Protection Warrior Tank Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot (Legion 7.2.5)

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 7.2.5 Changes
  • 3. Patch 7.2 Changes
  • 4. Contents
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. The Basics
  • 2. Talent Choice
  • 3. Stat Choice
  • 4. Basic Rotation
  • 5. Active Mitigation Abilities
  • 6. Cooldown Usage
  • 7. ChangeLog
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Main Resource
  • 3. Basic Abilities
    • 3.1. Movement
  • 4. Important Procs
  • 5. Active Mitigation
  • 6. Defensive Cooldowns
  • 7. Offensive Cooldown
  • 8. ChangeLog
• +Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices
  • 2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents
  • 3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents
  • 4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents
  • 5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents
  • 6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents
  • 7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents
  • 8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents
  • 9. ChangeLog
• +Artifact Traits and Relics
  • 1. Artifact Progression
  • 2. Relic Choice
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Single Target Rotation
  • 2. Multiple Target Rotation
  • 3. Active Mitigation Abilities
  • 4. Cooldown Usage
  • 5. Taunting
  • 6. Mastering Your Protection Warrior
    • 6.1. Rage Generation
    • 6.2. Mastery: Critical Block
    • 6.3. Procs
    • 6.4. Active Mitigation
      • 6.4.1. Shield Block
      • 6.4.2. Ignore Pain
      • 6.4.3. Shield Block or Ignore Pain?
    • 6.5. Other Notable Abilities
      • 6.5.1. Intercept
      • 6.5.2. Heroic Leap
    • 6.6. Detailed Cooldown Usage
      • 6.6.1. Battle Cry
      • 6.6.2. Last Stand
      • 6.6.3. Shield Wall
      • 6.6.4. Demoralizing Shout
      • 6.6.5. Spell Reflection
      • 6.6.6. Berserker Rage
      • 6.6.7. Artifact Ability
      • 6.6.8. Tier 1 Talents
      • 6.6.9. Tier 3 Talents
      • 6.6.10. Tier 5 Talents
      • 6.6.11. Tier 6 Talents
      • 6.6.12. Tier 7 Talents
  • 7. ChangeLog
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. Basics
  • 2. Getting a Better Understanding
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems
  • 2. Enchants
  • 3. Consumables
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Warriors
      • 1.1.1. Mouseouver Interrupt Macro
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Protection Warriors
      • 1.2.1. Mouseover Heroic Throw Macro
      • 1.2.2. Mouseover Taunt Macro
      • 1.2.3. Intercept Macros
      • 1.2.4. Blessing of Protection/Salvation Cancelaura Macro
  • 2. Addons
    • 2.1. Generic Addons for Warriors
      • 2.1.1. ElvUI
      • 2.1.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
      • 2.1.3. GTFO
      • 2.1.4. Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
      • 2.1.5. Weak Auras
      • 2.1.6. TellMeWhen
      • 2.1.7. Raeli's Spell Announcer
      • 2.1.8. Recount / Skada / Details!
    • 2.2. Specific Addons for Protection Warriors
      • 2.2.1. Omen Threat Meter
  • 3. ChangeLog
• ×Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot
  • 1. Best in Slot List
  • 2. Trinkets
    • 2.1. Non-Raid Trinkets
    • 2.2. Raid Trinkets
  • 3. Tier 20 Set Bonuses
  • 4. Legendary Items
  • 5. Loot Competition
  • 6. ChangeLog

General Information

This page is a gear reference for Protection Warriors. It lists your best items and Legendaries, gives you gearing advice, and shows you how you will be competing for loot with other classes.

The other pages of our Protection Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Reviewer

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Treckie, one of the best tanks in the world, who raids in Prime. You can watch his stream on Twitch and you can follow him on Twitter.

1. Best in Slot List

We are currently not providing a Best in Slot list, but we do make trinket, set bonus, and legendary item recommendations below.

