Protection Warrior Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.0.7)

Last updated on Dec 15, 2024 at 16:00 by Mwahi 49 comments

On this page, you will find our Level by Level Protection Warrior leveling guide for The War Within. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Warrior leveling guide.

1.

Best Protection Warrior Leveling Playstyle

Protection Warrior, thanks to being a tank, you can do big pulls and survive them without issues. Running around and tagging as many enemies as possible before grouping them up and starting damaging them will lead to fast quest completions.

As a tank, you should also queue for Dungeons between questing. Completing dungeons also gives a hefty amount of experience, and as a tank, you will have quicker queue times than DPS specializations. Enemies you fight in dungeons are generally speaking stronger, with more abilities, than the ones you meet while questing. This means that you need to pay more attention and use your abilities in a more thoughtful way than you would otherwise, which in turn leads to you learning to play the class a lot better, preparing you for the end-game content.

2.

Gear Options

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

3.

Level by Level Rotation and Talents

There are very few baseline abilities that you unlock. Most of them come in the form of Talents.

Talents are something that will give you options to optimize your character and change how some of the abilities work.

There are a multitude of possible ways to use your Talent points, and the tree below is just one of many. This tree will provide you with enough crowd control, single target, and AoE damage, together with all the survivability you need in order to get started.

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Level: 70
3.1.

Rotation/Ability Priority to Level Up as a Protection Warrior

NOTE: Hero Talents start at level 71 and are NOT available during pre-patch.

Once you hit level 71, you will gain access to Warrior Protections two Hero Talent options: Mountain Thane and Colossus. Which one to use for leveling is totally up to you; both of them do perfectly fine while leveling and picking one or the other will not give you any significant advantage.

Mountain Thane Talents Colossus Talents
4.

Mountain Thane Talents for Protection Warrior

Below, you can find a suggested list of which talents to pick as Mountain Thane. The order of picking them will not change anything drastically, so you are free to choose whichever ones you find more interesting while leveling.

  1. Crashing Thunder Icon Crashing Thunder
  2. Thunder Blast Icon Thunder Blast
  3. Flashing Skies Icon Flashing Skies
  4. Avatar of the Storm Icon Avatar of the Storm
  5. Ground Current Icon Ground Current
  6. Strength of the Mountain Icon Strength of the Mountain
  7. Keep Your Feet on the Ground Icon Keep Your Feet on the Ground
  8. Burst of Power Icon Burst of Power
  9. Storm Bolts Icon Storm Bolts
  10. Thorim's Might Icon Thorim's Might
5.

Colossus Talents for Protection Warrior

Below, you can find a suggested list of which talents to pick as Colossus. The order of picking them will not change anything drastically, so you are free to choose whichever ones you find more interesting while leveling.

  1. Colossal Might Icon Colossal Might
  2. Tide of Battle Icon Tide of Battle
  3. Precise Might Icon Precise Might
  4. Dominance of the Colossus Icon Dominance of the Colossus
  5. Martial Expert Icon Martial Expert
  6. One Against Many Icon One Against Many or Arterial Bleed Icon Arterial Bleed
  7. Practiced Strikes Icon Practiced Strikes
  8. Boneshaker Icon Boneshaker or Earthquaker Icon Earthquaker
  9. No Stranger to Pain Icon No Stranger to Pain
  10. Mountain of Muscle and Scars Icon Mountain of Muscle and Scars

Starting at Level 1, you only have one active ability: Slam Icon Slam.

  1. Cast Charge Icon Charge to initiate combat whenever possible.
  2. Victory Rush Icon Victory Rush activates whenever an enemy is killed. Use it to heal yourself.
  3. Use Impending Victory Icon Impending Victory to heal yourself when needed.
  4. Cast Avatar Icon Avatar to generate a bit of Rage and greatly increase your damage.
  5. Cast Demoralizing Shout Icon Demoralizing Shout to reduce the damage you take, and increase the damage you deal (when using the Booming Voice Icon Booming Voice talent).
  6. Cast Shield Charge Icon Shield Charge.
  7. Cast Champion's Spear Icon Champion's Spear.
  8. Cast Ravager Icon Ravager.
  9. Cast Shield Slam Icon Shield Slam to deal a lot of damage.
  10. Cast Shield Slam Icon Shield Slam to generate Rage and deal damage.
  11. Cast Thunder Clap Icon Thunder Clap to generate Rage and deal damage, particularly during Avatar Icon Avatar with Unstoppable Force Icon Unstoppable Force talented.
  12. Cast Execute Icon Execute when enemies are below 20% health.
  13. Spend Rage on Whirlwind Icon Whirlwind to damage multiple targets if you do not need to spend it on your active mitigation to survive.
  14. Spend Rage on Revenge Icon Revenge to damage multiple targets if you do not need to spend it on your active mitigation to survive.
  15. Cast Devastate Icon Devastate to fill empty global cooldowns, and reset the cooldown of Shield Slam Icon Shield Slam.
  16. Cast Slam Icon Slam as your filler spell.

Active Mitigation

  • Cast Shield Block Icon Shield Block as much as possible when tanking something and taking heavy physical damage.
  • Further smooth out your damage intake by spending Rage on Ignore Pain Icon Ignore Pain.
5.1.

War Mode Talents to Level Up as a Protection Warrior

The following PvP talents are recommended for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. You may find that different PvP talents work better for you, depending on your playstyle. Experimentation is encouraged!

5.1.1.

General PvP Talent

Morale Killer Icon Morale Killer significantly reduces the cooldown of Demoralizing Shout Icon Demoralizing Shout, allowing for more damage reduction and damage output in conjunction with Booming Voice Icon Booming Voice.

5.1.2.

Protection Warrior PvP Talents

  1. Dragon Charge Icon Dragon Charge improves mobility and inflicts moderate damage to targets along your path.
  2. Sword and Board Icon Sword and Board provides a near-constant increase to Shield Slam and Devastate damage through more frequent critical strikes.
6.

Congratulations!

Congratulations on reaching Level 80! Now that you have hit Level 80, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.

7.

Changelog

  • 15 Dec. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.7.
  • 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
  • 09 Sep. 2024: Resolved issue with Talents and Rotations having a mis-match.
  • 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
  • 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
  • 10 May 2024: Replaced Battering Ram with Enduring Alacrity.
  • 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
  • 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
  • 18 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
  • 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
  • 23 Nov. 2023: Updated Rotation priority.
  • 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2
  • 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
  • 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
  • 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
  • 20 Mar. 2023: Swapped Thunderlord for Battering Ram and reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
  • 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
  • 21 Dec. 2022: Updated talent calculator pick order.
  • 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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