World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Protection Warrior Glyphs

As you level, you’ll be unlocking those nifty little things to help upgrade your talents until you get 3 Major and 3 Minor glyph slots. Choosing which ones to put in all depends on what you want to do, or what your role is. Are you tanking 5-mans, main-tanking raids, off-tanking, progression raiding, or something else?

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Barbaric Insults	Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat. Mocking Blow only makes the target focus on you for 6 seconds, not changing your place on the threat table. With this glyph, it effectively turns it into a taunt. Just know that whether or not you have this glyph, Mocking Blow counts towards the diminishing returns on a taunted target. In any case, you shouldn’t need a second taunt. If you do, you could use this.
Glyph of Blocking	Increases your block value by 10% for 10 sec after using your Shield Slam ability. This glyph is an all-around useful glyph. Who doesn’t want 10% more shield block value, honestly? With Sword and Board and Shield Slam’s normal cooldown of 6 seconds, it should be no problem to always have this up in a fight. Not only does it give you bigger Shield Slams, it reduces more of the damage you take while blocking and increases the amount your Damage Shield hits for. It’ll activate whether or not your Shield Slam hits the target.
Glyph of Cleaving	Increases the number of targets your Cleave hits by 1. It hits an additional target for the same amount of rage! It is one of the best trash glyphs to grab, alongside Sunder Armor. If you don’t really care or don’t end up doing a lot of trash or heroics, this glyph isn’t so hot for you.
Glyph of Devastate	Your Devastate ability now applies two stacks of Sunder Armor. With Devastate being a low-end damage dealing attack with the 15 rage it uses (if you don’t have Focused Rage talent), it can be nice to not have to use this ability more than three times and once every 30 seconds to refresh. However, it is tied to Sword and Board, so if you have this talent I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to use it whenever everything else is on cooldown. It’s also not very useful in long fights as you, or another protection warrior, will be using devastate in your priority tanking rotation. If it is a short fight, such as heroics, it’s nice to have the speed to get the sunders up as fast as possible to help out your DPS.
Glyph of Enraged Regeneration	Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration. Getting 40% of your health over 10 second period does sound really appealing. It definitely has its uses when leveling/soloing, or the fight feels really healing intensive. However with other glyphs for Last Stand and Shield Wall, this one is subpar to choose when thinking of survivability glyphs. Though you are able pop Last Stand before using this and gaining a bigger smidgen (~8%) of health during the process as it is based on your total health, not your base.
Glyph of Heroic Strike	You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability. When raiding, accompanied with Glyph of Revenge, this might be a good pick for you depending on your talent spec (Cruelty and Incite for increased crit chance) and low-rage situations. When doing 5-mans and trash, it isn’t a very effective for a lot of the fights and is not a constant bonus as other glyphs would be, such as Cleave.
Glyph of Intervene	Increases the number attacks you intercept for your Intervene target by 1. Hm. By one. And it reduces the target’s threat by 10%, so you can’t really use this on a fellow tank unless it’s a specific fight that you could use this (e.g.: my OT liked to Intervene me right before Maexxna web wrapped or intervening a group mate that taunt immune Skirmisher is eating), but how many of those fights are there? With its limited use, it is better to replace this glyph with something else.
Glyph of Last Stand	Reduces the cooldown of your Last Stand ability by 1 min. Paired up with a survival spec and doing progression raids, more cooldowns couldn’t hurt as your raid gets situated with the new fights and big hits. For heroics, while it is great to be able to use cooldowns extremely often, it isn’t an ideal glyph to be using when the standard Last Stand should be doing you just fine for those “o noes!“ moments.
Glyph of Resonating Power	Reduces the rage cost of your Thunder Clap ability by 5. With Improved Thunder Clap and Focused Rage talents, this ability already costs only 13 rage, so with this glyph: 8. This glyph would be nice if you were, like the Glyph of Heroic Strike, in the rare rage-starving situations, but unlike Heroic Strike this one has a lengthy cooldown. A better glyph could easily take this one’s place.
Glyph of Revenge	After using Revenge, your next Heroic Strike costs no rage. With the Glyph of Heroic Strike, this helps a lot when saving rage if you’re raiding - doing single trash mobs and boss fights – as you’re constantly hitting Heroic Strike, if you have the rage. With Shield Block, and good avoidance, it should be easy to have this as a constant bonus, unlike Glyph of Heroic Strike. If you’re doing 5-mans or multiple-target trash more often, where you’re trying to hit multiple targets, it’s better to skip this.
