Protection Warrior Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Season 4

The best gear you can find will come from the Weekly Mythic+ chest, now known as the Great Vault, and from Mythic raiding. In addition to these, you can also place crafting orders once you have the necessary pieces for it.

While a definitive BiS list is hard to create, there are cases where specific gear can be best in slot. For example, some trinkets have special effects that are extremely powerful, and you will want to seek them out regardless of item level. Sometimes, some rings have special effects that outweigh item level increases or the benefit of specific secondary stats.

As a general rule of thumb, any increase in item level is an upgrade. For Protection Warriors, the value of all the secondary stats is close enough together that you should only look at what secondary stats a piece has if you are comparing across the same item level. Not only that, Stamina and Strength increases are significant as well.

All in all, if you come across gear that is an item-level upgrade (or has a socket and your current piece does not), equip it. If two pieces of equipment are the same item level, equip the best piece according to the stat priority. Finally, be aware of gear where the item level does not matter as much, which is the case for specific trinkets, rings, and gear with special effects, etc.

Simulation tools are used to simulate which piece of gear would provide the most damage output. While this might seem irrelevant as a tank, it is the opposite. A good tank will be tanky while contributing to the best of their abilities to the group's overall damage output.

Simulations as a tank should be mainly used to figure out which piece of gear of similar item level you should equip. Always follow the item level rule of higher item level = better first when choosing gear.

Season 4 offers a way to target specific, powerful items with the new Antique Bronze Bullion. Here are the best items to spend your Bullions on in Dragonflight Season 4.

We advise you to aim for Gholak, the Final Conflagration and Seal of Diurna's Chosen as your first two purchases. The rest you can choose freely, depending on the content you are doing and on your current gear. Note that we do not have any shields listed here. That is because there are plenty of shields that can drop from various raids, dungeons or even be crafted.

• Gholak, the Final Conflagration — the best weapon option;
• Seal of Diurna's Chosen — purely offensive;
• Cataclysmic Signet Brand — purely offensive, but one of our best trinkets;
• Elementium Pocket Anvil — purely offensive, but one of our best trinkets;
• All-Totem of the Master — solid all around trinket;
• Manic Grieftorch — solid all around offensive trinket;
• Ward of Faceless Ire — purely defensive;
• Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart;
• Augury of the Primal Flame;
• Seal of Filial Duty

In the following section, you can find some additional noteworthy gear.

To better understand the secondary stat prioritization for gear, look at the guide below, where each of the stats is broken down into bite-sized pieces.

Trinkets are some of the more unique items in the game due to their various effects. They can either help bolster your defenses or assist in dishing out even more damage. Regardless of which you will choose, below you can find a list of other noteworthy trinkets for us.

• Cataclysmic Signet Brand — one of our best offensive trinkets, as long as you can keep the buff up;
• Elementium Pocket Anvil — also one of our best offensive trinkets, under the condition that you can keep the buff up;
• All-Totem of the Master — this trinkets provides you with various "hidden" buffs, some of them are more visible than others. Regardless, this remains as one of our best all-around Mythic+ trinkets.
• Manic Grieftorch — deals a heavy amount of damage to enemies around your target. The great part about this trinket is that the cooldown is lowered by 90 seconds every time an ally dies.
• Augury of the Primal Flame — while it has a low proc chance, the proc itself is fairly powerful. It gets even better if you have more critical strike.
• Treemouth's Festering Splinter — a purely defensive trinket on a short cooldown. This is a great option if you want to play a more balanced setup, or the encounter requires an additional defensive on a short cooldown.
• Ward of Faceless Ire — on top of allowing you to grant an on-demand absorb on yourself, this trinket also allows you to grant the shield to an ally. While the shield is not as big as on some of the other defensive trinkets, the ability to use it as an external defensive on an ally makes it a worthy pickup.
• Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart — is another absorb trinket, but with a slight damage component to it.
• Enduring Dreadplate — an offensive trinket disguised as a defensive one. The damage it does should not be underestimated.
• Prophetic Stonescales — while obtainable on a lower item level than the rest of the mentioned trinkets, it is still worthy of a mention due to its effect. If you do happen to need it, be sure to get it from the hard-mode of Dawn of the Infinite.

A good shield is the most important piece of gear. Shield upgrades provide a much larger defensive boost than upgrades to other slots.

You can acquire high item-level shields from dungeons, raids, and the Great Vault weekly chest. The following shields are the available ones from current dungeons and raids.

  
• Defender of the Ancient, looted from Gnarlroot in   Amirdrassil.
  
• Verdant Matrix Beacon, looted from   Nymue in Amirdrassil.
  
