- Author: Kurathis
- Date: April 2, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
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As a Warrior, overall health and hit rating are both very important. With the following gear selection, gems, and enchants, you are able to reach nearly 8% Hit Rating and over 13,000 HP unbuffed with 76.83% passive mitigation (Not including Shield Block) While you may not have more health than a Warrior who decided to stack nothing but stamina, you’ll also be holding more aggro than them since you have high hit rating.
Armor
- Head: Warbringer Great Helm
- Neck: Barbed Choker of Discipline
- Shoulders: Warbringer Shoulderguards
- Cloak: Devilshark Cape or Gilded Thorium Cloak or Farstrider Defender’s Cloak (25 Badges of Justice)
- Chest: Warbringer Chestguard or Panzar’Thar Breastplate
- Bracers: Vambraces of Courage
- Gloves: Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden or Warbringer Handguards
- Waist: Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable
- Legs: Wrynn Dynasty Greaves or Warbringer Legguards
- Boots: Battlescar Boots
- Ring 1: Violet Signet of the Great Protector or Ring of Unyielding Force (25 Badges of Justice)
- Ring 2: A’dal’s Signet of Defense or Shermanar Great-Ring
- Trinket 1: Goblin Rocket Launcher or Argussian Compass
- Trinket 2: Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 (41 Badges of Justice)
- Shield: Aldori Legacy Defender
Weapons
- Main Hand: King’s Defender or The Sun Eater or Warbringer (If you are an Orc – it will increase your Expertise by 5)
- Ranged: Barrel-Blade Longrifle or Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer
Pre-Bis Gear (+ Other options)
Armor
- Head:Faceguard of Determination (50 Badges of Justice) or Felsteel Helm
- Neck:Necklace of the Juggernaut (25 Badges of Justice) or Strength of the Untamed
- Necklace of the Juggernaut does provide more mitigation and threat while Strength of the Untamed doesn’t require you to enter a raid or heroic to obtain
- Shoulders: Fanblade Pauldrons or Shoulderguards of the Bold
- Cloak: Devilshark Cape or Farstrider Defender’s Cloak (25 Badges of Justice)
- Devilshark Cape provides more mitigation while Farstrider Defender’s Cloak provides more threat
- Chest: Jade-Skull Breastplate or Breastplate of the Bold
- Bracers: Sha’tari Wrought Armguards
- Gloves: Dauntless Handguards (Alliance) or Felsteel Gloves or Gauntlets of the Bold (Horde/Alliance)
- Dauntless Handguards provide the most mitigation and threat
- Waist: Sha’tari Vindicator’s Waistguard
- Legs: Timewarden’s Leggings
- Boots: Flesh Beast’s Metal Greaves
- Ring 1: Elementium Band of the Sentry
- Ring 2: Protector’s Mark of the Redemption
- Trinket 1: Goblin Rocket Launcher or Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
- Goblin Rocket Launcher provides higher survivability while Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 boasts much more threat and an increase to your damage mitigation
- Trinket 2: Figurine of the Colossus or Goblin Rocket Launcher
- Arguably the best mitigation trinket until Tier 5 level, Figurine of the Colossus provides a significant amount of mitigation while also providing you the chance on use to heal every time you block
- Shield: Azure-Shield of Coldarra or Platinum Shield of the Valorous
Weapons
- Weapon: The Sun Eater or Crystalline Kopesh
- Ranged: Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer or Alley’s Recurve
You don’t have a Meta Gem listed on a previous page. Which is the BIS for each set?
My sincerest apologies for missing that!
I have updated the Gems, Enchants, and Consumables page.
But, the BiS Meta Gem does not change for Warriors throughout the entire expansion. It will always be Powerful Earthstorm Diamond.
I saw the prot warrior guide on Wowhead, they advice to get the T4 fury shoulders for the extra hit, would you advice against that or? Good to know before turning it in ^^
Warbringer Shoulderplates offer 13 Hit Rating – this equates to roughly 0.82% Hit. They offer roughly 0.73% Dodge Chance (Through the Agility stat) Its Strength equates to roughly 1.5 Block Value and the Stamina provides roughly 330 Health.
Warbringer Shoulderguards provide:
7.14 Defence Skill
0.29% Block
0.29% Parry
0.29% Miss
1.66% Dodge
Roughly .75 Block Value
Roughly 2.53% Total Avoidance
380 Health Points
The biggest thing to consider is that 15 Hit Rating is more or less pretty simple to achieve with just two Rigid Dawnstone. However, if you selected Warbringer Shoulderplates, you’d have a harder time achieving the set bonuses. It also makes switching around your gear much trickier since you won’t have the extra defence to fall back on.
I don’t want to speak ill of a fellow guide writer, but, no, I wouldn’t recommend purchasing the DPS shoulders even remotely, given the choice.
