Gearing up in the World
of Warcraft as a tank is a long and difficult process. One of the hardest pieces for most players to get ahold of is a set of good solid trinkets. Luckily this patch many of the trinkets are easy to get a hold of. There are many really good trinkets for tanks, as well as DPS and healers that are found by running the new heroics, the Dragon Soul raid, and from the justice and valor point vendors.

Which are the best for tanks though, which should you aim for and why. That is what we run through here starting from number 5 and working up to the best tanking trinket in the game.

Keep in mind that some of the trinkets listed here come in multiple different levels since items that drop in the Dragon Soul raid are base ilevel 384 in LFR, ilevel 397 in normal, and ilevel 410 in heroic. Some items are even higher level if they drop from Deathwing.

Also keep in mind that this guide is taken from the point of view of a Paladin tank, and as such some of the items may be better or worse if you are a different tanking class.

You can find all the items listed below, and more, on PlayerScore.

#5 Best Tanking Trinket - [ps item=72900]Veil of Lies[/ps]

A trinket that supplies dodge and stamina.

This trinket is a great starting tanking trinket when you first come into patch 4.3 since it is available from one of the new heroic instance bosses. It is dropped from the Archbishop Benedictus in the Hour of Twilight instance and is an ilevel 378 trinket.

It grants 575 stamina and allows your attacks to proc 1149 dodge rating for 20 seconds. The dodge rating at level 85 equates to 6.5% before diminishing returns which is a lot even at this level. It has a cooldown on it which is 45 seconds and stays up for 20 seconds, meaning it is up a lot of the time, so while you can not count on it always being up, it is up most of the time.

#4 Best Tanking Trinket - [ps item=77117]Fire of the Deep[/ps]

A trinket that supplies mastery and a great dodge cooldown.

This trinket earns its spot for its constant increase to mastery of 458, its on use ability to grant 2290 dodge for 15 seconds every 90 seconds, and for how easy it is to obtain. First up, 458 mastery is a big number and because it is always there it is easy to plan it into your overall gearing strategy unlike proc based stat increases which you have to consider their uptime, percentages, and how it helps or hurts your 102.4% normal hit cap if you are a Paladin or Warrior.

The dodge cooldown ability is also very significant since 2290 dodge is equal to almost 13% dodge before diminishing returns. In actual fact it will probably grant you in the area of 8% dodge but that is still a huge number. The only issue is that it is not constant but up just under 17% of the time if you use it all the time on cooldown.

One of the big positives about this trinket is how easy it is to get. There is no need to worry about drop rates, winning rolls, or getting into a group. It is available at your friendly neighborhood valor gear vendor for 1650 points. This means you can get it after only two weeks of running heroics and LFR groups.

#3 Best Tanking Trinket - [ps item=77990]Soulshifter Vortex [/ps]

A trinket that supplies a lot of stamina and a good mastery proc.

The Soul Shifter Vortex could have been the best trinket in the game if it had been put in at the beginning of the Cataclysm cycle. It is an ideal tanking trinket since it has a huge amount of stamina on it and grants an even larger amount of mastery. On the basic ilevel 384 version of it it grants 609 stamina and a chance to gain 2573 mastery for 20 seconds when you deal damage. There is an internal cooldown on it that seems to be about 2 minutes, so the up time is just under 17% of the time. Mastery is a key stat for all tanks but especially for Warriors and Paladins.

The only issue with this trinket is that for Warriors and Paladins at least, most of us are already normal hit capped at this stage of the expansion cycle. That means that most of us already have 102.4% total avoidance/block/miss and a trinket that procs more mastery granting more block, really doesn't do that much once we are past the normal hit limit. It does add more block value and more critical block chance for warriors, but the value of mastery as a stat greatly diminishes once you are past the 102.4% mark.

So, while still a good trinket, and probably the best trinket if you are very poorly geared still, for most tanks it is number 3 on my list, and that may still be pushing it. This trinket drops from Yor'sahj the Unsleeping in the Dragon Soul raid.

#2 Best Tanking Trinket - [ps item=77998]Resolve of Undying[/ps]

A trinket that supplies a steady boost to your dodge.

The second best tanking trinket in the game right now is the Resolve of Undying. This amazing trinket provides a huge amount of dodge, more than I have seen in any other place, through procs when you attack. The trinket drops from the Spine of Deathwing fight and is ilevel 390 from LFR, 403 from normal, and 416 from heroic.

The ilevel 390 version of the trinket grants 78 dodge per stack and stacks up to 10 times and lasts for 10 seconds. In a normal fight this will mean an additional 780 dodge rating almost all the time. In fights where there is lots of downtime it loses a little bit of its value since with only a 10 second timer on the stacks it can fall of fairly quickly. 780 dodge however is 4.4% before diminishing returns at level 85 and is nothing to sneeze at even if it does fall of quickly, it ramps up fast enough that you should have an uptime of over 80% on most fights.

Even if you are at the 102.4% normal hit cap, knowing that you will have this up most of the time, you could easily move some stats around to compensate for having this trinket. An easy choice would be moving some gems back to stamina gems instead of mastery gems, and staying just over the 102.4% when this procs.

#1 Best Tanking Trinket - [ps item=78003]Indomitable Pride[/ps]

A trinket that supplies a lot of stamina and a good mastery proc.

The best tanking trinket in the game right now has got to be Indomitable Pride. This trinket provides a huge amount of stamina and a really powerful and useful proc. The proc can take place once a minute and occurs any time you take a hit that knocks you below 50% health. When that happens you gain an absorption shield that prevents you from an amount of damage over the next 6 seconds that is based on a percentage of damage that the hit did to you (42-56% depending on the version of the trinket).

In most situations a tank does not fall below 50% other than from some of the big hitting special abilities that bosses have in the game. This means that most of the time when you are hit to make this trinket proc it will be from a hit causing about 100,000 damage or more. This means that the absorption shield it puts up will prevent the next roughly 50,000 damage over the following 6 seconds. That is huge amount at a critical time since you are low health and allows your healers some extra time to get you back up to full health before you suffer any more real damage.