• Experiment 1, Kitewing, looted from The Forgotten Experiments   in Aberrus.
  
• Calamity's Herald, looted from Echo of Neltharion, in   Aberrus.
  
• Broodsworn Legionnaire's Pavise, looted from Broodkeeper Diurna,   in Vault of the Incarnates.
  
• Flame Marshal's Bulwark, looted from Eranog, in   Vault of the Incarnates.
  
• Qalashi Defender, looted from Warlord Sargha, in   Neltharus.
  
• Drake Rider's Stecktarge, looted from Kryakka and Erkhart   Stormvein, in Ruby Life Pools.
  
• Crystalized Bulwark, looted from Umbrelskul, in   The Azure Vault.
  
• Stout Shield, looted from The Lost Dwarves, in   Uldaman.

Use the highest item level shield you can, regardless of its secondary stats.

Just as shields are important, so are weapons. They increase our damage output, allowing us to provide more to the group's performance. Below, you can find a solid selection of weapons.

  
• Gholak, the Final Conflagration, looted from Fyrakk, the Blazing, in   Amirdrassil.
  
• Volcoross's Barbed Fang, looted from Volcoross, in   Amirdrassil.
  
• Caustic Coldsteel Slicer, looted from Sennarth, in   Vault of the Incarnates.
  
• Maul of the Earthshaper, looted from The Primal Council,   in Vault of the Incarnates.
  
• Proctor's Tactical Cleaver, looted from Zskarn,   in Aberrus.
  
• Scholar's Thinking Cudgel, looted from The Amalgamation Chamber,   in Aberrus.
  
• Strike Twice, looted from The Raging Tempest, in    The Nokhud Offensive.
  
• Forgestorm, looted from Forgemaster Gorek, in    Neltharus.
  
• Tongue Hacker, looted from GulpingGoliath, in   Halls of Infusion.
  
• Spellbane Cutlass, looted from Vexamus, in   Algeth'ar Academy.

As with shields, use the highest item level weapon you have, regardless of the secondary stats.

Embellishments are various additional effects on craftable items. These can be either baseline effects on certain items like Shield of the Hearth or other effects which can be added by optional reagents when crafting an item.

While there are multiple embellishment options, you can have only two active at any time. For Protection Warriors, we recommend the following:

• Shadowflame — this can be placed on any crafted armor piece except for neck and rings. It provides a decent chunk of overall damage and is currently one of our best Embellishments.
• For the second embellishment, you have 2 options. The most beneficial option would be a second Shadowflame embellishment. Unstable Frostfire Belt is a decent follow up option.

While the Mythic Raids Amirdrassil, Aberrus, Vault of the Incarnates and the Great Vault drops 528 item level pieces, once fully upgraded, the highest you can craft is 525. As such, we suggest to craft your embellishments on the lower-stat budget pieces as shown below.

• Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.
• Primal Molten Vambraces with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.

 

In Season 4, every class will once again earn pieces of a gear set that is uniquely class-themed with its own two- and four-piece bonuses for every specialization. For Protection Warrior, these set bonuses are:

• Warrior Protection 10.2 Class Set 2pc — Spending Rage has a chance to cause your Shield Slam to consume and instantly deal 40% of the remaining damage on your Deep Wounds and Rend, and 100% of the remaining damage of Thunderous Roar. Also reduces your damage taken by 10% for 5 seconds.
• Warrior Protection 10.2 Class Set 4pc — For each bleed effect consumed, your damage taken is further reduced by an additional 2%. When Shield Slam consumes a bleed, the cooldown of Thunder Clap is reset, and Thunderous Roar's cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds.

Both tier bonuses are straightforward and benefit us in Raids and Mythic+. You want to get the entire 4 pieces as soon as possible to gain the perks it provides. There are a total of 5 tier pieces that are dropped from Amirdrassil; any combination of them will work just fine. In addition, you can use the Revival Catalyst to convert gear into Tier pieces.

To upgrade your gear, you will use Flightstones and Crests, both obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. They can be used to upgrade gear depending on which track they drop in. They also allow you to craft items up to item level 525.

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

   

Below you can find a list of rough priority on which items to upgrade first. For the best upgrade option for your character, be sure to sim yourself.

• Weapon / Shield
• Chest / Legs / Shoulders / Helm
• Trinkets
• Feet / Hands / Waist / Wrist
• Back / Neck / Rings

The cost to upgrade scales differs per slot but now also increases quickly as item levels go up.

Whenever you get a new piece of gear, enchant it if possible. The best enchants for us can be found on the page linked below.