As an orc should i try to get King’s defender/The Sun eater or the expertise i get from the axe from Thrallmar outscale them?
That’s a great question.
If we compare The Sun Eater to Warbringer, we’ll see this difference in stats:
+10 Stamina (Roughly 105 Health)
+3.05% Dodge Chance
-6 Defence Rating (Roughly 2.53 Defence Skill)
-7 Hit Rating (0.44% Hit Chance)
So, if we chose to use Warbringer instead of The Sun Eater, we’d only really be concerned with losing out on 3.05% Dodge Chance (While gaining both Defence and Hit Rating, and the 5 Expertise from Axe Specialization) So, if you didn’t need the avoidance/stamina, then, yes, I would recommend using Warbringer over it.
If we were to compare King’s Defender to Warbringer, we’ll see this difference in stats:
+182 Armor (+0.29% Physical Damage Reduction)
+16 Stamina (Roughly 168 Health)
+10 Hit Rating (0.62% Hit Chance)
-3 Defence Rating (Roughly 1.27 Defence Skill)
-0.20% total avoidance (Miss, Dodge, Parry and Block)
Realistically speaking, King’s Defender would technically be better against melee mobs since you have higher damage mitigation but worse against casters since armor only affects physical damaging attacks. It also depends on your current hit rating before equipping either weapon, since King’s Defender does provide more hit rating, while Warbringer provides more Expertise for you. Both Miss and Expertise effectively provide similar advantages – you’re either not going to miss, or they’re not going to dodge or parry your attacks.
At the end of the day, the hard reality of it is that you can’t reach either Expertise cap in Phase 1, or Phase 2, to be honest, but you can reach hit cap. I definitely admit that Expertise is a great stat, 100%, but at the same time, if you don’t have between 5-6% Hit without the weapon(s), focusing on the Expertise isn’t necessarily the best idea because you’d max out at 11 Expertise, requiring an additional 7 Expertise to even be at the “soft cap,” which we won’t see until later into the expansion, unfortunately.
Sorry for the long response.
Hi,
as Gyro-Balanced-Khoriuzm-Destroyer is not in the game yet. Which ranged weapon would you recommend excluding the Barrel-Blade-Longlife from World Boss.
Would the Steelhawk Crossbow be an option (Attumen) because of the Hit? Even if Stamina is totally missing?
Heya Krashna,
The Steelhawk Crossbow is definitely an option – while it doesn’t have any stamina on it, it does provide hit rating so you can use 2-3 gem sockets for Stamina since, depending on your gems used (assuming Hit Rating) it’s either 3, 4 or 8 Hit Rating, usually. So, while Steelhawk Crossbow doesn’t provide stamina, it provides us the opportunity to gem stamina, which will actually provide more stamina than other ranged weapons.
i can see that u said TF would not be bis and it is nerfed. what are these statment based on ? is it priv serv or is it based on actuall tbc ?
i play a prot warr and i cannot say i am noticing bad treath or nerfed treath with the TF.
so im just wondering where u have ur data from, all the guides i have seen so far state the same, but personal experience dont support these statement imo
As per Patch 2.0.10 notes, “The threat generated from the spell effect on “Thunderfury” has been substantially reduced.”
thoughts on all the new resilience dps/threat gear opportunities?
thoughts on the new resil gear combinations?
There is literally no hit on any bis item aside from the shield….8% hit, more like 1%
77% mitigation????? bro do you have any idea what you are even typing???
Combining the hit rating from both “King’s Defender” and “Aldori Legacy Defender,” we start off with a minimum of 2.03% Hit Chance. Without accounting for gem slots filled or enchants, we would be sitting at a minimum of 68.42% total avoidance with 11,677 HP.
With the basic enchants and no gems, we would be at:
Health: 12,688
Armor: 16,681
Total Avoidance: 72.98% (Passively)
Hit Chance: 2.03%
After filling each gem socket with appropriate gems (Rigid Dawnstone, Nimble Fire Opal, Powerful Earthstorm Diamond, Solid Star of Elune) we would be at:
Health: 13,255
Armor: 16,681
Total Avoidance: 77.01% (Passively)
Hit Chance: 8.37%
Clearly someone only read just this page of your guide.
Very well done guide btw. Much more complete than other guides here.
Thanks for your comment! I’m glad you found it informative!
Do you know if Thunderfury is going to be the BiS in TBC? I’d like to play warrior, but don’t want to if Thunderfury is best by margins. Great guide. Thanks.
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker is NOT BiS for any class in terms of TBC raiding or even leveling. The main appeal of this weapon for tanks is the AoE component. However, its threat output via AoE is massively nerfed in TBC.
The other thing to keep in mind is that with Devastate, our actual weapon’s damage comes into play and Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker has very poor on-hit damage. Realistically speaking, obtaining a weapon with hit rating is much more beneficial to Warriors.