Protection Paladin Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.2

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Protection Paladin for Dragonflight 10.2. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing a Protection Paladin, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

Generally speaking, you will prioritise an item level upgrade over an "optimal" item at a lower item level as your survival is heavily reliant on Strength and Stamina. If you have a choice on the same item level, the alternative will likely, in generic circumstances, not make a difference defensively. We recommend just simming the choice and doing whatever helps you do more damage.

There are exceptions to this rule and encounter specific situations where a stat is massively devalued. You should keep an eye on the raid encounter guides to be aware of this. Similarly, certain Mythic+ key levels and dungeons require a slightly different gearing path. We linked the related guides below, but generally, we will add a note here as well:

Throughout this page, we will regularly refer to the importance of simming yourself on Raidbots, as it is an indispensable aspect of optimizing your character.

While we do offer generic sim charts for Trinkets, this should not be a replacement for simming. As they will neglect nuances such as two on-use trinkets, Avenging Wrath timings or rotational changes that occur from using a trinket.

If you are new to simming and Raidbots, check out our detailed guide below.

Embellishments are additional item effects present on profession gear, either as a baseline (such as Elemental Lariat) or added as an optional reagent when crafting (such as Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch). These grant a free, additional effect to the piece.

You may only have two embellishments active at a time.

For Protection Paladins, we recommend the following for Raiding:

• Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch on Primal Molten Vambraces.
• Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch on Primal Molten Sabatons.

And the following for Mythic+:

• Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch on Primal Molten Vambraces.
• Frostfire Legguards of Preparation.

Alchemical Flavor Pocket can be added to crafted items and does not count as an embellishment.

The Amirdrassil raid features a new set of tier bonuses. In addition, you can eventually earn pieces of this set from any of the nine slots in the weekly Dragonflight Great Vault and can convert an item every 2 weeks at the Revival Catalyst as a catchup system. This armor, when enough pieces of it are worn, unlocks two special bonuses for Protection Paladins:

• Paladin Protection 10.2 Class Set 2pc — Judgment grants a stack of Sanctification, increasing damage reduction by 2.0% per stack. Upon reaching 5 stacks, your next cast of Consecration is empowered, increasing its damage and healing by 200% and its radius by 30%. Sanctification’s stacks are reset when your empowered Consecration ends.
• Paladin Protection 10.2 Class Set 4pc — While you are within an empowered Consecration, your abilities have a chance to deal 40% bonus damage or healing as Fire.

Once available, you should aim to acquire the set bonuses as soon as possible.

1. The 2-piece bonus focuses on incentivizing you to Judgment to get stacks of Sanctification. At 5 stacks, Consecration is empowered. The damage and healing buff also affects Golden Path and Seal of Mercy.
2. The 4-piece bonus makes everything you do in your empowered Consecration have a chance to deal more damage or healing.

If you cast Consecration whilst your empowered Consecration is down, you will lose it and all of the benefits from it.

The only downside of the tier set is the reliance on Consecration. If you need to move away from your empowered Consecration, you've just lost the value of the tier bonus. Good movement planning and stack tracking is a must to get the most from this tier bonus.

Obtaining gear from rated PvP can boost your item level early in the season.

It is essential to note that all of these items have Versatility on them.

If you want to obtain PvP gear, we advise doing Rated Battlegrounds as either Protection or Retribution, or Solo Shuffle as Retribution.

With the release of Amirdrassil and the launch of Dragonflight Season 3, Protection Paladins get to discover (and in a few cases, re-discover) a wide array of trinkets with different effects. For once, there are very few dead-on-arrival trinkets, and the majority of trinkets acquired from Amirdrassil have a concrete use-case.

We strongly recommend using trinkets that suit the encounter at hand. For instance, if you are not able to line up a defensive trinket with a mechanic, or flat-out do not need it, pick a generic trinket instead!

Caveat: All trinkets with a primary stat budget (Strength) or a secondary stat have defensive value. In fact, the bulk of any trinket's defensive value is in the Strength they have, as this provides armor and a noticeable amount of parry rating.

Cataclysmic Signet Brand is by far one of the strongest trinkets acquired in Amirdrassil, both for single-target and AoE. All of your direct damage abilities have a chance to apply a strong DoT to your target, and gives you a stack of Firestarter. Each application of Firestarter increases the damage of the DoT by 2.5%, stacking up to a maximum of 15 times. Above 5 stacks, this DoT also deals 50% of its damage to you. At 15 stacks, all enemies within 8 yards of the DoTted target also take 10% of the damage from the DoT, split between them. Every 5 seconds spent not in combat causes a stack of Firestarter to fade, with all stacks fading after 15 seconds (Similar to Elementium Pocket Anvil you want to make sure you chain pull in M+ to prevent the stacks from fading).

Branch of the Tormented Ancient allows you to tether yourself to a target, which slows you by 15% per root, with 4 roots total. This slow effect can be removed with Blessing of Freedom. Every direct damage ability damaging a rooted target deals a large amount of shadowflame damage, split between all nearby targets.

Coiled Serpent Idol creates Hydras, which attack your target when you critically strike. Every third Hydra created spawns 3 Hydras. If the target dies, it will deal AoE damage instead. This trinket will likely perform better in raid scenarios than in dungeon scenarios due to the nature of when the effects may trigger.

