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Protection Warrior: Review Dragonflight Talent Tree - Best Blend of Protection's Past
Dragonflight
Publié
18/10/2022 à 09:00
par
Llarold
With the
design phase over and the tuning phase underway for Dragonflight Talent Trees
, our Protection Warrior writer Llarold critically reviews the current state of the Protection Talent Tree as we near Pre-Patch. Join us as we discuss all the Talent changes for Protection Warrior in Dragonflight!
To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Arms, Fury, and Protection Warrior class guides:
Arms Warrior Talent BuildsFury Warrior Talent BuildsProtection Warrior Talent Builds
Second Thoughts on Protection Warrior in Dragonflight
IT’S GOOD!
Alright, let’s not start out by overhyping it, that’s how good specs get nerfed, but raid and Mythic+ testing indicate pretty clearly that Protection Warriors are great tanks.
In terms of the main changes Protection Warrior has received throughout the beta, the last few rounds of changes have mostly been nerfs, and they have been deserved. Protection Warrior was insane for the early phases of the Dragonflight Alpha and Beta, and the latest sets of changes have brought them down from the stratosphere. It's just a little Rage nerf, it's just a little Rage nerf, they're still good, they're still good!
The damage output is competitive, the defensive capabilities are solid, the mobility is high, and the cooldown toolkits are strong and versatile. Once again, Protection Warriors are a great tank. More importantly, their strength is spread across a broad array of valuable talent options, so a spare nerf to an overperforming talent or two isn’t going to orbital strike the class into a 6th-place usage rate like it was for the majority of Shadowlands.
You love to see it!
Protection Warrior Talent Setups
Here is a good generic Protection Warrior talent setup. You can use this for everything, but it has some AoE-oriented talents that won't be very useful in pure single target encounters. It also skips over some valuable mobility and utility options to pick up more direct damage and CC talents. There's a lot of wiggle room available.
Here's a Protection Warrior talent setup that's oriented toward single-target raid encounters, taking some options that would be much less useful in Mythic+ or on AoE fights, and skipping some great AoE talents that just don't do much in pure single target.
The skeleton of Protection Warrior talent builds for both raiding and Mythic+ remains largely the same. Making tweaks to gain more single-target or AoE damage are the primary adjustments between each setup. There is also some wiggle room to pick up damage talents such as
Mort subite
or
Dur comme fer
at the loss of some resource generation (
Afflux sanguin
) or defensive value (
Grand pavois impénétrable
,
Renforcement
). You can also go the other direction, sacrificing offensive options like
Ravageur
to get even more defensive value through talents like
Vétéran aguerri
.
There’s a lot of freedom in the tree, and that’s great.
The biggest concern here is that the points under
Ravageur
are both pretty weak, and
Bélier ravageur
is, as well, so taking
Charge de bouclier
with
Égide de champion
is pretty much locked in stone. This typically leaves
Ravageur
as the strongest remaining option for a final point. There's something dissatisfying about half-finishing two branches of a tree being better than finishing either of them.
What Has Changed?
Rather than break down every single change that has occurred throughout the Alpha and Beta, because that would be boring, let’s cover the broad strokes of what Protection Warrior looks like in Dragonflight now as compared to Shadowlands.
Simplicity - The 90+ APM playstyle of Shadowlands Necrolord Protection Warrior is dead and buried. Running out of melee range to charge back in for Shield Block uptime is dead as well. This is great.
There’s something sadly ironic about saying that Dragonflight Protection Warrior is simpler than Shadowlands Protection Warrior given that it has a lot more keybinds, but the new rotation is less difficult to play on a mechanical level, and the added offensive cooldowns are pretty easy to use and feel great.
Impactful Cooldowns -
Avatar
and
Force irrésistible
combine with
Sire-Tonnerre
to bring back some of the finest components of BFA Protection Warrior’s delightful, powerful playstyle.
But wait, there’s more!
Grand pavois impénétrable
,
Charge de bouclier
, and
Égide de champion
carry some excellent Shadowlands bonuses forward, and
Charge de bouclier
is much less annoying to use than
Représailles
.
