Protection Warrior Gearing Guide

Tier Sets

Provide the Tier Set bonuses and then explain or provide information such as if they are good and how they impact your gameplay.

Season 3 The War Within Protection Warrior Tier Set Bonuses:

In Season 3, Protection Warriors tier sets revolve around your hero talents and change depending on what you play.

Mountain Thane:

• (2) Thunder Blast has a 35% Chance to call down 5 Ionizing Strikes on affected targets. Each strike deals Nature damage
• (4) Ionizing Strikes deal 100% more damage and when you trigger Ionizing Strikes, you gain a charge of Thunder Blast and your next Thunder Blast deals 100% additional damage.

Colossus:

• (2) Demolish damage increased by 20% and critical strike damage of your abilities is increased by up to 20% on targets affected by your Demolish for 10 seconds based on the number of stacks of Colossal Might consumed.
• (4) Demolish increases the critical strike chance of your next Shield Slam by 100%. Shield Slam critical strikes increase your Rend and Deep Wounds damage by 80% for 8 seconds.

The Mountain Thane tier set highly incentivizes us to Thunder Blast as often as possible, reinforcing our general gameplay loop quite nicely. As a result of wanting to Thunder Blast as often as possible, it naturally puts a higher emphasis on shield slamming as often as possible too for Thunder Blast resets.

The Colossus tier set revolves around Demolish and your bleeds. You’ll build stacks of Colossal Might with Shield Slams like normal, Demolish to deal damage and consume them, and then get buffed to deal even more damage afterwards. On top of that, your shield slam crits will be increasing your bleed damage, giving you more self healing from Fueled by Violence and playing nicely into Arterial Bleed.

The tables below aim to give you a general list of gear that is good for Protection Warrior, these lists are not a perfect replacement for simming your character.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

S - Tier

Brand of Ceaseless Ire - This is easily our best trinket available right now, although a lot of its strength relies on taking damage. Getting hit infuriates you, causing you to absorb a small amount of damage and deal shadow damage back to enemies that increases per stack. The damage also further increases by 30% per additional enemy, up to 150%. Dropping combat makes you lose your stacks quite quickly but the trinket is performing very well in M+ regardless of downtime, and in raid it’s your best single target trinket.

Tome of Light’s Devotion - The best purely offensive trinket for single target damage. You shift between 2 stances, one offensive and one defensive. You can force a state change with the on use, and it lines up perfectly to allow you to stay in the offensive state permanently. The defensive stat is very bad so try to never be in it for long.

Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - One of the best Mythic+ trinkets you can get. Provides a large amount of crit every 60 seconds that you can extend when dealing critical strikes.

So’leah’s Secret Technique - This trinket actually provides more overall stats than Pacemaker, however a portion of those stats go to a teammate you bond with, making it worse for you personally. It’s a gear stat stick and I’d recommend it if you like supporting your allies.

A - Tier

Ringing Ritual Mud - The best purely defensive trinket from Mythic+. A 2 minute on use with a massive absorb shield that gets cooldown reduction when you take damage.

Araz’s Ritual Forge - A 2 minute on-use trinket that provides a massive amount of main stat that decays over 30 seconds at the cost of 15% of your max hp. In combination with your cooldowns this trinket can feel pretty crazy, although it does naturally desync so sometimes it can feel a little awkward to play.

All-Devouring Nucleus - A cheat death trinket that works by restoring you to 20% health and gives you 6 seconds to reach above 65% health or you die anyway. You can still die within the 6 seconds, so if you’re actively tanking something it’s not amazing. It is still a cheat death trinket and for that reason I feel obliged to put it in A tier. Cheating death as a tank no matter the circumstance is always valuable.

Ticking Sack of Terror - This is a purely offensive trinket with a simple damage effect. You build stacks on a target you hit, and at 3 stacks or if the target dies, it detonates to deal fire damage.

Ara-Kara Sacbrood - Returning from season 1, this trinket grants you main stat and hatches allies to attack your target. Provides a decent amount of stats and it’s baseline haste which is nice for us warriors.

Unyielding Netherprism - Your damaging abilities cause additional cosmic damage that’s split between nearby enemies of your target. The damage gets increased per enemy struck, up to 150%, but it can only occur every 10 seconds. Each time this damage procs, you gain a stack, up to 15 times. When you use the trinket it consumes the power stacked up to grant you main stat, increased by the number of stacks consumed. It has a 20 second cooldown and honestly you can simply macro this into a rotational ability and it be pretty solid.

