Warrior Protection Talents

Protection Talents:
Warrior Protection Talent Changes for WotLK
# Shield Specialization: I would put all 5 points on this if I were going strong for Protection. This is a great talent, increases your block by 5% and giving you a rage point every time you block, which also translates into a "Power Gain" that gives 5 unmodified threat per block is very, very nice. On top of that you need it for your point in Improved Shield Spec.

# Anticipation: Great mitigation talent again, 10 defense without needing to use gear to obtain is a nice extra. Refer to the second section of this guide or the Mitigation section to find out more about Defense and it's goodies.

# Toughness: Armor is always nice, reducing the damage of incoming hits, this would give you an extra 10% bonus, so it's worth picking up. I would not consider it vital though.

# Iron Will: Okay, this talent is interesting, probably worth more in the PvP world. It's 15% is not enough to rely on, but how many of us have lost hunters when those Wyrms in BWL stunned us? In any case, I don't believe it's worth picking up considering the limited amount of talent points we have, and seriously, who cares about hunters anyway?

# Improved Bloodrage: This is no longer an useless talent as of 1.11! It will now give 5 extra rage at 2 points which is an excellent upgrade to the ability, 5 extra rage beig a whole world at the beginning of any fight.

# Last Stand: This is an awesome talent and a life saver. It'll increase your HP by 30% and heal you for 30% for 20 seconds. If things are going wrong, it is an excellent talent to have. It isn't game breaking, but three points to get to it is probably worth it, your healers are not always available, and seriously, I use this a lot even when healers are fine. Stuff can always go wrong and this could make the difference.

# Improved Shield Block: One point. Just one point, that is all you need in this talent. It'll give you the extra block, and you don't need anything else here. It doesn't escalate and will not grant you extra points. But this one point will be pretty nice, giving you an extra block whenever you use this ability.

# Improved Revenge: If you're a raider, you'll probably want to pass on this, but if you play in 5-10man instances a lot, you'll probably enjoy this talent. Whenever it procs and stuns the target, it'll also cause threat, so for all the stunnable trash it's pretty nice to have. In a 40man though, you won't need this since everything is immune to stun.

# Defiance: Warning Warning, Winner incoming. Pick up this, especially if you're going deep in protection, because it'll be a major factor in threat. At 5 points, 15% extra threat is a LOT. Each of your abilities causing threat will be modified by this 15% and it is of great value. Even tanks who do not want to spend many points in protection will probably want to keep this close, even more as Horde.

# Improved Sunder Armor: Same as Improved Heroic Strike. Go up and read what I had to say about Imp. HS, because the same thing applies here. I think it's a fine talent, many people will argue against it, and many others will argue in it's favor. Try it and decide for yourself if it's worth keeping.

# Improved Taunt: It is important to understand Taunt before really deciding about this talent, and we'll talk about it deeply in the team play section, but even so, it is not that great of a talent and you'll only see big results from it in a fight in AQ Temple (Sartura). Anywhere else, it loses a lot of value, because a tank that knows what he's doing is not spamming taunt every second it's up or whenever anyone but himself is tanking ( OTs can tank just fine without you trying to grab aggro in every trash pull mob). It helps a bit on resists or when you're not able to lock aggro.

# Improved Shield Wall: I don't know what this is doing here. I really cannot even begin to comprehend why you would want to give 5 extra seconds to an ability you will use once every 30 minutes, well, not even since you'll be saving your Shield Wall for critical moments! Very situational, very.

# Improved Shield Bash: A silence is always nice, but same rule applies than Improved revenge. Highly depends on your field of play. Go back up to Improved Revenge, same thing applies, although Imp. Revenge may have a bit more of value. For PvP though, things change.

# Concussion Blow: Probably useful for any tank, since if you have went this deep in Protection, you're going for Shield Slam, and this is a nice extra.

# One-Hand Weapon Specialization: Maxing this talent will override the loss of damage of Defensive Stance, and damage = threat. It is another nice extra use of talents to improve your threat, and 10% is pretty nice. Even if you do not have the points to fill this up, a few points will still prove useful.

# Shield Slam: This talent was commented in the skills section, and there's not much more to say. The dispel will most of the time not be useful, first, fights where you must dispel another class will be doing it. And second, you can't rely on Shield slam to make sure the target will be dispelled, It is not a 100% dispel effect after all, is on a 6 second cooldown, and costs too much rage to spam it. Other than that, it's nice talent, especially for starting tanks who don't have amazing weapons. It doesn't escalate well in that sense. Edit: As of patch 1.11 there have been signnificant