Warrior Tank Season of Mastery Phase 5 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 for Warrior tanks in the AQ40 patch, split between defensive (D) and threat (T) options, which you can mix and match in order to make your tanking as comfortable as possible.

Warriors Tier 2.5, Conqueror's Battlegear has an amazing 3-piece bonus for advanced tanks, which enables a Shout focused rotation when combined with Manual of Battle Shout VII, which drops in AQ20.

• The 3-set bonus reduces the Rage cost of your shouts by 35%. While this is only a minor bonus when following the normal tanking rotation, it allows Battle Shout spam to become more threat per Rage than Sunder Armor in many situations.
• The 5-set bonus increases the slow and damage of Thunderclap by 50%. While the slowing debuff slot should be ideally covered by Thunderfury, if you happen to have the whole set at your disposal and no Thunderfury in group, consider using it as an alternative slowing debuff, especially if you are off-tanking.

As always, try to have at least 305 weapon skill with your weapon in order to benefit from a huge boost to your damage / threat, using gear such as Edgemaster's Handguards to hit that magic number if needed.

Your hit cap is 6% when you have 305+ weapon skill (vs 9% without), so make sure to mix and match our suggested gear in order to hit this cap. Going over it can still help you while dual wielding, but the value of 1% hit will be much lower than before 6/9%.

If you crave raw damage and threat numbers, you can find even more offensive gear options in the Warrior DPS Best in Slot guide below (scroll down for the AQ40 page until Phase 5 launches):

As a Tank Warrior, you will generally be better off using your normal high threat and high mitigation gear while tanking Princess Huhuran and Viscidus, since their normal physical attacks are just as dangerous as their poisons. It can still be useful to wear a few Nature Resistance pieces on your weakest slots, so read this guide to understand where to find such pieces!

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

Since weapons are such a broad topic, we have written a full guide about Warrior weapons.

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.