Alternative Talents - There’s a lot of room to make tweaks throughout the tree. You have room to make offense/defense tradeoffs, or to pick up more group utility. For the first time in a while, you’ve got a lot of really hard choices to make in the talent tree. This is a substantial change from the two cookie-cutter specs (one for raid, the other for M+) that Protection Warrior has had for the last several expansions. Options are good!
Another example:
Onde de choc
with
Grondement sonore
deals incredible AoE damage, and can be a competitive DPS option at the end of the generic Warrior tree instead of investing entirely into
Rugissement vibrant
and its synergies.
Objet inébranlable
can be a useful defense-first alternative to
Force irrésistible
in pure single-target. It's definitely going to be a useful talent during progression raiding in the first tier of Dragonflight.
Strong Passive Defenses - While Protection Warrior also has strong active defenses (Shield Block and Ignore Pain are performing very well right now), it also has some of the strongest passive defenses of any tank. This really helps compensate for some of Protection’s shortcomings, like lack of self-healing.
Some examples:
Vigueur concentrée
,
Empressement persistant
,
Entraînement d’endurance
,
Douleur et récompense
,
Spécialisation Bouclier
,
Indomptable
New Self-Healing Tools - You know what else helps compensate for lack of self-healing? Having self-healing!
Victoire imminente
,
Vitalité brutale
,
Douleur et récompense
,
Indomptable
, and
Immunité amère
aren’t new, but they have been made much easier to acquire than they were in Shadowlands.
Vitalité brutale
has seen a major buff.
Immunité amère
manages to carry over the Kyrian Potion design, but without the one-use-per-combat limitation – or Mikanikos using it for you!
Victoire imminente
and
Indomptable
no longer have the opportunity cost of sacrificing one to get the other. Having these talents helps improve Protection Warrior’s self-sufficiency immensely. You’re still no Blood DK, but the degree of self-healing tools available to Protection Warrior in Dragonflight is a serious upgrade compared to the entirety of Protection Warrior’s storied tenure as the no-self-heals-at-all tank.
Major Bugs
Frankly, Protection Warrior is doing pretty well in terms of bugs. It’s definitely ahead of the pack.
There is one fairly major bug with a new talent:
Charge de bouclier
. If talented into
Égide de champion
, which you should be, casting
Charge de bouclier
consumes a charge of Shield Block, rather than just granting you the buff. This is unintended, and should hopefully be fixed pretty soon.
THIS WAS FIXED IN A RECENT BUILD! SEE, THE DEVS ARE DOING A GREAT JOB!
Sang et tonnerre
was recently changed to simply make Thunder Clap automatically apply
Pourfendre
, which is a massive quality of life improvement for Protection Warriors. Manually applying
Pourfendre
and spreading it via Thunder Clap was strong in terms of DPS impact, but it was pretty annoying in a lot of cases, especially at the start of AoE pulls. It's worth reiterating that this is an incredible quality of life improvement.
It did introduce a bug with
Afflux sanguin
, which now no longer does anything. At all. Prior to this, it granted ~7-8% more Rage in single target, and even more in AoE. It's a good talent, and the bug will most assuredly be fixed soon, but it is a minor grievance.
ALSO FIXED! SEE, THEY'RE JUST DOING GREAT!
Most of the older, funnier bugs such as
Réverbération sismique
triggering off itself and causing Revenge casts in AoE to infinitely loop, dealing literally hundreds of thousands of DPS, or
Vétéran aguerri
being named ‘Battle-
Scared
Veteran’ have been fixed.
Final Thoughts
Blizzard has made a lot of tweaks and changes to Protection Warriors throughout the Dragonflight development process. No class design in WoW is ever truly final, especially during a beta, but Protection Warriors look like they’re pretty much completed. With the November 28 release date rapidly approaching, this is great news.
Playing Protection Warrior in raid and Mythic+ testing feels excellent. It feels extremely powerful, like it hasn't felt in raids in years, and in Mythic+ since BFA, at least. The defenses are steady, the offense is competitive, the cooldowns are strong and plentiful. Dragonflight Protection Warrior’s kit feels like a blend of the best components of Protection Warrior from Cataclysm, BFA, and Shadowlands, with a few bits of new flavor thrown in, as well. It’s a fully-realized class design.
The future’s so bright, you better wear shades.
Interested in playing Protection Warrior now? Check our out live guide for this spec!
Protection Warrior Guide
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