block up as much as possible and sprinkle in some max value ignore pains at key moments?

 

Yes, that's essentially it. Shield Block as part of your rotation. Ignore Pain if you're at high rage, about to take a big hit, or if you've lost some health. You don't need (or want) to wait for an emergency to use it, but being a bit below 100% when using it is ideal.

[Jeffurious 0]

On 8/26/2016 at 10:50 PM, Estarriol said:

snip

• Haste (to 20%) > Mastery ~= Versatility (to 10%) > Crit

Hello! Mained Lock for 8 years and switched to prot war for Legion because of my love for tanking.  Great guide. I really enjoyed reading it and it provided me with some insight I didn't previously have. Again, thanks.

My question is basically on stat priority alone. I've been all over all 3 of the main forums (official, mmo-champion, and here) for the past week or so since I've gotten to 110 and no one seemed to have any concrete evidence until yesterday. Yesterday I found a great post from someone who did a lot of simming (this was actually on the warrior prot discord channel) and it was revealed that vers is actually our strongest stat with mastery close and haste/crit, as vers 'double dips' in decreasing our damage taken as well as increasing our AP which also increases IP. I just wanted your feedback on that and to discuss it a little bit. Thanks!

[Estarriol 167]

I hadn't scrolled through the Discord yet, thanks for keeping me up to date!

[Sodam 1]

On 9/8/2016 at 3:28 PM, Jeffurious said:

• Haste (to 20%) > Mastery ~= Versatility (to 10%) > Crit

Hello! Mained Lock for 8 years and switched to prot war for Legion because of my love for tanking.  Great guide. I really enjoyed reading it and it provided me with some insight I didn't previously have. Again, thanks.

My question is basically on stat priority alone. I've been all over all 3 of the main forums (official, mmo-champion, and here) for the past week or so since I've gotten to 110 and no one seemed to have any concrete evidence until yesterday. Yesterday I found a great post from someone who did a lot of simming (this was actually on the warrior prot discord channel) and it was revealed that vers is actually our strongest stat with mastery close and haste/crit, as vers 'double dips' in decreasing our damage taken as well as increasing our AP which also increases IP. I just wanted your feedback on that and to discuss it a little bit. Thanks!

 

I'm really getting confused with stat prio right now, I was under the impression that it was Haste -> Mastery -> Versa/Crit 

Here is my 3 different stat setups.. I don't really know anymore what I should be using.. doing mythics my healer doesn't notice any significant difference and I can't tell apart from that I prefer the haste setup because it just feels much better to play.

http://imgur.com/a/zRQeu

Any suggestions?

Edited September 12, 2016 by Sodam

[Estarriol 167]

There has been a lot of debate for quite a while about the start priority due to Sims being incomplete or unreliable. Mostly the debate centered around haste. We know that it feels nice and it does provide a benefit, but exactly how much has been hard to pin down. Part of the cause of the vicious debate has been the fact that it simply does feel good in the rotation. Ultimately, a lot of people were over valuing the effect on Shield Block uptime that it has. We really don't need 100% raw uptime at all, especially since tank swaps give us 100% effective uptime at a much lower haste value. Additionally, there was no doubt about the effectiveness of mastery and versatility, but knowing exactly where they fall was really just a guess without Sims. 

Testing your start priority in mythic dungeons is a poor way to test it. The fights just don't hit you hard enough and last long enough for you to be able to draw any conclusions. Additionally, you'll really only be able to tell extremely egregious differences by the way it feels. 

Ultimately, we as a community are pretty certain about the new stat priority whereas before we were making educated guesses. You want to prioritize versatility and mastery for the most part, but shouldn't worry about the odd versatility/haste or mastery/hate item. Essentially, you do want a bit of haste, but you want to focus on versatility and mastery. 

[Hitry 0]

Did you guys know indomitable also lowers rage from damage taken by about 20% due to the max hp buff? This is quite a lot considering most of our rage comes from rfdt in mythic raiding. Is there any place for never surrender in raids once you can get to a large enough hp pool without it do you think?

[Allseye 96]

Never heard of that before. Perhaps because i dont care about the beta-builds...

I just did a little research and found the following post, see #2:

us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20747754822

To be honest, i did not research this bluepost again if thats still true.

[Hitry 0]

Ah that makes sense, thanks very much for the clarification!

[Syconix 0]

I only started getting into Warrior in MoP but played as Fury. Even in Legion I was playing Fury in Raids etc. But I then seen some really good warrior tanks so thought i'd give it a bash. I've been doing okay as protection but thought i'd come to the forums just incase there were some nice little tips.

This guide is great it really explains my rotation a lot better and makes much more sense to me now. As before I was poping max ignore pains at full HP. I didn't even put any thought into damage smoothing. I'm definitley going to give your tips a try for sure.

Excellent guide! Certainly helped me out a bunch.

[Estarriol 167]

I'm really glad to hear that, thank you! I also greatly enjoyed the prot warrior pun .