Originally Posted by
Alahondor
Heya, I play Prot Warrior in lowish keys (8-11's) pretty regularly, and have tanked up to Za'qual on heroic. Unfortunately it's the only tanking class I've played this expansion so I can't offer you any insight into how it differs with the others.
With Prot you will never have downtime. There is not a single moment where you have nothing you CAN press (although that doesn't mean you SHOULD press something). It has the highest APM of every spec in the game at the moment, just over brewmaster. There is a fair degree of decision making at lower gear levels, but once you get to higher gear it smooths out and it becomes a lot of just keeping shield block up, and dumping rage into ignore pain. You'll find periods where you are rage starved even at ~430 ilvl depending on the size of packs you're pulling in m+ and on boss fights, and you will have decisions to make in those instances. Unfortunately we have very little variance in our talent choices, as the playstyle and success in tanking is built around the current meta build. For example, we can mitigate an incredible amount of damage through shield block, and one of our talents gives us a 100% block chance while last stand is active. So use all your shield block charges, last stand, then your shield blocks are back up, and you have something like ~50 seconds (if memory serves) of active mitigation without having to change anything. That is just one example of how our 'rotation' is more or less up to you and how you decide to play it, but there is certainly more to watch than say, the stagger bar for Brewmaster. I can't go without mentioning Ignore Pain as it bears a huge weight on the success of the class, but that's simply up to you and your skill as to how much uptime you have.
It's an incredibly rewarding tanking class. You'll start inexperienced and without practice and feel squishy, but as you keep at it and get better you'll find yourself feeling like a shield wall. One of the best feelings is when you can focus up and play the class nearly perfect, and see just how little damage a boss is dealing to you.
Speaking on mobility, though. You have two charges of intercept/charge which makes it easy to get around, plus heroic leap. Our mobility is rivaled only by Vengeance.
And finally, the repetitiveness. It's not more repetitive than other classes I've played. Shield slam on CD, thunder clap on CD, hit those revenge procs. Ignore revenge for devastate if you need more shield slam and use your active mitigation. You'll find yourself worrying more about what mechanics are coming in than on other tanking classes, as there are times you ignore shield block for more ignore pain (first phase of King Mechagon for example, since there are no melee attacks). Demoralizing voice is very strong (do NOT take devastator EVER) too, so you've just got a lot of buttons to help stay alive. It is absolutely worth playing!