WotLK Classic Protection Warrior Stat Priority

1. Defense Rating
2. Stamina
3. Armor
4. Hit Rating
5. Expertise Rating
6. Block Rating
7. Block Value
8. Dodge Rating
9. Parry Rating

As a tank, your first priority is to survive the incoming damage. Becoming immune to Critical attacks from a boss is the first thing on the list you will be aiming for as a tank. Bosses have an inherit 5.6% chance to land a critical strike, which you need to counter through Defense Rating.

This requires a Defense Rating of 689, or 540 total Defense Skill to achieve. At Level 80, your max base Defense Skill will be 400, meaning you will need to boost the needed 140 Defense Skill through gear, gems, enchants, and consumables. You may also use Resilience to reach the 5.6% reduced chance to be critically struck.

You will always want to maintain this Crit Immunity state, as taking a critical attack from a boss can very easily lead to your death and possibly a raid wipe.

At Level 80:

• 4.92 Defense Rating = 1 Defense Skill
• 1 Defense Skill = -0.04% chance to be crit

Stamina will be your main stat priority as it offers by far the best survivability out of any stat you can obtain. Stamina increases your health, which is a direct increase to your ability to survive incoming damage. Increasing your health pool also increases the value of other stats such as Armor, as they will have a larger pool of health to protect.

Stamina will always benefit you as it simply increases your health, whereas a stat like Dodge is only useful when you are taking melee damage, and then it is also subject to randomness. Stamina is one of the only stats you can get to increase your survivability against magical attacks, which is a large part of several specific encounters. Stamina is always relative and will always be your most ideal stat to increase your overall chance of living.

As a Prot Warrior, you have access to the Vitality talent, boosting your total Stamina by 9%. In a raiding environment you will likely be buffed with Blessing of Kings, even further boosting your Stamina.

At Level 80:

• 1 Stamina = 10 Health

While you can't usually seek out Armor in any additional way past your gear and a few enchants, it is always worth mentioning. Armor is one of the most powerful mitigation stats available to you as a tank. The main downside with Armor is that it only applies to Physical attacks, whereas Stamina is always active.

It is also worth noting that Armor gives you Attack Power through Armored to the Teeth. Keep that in mind as well when comparing gear choices.

After improving your overall survivability through Stamina and Defense Rating, you will want to aim to start improving your threat generation. The easiest and best overall way to do this is to increase your Hit Rating until you reach the Hit cap of 8%.

Hit Rating reduces the chance that your attacks will miss, providing you with a large increase to your damage and, more importantly, threat output. Ensuring that you land your important abilities, especially early on, is a crucial part of being a tank. Consistency is a vital part of a good tank, and Hit Rating helps you achieve that on many levels.

In addition to the above mentioned reasons, another important factor of why Hit Rating is prioritized so highly is your taunts. Many fights in Wrath of the Lich King require the use of Taunt to swap tanks constantly throughout an encounter, and Hit Rating is the only stat that improves the odds of you landing this crucial ability.

It is important to know that Taunt still counts as a spell and not a melee attack, making it require 17% Spell Hit rating to never miss, instead of the 8% Melee Hit rating you need for most of your other abilities. Glyph of Taunt is a huge help, increasing the odds of it by 8%. Combining this glyph with raid debuffs (either Misery or Improved Faerie Fire), you can easily reach the Glyph of Taunt Hit cap, ensuring you never have a taunt resist.

The last Hit Rating concern is if you are Alliance with a Draenei in your party. This will give you the Heroic Presence buff, granting you another 1% Hit Chance. Remember that this buff is still party-wide and not raid-wide, so they must remain in your group for you to get this buff.

At Level 80:

• 32.8 Hit Rating = 1% Melee & Ranged Hit Chance
• 26.23 Hit Rating = 1% Spell Hit Chance

Expertise reduces the chance that your attacks will be dodged or parried. Much like Hit Rating, this will increase your odds of landing attacks on your target. Protection Warriors have access to Vitality, giving you 6 Expertise Skill.

