Fearless leveling build for Protector

Protector is probably the hardest class to start with in the game partly because of how many enemies game throws at you and how punishing the enemy level scaling can be on lower levels. Enemy attack and spell damage values have some pretty wild spikes between levels which will directly influence how much damage your defense and resistances will mitigate.

Protector tier-1 skills also leave much to be desired as Cleave, Earthquake and Storm shield are just bad. This leaves you with Strike and Embracing flames for attacks which will do the job. Things get a little better after level 20 when getting access to tier-2 skills like Painlessness and Whirlwind which will allow you to become immortal whirlwind of hurt for few seconds.

Much of the protector gameplay is just hiding behind the shield using Lesser shield block or Shield block skills and waiting out cooldowns and block pool to fill. Then when going for the offensive using Whirlwind or Hurricane assault to deal massive amounts of hurt to enemies while spinning around and perhaps mixing things out with Viper leap or Smashing blow.

## Levels 1-20

Nothing too fancy here just use Embracing flames to deal AOE damage to fend off the weaker foes and finish the rest with Strike. When things get tougher you can use Lesser shield block to block all the damage that dealt by enemies in-front of you (180 degrees). While blocking you can use Embracing flames to deal damage and with some mana regeneration and levels on Lesser shield block you can block pretty much indefinitely (Each class starts with some mana regeneration, with protector starting with 7.22/s).

Taunt can be useful for making the enemies prioritise you over Katarina which will allow Katarina to keep attacking enemies while you're blocking. With Katarina's Withering kiss and Lesser shield block steel shelter power-up you can try to regain some health when in a pinch. Use mana potions to extend the duration you can block with Lesser shield block when needed.

Try your best to clear maps on one go without visiting town to sell stuff (Use Katarina to sell stuff if your inventory is full) or entering new areas. This will keep enemies at the level they where when you initially entered the area instead of scaling to your level. This will make killing things much faster as enemies will have less health and deal a lot less damage. While you may get marginally less experience per kill the faster clearing speed more than makes up for it and makes it easier to keep up with gear requirements.

It's recommended that you kill the Nameless Wisp in Croakwood as it usually drops at least once capacitive essence (you can easily farm these). These will allow you to add essence capacity to weapons that have none and can be remove from weapon through dismantle item tab in Alchemy and re-used in any new weapon you may find. Having weapon with essence capacity will allow you to add Quintessence to the weapon which will drastically help with mana usage later on with Whirlwind skill.

Avoid The nest from Lost relic quest and Arachnid Leviathan in Orichalcum Mines until you're level 20. These can be a bit of struggle for Protector due to lack of good AOE skills. Painlessness and Whirlwind at level 20 will help you a lot with both of these.

### Items

Use weapon with highest weapon damage you can find that also has flat damage bonus enchant. Both of your rings should also have flat damage bonus enchants for extra damage. With armors try to keep your item defense and resistances as high as possible and don't forget the shield. Having high defense is cornerstone for damage mitigation which is important especially for melee classes.

### Skills and ability points

Start by unlocking all the listed skills with power-ups then level up Embracing flames, Strike and Lesser shield block to level 5. Then continue to level up Strike and Lesser shield block all the way to level 10. Ignore Cleave as not only it halves your defense but also has poor Enchantment modifier and Leeching modifier.

We'll be re-speccing for two tier-2 skills at level 20.

Switch Katarina to ranged as we'll be the main tank for most of the run. This will allow Katarina to provide support from afar.
Focus on Withering kiss and Wraith frenzy to make each attack made by Katarina to heal us for portion of our health and to increase her attack speed. Healing is not much but Protector having the most health in the and limited sources for healing it's alright.

Some may think about building Katarina purely around sentinel tree but by doing so you'll be missing out on a lot of damage and powerful debuffs just for mediocre buffs. Also while enemies are focused on banging their head against your shield Katarina will often have all the time in the world to deal damage to enemies.

