I’m here to talk to you today about one of the unsung heroes in the protection warrior talent trees.

Taking a look at it, we can see that what it adds to the Intervene ability is a simple scaling damage reduction of 30% for the next 6 seconds. It seems a good talent on paper but the fact that it’s attached out our Intervene ability is what makes a lot of tanks hesitant to pick it up on the way down the tree.

Taking a look at Intervene, we find an ability that’s also sadly underused. Most tanks only use it for the defensive portion, to intercept one hit directed towards a fellow party member. The best part of the ability, and most often useful, by far is the 10% reduction in threat it provides.

Sadly, this isn’t an ability that you’re free to use as the main tank, namely because you always tend to be busy.

However, as an offtank, the Intervene ability, especially tacked on with the Safeguard talent can become invaluable.

Looking at it in context, it’s a life-saving cooldown that’s almost as good as a discipline priest’s Pain Suppression talent, can be cast on just about anyone, so it’s not a self only skill and on top of all that, you can use it every thirty seconds.

Did you miss that? I’ll repeat it.

As a protection warrior, you have a thirty second Pain Suppression.

How could you pass up something like that for just two talent points?

For a solid example of an effective use of it, take this anecdote:

My guild has taken to using a paladin main tank during the latter half of our ICC trip, relegating our previous tank, a warrior, into the role of the offtank in most encounters. This enhanced his role significantly in our encounters as it freed him to use all of his abilities to the utmost. Careless DPS that regularly found themselves calling for Salv from our absent-minded paladins found their threat issues largely taken care of as he pre-emptively Intervened them as he found their threat rising to uncomfortable levels.

On many of our attempts on Professor, many green slime targets would simply get Intervened and then everyone would be saved the hassle of bunching up on them, freeing up the DPS and the healers to have more time burning it down, often preventing it from selecting a second target.

Attempts against Deathbringer will occasionally find him intervening and eating a hit from the blood beast on the odd occasion where they’re not killed fast enough, saving the life of a raid member.

Finally, while learning how to deal with the Lich King, we’ve found that simply between the paladin’s Arden Defender and a well timed Intervene, we could keep the Soul Reaper under control, leaving all of the other life-saving cooldowns free to help the raid in case of bad Infest positioning or some extra hits from the Raging Spirits.

There are a countless number of ways to use Intervene without the talent. Throw the damage reduction of the talent into the fray and the ways that Intervene can be used becomes innumerable.

The only thing to really keep an eye out for if you’re going to use it on a tank is to make sure that they have a very strong threat lead or you’ll end up causing more problems than you’re hoping to solve.