Protection Warrior Gearing Guide

Season 2 The War Within Protection Warrior Tier Set Bonus:

This tier set has gone through quite a few buffs and changes, landing on what we have now. It’s extremely powerful, providing a ton of shield charge cooldown reduction and shield slam damage.

• (2) Set Bonus: Each time you take damage you have a chance to activate “Luck of the Draw!” causing you to cast Shield Wall for 4 seconds. Your damage done is increased by 15% for 12 seconds after “Luck of the Draw!” activates.
• (4) Set Bonus: During “Luck of the Draw!” Shield Slam’s chance to critically strike is increased by 75% and its critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Shield Charge by 12 seconds.

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

Eye of Kezan - A stacking main stat trinket. This amount caps at 20 stacks, decaying upon leaving combat. It has a minor damage and healing effect but that’s not where the strength of this trinket lies. The longer you’re in combat the larger the benefit of this trinket.

Chromebustible Bomb Suit - Easily the best defensive trinket of the season. A short cooldown on use for a large amount of damage reduction and a large absorb shield. It also has a decent damage effect once the absorb is destroyed.

Tome of Light’s Devotion - By far 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.

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.

Reverb Radio - A stacking haste amp. A very good trinket for us in all content. More shield block uptime, more globals, it’s just very nice.

Cinderbrew Stein - This is the best support trinket of the season. It provides you and an ally with absorb shields and main stat randomly, which is forced when you drop below 50% health.

House of Cards - A large Mastery on use trinket on a short cooldown. Very strong offensively and lines up very well with Avatar a lot of the time.

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

Sigil of Algari Concordance - An interesting trinket that summons an earthen ally to aid you. He deals pretty decent single target damage.

Torq’s Big Red Button - Mastery maintstat trinket that has a 2 minute cooldown providing a large amount of main stat as well as a nature damage effect on your next 3 abilities after using. It contributes a good chunk of damage.

Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - A very strong offensive Mythic+ trinket. Provides a large amount of crit every 60 seconds that you can extend when dealing critical strikes. Has decent defensive value too through parry.

B - Tier

Zee’s Thug Hotline - You summon a goon squad to attack your target. A fun trinket but not super compelling numerically.

Vexie’s Pit Whistle - An interesting trinket. You coat enemies in oil to provide you additional threat, and then it has a damage effect that’s split. Unlikely to be very useful but it’s not awful.

Scrapfield 9001 - A decent defensive trinket. When you fall below 60% hp it reduces your damage by 50% until a certain amount of damage is taken. The numbers on this are fairly low so it’s not overly useful.

Remnant of Darkness - A random strength increase that ramps. Once it’s at full power you deal dot damage to nearby enemies.

K.U.-J.O.’s Flame Vents - A decent damage effect trinket that deals split damage to enemies. When used against mechanical enemies they take additional fire damage.

C - Tier

Geargrinder’s Spare Keys - A simple Damage effect that splits between all enemies hit. Doesn’t deal much damage and it being split makes it even less useful.

Mister Lock-N-Stalk - A simple damage effect trinket that doesn’t deal much damage.

Ravenous Honey Buzzer - A mediocre damage effect that deals split damage.

Modular Platinum Plating - A very bad defensive trinket. Provides a small amount of Armor.

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.

Cyrce’s Circlet

The power of this ring currently means we will be using it throughout the new season. It’s far too powerful and versatile of a ring, with the only downside being a loss of secondary stats. It’s definitely worth grabbing if you haven’t, and using throughout the new patch unless it gets nerfed.

Best Gems for Protection Warrior in raid:

• Thunderlord’s Crackling Citrine
• Undersea Overseer’s Citrine
• Legendary Skipper’s Citrine

Best Gems for Protection Warrior in M+:

• Stormbringer’s Runed Citrine
• Seabed Leviathan’s Citrine
• Legendary Skipper’s Citrine