Rezan's Gleaming Eye returns and has been reworked. It now deals damage directly to the target and applies a DoT. It procs a lot and provides a good amount of passive DPS.

Augury of the Primal Flame, the Very Rare DPS trinket from Fyrakk, which means it drops at a higher item level to any other item in game on Mythic. It gives a large amount of critical strike rating and triggers on critical strikes, creating a feedback loop. The proc has a chance to apply a very large amount of fire damage split between all targets.

Gift of Ursine Vengeance is a very interesting trinket from Amirdrassil. Every time somebody near you takes direct damage, you gain a stack of Rising Rage, up to once every 3 seconds. This buff gives you a stacking amount of Strength. When you reach 30 stacks, these are converted into Fury of Urctos, causing you to deal damage to any enemy within 8 seconds that damages you, and regenerating a small amount of health every second while this effect persists. The counterattack proc has a 0.1s internal cooldown, allowing you to deal a significant amount of damage in AoE.

Finally, there is Ashes of the Embersoul. The on-use Strength bonus is great for damage cooldown windows, however, it comes at a price, and this is losing a large amount of Haste for 1 minute. This downside makes the trinket not valuable for Protection Paladins. There is also another dangerous aspect of the trinket, and it requires you to go below 15% HP to reset the buff. Avoid this trinket.

Amirdrassil and Season 3 also bring a number of stat stick trinkets. Rather than endlessly copying descriptions, we have instead created a table to represent what they do:

Trinket	Stat	Cooldown	Notes
Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge	Cycling between all secondaries	Passive	Cycles every 12 seconds between secondaries and decays for 12 seconds thereafter.
Accelerating Sandglass	Haste	Passive	A good, consistent stat stick with some bonus damage when the buff ends.
Ember of Nullification	Versatility	Static	Stat stick with a proc which silences enemies when you are hit by magic spells. With Avenger's Shield being so frequent, this silence effect isn't as impactful as it would be on other tanks.
Spores of Alacrity	Haste	2 Minutes	Line up uses of this with Avenging Wrath.
Nightmare Egg Shell	Haste	Passive	Random procs, but if it lines up with your damage windows, it can be good, but the reality is that this will not happen consistently enough for you to value this above any other trinket.
Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block	Criticial Strike	Passive	Random procs, but if it lines up with Avenging Wrath, it can provide a good amount of DPS.
Might of the Ocean	Strength (passive crit)	1min30	Line it up with Avenging Wrath.
Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows	Highest secondary	3 Minutes	Provides a large amount of secondary stats for your damage burst windows, however, the long cooldown means that you will either hold uses of the trinket or your abilities, which makes it less than ideal.

Amirdrassil and Season 3 have very few pure defensive trinkets. Most of them either have a very concrete (but niche) use case, or deal enough damage to be considered hybrid. We have listed them here, along with their use case

Trinket	Use case	Notes
Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart	Shield every 1min30	Deals a high amount of damage to targets when used. You have a very strong incentive not to delay using this trinket. You would use this for burst damage with the on use rather than the shield.
Prophetic Stonescales	Cheat death	Cheat death trinkets are great for learning a new, difficult encounter or just having a safety blanket. When you've learned the encounter and the trinket is not going to proc this becomes a wasted trinket slot and should be replaced with another option.
Writhing Heart of Darkness	Flat (10k) damage reduction to all damage events	You get hit with a lot of very frequent but small damage events.
Xeri'tac's Unhatched Egg Sac	Random shields with no primary budget	Stamina trinket with a random absorb. Stamina you obtain from passive item level increases on your armor is more than enough for all content. When looking at defensive trinkets, you want them to solve a problem and a random absorb has no real problem-solving capability. Use this for item level but replace it when you can.
Porcelain Crab	Random Mastery and Avoidance	As with the above trinket, random procs for defensive utility are not the best because they cannot be up when you need them consistently. The amount of Mastery and Avoidance it does provide is great when stretched out over a long period of time, it can appear to be an attractive choice, but as you are unable to plan around the proc it becomes unreliable.

Ward of Faceless Ire applies a large absorb shield to either yourself or another friendly target. However, if the shield breaks, it will apply a DoT to that player.

Treemouth's Festering Splinter is a very strong defensive trinket. It will deal some damage to you but also apply a very large absorb shield. The trinket also only has a 1.5-minute cooldown, making it very readily available to fit between your other defensive cooldown options.

Dragonflight Season 3 continues to leverage the upgrade system introduced in Season 2 with the introduction of Dreaming Crests. Both Flightstones and Crests are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. They can be used to upgrade gear up to Item Level 483, which is entry-level Mythic Raid Item Level. They can also upgrade Crafted Gear up to iLvl 486, which is late-Mythic Item Level.

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

As with Valor, the cost to upgrade scales differs per slot but now also increases quickly as item levels go up.

We recommend upgrading your Weapon and Shield first, as these will provide you with the largest offensive and defensive gain.

Once you have obtained a piece of gear containing a prismatic socket or needing to be enchanted, you will need to know how to modify it. Details about these tweaks can be found on our dedicated gems, enchants, and consumables page.

A new helm enchant was added with the launch of Amirdrassil. Don't forget to complete the raid-only quest to unlock access to Incandescent Essence!