Katarina Level 15

### Perks

Ghost whisperer is great since not only does it reduce the lengthy duration which Katarina needs to recover from her weakened state but also increases her health regeneration. This allows her to tank more damage for us through spirit guardian and makes her overall better tank. Veteran Hunter perk is stable for most builds as skill-levels usually offer more bonuses than most perks.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter

## Levels 20-40

Now things are about to get a bit silly. We'll be using Whirlwind to kill large groups of monsters very quickly and use Painlessness to make ourselves invulnerable while doing so. We'll also be using Tornado power-up with the whirlwind to deal up to 90% more damage with it whenever we have rage to do so.

Important thing to know about power-ups in the game is that with continous or chargeable skills **the effects from power-up affects for the whole duration of the move**. This makes chargeable skills with damage power-ups a bit overpowered in comparison to skills that only hit once.

In most games skills that turn the player invulnerable for short period of time often have cooldown measured in minutes. However in this game Painlessness has cooldown of 20 seconds which can further be reduced with skills, masteries, enchantments and glory ranks to be as low 10-15s. With Lesser shield block you'll be able to wait out this cooldown even in a pinch since most of the time enemies will not flank you and your mana regeneration will allow you to use the skill for extended periods of time if not forever.

This allows you to clear out very large groups of monsters by:

* 1.) Run to center of a large group of enemies.
* 2.) Start spinning with Whirlwind preferably using Tornado power-up level 3
* 3.) Use Painlessness (doesn't interrupt Whirlwind)
* 4.) When you're running out of mana you can use a mana potion to keep going for longer.
* 5.) Retreat and start blocking with Lesser shield block to wait out cooldowns and play it safe if necessary.

### Enemies with mana drain

If you encounter any enemies with mana drain just use you can still use good old Strike to deal with them. Katarina should be able to deal some good damage to them as well while you're keeping the enemies occupied. You can also always retreat or mana potion to regain some mana to activate Embracing flames and Painlessness. Later on you'll be dealing so much damage and regaining so much mana with Quintessence that these mobs are simply unable to drain your mana fast enough for it to matter.

* **Mastermind Genius**
	+ Just lure the boss to the upper level to prevent the boss from healing at Gas Machines. Then proceed to tag team the boss with Katarina.
* **Breda boss battle**
	+ Focus on killing the mages that drain mana first. Just run around and when ready use Painlessness and Embracing flames then go deal as much damage to mage as possible. When mages are dead continue as normal.
	+ Katarina's Touch of death can actually instant kill all but Preda from these enemies.
	+ You're likely level 40 or close to it at this point so you could level up to get tier-3 skills to deal with this boss as well.

Ghastly shape is great for mobility and can be used while using Whirlwind or Lesser shield block to reposition.

Make sure you have Load Power-up preset action bound to a key you can use quick and often.
This will make using level 3 power-ups a lot easier.

### Items

You should use the Diamond essence you get from Goat Carcass in Gallowsbog (you'll need to talk to the drunkard in Markovna couple times in order to loot it.) as it'll provide you with some extra mana regeneration when taking hits. You should also start shopping for Quintessence to use with your weapon as it'll allow us to use Whirlwind for much longer. Use Capacitive essence (or two) you got from Nameless Wisp in Croakwood to add more capacity to your weapon. Generally you should aim to have at least 2 Quintessence in your weapon at all times if possible.

To deal more damage you should try to get weapons with high weapon damage and flat damage enchant (element doesn't matter). Both of your rings should also have high flat damage enchants for any element. When it comes to Trophies you should use artifact forge to craft one with as many enchants as possible, preferably with 2-3 flat damage enchants.

With gloves, armor, boots and shield you should focus on having as much item defense and resistances as possible. High deflect value on a shield is also a plus. If any of them have essence capacity do throw in Profane essence to boost item defense stat even higher. While helmet, belt and amulet wont provide any defense they do boost stats like health, mana and resistances so try to keep them at your level to get most out of them.

