Too many items, what to wear

[Tobius]

Hi, firstly let me say what a great site this is :)

Ok, I am tanking in a guild that are working on Kael atm, and I find myself with various options of gear for different slots and my concern is I am not always choosing the most effective set for encounters.

My default tank set currently is:
Warbringer Greathelm, Brooch of Deftness, Destroyer Shouldergaurds, Slikk's Cloak of Placation, Panzar'Thar Breatsplate, Vambraces of Courage, Bonefist Gauntlets, Girdle of the Invunerable, Unwavering Legguards, Boots of the Resilient, Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen, Ring of Sundered Souls, Scarab of Displacement, Darkmoon Card: Veneance, Cleaver of the Unforgiving, Bulwark of the Amani Empire.

That leaves me with 16,704 health, 16,517 armour, 490 def, 17% dodge, 19% parry and 33.5% block. All gems are solid stars except for one enduring talasite to keep at 490 def. Enchants wise I have 2% threat on gloves, executioner and the rest are stam.

Now, the spare gear I have is as follows:
Necklace of the Juggernaut, Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden, Warbringer Handgaurds, Jungle Stompers, Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600, Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch, Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet, Dabiri's Enigma, Mallet of the Tides, Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall.

The biggest problem I have playing around with gear is keeping 490 defense, using the Gladiator shield frees some of that requirement up but is it a better option then the ZA one? The other main concern I have is over which trinkets are best to use.

If anyone would be kind enough to spare some time to advise me on the best usage of the gear I have it would be most appreciated.

Regards,
Tobi

[Haam]

First I would recommend checking out TankSpot Strategy - TankSpot (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tankspot-strategy/) I am constantly changing my gear for different kinds of trash, different bosses, different roles in different raids as well as heroics and all of their different bosses. Prot warriors are one of the extremely few classes and specs where you need to do this to be optimal.

The link has general stuff that helps, but obviously can't give you specific information on what gear you should be using because it really depends on the rest of your raid as well, how fast the dps can kill the boss and how good your healers are. Use itemrack to set up different sets of gear, such as a stam set, SBV set, avoidance set, threat set, etc. You will figure out what kind of gear you should be using once you fight the boss a couple of times, just to get a feel for what you need to be doing along the lines of threat generation and staying alive with variables like how fast the boss attacks, if the boss bursts, and if the boss just hits damn hard.

An example of this is Karathress in SSC. If you are MTing him and just running around the lower part of the room until everything else is dead, you really don't have to worry about your threat at all. You just need to stay alive, max your stam and avoidance, don't worry about threat at all. No one is gonna pull off of you because you are going to solo 4% of his life before anyone else even touches him.