Glyph of Shield Wall	Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 2 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%. At a glance, this glyph put me off by one of my survivability buttons being reduced from 60% to 40%. However, 2 minutes is also being shaved off. After that glance, this glyph can be extremely useful in multiple situations - and back again after 3 minutes like Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration and, maybe, your trinkets. If you’re not survival spec or interested in progression raiding, this might be a lot less useful for you.
Glyph of Shockwave	Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec. If you’re running 5-mans or doing trash, alongside Glyph of Cleave, this is one of those that you can get to make those big pulls a little bit easier with the shorter cooldown, though if you’re chain-pulling the 3 seconds won’t make much of a difference either way. For boss fights, the glyph is subpar as it isn’t high on the threat priority so you’d be better off getting a different glyph.
Glyph of Spell Reflection	Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec. Spell Reflect is only used in rare situations where there are magic user fights and when the spells actually can be reflected. The ability is limited, and the glyph will be limited with it. 1 second isn’t a good enough reason for this to take one of your Major Glyph slots when there are superior ones that give constant bonuses.
Glyph of Sunder Armor	Your Sunder Armor ability affects a second nearby target. Even when you use Devastate, it still adds an additional Sunder Armor to a second nearby target. You don’t have to have Sunder Armor on your bar to use this great glyph. While it is sundering, it gives you threat equal to that of a normal sunder on that target, so it makes this glyph great for 5-mans and trash. For boss tanking, you’re better off with something else as there most likely won’t be another target around for this glyph to take effect.
Glyph of Taunt	Increases the chance for your Taunt ability to succeed by 8%. With Taunt being based on melee hit (the cap being 8%), this glyph guarantees that your taunt would hit 100% of the time, even without hit gear. However, as a tank, you should be gearing to hit that cap for threat and damage reasons. Even then, you have other ways to grab a mob (Mocking Blow, Challenging Shout) that are all available in Defensive stance, so this is a near-useless glyph.
Glyph of Vigilance	Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target's threat to you. As of right now, this glyph is the number one threat glyph out there – if you have a decent DPS to siphon the threat off of. This glyph is great if you’re undergeared compared to your comrades, and for situational fights where DPS get huge bonuses while the tank might not be able to (e.g.: spark bonuses on Malygos, starlight bonuses on Hodir). Because this glyph can be situational, it might not be the ideal glyph for your build.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Battle	Increases the duration of your Battle Shout ability by 1 min. If you find yourself doing this shout more than the other, this helps save a bit of time and rage to ignore it for another minute, or more as it stacks with Booming Voice.
Glyph of Bloodrage	Reduces the health cost of your Bloodrage ability by 100%. As you lose 16% of your base health with Bloodrage, it’s pretty nice to lose no health at all when using it at the beginning or during the middle of a fight.
Glyph of Charge	Increases the range of your Charge ability by 5 yards. With the Warbringer (or Juggernaut), this glyph is great. I love being able to charge from farther away.
Glyph of Mocking Blow	Increases the damage of your Mocking Blow ability by 25%. With the long cooldown and limited usage, I don’t see a lot of reason to pick this glyph over the others for tanking, or any other reason as it isn’t good for burst damage in PvP at the moment either.
Glyph of Thunderclap	Increases the radius of your Thunder Clap ability by 2 yards. This is a great all-around glyph – literally! You have to be mindful of its new size around crowd control, but other than that it is great for trash pick-up in many situations.

Too long; didn’t read. What’re my ideals for what I want to do?

Not in the order of preference, pick 3 of the Majors -

For progression raiding:

• Glyph of Blocking
• Glyph of Last Stand
• Glyph of Shield wall
• Glyph of Vigilance

For regular raiding:

• Glyph of Blocking
• Glyph of Revenge
• Glyph of Heroic Strike
• Glyph of Devastate

For 5-Mans or Trash:

• Glyph of Blocking
• Glyph of Sunder Armor
• Glyph of Cleave
• Glyph of Vigilance

And finally, the ideal minors are:

• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Thunder Clap
• Glyph of Bloodrage
• Glyph of Battle

Choosing glyphs is all about what your role is, and who your support is. It is easy to mix and match what feels right for you with what you’re doing at your current progression in the game.