In this article, we present you with various talent trees for Protection Warriors (WoW 4.3) that you can use in specific situations. We also explain in detail what the talents do, how they work together, and how you can customise your talent tree in order to adapt it to a particular boss. The other articles of our Protection Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the left.

1. Recommended Builds↑top

This build provides strong single target threat and DPS, thanks to the Cruelty talent as well as 3/3 in Incite.

This build is tailored for AoE tanking. It provides a great boost in threat and DPS, through the Blood and Thunder and Thunderstruck talents. It also provides some additional utility thanks to Gag Order, providing you with a silence effect.

2. Customising Your Build↑top

While the above builds will yield very good results under most circumstances, it is important to know how you can customise your talents and glyphs, to adapt your build to specific situations.

2.1. Talents

There is a number of 27 talent points which Protection Warriors are required to spend in a specific combination of talents. These talents are mandatory either because without them you cannot tank, or because they are simply better than any other possible alternatives. These are the fixed talents.

In addition to these, you have a rather vast choice for your remaining talent points, from among optional talents.

In the following image, the fixed talents have been hightlighted in green, while the optional talents have been hightlighted in red:

2.1.1. Fixed Talents Explained

2.1.2. Optional Talents

As a Protection Warrior, you have access to a great variety of optional talents. Some increase your AoE tanking capabilities, others improve your single target threat and damaging capabilities, while others are simply useful in specific circumstances.

Single target talents:

• 2/3 Incite: provides you with a significant buff to your Heroic Strike usage, in terms of threat and damage done.
• 2/2 Cruelty: a straightforward threat and damage increase, by providing an extra 10% critical strike chance to your Shield Slam.
• 3/3 War Academy: a straightforward threat and damage increase, by providing an extra 15% damage done to your Devastate.
• 3/3 Deep Wounds: your critical strikes cause your enemy to bleed for a decent amount of damage over 6 seconds. This ability has a high uptime and ends up as a large amount of the damage caused by Protection Warriors.

AoE talents:

• 2/2 Blood and Thunder: spreads your Rend to all targets affected by your Thunder Clap, each time you Thunder Clap, and is absolutely crucial to proper AoE tanking.
• 2/2 Thunderstruck: improves the damage of your Cleave, Rend and Revenge (all crucial AoE abilities), and also increases the damage of your next Shockwave by 10% each time you Thunder Clap, stacking up to 3 times.
• 3/3 Blood Craze: the healing received from Blood Craze is only significant if you can maintain a high uptime on it, which is made considerably easier when you have multiple enemies attacking you.
• 2/2 Gag Order: reduces the cooldown on your Heroic Throw and grants your Heroic Throw an interrupt and silence effect. The silence effect is also granted to Pummel. This is mostly useful only on trash mobs.

Situational talents:

• 2/2 Safeguard: causes your Intervene ability to grant the target 30% damage reduction for 6 seconds. While it is a very powerful damage reduction ability, on a low cooldown, keep in mind that Intervene reduces the threat of the target by 10%, so using it on tanks is not really an option.
• 1/1 Piercing Howl: grants you the Piercing Howl ability, allowing you to kite groups of adds with relative ease.

2.2. Glyphs

Glyph choice for Protection Warriors is quite easy.

2.2.1. Prime Glyphs

The following Prime Glyphs are mandatory, and there are really no other options.

• Glyph of Shield Slam;
• Glyph of Devastate;
• Glyph of Revenge.

2.2.2. Major Glyphs

Glyph of Shockwave is a mandatory Major Glyph. For the remaining two slots, you should choose depending on whether you desire single target or AoE tanking.

For single-target, any of the following are viable:

• Glyph of Long Charge;
• Glyph of Rapid Charge;
• Glyph of Spell Reflection;
• Glyph of Intercept.

For AoE, both of these glyphs are essential:

• Glyph of Cleaving;
• Glyph of Thunder Clap.

Keep in mind that Glyph of Shield Wall may be useful if you find yourself requiring an extra 20% damage reduction on your Shield Wall, at the cost of an increased cooldown. This is generally not advised, as abilities which require 60% damage reduction to survive are not meant to be survived anyway.

2.2.3. Minor Glyphs

None of the Minor Glyphs are mandatory, but depend greatly on what buffs (and debuffs) your raid requires you to keep up.

• Glyph of Demoralizing Shout;
• Glyph of Battle or Glyph of Command.

Glyph of Berserker Rage can be used as a filler with some use.