PvE Protection Warrior Tank Gear & Best in Slot (BiS)

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.

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.

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.

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.

As per Patch 2.0.10 notes, “The threat generated from the spell effect on “Thunderfury” has been substantially reduced.”

Heya orcfoe!

Are you referring to the PvP gear?

Heya Larry!

Latro’s Shifting Sword can definitely be used for a pre-raid gearset. The main appeal of this sword is the Expertise Rating – granting a total of 3 Expertise.

Comparing Aegis of the Sunbird to Platinum Shield of the Valorous is what I would consider to be a “side-grade,” since you’re gaining some stats, while sacrificing others.

Threat-Wise: Aegis of the Sunbird in regards to the additional Block Value.
Survivability-Wise: Platinum Shield of the Valorous with more stamina, and defence (Dodge, Parry, Block, Miss)

Note: Without 9% Hit, Aegis of the Sunbird is potentially not going to increase your threat whatsoever, since you could always miss your Shield Slam. Theoretically speaking, without that 9% Hit, Platinum Shield of the Valorous can potentially provide more threat since the extra defence will increase our Dodge, Parry, and Block (Miss, too, but that doesn’t trigger Revenge) and thus will increase the amount of times we will be able to use Revenge. If we were to include the boss dodging or parrying an attack, Aegis of the Sunbird would drop some more in value since, as it did before, Platinum Shield of the Valorous could potentially lead to more uses of Revenge, even if some of those missed, or were dodged or parried.

Shield of the Wayward Footman is a great shield that I would recommend for Protection Paladins to help them reach their crush cap since Block Rating has the best defensive conversion rate. For Warriors, because we have Shield Block, I wouldn’t generally recommend prioritizing Block Rating on a lesser piece of gear in all other aspects.

I would take into consideration your current standing in the Sha’tar reputation since the shield requires you to reach Exalted.

If we look at Crest of the Sha’tar and compare it to Azure-Shield of Coldarra, we’ll see that the only thing that Crest of the Sha’tar has over it is the ability to utilize two gem sockets. Let’s say that we use two Solid Star of Elune as our gems for this:

Crest of the Sha’tar will provide an additional 12 Stamina, while sacrificing 203 Armor, 9 Defence Rating (Roughly 0.64% Total Avoidance), 7 Block, and 9 Block Value.

If we were to consider drops from Karazhan on your way to Aldori Legacy Defender, we will see a very minute difference between Azure-Shield of Coldarra and Shield of Impenetrable Darkness; this is pushed further when Nightbane’s difficulty is taken into account and that some groups are not able to successfully defeat him.

The thing to consider regarding rings is that you are able to pick up a VERY good ring from just running Karazhan, and with each new tier of reputation with The Violet Eye brings a new rank of the ring. You mentioned that you are looking to get Shapeshifter’s Signet, so both rings would be taken care of without spending any badges on them.

Now, for the neck piece, this is a little trickier, unfortunately. It depends on your current equipment since if you are able to run Karazhan weekly, you have a chance of getting Barbed Choker of Discipline, which most consider an upgrade from Necklace of the Juggernaut. Avoidance-wise, it only provides roughly 0.01% more than Strength of the Untamed, which is pretty accessible for most players.

Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch is a great trinket, absolutely! Why did I place Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 instead, though? There’s a couple of reasons:

1. By default, it increases our Block Value by 59 – this affects both mitigation and threat generation
2. With the on-use effect, we are able to increase our total Block Value by 259; again, increasing our mitigation and threat generation. Sitting on a duration of 20 seconds, we’d theoretically use it in conjunction with Shield Block 4-5 times, depending on when you first used Shield Block, allowing for a potential total of 1,036 reduced damage against physical attacks
3. Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch provides roughly 2.01% Dodge Chance through its Equip-effect, while its On-Use effect provides roughly 15.87% Dodge Chance – while dodging provides the player with damage immunity for the dodged attack, they also don’t generate any rage
4. Despite being below Dodge on the Attack Table, we’ll always have a better chance to block attacks than we will to dodge them, simply because of Shield Block

Note: Because we cannot block spells by default, Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch could prove effective against casters. However, since Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 increases our threat generation, it becomes a question of if you pushed your threat generation to the limit, how much faster could your DPS kill the enemy in question?

