Stat Priorities
Stat Ranking
Item Level > Haste > Crit = Vers > Mastery for all situations
Stat Outline
Haste - Haste is a preferred secondary stat for Protection Warriors as it reduces the cooldown of your rage-generating abilities and global cooldown. This allows you to use them more frequently, which supports the Anger Management rotation.
Critical Strike - Critical Strike increases your parry chance as well as provides you with the chance to deal double damage on spells.
Versatility - Vers is pretty straightforward, it increases the damage you deal and your healing by a flat percentage and decreases the damage you take by half that percentage. Most Protections healing sources are affected by vers, except Indomitable, making vers a decent survivability option.
Mastery- Mastery: Critical Block increases your block chance and gives you a chance to Critical Block, block twice the amount of damage. Additionally, it increases your attack power by a flat percentage. The defensive side of Protection’s mastery is a bit underwhelming. There are already a ton of sources from its talent trees, like Shield Specialization, that increase our base block chance that mastery becomes a bit redundant as a stat to have. By no means does this mean avoiding mastery. It still has its advantages, but you aren’t going to be actively looking for it.
Races
Just like previous expansions, the difference between races is mostly fairly small, so feel free to play whatever you like the most. If you care about min-maxing then here are my recommendations.
Some races perform slightly better for specific situations.
Dwarf for Stoneform.
Night Elf for Shadowmeld if you want to utilize it for Mythic+ skips.
Earthen for the increased base armor value.
Pandaren: Panda can be great if current food buffs x2 outweighs other racials.
Enchants
Cloak: Chant of the Winged Grace
Chest: Crystalline Radiance
Bracers: Chant of Armored Leech / Chant of Armored Avoidance
Boots: Defender’s March / Scout’s March
Legs: Stormbound Armor Kit
Rings: Radiant Haste
Weapon: Authority of Depths
Gems
Unique Gem (Can only use 1): Culminating Blasphemite
Regular Gems: Versatile Emerald or Deadly Emerald
Consumables
Food: Feast
Phials: Flask of Tempered Swiftness
Potions: Tempered Potion
Health Potions: Algari Healing Potion
Weapon Oil: Ironclaw Whetstone