Protection Paladin Midnight Gearing Guide

Midnight Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses:

• (2) Set Bonus: Shield Of The Righteous deals 20% increased damage
• (4) Set Bonus: After casting Shield Of The Righteous, your next Avenger's Shield deals 5% increased damage, stacking up to 5 times.

As we’ve come to expect with Season 1 tier bonuses, this is a very simple effect that you likely won’t ever think about or track, and just gives you a passive damage boost. It does have some offensive synergy with the Apex talents, and doubles down on the burst nature of the spec in Avenging Wrath, but otherwise is a bit lackluster and doesn’t offer any defensive benefits.

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Protection Paladin, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

In this section, I’ll go into a bit more detail on the trinkets and very rare items available in Midnight Season 1, explaining how certain effects work and in what situations they give the most value. Note that I won’t be discussing every available trinket, just the most competitive or controversial ones.

Very Rare Items

Eternal Voidsong Chain (Neck, Crown of the Cosmos) - This high haste neck has a bonus damage effect on it, though it does require shadow damage in order to proc, something Prot does not have in its base kit. That being said, you are able to get around this requirement with the Devouring Bolt embellishment, which likely is worthwhile if you’ve managed to get your hands on this amulet.

Regardless, the stats on this neck are quite good for Prot, so even without the effect, it's one of the better choices in season 1.

Eye Of Midnight (Ring, Midnight Falls) - Another piece of haste jewelry, this ring actually has a full stat budget in Haste, making it quite strong for Prot who favours that stat.

The effect on the ring is quite weak, particularly for tanks who have a larger health pool, but with it being the only ring that has double haste, it’ll likely be quite sought after.

Raid Trinkets

Gaze Of The Alnseer (Chimaerus) - Looking to be one of the strongest trinkets by far, this flat Mastery trinket occasionally procs a 12s window where you can build stacks of a primary stat buff, where quite often you can get your stack count to 10+, equivalent to roughly 5 trinkets worth of value.

Heart Of Ancient Hunger (Vorasius) - Another extremely powerful option, this passive trinket occasionally procs a massive amount of Crit that decays over the 12s duration. Despite Crit not being the top stat for Prot, this trinket gives so much of it relatively consistently, allowing it to outperform many of the other choices in season 1.

Gloom-Spattered Dreadscale (Vaelgor & Ezzorak) - For those in need of a defensive trinket, this is one of the top choices, which is especially strong in situations where you can hit multiple targets with the effect to scale the shield.

The main downside is that this trinket has crit instead of strength, so you are losing out on some passive durability, but in multi-target situations like M+, it’ll likely be a competitive choice regardless.

Umbral Plume (Belo’ren) - If you want a passive stat option, this is looking like one of the better options in Season 1, which also has some flexibility if you want to have it give Mastery instead of Crit, as you’re able to turn it into Radiant Plum by using it out of combat.

Mythic+ Trinkets

Vessel Of Tortured Souls (Maisara Caverns) - A combination of Ara-Kara Sacbrood and Astral Antenna, this trinket will occasionally spawn a green orb nearby that remains still for 10s, which grants you a 1min primary stat buff on contact. Assuming you never let a proc go to waste, this is quite a powerful trinket.

As a tank who has to pay attention to mob positioning and focus on survival, it can sometimes be hard to grab these or even notice they’ve spawned in the first place, so while this trinket has a high upside, I generally recommend avoiding it.

Heart Of Wind (Windrunner Spire) - Likely to be one of the more popular M+ trinkets this season, Heart Of Wind is another passive option that occasionally procs a haste buff.

While this isn’t as consistent as Umbral Plume, Protection Paladin prefers having haste, and it doesn’t require you to raid to obtain.

Algeth'ar Puzzle Box (Algeth’ar Academy) - The best on-use option available, this trinket gives you a ton of Mastery for 20s on a 2min CD, lining up with every other cast of Avenging Wrath when spec’d into Righteous Protector.

That being said, there is a bit of an annoying downside with this trinket, as it does have a 2s cast time to trigger the effect, which can sometimes be awkward if you are actively tanking mobs.

Solarflare Prism (Skyreach) - The last notable passive option, this one is another proc similar to Heart Of Wind, except it gives Crit instead of haste and also scales based on your target's health, giving more stats the lower it is, which is capped on targets with 50% health or less. While I would generally prefer to have Heart Of Wind over this trinket, it’s still a decent option, especially for players who do not have access to any raid trinkets.

Solar Core Igniter (Skyreach) - The other main defensive trinket option, this one does have a passive primary stat, unlike the Gloom-Spattered Dreadscale; the shield itself is a bit weaker as well.

To help make up for this difference, the cooldown is 30s shorter, plus it does have the ability to grant you bonus Versatility if the shield expires with some of the absorb left, though this bonus is unlikely to ever proc in difficult content unless you use the shield outside of high damage moments, at which point there’s no real reason to be wearing it anyways.

Trinket Recommendations

Raid & M+: Gaze Of The Alnseer and Heart Of Ancient Hunger

Defensive Option: Gloom-Spattered Dreadscale in AoE, Solar Core Igniter in Single Target

Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt (Weapon) - This grants you a secondary stat buff based on what monster type your target is, where generally in raid it’ll grant you either Haste or Mastery. The main downside of this embellishment, outside of it frequently granting a low value stat in Mastery, is that it must be crafted onto a weapon. This means that, while this is valuable early in a season to guarantee a high item level in that slot, later in the season when you have access to Myth track options it starts to lose value.

Arcanoweave Lining (Armor) - If you’re looking for an armor embellishment, the best option is looking to be Arcanoweave Lining, which gives you a moderate primary stat buff as well as a small amount of primary stat to a nearby ally for some extra value. This also can be crafted on your shield, which similar to a weapon craft is strong early in the season but loses value once you get a myth track option.

Devouring Banding (Weapon or Armor) - Another secondary stat buff, however unlike the Darkmoon Sigil this one has a small damage hit and always gives your highest stat, making it much more valuable. It can also be placed on weapon or armor slots, so you can still take advantage of crafting an early myth weapon with an embellishment which something like Arcanoweave Lining is unable to do.

Signet Of Azerothian Blessings (Ring) - While this ring has fairly bad base stats, it’s currently granting a lot of secondary stats overall, potentially allowing it to overcome this downside. I don’t recommend crafting it early on, but it’s something to keep an eye on later in the season.

Embellishment Recommendations:

• Early Season - Devouring Banding (Weapon) and Arcanoweave Lining (Shield).
• Late Season - Arcanoweave Lining x2 (Cloak / Bracers / Belt / Boots).