When it comes to gearing, the item level of the items always comes in question, thus a list to blindly follow will not do much good, since any item can be competitive if it comes with a socket or if it is sufficiently Warforged/Titanforged. The only thing to really try to avoid are items with Critical Strike. A general rule of thumb is that if the item has Critical Strike, it needs to be either 10 item levels higher OR have a socket (15 item levels for jewelry), to really compete with a piece that has Haste and Mastery/Versatility.

Mythic+ can also proc high item level pieces, which means they are highly competitive as well.

2. Trinkets

2.1. Non-Raid Trinkets

Darkmoon Deck: Immortality is one of the strongest trinkets out there for reliable Physical damage reduction, despite its item level being capped at 885.

Unstable Arcanocrystal provides an amazing set of secondary stats and, because of it, this is easily one of the strongest trinkets out there; its strength and weakness come from being passive, but in most cases that ends up working in your favour.

Chrono Shard's Strength is solid for dealing damage, and the Haste proc is great for both damage and survival ( Memento of Angerboda is a very good alternative that is stronger DPS-wise, but weaker survivability-wise).

Horn of Valor is overall a strong trinket, with an on-use effect that provides a lot of on-demand Strength. This is great for dishing out more damage and increasing survivability.

2.2. Raid Trinkets

Feverish Carapace is a proc-based trinket for survivability that gives a bit of Armor. In purely Physical encounters, it can be somewhat useful, but in general you are simply better off with a reliable trinket such as Darkmoon Deck: Immortality. The reflect part could end up doing a bit of damage when AoE tanking, but it is likely pretty unimpactful.

Reliquary of the Damned is a Stamina trinket that could rival Infernal Contract if you need an extra cooldown. Its use effect is not quite as strong, but it has no backlash effect, and passively gives you a solid amount of effective health, making it harder for you to die in the first place.

Recompiled Guardian Module is a pretty passive trinket that will end up doing quite a bit of healing throughout the fight, and the shield is really what makes the trinket useful. That said, the numbers are not that strong, and it would really only suit fights with a relatively low healing intake on you.

Shifting Cosmic Sliver has an interesting effect that plays around with your Shield Wall; you can either reduce the cooldown of it, or increase the duration of Shield Wall if it is currently up. Against a single target, it stacks up relatively slowly, but can be an alternative if you feel you want cooldowns more often, combined with The Walls Fell for maximum cooldown reduction. Using it to prolong the duration of Shield Wallis going to be very situational.

Leviathan's Hunger is likely going to be the trinket with the most effectiveness out of all the Tomb of Sargeras trinkets. Passive Haste is always welcome, and then you also have a damage-dealing ability that heals you for 3x the amount of damage it does, with this damage being increased by abilities that normally increase your damage, resulting in increased healing. Aside from being a high damage output trinket, it also means that you basically will not need any healing for the next 8 seconds, which is very strong (though it will not prevent you from being one-shotted).

As a side-note, The Deceiver's Grand Design is an interesting trinket that is meant for healers, but can currently be used by tanks (although its value is not as high as it is for a healer). That said, it is still looking somewhat useful. The heal it does is very small and ticks very slowly, but the shield whenever you drop below 35% health can be a lifesaver.

Chains of the Valorous or any kind of stat sticks are solid if high enough item level and preferably with Haste; since they are passive and reliable they are all useful (defensively, though, you should avoid the ones with Critical Strike).

Grotesque Statuette's proc to reduce damage is fairly strong, even if you only get a few stacks. You will need to learn to adapt to its randomness, but doing so will allow you to have great success with this trinket.

Animated Exoskeleton has a huge amount of Stamina that often feels redundant to have on a trinket, but this trinket is mainly to be used against tank busters; while the on-use effect is pretty weak and would often be removed within a single hit or two, the passive effective health provided is not to be ignored.

