Lightsworn: Paladin tank trinkets, including Nighthold
@honorshammer
Hey, Blizzard Watch, it’s Hammer time! In Legion, gear decisions are straightforward, and in most cases, taking the higher ilevel piece is the best bet. When you’ve got two pieces that are close (within 5 ilevels), we go to the secondary stats. For Tankadins, the stat priority is Versatility/Haste, then Mastery — or Critical Strike/Haste, then Mastery, then Versatility, if you want to push out a bit more damage at the cost of a little survival.
Where it gets a bit more complicated is when we start to look at trinkets.
There are a plethora of trinkets available with a variety of stats, procs, and cooldowns, and they all come in the usual array of ilevel ranges depending on the content and difficulty you are running. We’ll take a look at each one and provide some commentary, but keep in mind that I don’t have personal experience with every trinket on the list. I’ve chosen to include only those trinkets you can loot if you’re in Protection loot spec. None of the trinkets I could get with Retribution loot spec are enticing enough to justify the cost of missing out on a potential Protection Legendary.
Vendor/AH
The Vendor group is great for players looking to quickly build a tank kit, or who want to build an offspec kit while not changing their main loot spec.
Every 20 seconds you get a new “card” which buffs you with some amount of armor based upon the ilevel of the trinket and a bit of RNG.
Standard Armor caveat: With Bonus Armor removed as a stat, this is one of the few ways to increase armor outside of basic ilevel. Armor is a strong damage reduction, and almost all bosses have a physical component to their damage. Armor is not effective against magic damage or bleeds (like Ursoc’s Rend Flesh), and with diminishing returns, armor trinkets tend to get worse the better your gear gets.
When are you aren’t Timewalking, this trinket will provide 2018 armor for 40 seconds. It’s a cheaper option than the Darkmoon deck if you can spare the badges. Standard Armor caveat applies.
This is Bind on Equip so you can purchase it from your friendly neighborhood Alchemist. It’s something I might use if I was an Alchemist or the guild Alchemist gave me one, but I wouldn’t spend gold on it.
A kissing cousin of the Auto-Blocker and Darkmoon Card: Immortality, this trinket acts more like an additional cooldown with twice as much armor as Auto-Blocker, but only half the duration. Standard Armor caveats apply.
Dungeons and World Quests
A Stat stick that lacks Versatility.
I wish it had Haste or Versatility instead of Mastery. This has a place in my soloing set or when I’m trying to maximize my damage on content I overgear.
This is a dressed up stat stick. When you use it, turns you in a Vyrkul for 30 seconds. The Versatility is desirable, but the Strength is a damage only stat.
Haste is wonderful and the proc is nice. Standard Armor caveat applies
This provides a version of the Burning Crusade era Ardent Defender spell. You never want to go under 35% health, but it does happen. The increased health can help you survive the next hit and the Mastery will buff your Shield of the Righteous. It’s a Hail Mary pass — it might win you the fight, or it might do nothing at all.
Where this trinket really shines is in AoE situations. Most of the difficulty in 5 mans is getting through the trash. The Versatility not only reduces the damage we take, but increases our self-healing from Hand/Light of the Protector, and increases our own damage output. I could see using this for all my Mythic+ runs especially if I got Teeming. You are going to need some amazing RNG luck to get it. First Shivermaw has to one of the bosses that spawns during your Violet Hold run, and then if he does, he still needs to drop the trinket for you.
A powerful cooldown, and of course, I love the Versatility. If you find yourself having Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings and Bastion of Light on constant cooldown, this would give you another rabbit to pull out of your hat.
Davy Crockett was king of the wild frontier and this is the king of the stat sticks. Our best two stats are Versatility and Haste and finding gear with both of those can be difficult. Not only does this trinket do that, but it also brings Mastery and Critical Strike to the table. It gets bonus points for being a trinket you can use in any specialization. Sometimes, I wish Withered J’im would spawn every week.
Critical Strike is our worst stat, but the damage reduction is nice.
My attack speed is 2.16 seconds (861 ilevel). In 6 seconds, I’ll get in 2 auto attacks, plus 6 ticks of Consecration, a Shield of the Righteous, and a Judgment. That’s 10 attacks. My Critical Strike chance is 17.31%. Doing a bit of math, let’s see, carry the one, and we get a 15% chance that none of those 10 will be a crit and the buff will fall off. I should see a high uptime
- World quest stat sticks
Various World Quests will award simple stat stick trinkets. These can be helpful in filling in the gaps until you get a drop and also for raising your iLevel to enter Heroics or LFR.
Mythic Dungeons
Mastery isn’t a top stat choice right now, but the absorb shield functions as an additional cooldown.
This is another stat stick, but it’s one you can win in any loot spec. Haste and Strength are two of our best DPS stats. Like the Arcanocrystal, this also fits into your Holy and Ret kits. The Strength becomes Intellect for Holy and all three specs love Haste.
This is a situational trinket for party or raid wide damage. It picks the four closest allies which can include pets and guardians so keep that in mind if you run with pet classes.
Emerald Nightmare
When it procs a little ooze forms near you and crawls over to you. When it hits you, you get a Versatility buff. If you already have the buff when it gets to you, it will refresh it. According to my logs from Emerald Nightmare, I get about a 20% uptime.
It procs based each you hit you take from everything that’s not environmental damage. In an AoE situation, you’ll have small stacks on many enemies instead of a big stack on one enemy.
Triggering at 50% is more useful than Parajesh’s which procs when you go under 35%. It spawns a little shadow reflection of yourself to show you its working and when the absorb is used up, your little shadow buddy ‘dies’. I love the Haste and the proc is great for progression.
Ugh, more Critical Strike, but the on use gives us a Last Stand type of ability on a short recharge. One place to use this is Odyn for the Spears in Phase 3. If you time it right, the extra health would be available for two Stormforged Spears in a row. Like all extra health effects, good communication is needed with your healers so they can be ready to heal you when that extra health goes away.
Trial of Valor
You get a random stat on the trinket when you loot it, and your best outcome is either Versatility or Haste. Even with that best case scenario, I’m not sure it would be used over the other options you are bound to have by the time you are running Trial.
Nighthold
Stamina is welcomed, as is the damage reduction. With this trinket, Ardent Defender, and 3 ranks in the Unflinching Defense Artifact Trait, we can have at least a 20% damage reduction up 25% of the time.
Strength is a damage stat and I don’t think Leech will provide enough healing to make this trinket worth it. As Gordon Ramsay might say, “chimi chuck it in the bin”.
Mastery isn’t a great stat until we can get higher uptime on our Shield of the Righteous. This could be useful on a tank swap fight where the offtank takes little damage when it’s not his turn and the increased damage won’t matter, but you never know when something will go off the rails and you’ll have to take the boss back early. I’m not a fan.
The item designers seem to think we like Critical Strike more than we do. It’s a passive trinket that fires on its own from an attack that would have killed you, and can create some additional room for error while learning new fights.
Choosing between trinkets can be difficult. My progression set uses Goblet of Nightmarish Ichor and Phantasmal Echo. I’d like for us to help each other out in the comment sections. Feel free to leave a comment if you are deciding between two or more trinkets. Please include the ilevel of each one, and we’ll give you an opinion on which ones to use.
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