Warrior Tank Season of Mastery Phase 3/4 Gear

While a clear best in slot list is always available in WoW Classic Season of Mastery (SoM), the items contained might be extremely hard or expensive to get. Depending on your race, you might want different items as well, as Swords or Maces are more powerful for Humans, due to Sword Specialization and Mace Specialization, and Axes are more powerful for Orcs, due to Axe Specialization.

Thus, we will try to give at least one alternative, for most slots in the list, so that you can pick where and how to farm them.

In order to get ready for raiding, it is recommended that you follow this guide in order to learn which gear to gather for maximizing your threat output and survivability before raid gear is accounted for. Even so, expect to get a few pieces that you will have a hard time replacing, such as Diamond Flask and Hand of Justice.

This is the gear we recommend you to chase in the Blackwing Lair as a Tank Warrior. Before we get into the list itself, it is good to present two of the most important concepts for gearing: weapon skill and the Hit cap.

As explained in our Warrior Tank Weapon Skill guide, the difference between only having the baseline 300 weapon skill at level 60 or 305 weapon skill or above is absolutely gigantic for threat generation against bosses, and easily capable of making a pre-BiS blue weapon superior to the best raid epics. Thus, your first gearing priority against raid bosses should be hitting at least 305 skill with your current weapon.

This can be achieved by using race-appropriate weapons on a Orc or Human character, or with any race by using special gear such as Edgemaster's Handguards. Once you get 305+ weapon skill, remember to not go over 6% extra Hit chance, as the extra Hit will be wasted. This cap is 9% Hit when at 300 weapon skill, which means you will require a lot more Hit to cap out.

The Tier 2 Warrior set is designed with tanking in mind, and its bonuses are very useful:

• The 3 set bonus increases the attack power of Battle Shout, granting you a small personal damage (threat) gain, that extends to your group.
• The 5 set bonus causes your offensive abilities to have a 20% chance to decrease the cost of your next offensive ability by 5 Rage. More Rage equals more damage over time.
• Finally, the 8 set bonus increases your parry by 4% for the next hit after a block, which is a nice survivability boost.

Because of its perks, and general strong stats across the board, using full tier 2 is a viable option for mitigation oriented characters. Threat oriented Tanks will still want to use off-pieces such as Lionheart Helm and Savage Gladiator Chain to maximize their threat output.

While the main focus is on Blackwing Lair gear, the list below also contains some gear from older raids, PvP sets and world bosses, when warranted, in order to create a good list for players who regularly clear the raids up to Tier 2.

Also, we are only listing the Horde versions of quest and PvP gear. Equivalent versions can be found on the Alliance side, with the same requirements, cost and stats.

We will be mixing in threat / offensive oriented gear (Strength, Agility, Hit) alongside defensive gear (Stamina, Dodge, Armor). Offensive gear is generally recommended to allow for greater raid DPS, but it can also be useful to keep some defensive gear on you for tougher bosses.

You can find even more offensive gear options in the Warrior DPS Best in Slot guide.

As a Tank Warrior, Fire Resistance gear is very important when tanking bosses whose attacks do high amounts of Fire damage such as Ragnaros.

You will still want to have high amounts of Stamina and some Physical mitigation in order to survive the Physical parts of his attacks, but the majority of the damage is Fire and can be mitigated by using Fire Resistance gear.

If you would prefer to gear for PvP, you can find our Warrior PvP BiS guide below.

Some items, which are not powerful enough to be in the best in slot list, have special properties that make them very valuable to acquire for specific encounters or as a weapon swap mid-fight. We will list the most notable special items for the current phase, and their effects and application below:

• Annihilator (or the less expensive, less powerful Rivenspike and Bashguuder) allows you to reduce an enemy's armor by up to 600 for your whole group, making it a very powerful weapon swap. Use it at the start of an encounter to quickly full debuff the boss, and then swap to your normal weapon to take advantage of the lowered armor.
• Gnomish Battle Chicken summons a chicken that attacks your enemies for 1.5 minutes, with a cooldown of 30 minutes. The chicken scales with your Engineering skill (Level 60 at 300 skill), and buffs your group with 5% increased Attack Speed through Battle Squawk. This is what makes it well worth using while grouped.
• Arcanite Dragonling summons a dragon that attacks your enemies for up to 1 minute, with a cooldown of one hour. The dragon scales with your Engineering skill (Level 60 at 300 skill) and causes a stacking debuff that increases Fire damage taken, which makes it worth using in later raids to boost Fire Mage damage.
• Skull of Impending Doom is given as a quest reward from completing Forbidden Knowledge in the Badlands. While generally undesirable, if you need to run somewhere fast, it can be a useful item to have.
• Furbolg Medicine Pouch is sold by Gorn One Eye when you reach Honored status with Timbermaw Hold. This is a great item that you can swap during combat to provide you with a significant 1000 heal over 10 seconds. For comparison's sake, Heavy Runecloth Bandage heals you for 2000 over 8 seconds, but requires you to channel it, and you cannot take any sort of damage in the channel duration.
• Tidal Charm allows you to instantly stun an enemy for 3 seconds. It has a 50% drop chance from Prince Nazjak, who spawns around 25,84 in Arathi Highlands. Due to his very high respawn timer it might be hard to get this trinket, but the stun it provides is a life saver and duel winner.
• Linken's Boomerang allows you to potentially disarm or stun an enemy when used, which makes it useful in certain scenarios, especially in PvP. Its rewarded from the Un'Goro Crater quest It's Dangerous to Go Alone.
• Luffa removes a bleed effect, such as Garrote, from yourself when used. This is great when tanking bosses with dangerous bleed debuffs such as High Priest Thekal's bleed, Speed Slash. You get this item from the Searing Gorge quest Incendosaurs? Whateverosaur is More Like It.
• The Alliance-only Crystal of Zin-Malor allows you to kill yourself easily, and you do not get durability loss if you die from its effect. This can occasionally be useful, such as when you regret getting on a fly path after you are already flying or if you need to talk with the Blackrock Depths key ghost NPC. You get it from starting the quest Tormented By the Past.

As this list is meant to be used for Tank Warriors in WoW Classic's Season of Mastery, we have created separate gear lists for those interested in optimizing themselves for the "main" branch of Classic instead. If you are not playing in the Season of Mastery, it is recommended that you consult this gear hub instead. In case you still need them, we have also included links to other phases of our Season of Mastery gear lists.