A boss-level mob will have 14% chance to parry attacks as well as a 6.5% chance to dodge attacks. Since you will be attacking bosses from the front, Expertise gets double value for you until you reach 26 Expertise skill, as it will be reducing both parry and dodge chance.

An additional source of Expertise outside of gear will come from your racial abilities depending on what you picked. Humans get both Sword Specialization and Mace Specialization. Dwarves get Mace Specialization, and Orcs get Axe Specialization. Remember that these bonuses are only active while you are wearing the specific weapon type.

You will ideally want to aim for a minimum of 26 Expertise skill, which will remove the chance for your attacks to be dodged. Further Expertise past this will only reduce the chance that your attacks are parried. It is still valuable to get Expertise past 26, but the value is much lower than the initial 26.

At Level 80:

• 8.2 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise Skill

Block Rating increase your chance of blocking an incoming attack. If you do block the attack, your Block Value will be applied, reducing an equal amount of incoming damage. Unlike Dodge and Parry Rating, Block Rating does not suffer from diminishing returns, making it very easy for you to stack up a high amount of Block chance.

Protection Warriors are the most reliant on their shields out of any class, having multiple talents and abilities built around their blocking. Critical Block gives your blocks a 60% chance to prevent twice the amount of damage it normally would, which is a large part of your damage mitigation.

It is important to note that Block Rating works together with Block Value. Having a large amount of one stat and none of the other does little to nothing for you. You will want to maintain a healthy balance of the two to properly get their full benefit.

At Level 80:

• 16.395 Block Rating = 1% Block Chance

Block Value increase the amount of damage that your shield absorbs whenever you block an attack. It also increases the damage of your Shield Slam, helping you a bit with your threat generation.

Protection Warriors are the most reliant on their shields out of any class, having multiple talents and abilities built around their blocking. Critical Block gives your blocks a 60% chance to prevent twice the amount of damage it normally would, which is a large part of your damage mitigation.

As a Protection Warrior, you will also be taking the Shield Mastery talent, further increasing your Block Value by a multiplicative 30%. Damage Shield is another key talent of ours that will reflect 20% of your Block Value back to enemies that attack you. Lastly, whenever you use your Shield Block ability, your Block Value is doubled, allowing you to mitigate a very high amount of incoming damage.

It is important to note that Block Value works together with Block Rating. Having a large amount of one stat and none of the other does little to nothing for you. You will want to maintain a healthy balance of the two to properly get their full benefit.

At Level 80:

• 1 Block Value = +1 Damage on Shield Slam
• 1 Block Value = -1 Damage taken on Block

Dodge Rating simply increases the chance that you Dodge a melee attack, taking zero damage. In Wrath of the Lich King, Dodge Rating suffers from diminishing returns. This means that the more Dodge Rating you acquire through gear, the more that it will take to get another 1% Dodge chance. This was put in place to counteract tanks stacking extremely high amounts of avoidance.

Ideally you will want to TRY to keep your Dodge and Parry chance around similar levels to suffer the least amount as possible from the diminishing returns penalties.

At Level 80:

• 45.25 Dodge = 1% Dodge chance before DR

Parry Rating simply increases the chance that you Parry a melee attack, taking zero damage. In Wrath of the Lich King, Parry Rating suffers from diminishing returns. This means that the more Parry Rating you acquire through gear, the more that it will take to get another 1% Parry chance. This was put in place to counteract tanks stacking extremely high amounts of avoidance.

In addition to preventing you from taking the melee attack, Parrying also reduces the swing time of your next melee attack. While this is nice it is very minor and is not really worth considering. Parry Rating also suffers from higher diminishing returns than Dodge Rating does, making it slightly worse. That being said, you will want to TRY to keep your Dodge and Parry chance around similar levels to suffer the least amount as possible from the diminishing returns penalties.

At Level 80:

• 45.25 Parry = 1% Parry chance before DR