Infernal Contract's passive Mastery is appreciated, and the on-use effect is interesting and can be very rewarding if used correctly. It is best used against single large hits followed by periods of low damage, where it effectively works as a 4 million damage shield, with a small drawback. The drawback can can give you more issues if used during extended periods of high damage intake.

Royal Dagger Haft is a trinket with a very effective passive defensive proc, without having any actual defensive stats on it. On the face of it, this last feature is unappealing, but the proc, which is effectively a cheat death, can be extremely powerful, especially against any boss that has very unpredictable tank damage, or when you are first learning a boss fight and you do not quite know how to play effectively against it yet.

While Phantasmal Echo's Haste is much appreciated, the lack of Strength, coupled with a weak proc that procs way to easily and with a long cooldown just makes the trinket very underwhelming. Similarly, Ravaged Seed Pod is a fairly weak trinket with Haste, however that one at least has potential use in AoE situations (more general use in 5-man content).

3. Tier 20 Set Bonuses

The 2-piece Tier 20 Set Bonus is good. It enables your Berserker Rage to instantly generate 20 Rage, and an additional 10 Rage every second for 6 seconds. This means you get 80 Rage every time you use Berserker Rage, assuming you are using Warlord's Challenge to reduce the cooldown, in which case it provides a nice amount of on-demand Rage.

The 4-piece reduces the cooldown of Berserker Rage by 3 seconds every time you Shield Slam, so depending on your Shield Slam procs, this Set Bonus will reduce the effective cooldown by quite a bit.

While the 2-piece is pretty solid by itself if you acquire good pieces, it is really together that the two bonuses shine, often reducing the cooldown of Berserker Rage to about 25 seconds, meaning you should be able to use it more than twice a minute, increasing your Rage generation (not counting Rage generated from taking damage) by a fair amount.

If at all possible, you should try to acquire set pieces in this order (you obviously only want 4, but if you have legendaries for some of the first 4 slots, you may want to use the other two pieces):

1. chest;
2. shoulders;
3. helm;
4. legs;
5. cloak;
6. gloves.

The 2-piece Tier 19 set bonus is decent. The 4-piece, however, is pretty weak compared to the choices you have in the Tomb of Sargeras.

4. Legendary Items

Legendary items have a high item level of 970, which makes them extremely strong. They are so strong, in fact, that a legendary item is always going to be worth equipping over any other item you might have in that slot.

However, there is a limitation on the number of legendary items you can have equipped at any one time (by default 1, but by now most players should be able to equip 2). Since some legendary items are better than others, if you have more items than the limit, you will have to choose which ones to equip.

Below, we will do our best to guide you through this process, as well as provide any other relevant information.

Kakushan's Stormscale Gauntlets is overall a great legendary, the strength of which comes from its damage output. That said, even its defensive aspect, in terms of Rage generation, makes this a very strong legendary to use in most cases.

Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles provides some nice self-healing in situations where healing would not otherwise really be incoming. That said, assuming you never really use Ignore Pain at full health (which you should not) these bracers make each use of Ignore Pain also heal you a bit. If using the Devastator talent with high Rage generation, these bracers are very powerful against steady incoming damage. We rank them as the second-best legendary, overall.

Thundergod's Vigor can be very strong if you are fighting multiple targets; it is also a very good choice in Mythic+, where you are constantly hitting multiple adds, coupled with Booming Voice for a lot of damage with a high uptime. In raids, its uses are limited since you would need to be able to hit multiple targets consistently for it to benefit you.

Ararat's Bloodmirror gives Shield Block and Spell Reflection an additional charge. This makes it a very situational legendary: it will basically not do much at all on some fights, while it can be very useful on others. This legendary benefits a lot on tank swap fights where you can recharge the charges when you do not need them, so you have more available when you do need them. Spell Reflection having twice as many charges is great, as it is very useful on anything magic-related, and you might get two damage spikes quickly one after another before the other tank takes over.

