Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are 2 more things you can use to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact they can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Protection Warrior Tank.
Addons
Addons are direct quality-of-life improvements to the existing game features. They can range from User Interface modifications to simple tools such as a Damage Meter or Threat Meter. Addons can also be used to generate text notifications or even in-game vocal notifications to keep better track of your buffs and procs. They can also be used to display boss tactics and notify you of impending threats.
- DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
- Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends!
- WeakAuras – Extremely versatile addon that can be used to track buffs, debuffs, or create audio notifications.
- Auctionator – A great tool for any interaction with the Auction House
Macros
Since Stance Dancing is not necessary for Protection Warriors in Cataclysm, the amount of macros that they require has been mostly reduced. Protection Warriors only need essential macros along with a few specific macros for more optimum ability use.
Startattack Macro
It is optimal to have the /startattack command on all of your abilities as a melee character. Doing so allows your character to begin auto-attacking your target right away, even if you aren’t currently in range to attack them, that ability is on cooldown, etc.
#showtooltip Devastate
/startattack
/cast DevastateCancel Aura Macro
There will be abilities that will be cast on you for brief invulnerability purposes that you will need to remove as soon as possible to maintain aggro! The best example of such an ability is the Hand of Protection.
#showtooltip
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cast DevastateMouseover Macro
This macro can be used to cast an ability on any target by simply hovering your mouse over it. You can either hover your mouse over the target itself or over the UI raid or party frame in the case of a friendly target. For any beneficial spell, you will want to have “Help” in your macro, and for any damaging spell you will want to have “Harm”
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, harm, nodead] Intercept#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help, nodead] InterveneHeroic strike/Cleave Macro
Both Heroic Strike and Cleave are not affected by GCD! This means you can effectively spam the abilities in conjunction with your other abilities. To achieve this in the most optimal way, you can bind Heroic Strike and Cleave to each and every single one of your offensive abilities!
#Showtooltip Devastate
/cast Devastate
/cast Heroic Strike#Showtooltip Revenge
/cast Revenge
/cast CleaveCharge/Heroic Throw
Heroic Throw is not affected by GCD, allowing you to gain additional Threat even while using Charge or any of your other abilities!
#showtooltip Charge
/cast charge
/cast Heroic ThrowPanic Button
Generally speaking, you do not want to use all of your defensive abilities at the same time. However, there will likely be situations causing you to stress out a little, and having such a macro in your toolkit can be quite handy. The best part about this macro is that every ability presented in it can be activated at the same time, effectively not respecting the normal GCD limit.
#showtooltip Last Stand
/cast Last Stand
/cast Shield Wall
/cast Shield Block
/cast Spell Reflection
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