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What You Need To Know: Protection Warriors

This guide was written by me - Amedis, 70 Warrior of Tichondrius.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction
II. Introduction to a Protection Warrior
III. Races
IV. Basic Stats

V. ‘Rating’ Stats

A) Dodge Rating
B) Parry Rating
C) Block Rating
D) Block Value

VI. Defensive Stance & Defence

A) Stance
B) Defence

VII. Damaging NPCs

A) Hit Rating
B) Expertise
C) Boss Avoidance

VIII. Threat

A) Threat/Abilities
B) Taunt

IX. Skills & Rotations
X. Talents
XI. Gems

XII. Consumables
A) Potions
B) Flasks vs. Elixirs
C) Food
D) Scrolls
E) Other

XIII. Class Buffs
XIV. Class Auras & Totems
XV. Thanks



I. Introduction

This guide is a collection of knowledge that I have acquired over my Warcraft career as a Protection Warrior. I have written this guide from the view of a Main Tank, because this is what I have spent my time doing.

While this guide is written by me, and therefore may be slightly biased with my own opinions, I will try to give only fact, unless stated otherwise. I also want to apologize, for I have not included a Horde section for the race. Every other section however is beneficial to both factions.

As said above, this guide is written by me, with a little help from both WoWWiki, the endless pool of knowledge, and Elitist Jerks, the kings of theorycraft.

II. Introduction to a Protection Warrior

The Protection Warrior is arguably the most important person in the raid. It is easy to say that without healers, no one would live long enough to kill anyone, or without DPS classes, you would never kill anything, while this is true, the Protection Warrior is the only person in the raid group who’s living or dying immediately determines the outcome of that particular fight. If your Main Tank dies, it is almost always guaranteed to be a wipe.

Being a Protection Warrior also means you need to know your class extremely well. While others will argue that Healing and DPS takes work too, how hard is it to spam lightning bolt, fireball, or backstab or to spam flash of light, or stack HoT’s on the Main Tank? Having fulfilled all three roles in raid, I can safely say tanking takes the most practice.

III. Races

As a Warrior, your options for races’ only limit, is the races blizzard has provided us with. Every class, now with the exception of Blood Elves, can be a Warrior. Now, as said before, this was written by an Alliance player, and hence, only has Alliance stats.


Race Strength Agility Stamina Intellect Spirit Armour

Human 23 20 22 20 19 47
Dwarf 25 16 25 19 19 34
Gnome 18 23 21 24 20 53
Night Elf 20 25 21 20 20 53
Draenei 24 17 21 21 22 36

While the base stats are almost identical, I think it’s a good idea to take a look at everything, before making your choice. After all, you’re going to be playing this character for awhile.

Based on base stats alone, your best choice for a warrior would either be a Human, or a Dwarf, based on the most important stats for a Protection Warrior; Stamina, Strength, and Armour.

Another thing you might want to know before choosing a race is the racial abilities.

Humans:
Perception - Activate to dramatically increase stealth detection
The Human Spirit - Increase Spirit by 10%
Diplomacy - Gives 10% bonus to faction point gain
Weapon Specialization: Expertise increased by 5 when using a Sword or Mace.

Dwarves:
Cold resistance: All Dwarves get +10 Cold Resistances.
Stone form: While active, grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. In addition, Armour increases by 10%
Gun Specialization: Your chance to critically hit with Guns is increased by 1%
Find Treasure: Activate to find treasure on mini map.

Gnomes:
Escape Artist: Activate to break out of a Root or Snare effect
Arcane resistance: All Gnomes get +10 Arcane Resistance.
Engineering Specialization: 15 skill bonus to engineering
Expansive Mind: Increase Intelligence by 5%

Night Elves:
Shadowmeld: Allows the warrior to become invisible, as long as he is out of combat.
Quickness: Dodge chance increased by 1%
Wisp Spirit: Allows the player to move 25% faster then a normal ghost.
Nature resistance: All Night Elves get +10 Nature Resistance


IV. Basic Stats

Strength [Str]: An increase of 1 strength point will add 2 to attack power. Every 14 attack power increases melee damage per second by 1. This yields a relationship of 1 str for a change of 1/7 melee dps. (1 str = 0.14 dps) 20 Strength also gives 1 Block Value.