Soul of the Battlelord gives you the ability to have two talents from the same row, that is Vengeance together with either Booming Voice or Into the Fray. Realistically, since Into the Fray is pretty weak on its own, you are usually going to take Booming Voice for the damage output and Rage on-demand. This legendary, while it is not that bad, simply has a hard time competing with other legendaries like the hands or wrists.

The Walls Fell causes Shield Slam to reduce the remaining cooldown of Shield Wall by 4 seconds. This is a huge cooldown reduction that can have Shield Wall's cooldown down to about 2 minutes and 30 seconds (depending on the number of procs).

Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus gives you a shield for 15% of your maximum health every 30 seconds; this sounds a lot better than it actually is, which is not to say that it is bad, but while it will produce decent numbers over the course of the fight, if you do not take advantage of knowing when the shield will come, you are getting a lot less out of this legendary than you could. It has a guaranteed socket, and 3 passive stats, making it passively a decent throughput legendary.

Archimonde's Hatred Reborn is similar to the heirloom trinket with an absorb shield on a very short cooldown. This is a very strong legendary effect if utilised well. It also explodes for 75% of the damage absorbed, split between all nearby enemies, making it effective both offensively and defensively. Its total usefulness is not amazing, but the absorb is nice to have.

Destiny Driver boosts Intercept, making it something of an external cooldown. If you also have the Wall of Steel, this is even better, resulting in a good damage absorption for both you and your target.

Sephuz's Secret is considered a very strong legendary when it can proc, but for raids, its uses are limited. The passive 2% Haste is worth a bit over 700 Haste, even if you cannot get the item to proc; the fact that you can sometimes manage to proc it makes it a worthwhile choice in some cases. For 5-man content, you can proc it on demand most of the time using abilities like Shockwave.

Timeless Stratagem grants your Heroic Leap 2 additional charges and also comes with a 3rd set of secondary stats which makes for guaranteed throughput. The stats themselves are perfect for Protection Warriors, and it gives you great mobility almost constantly. There are, however, not many raid encounters where this kind of movement is needed, and it becomes pretty redundant.

Rethu's Incessant Courage has great stats, and 3 sockets, so you can add another 450 stats of your choice. For 5-man content, it seems decent since it will let you reach the next pack faster, and then self-heal when you are actively tanking, however it is still very weak. The heal itself is fairly weak and slow, there are some encounters that can be effective on, but realistically it is not why you get this legendary.

Aggramar's Stride is a nice movement and quality of life increase, but does not really increase your throughput, so unless you feel you want the movement, it is not really a great legendary.

5. Loot Competition

Regarding the loot you will get from raid or dungeon bosses, you will compete with other classes in the following cases:

Item Type	Competing Classes
Tier Tokens	Hunters, Monks, Shamans, and Arms/Fury Warriors
Plate Armor	Death Knights, Paladins, and Arms/Fury Warriors
Amulets Cloaks Rings	Everyone
Trinkets	Blood Death Knights, Vengeance Demon Hunters, Guardian Druids, Brewmaster Monks, and Protection Paladins

6. ChangeLog

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries

• 13 Jun. 2017: Updated trinket and legendary item recommendations and added Tier 20 Set Bonus recommendations.
• 17 Apr. 2017: Updated Chain of Valor description to no longer incorrectly refer to Paladins.
• 27 Mar. 2017: Updated the legendary and trinket rankings.
• 19 Feb. 2017: Removed outdated BiS list.
• 12 Jan. 2017: Further updated the text for Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles to more clearly explain their viability.
• 11 Jan. 2017: Updated text for Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles.
• 10 Jan. 2017: Added Tier 19 set bonuses and updated assessments of Legendaries.
• 22 Oct. 2016: Updated the BiS recommendations, and added a mention of Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles in the legendary section.
• 29 Sep. 2016: Fixed a small typo.
• 23 Sep. 2016: Added Best in Slot recommendations.
• 20 Sep. 2016: Updated the text for The Walls Fell slightly, and moved it up on the page.
• 29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
• 19 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.