Tier 15 Trinket Comparison for Brewmasters

Trinkets for tanks are no black-and-white matter. There are trinkets that are good for burst reduction and time-to-live, while others are good for avoidance, total damage reduction, and DPS. Trinkets are the best way to change your stats for what you need at a moments notice, and because of that, there is no true best-in-slot pair. Ideally, you should collect a handful of trinkets with various specialties and swap them in depending on fight requirements.

These trinkets will be categorized and ranked according to what their role is: Survival, Hybrid, and Avoidance/DPS. I’m including some tier 14 trinkets in this list because a couple of them are still quite good. And if you’re unlucky (like me) you’ll be stuck with them for a while so you might as well get used to it.

Survival Trinkets

These are trinkets that purely focus on increasing time-to-live. They usually provide a mixture of stamina and mastery. You should seek them out if you’re running up against heroic content or if you’re getting burst down before healers can top you off.

	Soul Barrier Base: 2201 Stamina On-Use: Absorb Shield Source: Throne of Thunder – Lei Shen This is the best survival trinket in this tier, and you should seek it out if you’re running against hard content. If you want to macro it, it should mesh nicely with Guard.
	Lao-Chin’s Liquid Courage & Jade Warlord Figurine Base: 1619 Stamina On-Use: Mastery Source: 875 Valor and Revered with Shado-Pan, Mogu’shan vaults trash drop These two trinkets were staples of Tier 14, and are still very good now, especially because there aren’t that many stamina trinkets out there. Their on-use effects don’t stack and using one incurs a short 15 second cooldown on the other, but with both equipped you can have around 50% uptime on the mastery buff. Because of the short cooldown, you can get away with macroing them to an ability you use quite often, like Jab, Tiger Palm, or a heal.
	Fortitude of the Zandalari Base: 1467 Mastery On-Use: Temporary Health Increase Source: Throne of Thunder – Council of Elders Fortutude of the Zandalari is a nice trinket, though a bit basic. The hard part about health on-use effects is that it’s often impractical to macro them and it’s hard to see the effects if you’re not always topped off. It is useful against predictable burst. If you forget to use it by itself, macro it to Guard.

Best-In-Slot Survival Trinkets

If you only care about reducing burst and increasing time-to-live, you want Soul Barrier and either Lao-Chin’s Liquid Courage or Jade Warlord Figurine. Fortitude of the Zandalari is still a good trinket, but I find the mastery on-use of the tier 14 trinkets more useful than the health on-use.

Hybrid Trinkets

What I call “hybrid” trinkets are items that provide a mixture of both survival and avoidance/dps. They usually have agility, dodge, mastery, or some other secondary stat that can be reforged. Use these types of trinkets if you don’t have better survival trinkets or you want to both increase your DPS and survival at the same time.

	Rune of Re-Origination Base: 1467 Agility Source: Throne of Thunder – Lei Shen Proc: Re-Origination (Haste), Re-Origination (Crit), Re-Origination (Mastery) Rune of Re-Origination is a tricky item. If you prioritize crit or haste, it can actually hurt you if it procs during a burst event because it decreases your mastery significantly. On the other hand, if you prioritize mastery then you can reach very high stagger numbers during the proc, which can be quite useful if you’re lucky. The base agility makes it less than ideal for increasing time to live, but for a hybrid trinket the proc can make up for that. My advice is to pick it up for mastery builds. It can also be great for your personal dps if you prioritize crit, though you must keep in mind that it will hurt your survival when used that way.
	Bad Juju Base: 1467 Mastery Proc: Agility and Voodoo Gnomes Source: Throne of Thunder – Council of Elders This is my favorite hybrid trinket because it’s got a reliable base stat in mastery, but a fun little agi + gnomes proc. It’s great if you’re leaning toward survival but are bored by the pure survival trinkets.
	Steadfast Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault Base: 1467 Mastery On-Use: Dodge that decreases over time Source: 1750 valor and Friendly with Shado-Pan Assault The dodge on this reputation-based trinket isn’t very attractive to brewmasters, but the unique proc is interesting and paired with mastery, makes this a very good starter trinket. The proc begins with a high value of dodge, which slowly dwindles into low values. If I was lazy, I would bind the on-use to Elusive Brew. This isn’t one of the best trinkets out there, but it’s solidly in the middle of the pack and it’s great if you’ve had bad luck with other survival trinkets.
	Ji-Kun’s Rising Winds Base: 1467 Expertise Proc: Heal proc when health drops below 35% Source: Throne of Thunder – Ji-Kun The automatic heal can be useful if you regularly drop below 35% health, though obviously useless in less bursty fights. I also greatly dislike any trinket that has a capped stat like hit or expertise because it forces you to rely on that trinket to reach your caps, removing any ability to swap trinkets for different fights. Because we generally don’t have problems reaching our caps through gear anyway, this trinket is solidly in the “decent if you don’t have anything better” category.
	Bottle of Infinite Stars, Stuff of Nightmares, Vial of Dragons Blood Base: 1079 – 1152 Mastery Proc: Avoidance (in the form of agility or dodge) Source: Mogu’shan Vaults – Elegon, Terrace of the Endless Spring – Tsulong These three Tier 14 trinkets aren’t exactly the same, but they’re similar. All give you static mastery plus an avoidance proc.
	Delicate Vial of the Sanguinaire Base: 1467 Dodge Proc: 4% chance on dodge for stacking mastery Source: Throne of Thunder – Dark Animus This trinket sounds like it might be good for brewmasters because of Elusive Brew, but sadly it is not. A four percent chance to proc is incredibly low, and we actually don’t dodge as much as you’d think. For example, on my last heroic Jin’rokh kill (a short, single target fight) I dodged 17 times. If I had had this trinket equiped, it would have procced once if I was lucky. Even for add fights, where you’re dodging much more often than a single target fight, it barely compares to any other trinkets. On my last heroic Horridon kill (where I primarily tank adds), it would have procced around 3 times. The proc provides a huge amount of mastery, but because it’s rare and uncontrollable, it not really worth it. The only time I would recommend this trinket is if you’re face-tanking (as opposed to kiting) bats on Tortos.

