How to improve my survivability ? (~T7 gear)

[Zahia]

I'm new here and I'm desesperatly looking for advice for how to improve my gear with my dk tank. This character war 80 for a few month and I was pretty happy with my gear but I stop playing her, and when I took her again she had lost about 1,5k hp due to stamina nerfs.

I'm now 27k hp unbuff, about 20% parry and 20% dodge. I miss a few points in defense but I'm capped as soon as I enter combat thanks to my sigil.
Here is my armory : The World of Warcraft Armory (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Culte+de+la+Rive+noire&n=Egesippe)

My problem is : I tried once to tank H ToC and it was a complete failure. I took so much damage the healer couldn't stop healing me to top the others. (we didn't kill the first boss). Since that I don't dare tanking anything else than heroics or naxx 10, but there isn't that much items I need in these instances to improve my gear (only 3-4 items)

How can I improve my gear to access higher content ? Should I change my weapon enchant to gain 2% stamina and have more defense ? Should I completely regem my gear ?

Thanks for your help, I really don't know what I should change in my gear to improve my survivability.

PS : this character is an alt and I don't want to gem his blue/~T7 gear with epic gems, unless it is absolutely necessary.

[Hurmeli]

Seeing as your gear doesn't really have that much gems to begin with... but later on you should gem for stamina. You're already crit immune for heroics as the limit for that is 535 and you're above it. Also if you feel you're low on health you can slap the +30 stam pvp shoulder enchant and +40 stam to your bracers.

You're at lower end of the gear, but I wouldn't have any trouble healing you in HC ToC. Some of the boss combinations may simply be bit harsh if dps / tank does not move from poison etc.

The normal ToC also has plenty of upgrade for you so why not do that some more. Do other heroics to get the emblems of conquest gear. As someone pointed out a while back, you'll need several hundred emblems before you run out of things to upgrade.

[20x]

I would not gem for parry. According to all the reading I have done it is a wasted stat for Dk's. Slotting for Dodge is a lot better. I also noticed that your defense is 539. To be un-crittable you need 535 for Normal heroics (e.g. Nexus, Violet Hold, etc.) and 540 for raids (e.g. 10 man naxx, 10 man Uldar, 25 man Naxx, etc.). I would change your Weapon rune to Rune of the Stone Skinned Gargoyle. Those changes should help out a bit I would think.

[Lightshard]

First of all, get the Conquest Badge gear from some heroics. These 226 pieces are massive upgrades, especially the chestpiece. Get rid of your parry gems, and go for Defence / Stamina or Agility/Stamina, if not a pure stamina gem. Try throwing a 40 Stamina enchant on your bracers, or get better bracers and do that.

Other than that, its just general gear. The conquest gear will make it so you will not have problems in heroics anymore. Better yet, accumulate some Triumphs from the heroic daily and use those for new shoulders or such.

Hope this helps!
-Lightshard

[Zahia]

Thank you for you answers. I make a few changes you suggested and tried ToC H.
First we had shaman + rogue + war and outch! we wiped 3 time. The dps couldn't kill the shaman before all my cds were gone and the healer were overwhelmed.
Then we just reset the instance and we had new bosses and it was pretty easy. Didn't know we could do that but it help a lot :)