Protection Warrior Gearing Guide

Midnight Pre-Patch Tier Set Bonuses:

• 2 Set: Damage done increased by 6%
• 4 Set: Damage done increased by 10%

Going into the Midnight pre-patch, our Tier Set bonuses will be removed, with some effects being seen on talent pages or just getting completely removed, and instead replaced with damage amplifiers that don’t directly affect gameplay.

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

Astral Antenna - This trinket will occasionally spawn orbs of arcane energy around you, that fly towards you and grant you critical strike upon reaching you. If you get orbs spawning before you are about to enter cooldowns, you are incentivized to avoid them until you enter cooldowns, as the buff stacks multiple times.

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.

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

The cloak slot will still be filled by Reshii Wraps, This cloak is obtainable via a quest chain, in which chapter 3 of the Ghosts of Karesh storyline will reward you with Reshii Wraps. It will get Item Level capped like all of your other gear, so upgrading it will no longer be necessary.

You can also add a secondary stat of your choosing to the Wrap via the Fiber Socket - as always Sim yourself as you can remove the Fibers at any point to slot another in.

But the result will most likely be the Haste thread: Pure Chronomantic Fiber.

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

Puzzling Cartel Chips

Puzzling Cartel chips provide an easy way to obtain BiS trinket options, providing that you meet the criteria. You can earn up to 9 Chips per character, so up to 3 items can be purchased from the vendors in Dornogal.

Recommended Purchases:

• Brand Of Ceaseless Ire
• Astral Antenna
• Tome Of Light's Devotion
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker
• Interloper's Plated Sabatons