Gear Advice for intermediate tank.

[Nubalidin]

Kia Ora fella's and ladies.
Well, i asked over at maintankadin this same question and so far no answer and as our guild is rather low on geared tanks atm progression is going nowhere and i need to gear up fast lol.

I'm currently reasonably geared and have MT'd Naxx10/25 and OS10/25 but i want to be geared for Ulduar and totc 10man, i currently have 80+ conq badges and no idea what to buy with them.

Here is my toon currently: Profiler - Wowhead (http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14357927)

What i'm looking to upgrade is my neck, hands, legs atm and maybe legs but i don't know weather the badge gear is better then some of current gear due to the loss of sockets in places.

The only other thing i can see atm is replacing my libram and shield. I'm also gearing my Main Spec (Ret) aswell so spening Triumph badges on Tank gear is not something i want to do atm.

Would i be right in saying that any badge libram i can pick up will be better then my current Venture Co. Libram LOL!?

As for my shield i do have this in the bank: The Skull of Ruin - Item - World of Warcraft (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39276) but when i equip it, it takes me under the d cap for raids even with the defense enchant.

Apart from that, love the video's guys, they've helped out alot in our raids, although we still can't seem to down the faction champs in TotC lol (I dont tank there i DPS :P)

Thanks for any help, much appreciated.

[uglybbtoo]

You could easily tank ulduar 10 as is and probably ulduar 25 although probably changing your block pieces would be better. The old target was 32K unbuffed and 55% avoidance and you are very close to that.

Personally for me change the neck to the conq badge one thinks its only 19 badges from memory and I would get the platnium mesh cloak for back which would ease up some +20def gemming you having to do and your could change to hybrid gems and gain a bit of extra HP.

The libram yeah but really LOO isnt going to worth huge amounts in ulduar so thats an optional you might just hang out till you get triumph badges.

As for the shield its a block set trash shield it stays in the bank.

Go kill the brewfest boss for your +170 stam trinket to replace the essence of gossomer the shield effect isnt worth much in ulduar.

Tank ulduaar collect loot move on ... GL

[Nubalidin]

I took your advice and changed my neck, back piece and ended up changing my Titanium Earthguard Ring with the Valor badge one.

This has taken me to 553 defense rating lol, which brings me to gems, should i be changing my par/def gems with par/stam or change my +20def gems with par/stam or dodge/stam or hit/stam or even str/stam??

Gemming has never been strong point except with Ret, gemming for ret has been so easy.

[Irat]

A couple of general rules for gemming, of course these are just guidelines and you need to think about what kind of set you are trying to make. Firstly it is very weak to gem parry. Due to Diminishing Returns (DR) you want to have a much higher ratio of Dodge to parry and you get a lot of that parry from gear.

Secondly you only want to gem hybrid gems if you are chasing a socket bonus or activating a meta. If you are not going after either of them then currently +stam is your best bet.

If you are chasing them then for pure avoidance:
Def/Stam in Yellow
Dodge/Stam in Red

For Threat:
Hit/Stam in yellow
Str/Stam in Red

For EH:
Any yellow combo
Agil/Stam in red

Agility/stam is very close to dodge/stam in terms of survivability too. Dodge is better for pure avoidance but agility gives you armor and crit too. Generally if you don’t have different gear sets then you should have chasing EH first and foremost. For that pure stam gems are your best bet where you can afford them.