Best-In-Slot Hybrid Trinkets

If you can’t decide between pure survival and pure avoidance/dps and you are currently prioritizing mastery, Rune of Re-Origination and Bad Juju are the best. If you don’t mind not being able to swap it out, Ji-Kun’s Rising Winds has a strong proc that can help with low health events.

Avoidance/DPS Trinkets

These trinkets are typically traditional dps trinkets. They usually have agility, crit, haste, or dodge. Use these trinkets if you don’t have to worry about dying or if you want to top the meters.

	Rune of Re-Origination Base: 1467 Agility Source: Throne of Thunder – Lei Shen Proc: Re-Origination (Haste), Re-Origination (Crit), Re-Origination (Mastery) Yes, this trinket again. Like I mentioned earlier, if you prioritize crit, this trinket is good for dps and avoidance through Elusive Brew. Just keep in mind that it will reduce your mastery and haste, which in turn could risk your survival. I would not advise using this trinket if you prioritize haste because it can easily take you beyond your comfort zone of energy gain.
	Talisman of Bloodlust Base: 1467 Agility Proc: Stacking Haste Source: Throne of Thunder – Primordius This is a pretty straightforward trinket. The haste is a decent dps proc as long as it isn’t more than you can handle.
	Renataki’s Soul Charm Base: 1467 Expertise Proc: Increasing agility Source: Throne of Thunder – Jin’rokh the Breaker Another expertise trinket, which I’m not a big fan of. The proc starts with a relatively low 770 agility and builds up to 7,770 agility.
	Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault Base: 1467 Hit Proc: Agility Source: 1750 valor and Friendly with Shado-Pan Assault The hit on this trinket may risk putting you over the cap, and the agility proc isn’t terribly attractive all by itself. If you want to buy a Shado-Pan Assault trinket, Steadfast Talisman of the Shado-Pan will help you more.

Best-In-Slot DPS/Avoidance

Rune of Re-Origination if you prioritize crit, and Talisman of Bloodlust.

Best Overall Trinkets

Due to the spread of trinkets, you’ll likely want to mix and match. Here are the different situations I can think of, and the best trinkets for those situations.

Pure Survival, High Health Requirements(e.g. Horridon, Tortos):
Soul Barrier + Jade Warlord Figurine or Lao-Chin’s Liquid Courage

Survival, Moderate Health Requirements (most progression fights):
Soul Barrier + Rune of Re-Origination (mastery) or Bad Juju

Survival, Low Health Requirements(e.g. Durumu):
Rune of Re-Origination (mastery) + Bad Juju

Moderate/High DPS requirements + lots of non-spiky damage (e.g. normal Lei Shen):
Talisman of Bloodlust + Rune of Re-Origination (mastery or crit)

Mostly Magic Damage (e.g. Megeara):
Soul Barrier + Jade Warlord Figurine or Lao-Chin’s Liquid Courage