Tanking Normal 5mans, in T5 Gear.

Lately I've been running some 5mans with some of my core friends that have been leveling new characters to 70. It wasn't long ago that I completely dreaded the idea of tanking a normal 5man, knowing the fact that if theres any competent dps player they are gonna rip agro from me right away since I'm going to be rage starved wearing T5 gear with about 50+% avoidance. I took this as an opportunity to challenge myself.

I started by optimizing my gear. In reality with a solid healer, I could have tanked these instances with my DPS plate on. Afterall, in my dps gear i still have over 15k armor and 10.5kish hp. That probably blows away whatever I had when I first hit 70. But I decided I wanted to stick with *mostly* tank gear, to make my healers job easy and so that I could multitank entire groups without much risk of dying.

I dropped a few health and avoidance pieces for threat gear. Threw on the serpentshrine shuriken (hit, crit), romulos vial (hit), a couple pure block value pieces, PVP legs (high armor, crit, hit). And the most important piece, a [item]Talon of Azshara[/item] in my main hand, enchanted with Executioner. This weapon makes an amazing low rage threat weapon. Even though it doesn't have stamina, the armor/agility/hit/ap make for good tanking stats.

One important thing to note in running these normal 5mans in mostly tank gear, is that decreasing your incoming damage greatly lowers the amount of heals you need, thus reducing the amount of healing agro you have overcome to AoE tank. The key is getting your dps to assist train correctly so you know where to prioritize your threat. A thunderclap and a devastate per mob will easily hold agro over a healer if you don't take much damage.

The stats I'm running in this 5man tank set are as follows:

13.9k hp
16.7k armor
17% dodge
16% parry
37% block
493 defense
551 SBV

798 AP
74 hit
14.97% crit
15 expertise

Granted, my "threat stats" are lower then what a lot of main tanks use in their standard raid kit, I don't like sacrificing my durability in raids to boost my threat as much. If it's actually a threat sensitive fight I'll swap a few pieces, but generally my playing well, managing my rage, and efficiently using my abilities I dont seem to ever have threat issues.

SBV is a huuuuge reduction in damage in normal 5mans, usually resulting in mobs hitting for 50 (550 blocked). These types of mobs kinda make me laugh, especially the dual wielding ones that get a miss penalty and barely tickle. Stacking block value and block rating seems to be pretty efficient for normal 5man tanking, and the side bonus is the extra SBV translates into shield slam threat.

Now the other counterpoint to managing your rage in this situation is effective use of your abilities. Besides the fact of the Talon having nice threat stats and high base dps, it's also a very slow sword making it slightly more effective for devastate. It will make the effective rage cost of heroic strike much higher, but I find it's a horrible idea to use heroic strike the low rage situations anyways. If i somehow pop above 60 rage, I'll queue it up, but to efficiently use my limited rage i have to use every GCD perfectly before ever considering Heroic Strike.

I think tanking Black Morass on normal with limited rage and still averaging 1k TPS was a good indication that what I was doing was working. It's not so much that you have to avoid being rage starved, it's more about making sure the rage you do have gets spent wisely.

And now it's time for a nap. I've been up all night doing the new dailies and farming since a good friend of mine just loaned me 5000 gold for my epic flyer, and now I'm horribly in debt.

Maybe I should hire myself out to tank normal 5mans? LoL.....

Take care and tank well, Tankspot.
~Galu