WotLK Classic Protection Warrior Guide

If you would like to see where Protection Warrior falls in the overall rankings among DPS specs for both PvE and PvP in WotLK Classic, we have created pages dedicated to explaining what classes and specializations are the best of the best through multiple factors. However, ultimately, you should not let these lists dissuade you from playing what you enjoy.

Strengths

• Very high threat and damage compared to other tanks.
• Extremely mobile, having multiple gap-closers.
• Amazing AoE tanks, having the highest initial threat.
• A very diverse toolkit, having multiple stuns, interrupts and unique utility such as Spell Reflection.

Weaknesses

• Most of their mitigation comes from blocking, which will not always help.
• No real additional defensive cooldowns gained in WotLK.
• Much less versatile than other tanks in terms of raid utility.
• Incorrect stigma about being a bad tank, making them less desired than other classes.

Here you can see the benefits of the different races for Protection Warrior in WotLK. Some racials are much stronger than others, helping you deal more damage or survive longer. However, you should not let this decide what race you choose; play what you want to play.

Draenei is one of the strongest races in PvE content for Alliance, as Heroic Presence is a great stat boost to your entire party. It still remains a party-wide buff, not raid-wide, meaning the group you are in still matters. This buff helps you with your Hit Rating needs greatly, as well as the rest of the players in your party, making Draenei an extremely powerful choice.

Human remain a solid choice for Protection Warrior in WotLK, having both Sword Specialization and Mace Specialization to increase your Expertise. Humans are also arguably the strongest race in the game for PvP. Having both Will to Survive, essentially a free PvP trinket, and Perception; Human is a solid choice if you will be doing PvP on your Warrior.

Dwarves are similar to Humans, having Mace Specialization to increase your Expertise. While this racial grants more than the Human version, it is limited to maces only, which restricts your weapon options more.

Dwarves also have Stoneform, which has some uses in PvE and is quite powerful in PvP. While this is a decent tank cooldown for the extra Armor, it is rather minor and has a very short duration, making it rather average.

Night Elves are worth mentioning for the improved Quickness racial. This is a great defensive-focused racial, reducing the chance that both melee and ranged attacks will hit you by -2%. While this is technically the best defensive racial on the Alliance side, it is typically recommended to grab a threat-focused racial instead.

Night Elves also get Shadowmeld, which has some unique and fun uses.

Troll is a great choice for Protection Warrior. Berserking is the Troll racial, granting a 20% multiplicative increase to your Haste. This large Haste increase will allow you to get off many more Heroic Strikes, greatly increasing out threat output. You also get Beast Slaying, further increasing your damage against any beast you encounter.

Orc is a good choice for Protection Warrior as well. The Axe Specialization Expertise bonus is great, but it will rarely be active as almost all tanking weapons are not Axes. Sadly, without using this racial bonus, Orc falls off greatly for Protection Warriors.

Orcs also get Blood Fury, a racial ability acting similar to an on-use Attack Power trinket. While the amount of Attack Power granted by this racial is not much, it is still a "free" on use buff.

Keep in mind that Orc is the best racial for DPS Warrior specializations, so if you plan on dual speccing often, or even just PvPing, the value of being an Orc goes up greatly.

Taurens fall off greatly in Wrath of the Lich King, as their main racial buff Endurance gets changed. Instead of buffing 5% of your total health, it now instead only buffs 5% of your base health. This is a massive nerf as it now only provides around 400 health instead of the 2,000+ it would grant you in WotLK. That being said, Tauren still remains the defensive racial choice on the Horde side.

Engineering has long been a Protection Warrior's best friend, and this remains to be the case in Wrath of the Lich King. Engineering works wonders with Prot Warriors, giving you the extra edge you need.

Armored Titanium Goggles is a great pre-raid helm option, giving you another easy piece of gear to craft early on. Nitro Boosts is a powerful boot enchant choice, allowing you to cover a large amount of ground quickly. This can greatly increase your uptime on certain bosses that have high movement mechanics. You can also get Flexweave Underlay, your best cloak enchant that also doubles as a slowfall when activated.

Another unique Engineering enchant is Hyperspeed Accelerators, a glove enchant. This is your ideal threat glove enchant choice, giving you a huge burst of Haste Rating, skyrocketing your threat generation. Reticulated Armor Webbing is the "tanky" Engineering glove enchant, and is what you will be using most of the time.

Engineering explosives continue on through WotLK with both Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bomb giving you extra damage and threat, especially during large AoE pulls.

Overall Engineering remains a powerful option for everyone as it brings a huge amount of utility and extra damage. If your raid requires you to have engineering do not feel bad about losing out on a few passive stats as the utility you gain far outweighs them.

Jewelcrafting is an extremely powerful profession in Wrath of the Lich King, being used by almost all classes and specializations. For a Protection Warrior, it provides you with Solid Dragon's Eye, a huge boost to your Stamina.

you also get access to Figurine - Monarch Crab and Figurine - Ruby Hare. These are extremely powerful trinkets that will last you throughout all of Phase 1.

Using macros and addons makes your life significantly easier when playing Wrath Classic, and they can improve your experience a lot, depending on how skilled you are at customizing them.

If you are interested in learning more about addons and macros suited to Protection Warrior, check out our guides below: