[Deevious]

Hey, I've been working on my Tanking gear in Heroics for a while now. I think I've found all the best gear I can for tanking without entering raids, but I am having trouble with what stats I need to gem for and ones I don't. I've asked a fair few different people online but I get mixed answers so I thought I'd come here.

My character Deevious.

I am currently gemming for Exp and Stam but I am now being told my Parry is a little low and I should get that up. Can you please check out my profile and let me know what enchants and gems I should change and even gear if there's better gear out there to be had.

Thank you
Deev

[Magnuss]

Your gearset to start off with is admirable that is for sure. You do a nice job of maintaining your 540 defense rating and definitely have enough gear to do some quality tanking in Naxxramas. I am not sure who told you that you should gem for expertise but I would very much disagree with them. You see, in your current level of gear, with the content that you will likely be clearing with it, threat is not going to be your largest issue. Expertise plays a role in defense by reducing the chance that a boss will get a parry hasted swing on you and hurt you. Mostly however, expertise is a threat stat because it acts sort of like hit. Reduces your chance to be dodged and parried by the boss.

What you mostly want to shoot for are a few bare minimums for tanking. You need to be uncritable (which you are). You need to be able to hold threat (which unless you are trying to tank for people who significantly outgear you, you can). And you need to make sure you have enough survival stats to tank all the bosses that you are expected to tank.

This is where the disagreement with your current gear setup lies. By geming for expertise you are adding threat stats when you should really be adding survival stats. If you were to place stamina gems in your various different sockets then you would be better able to take hits from a great many bosses in the raid instances. The higher the healthpool you have, the easier it is for healers to keep you up. As you progress throughout the raid instances you will find that bosses continue to hit harder and harder and that having as much effective health as possible will go a long way for you.

I would recommend not gem'ing for anything other than stamina except for when you are trying to match beneficial socket bonuses. By beneficial bonuses I mostly mean ones with stamina or perhaps a great deal of defense rating (that might get you over the 540 cap as an example). Overall your largest challenge when tanking in raids is going to be able to survive. Naxxramas is a very easy and basic instance but when you are first entering the instance, this survival is still something you are going to be worried about. As you progress through Naxx you will pick up gear that will give you very generous amounts of survival stats naturally and give you some room to adjust your gear to be more threat oriented. I still however, would not recommend gem'ing for much more then survival unless you were actually trying to build a specific gearset (like one that capped expertise).

Hope this helps.

[Halandir]

whoever told you to get your parry rating up doesn't know what they're talking about

Your stuff looks pretty good! Be ready to be flexible though--even upgrading one piece of gear can cause you to have to swap gems / enchants around sometimes.

One awesome post on Veneretio's blog (you can read it here: Should I Gear, Gem or Enchant for Defense? - Warriors - TankingTips.com) has really helped me with seeing the comparison of the best ways to reach 540 defense while maintaining as high a health pool as possible. I'd urge you to take a look at his post.

Based on his math, I have a few suggestions for you:

1) get the 22 defense enchant on your chestpiece.

2) get the 16 defense enchant on your cloak

3) replace the two 16 defense gems in your chestpiece with 24 stam gems.

These changes will increase your stamina by 38, while raising your defense rating by 6!

[Deevious]

Thank you Magnuss and Halandir!
I'll change them right away!

EDIT: I enchanted the Cloak and Chest with defense and swapped all Expertise gems for Stamina gems.
I have 541 Def now and 31.1K HP.

What about my shield there's Crygil's Discarded Plate Panel.
Comparing the two, Crygil's has 33 more Dodge but loses 15 Defense which I would have to gem for to keep it above cap?

Worth the change or should I just keep the Royal Crest?

[Magnuss]

Keep the Royal Crest. They are very close in stats so the one that lets you not have to gem for defense is the the winner. As you gain some other pieces of gear you will get some flexibility in this so that you can wear whichever shield is overall better. Until then, try and just keep yourself stam stacked, only geming for something else when necessary.

[Deevious]

I ran Naxx 25man today with the guild. Went as DPS because I don't know the fights that well. But I came out with Shadow of the Ghoul and Fleshless Girdle.

I put a Eternal Belt Buckle on the Girdle and had to put a Thick Autumn's Glow (+16 Def) because the two items didn't have as much defense as the previous two.

[Eraser]

Hi there,
I can't see your tank gear in your armory atm, though depending on your aspirations, becoming main tank or not, tanking ulduar or not. Depends what gear you should get, from what I've been reading and my experience as being a main tank, block doesn't do squat in Ulduar. When bosses are hitting you for the large amounts that they do, being able to block for such small amounts doesn't really add up.

Gem wise, personally I gem only for stamina except in the instance that the slot bonus is being more stamina. As Halandir mentioned before Veneretio's blog is an incredibly amazing source for information, and if you're not reading it you ought to.

Mind you all of this may not apply to you, to my understand block was somewhat OK in nax. It's decent when taking alot of adds at once, and while I still wouldn't stack it I wouldn't mind it being on my gear none the less.

Sorry if I've gotten sidetracked, I hope this has helped even a lil bit. D:

[Rokbal]

Source: Magnuss [Your gearset to start off with is admirable that is for sure. You do a nice job of maintaining your 540 defense rating and definitely have enough gear to do some quality tanking in Naxxramas. I am not sure who told you that you should gem for expertise but I would very much disagree with them. You see, in your current level of gear, with the content that you will likely be clearing with it, threat is not going to be your largest issue.... ...Hope this helps.]

This is a great post.