Stamina [Stam]: An increase of 1 stamina point from equipment will raise hit points by 10. A Warrior with 5/5 Vitality will gain 10.5 from 1 stamina.

Agility [Agi]: 1 agility is 2 points of armor. 33 Agility gives, 1.0% crit, and 30 agility gives 1.0% dodge

Intellect [Int]: Intellect gives no bonus for a warrior.

Spirit [Spirit]: Spirit increased health generation out of combat. Also useless for a warrior.

Armour: Armour is your defence against physical attacks. The more armour you have, the more damage you will be able to take.



Raid Boss: Armor = (467.5 * Enemy Level - 22167.5 ) / ( 100 / %Reduction - 1)

Damage reduction
Enemy lvl _50% ____60% ____70%_____75%
60 ______5883 ____8824 ___13726 __17648
63 ______7285 ____10928 __16999___21855
70 ______10558___15837___24635___31673
73______11960 ___17940___27907___35880

Armour required to get 50, 60, 70, and 75% mitigation.

V. ‘Rating’ Stats

A) Dodge Rating

18.92 Dodge Rating gives 1% to Dodge.

The forluma for dodge is:

Dodge% = Base dodge + (AGI / AGIodge ratio) + (Dodge Rating / DRodge ratio) + Talent and Race contributions + ((Defense skill - Attacker's attack skill) * 0.04)

Which, simply put, takes into account your base dodge, plus dodge gained from agility, racial (NE only) defence skill, and attackers skill.

B) Parry Rating

22.4 Parry Rating gives 1% to Parry.

Parry% = 5% base chance + contribution from Parry Rating + contribution from talents + ((Defense skill - attacker's weapon skill) * 0.04)

Parry is much simpler then dodge, as you can not gain parry via stats. Parry only comes from items with Parry Rating, Defense, or Talents. The downside of parry, though it negates all damage taken, when you parry, the timer left before your next attack is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed. This is a bad thing for tanks, because it could result in 2 very fast attacks. (Attack, Parry, Attack) within a second or two.

C) Block Rating

7.88 Block Rating gives 1% to Block.

Block% = 5% base chance + contribution from Block Rating + contribution from talents + ((Defense skill - attacker's weapon skill) * 0.04)

Block, like armor, is another physical damage mitigator. Warriors have an advantage when it comes to block because of their ability Shield Block, which grants an additional 75% Block for 2 attacks, or 6 seconds. The amount blocked is determined by another stat, which leads us to..


D) Block Value

+1 Block Value gives 1 damage absorbed by your shield upon blocking an attack. +1 Block value also gives +1 damage with Shield Slam.

When an attack is blocked, the amount blocked is determined by the formula:

X = [(Shield [[block value]]) + ((Strength / 20) - 1)]

For warriors with Shield Specialization, the formula becomes

X = [(Shield block value * 1.3) + ((Strength / 20) - 1)].

Note: When it comes to block, the amount blocked is taken after other physical mitigators (IE Armor)

VI. Defensive Stance & Defence

As a Protection Warrior, you will spent the majority of your time in Defensive Stance. In Defensive Stance, you take 10% less damage, and generate an additional 30% threat. Most Protection Warriors will have Improved Defensive Stance, which gives the only spell damage reduction (6%) aside from resistance gear.

Defence: 2.4 Defence Rating gives 1 Defence. 1 Defence gives 0.4% chance to Block, Dodge, and Parry, as well as 0.4% chance to be missed, and crit. 490 Defence is needed at level 70 to not be crit by a level 73 mob (AKA a Boss)

A universal goal of all tanks is to be uncritable, and uncrushable. A handy script to have:

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+Get BlockChance()+GetParryChance() +5+(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355 + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)

Remember to cast Shield Block before hitting this macro.