B - Tier

Soulbinder’s Embrace - One of the few defensive trinket options available. On-use it has a damage effect, before reducing 50% of your damage talent for 20 seconds or until an amount of damage has been prevented. It’s only on a 1 minute cooldown so it’s not bad, but the amount of damage it prevents is a tad low to be particularly valuable outside of niche scenarios.

Perfidious Projector - One of the only on-use large damage effect trinkets this tier. 2 minute cooldown, deals a large chunk of damage that gets split between nearby enemies. The damage gets increased by 30% per additional enemy, up to 150%.

Eradicating Arcanocore - A damage trinket that stacks charges. At 10 charges you deal arcane damage split between enemies. Interestingly, you regain 2 charges if only a single target is struck, but the damage is increased by 30% per additional enemy, up to 150%. It’s one of many trinkets like this with a split damage effect and it’s not numerically insane, there are better options.

Astral Antenna - A crit stat stick that can stack each proc to provide additional stats. The amount of stats you get and how often this proc’s was heavily nerfed and unfortunately it’s one of the lesser stat sticks available this season.

Screams of a Forgotten Sky - Baseline crit trinket where your harmful spells and abilities have a chance to deal extra cosmic damage that stacks and increases the damage of each consecutive chunk of damage it deals. When a target with stacks on it dies, they implode to deal additional cosmic damage per stack split between each enemy, with the damage increased by 30% per enemy up to 150%.

Incorporeal Warpclaw - A damaging effect trinket based on melee attacks that gets split between enemies in its path. It’s okay, but there are much better options.

Signet of the Priory - A 2 minute on use trinket that provides a large amount of secondary stats. Paired with Avatar it’s pretty good but there are better options.

C - Tier

Ceaseless Swarmgland - A very mediocre Tank trinket that reflects damage back to attacks and reduces a very small amount of damage they deal to you.

Void Pactstone - Another damage trinket that has a split effect on nearby enemies. It also increases your haste by a small amount for 10 seconds.

Cursed Stone Idol - A short channel trinket that increases your crit for 15 seconds as well as deals a small amount of damage to nearby enemies on a 1:30 cooldown.

Codex of the First Technique - This trinket has been a bait ever since it was introduced in Shadowlands. It spent the entirety of the PTR cycle bugged, and even in a fixed state doesn’t provide enough benefit to warrant ever using.

Currently Embellishments are fairly under-tuned and don’t provide a ton of value, although the following are the most notable for Protection Warrior in my opinion:

Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension - A random secondary stat proc that stacks.

Elemental Focusing Lens - Your spells and abilities have a chance to deal bonus magic damage, this is a simple proc of extra damage and it adds up to a decent amount, particularly single target

Duskthread Lining - This needs to be put on a crafted armor piece. It provides you with extra versatility above 80% health. It’s not ideal as a tank but our options are limited.

Sanctified Steps - This is one of the 2 plate embellishment specific pieces available for us to use as Protection Warriors. It’s not great.

Beledar’s Bulwark - Taking damage has a chance to grant you Versatility for 15 seconds, which you can split with an ally by moving near them. It’s one of our best embellishments but it’s overshadowed by the special effect shield from raid.

Reshii Wraps

Reshii Wraps is a new Cloak released in Patch 11.2 and will be the only cloak you use (and the only one that can drop from any content in Season 3). You gain access to it via a quest chain and completing chapter 3 of the main patch storyline.

The Reshii Wraps are upgradable via Ethereal Strands and can have secondary stats of your choice added to it.

To add a secondary stat to the Reshii Wraps you use a Fiber in the Fiber Socket of the Cloak. The highest quality version of the Fibers requires a work-order to a Tailor.

When picking a Fiber, I strongly recommend simming your character for the best stat for your current gear and intended content. If you just want a quick recommendation for which Reshii Fiber to use, then use Pure Chronomantic Fiber (Haste).

To find out more about the Reshii Wraps, you can read the Method Reshii Wraps Overview Guide.

Best D.I.S.C Belt & Miniature Titan Disc Effects

Patch 11.1.7 comes with a brand new feature! You’ll be able to attain a high item level Titan D.I.S.C. Belt that gives you access to powerful buffs and effects. Alongside the belt, the patch introduces overcharged delves, which you’ll need to do in order to obtain the memory cards to upgrade your new piece of gear each week. You’ll also need to be doing delves to unlock specific Titan discs, however those can be done at any time on any difficulty and don’t have to be overcharged to earn the disc you desire (They are also warbound so you only have to unlock them once).

Listed below are currently the best options for Protection Warrior:

Single Target: Spark Burst
AOE: Spark Burst / Electric Current

For more information about unlocking the DISC belt and the different Miniature Titan Disc effects available, check out Method's D.I.S.C Belt Guide.