All these apply to Katarina as well and don't forget to enchant your items with random enchants at Saffi as every little bit helps.

### Skills and ability points

The goal here is to get Whirlwind and Painlessness asap as they'll be the skills that'll help you level up quickly to level 40.
To do this you can use skill-points from level 20 to get Painlessness, then re-spec skill-points at Gaspar the Romany Prince and remove half of the points from Strike to level up Storm shield to level 5 and Whirlwind level 1 with tornado power-up.

After that you should spend all your skill-points from level ups to max out Whirlwind asap. Since you can only level up Whirlwind once per level up and you'll have 4 points to spend every other level up spend those points to Painlessness instead.

After both skills are maxed out with listed power-ups you can level up Skin of steel aura and Ghastly shape to level 5. Skin of steel is great as it provides percentage based damage mitigation which is not influenced by enemy attack values like defense and resistances are.

Goal here is to make use of Katarinas Powerful debuffs as well as make her attacks stronger. Start leveling Touch of death as it has chance to instantly kill enemies and surprisingly few enemies in the game are immune to instant death.

### Perks

Save up any extra points for later.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter
* Scholarly ghost
* Alchemist

## Levels 40-60

At level 40 Protector gains access to Shield block which will provide massive damage boost for Whirlwind and Hurricane assault. Every hit you block with Shield block will generate block-pool that'll then provide damage bonus to your next attack. This is huge as Whirlwind and Hurricane assault count as single attack meaning that you'll get damage bonus for as long as you keep spinning with these skills. Combine these with damage power-ups to deal silly amounts of AOE damage.

So the goal here is to use Taunt to make enemies target us, then use Shield block to generate block pool points. Then start spinning likely killing most if not all the enemies nearby. We can also still use Painlessness to become invulnerable for up to 6 seconds which is often more than enough to clear large groups of monsters and with some good gear and a lot of health we can leave this for the toughest groups of mobs.

We'll also be taking Smashing blow which we can use as backup option against single targets and dealing with mana draining enemies. Albeit with good gear you might not even notice the latter due to dealing so much damage with Whirlwind and Hurricane assault critical hits and quintessence. Still smashing blow hits hard and very hard with especially with pulverizing blow power-up and full block-pool.

From Auras we'll be taking Fury as it'll give us up to 10% damage bonus for first kill and up to 22% damage bonus stack of 5 kills. This combine with Katarina's Death knell which can provide up 32% damage bonus or 21% at level and you'll frequently have almost 50% worth of damage bonuses on top of block pool and power-ups.

### Items

Like usual focus on having high weapon damage and as much of flat damage bonuses from different sources as possible. Then with armors try to keep item defense and resistances as high as possible to keep damage reduction high. In addition you should try to add some critical hit chance and critical damage bonus modifiers to the mix as they'll bring your DPS through the roof and thus speed up leveling process considerably.

You'll also start to encounter greater versions of essences. If you can find greater quintessence you can swap the normal ones to these to gain even more mana regeneration which can help you keep spinning for longer.

### Skills and ability points

Focus on leveling Shield block first and keep using Whirlwind until level 45 or so. After reaching level 45 you can re-spec points from Whirlwind to Hurricane assault which will start to use instead as it'll now deal more damage and allow us to move. Also re-spec points Embracing flames to level 5 Flowing combo and Smashing blow.

Once you've leveled Shield block, Hurricane assault and Smashing blow to level 7 with the most desirable masteries and unlocked the listed power-ups then start leveling Fury aura.

We'll be taking full use of Katarina's Touch of death which will give us chance to instantly kill enemies including ones with a lot of health and even some boss monsters and special monsters. We'll also get Spirit arc to get nice flat lightning damage bonus to her attacks (hitting two additional mobs is just a small bonus). Improving her critical hit chance with Deathless ferocity also works wonders to improve her damage output.

### Perks

Save up any extra points for later.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter
* Scholarly ghost
* Alchemist
* Master hunter