There are a couple of different things to note regarding the Adamantine Figurine:

1. With the Phase 1 BiS gear selection, we don’t have trouble reaching the defence cap, so the 32 defence rating would be wasted
2. Feral Druids will often seek this trinket out since it’s right up their alley – it increases their defence rating, which is a nuisance for them sometimes, and it can increase their armor, which aside from their crazy health pool, is a major appeal for them
3. 1,280 Armor equates to roughly 5% or so damage reduction – on a boss hitting you for 3,500 damage, that is about 175 damage. With Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 and Shield Block, we’re able to easily mitigate at least 1,036 damage in 20 seconds while also increasing our threat
4. Adamantine Figurine only affects our incoming damage – if we reach 100% combined avoidance (Shield Block would likely be necessary to achieve this) the attack won’t be a normal hit – likely blocked for less damage. If we dodge, parry or they just straight up miss us, then the additional armor has zero effect for us

That’s a very good question.

Because Expertise affects both surivability/mitigation and threat, whenever we can obtain it, we definitely should.

If you can reach and maintain the defence cap using Shapeshifter’s Signet, absolutely. Your total avoidance (I assume you’re including Shield Block with that) is perfectly fine, and your health/armor levels are awesome.

My recommendation would be to equip it, and keep the replaced ring in your bags.

Heya Loras,

Assuming the boss in question has a 5.6% chance to critically strike you as a tank, this means:

• We will need roughly 221 Resilience Rating to be immune or,
• We will need roughly 332 Defence Rating to be immune, in addition to our base amount of 350.
• For every 39.4 (roughly) points of Resilience, we reduce the chance to be critically struck by 1%. To achieve the 5.6% threshold, we could easily multiply 39.4 x 5.6 to find our answer of 221.
• For every 59.25 (roughly) points of Defence Rating, we reduce the chance to be critically struck by 1%.

On paper, it would seem as though Resilience Rating would be the ideal candidate for tanks to reach their crit immunity but unfortunately, there are a few downsides to it:

1. For every single point of Defence Skill, we receive 0.04% increased mitigation in each defensive stat (Dodge, Block, Parry, Miss) for a total of 0.16% per point.
2. Because of this, Warriors equipped with PvP gear will often times face less uptime on Revenge than their PvE-geared counterparts, and they are likely to see much less damage coming from Shield Slam due to the lack of Block Value they have.
3. And, while not deemed to be very much, the difference in Block Value means the tank in PvP gear will be blocking less damage than the tank in PvE gear.

So, at the end of the day, realistically, tanks using PvP gear (With the exception Druids) will likely take more damage from any enemy and cause less threat with our two main abilities. Devastate would likely be slightly higher in damage when using PvP gear as it is a direct product of your weapon damage.

Is it possible to tank using PvP gear? Absolutely!

Is it a better idea to use PvP gear over PvE gear? I generally don’t recommend tanks to use PvP gear while in a progression state (Attempting to clear raids) since this will put unnecessary stress on your healers, and if they’re not geared well enough, the tank will likely die and the group will then likely wipe.

Can any tanking class use Resilience as a priority? Yep! Druids have the unique ability to utilize Resilience as their method of reaching their crit immunity. This is because of the reduced amount of Defence Skill required to be considered immune to critical strikes, thanks to Survival of the Fittest. In addition to this talent, Druids only have to concern themselves with one mitigation stat: Dodge, and because Agility is generally always on their gear, their Dodge Chance continues to increase, without the aid of Defence Rating.

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%