Where do I go from here?

[haxyou]

I am in the point in my gear where I can start dropping defense gems and enchant. The problem I am facing is I am getting conflicted information from players. I have read most of the guides on this site and understand the importance or expertise and hit, but want to know where I should go from here.

the 2 main schools of thought I am hearing from other players are

1) stamina stack
2) hit expertise cap / hit cap

But which do I do? I was gonna start removing some of the defense off my gear but decided to leave it and get some feedback first.

Healers usually tell me to stamina stack, but then again I feel that taking advice from a healer is like a healer taking advice on how to spec from a dpser. So I want to know what other Ulduar+ tanks are starting to stat into.

BTW, I am gonna start tanking Ulduar10 on Sunday, with the focus on being ToC10 progressing in the near future. I have included my armory.

Thanks in advance.

Armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alterac+Mountains&n=Haxnslash)

[Griff]

It depends alot on your raid makeup. Are your healers sharp? Can they keep you up at your current level of stam? Are you threat-capping your dps regularly?

I'd try to get myself to the expertise soft cap of 26 and then start to stack stamina. Ulduar bosses hit harder than the fellows in Naxx do and while the rest of the raid is learning the fight, its good to give your healers the largest margin that you can. By the same token, if a boss is taking an extra 60 seconds to die because dps is throttled by your low threat, you're putting the raid's progress at risk.

You might want to think about ditching your dodge trinket. There are a number of better options. Even Essence of Gossamer would give you a nice stam boost.

You also don't need to always gem for socket bonuses. Sometimes its nice, but its not always worth it.

[veneretio]

How you gear yourself is purely dictated by the content you're doing. If you're farming content then a high damage (exp/hit) set is preferred to speed things up. (unless your crew cuts a lot of healers in the process too) If you're doing progression, you're always best off starting with a high survival set focusing on either Stamina, Avoidance or a combination of both. (your preference, I prefer Stamina stacking myself) Once you've got a feel for the threat necessary for a fight or the damage thresholds required then add more Expertise and Hit gear until you're comfortable.

This is why trinkets such as Mark of Norgannon - Item - World of Warcraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40531) are so valuable to have around. You can start with a couple Stamina trinkets then if things are looking good on the next attempt you can throw on your heavy Expertise trinket. It's really all about getting a beat on what the content is like and gearing towards it.

In my experience, most tanks concern themselves way, way too much with Expertise and Hit caps and usually they've got more than enough of this already, naturally from their gear. If you've got threat problems it's so rarely about gear and is usually because either a very Survival oriented spec or simply a lack of understanding of how to generate threat properly. (Devastating too much or Heroic Striking too little)