[Culture_Jam]

Hello all -

I'm going back to tanking after spending roughly the past 6 months as a Fury Warrior. I've picked up some tank gear along the DPS path but now I need some help from the community to assess my gear/enchants/gems. **Note: I'm going to retain Fury as my other spec, so please know that I will not be carrying 2 tank specs and I probably won't have access to multiple sets of tank gear (at least not for a while) - thanks!!**

Here's my armory link (when I posted Armory still showed my DPS gear even though I am wearing prot gear in game, hopefully it updates later b/c it currently shows "last updated 9/2/09")

I know that I need to replace the legs and the waist items soon and I plan to do so by running reg ToC to get item A. As far as the waist goes, would it be better to grab the ToC waist or the H AN waist? (I'm thinking the H AN waist just for the def and dodge, but I'm not 100% sure)

Next question, my hand enchant. Based on my gear should I enc the hands for threat, EH or avoidance?

And, in general, which gems & enchants should I change?

It feels like it's been so long since I've been prot and I greatly appreciate all of the feedback and help.

-- Dork

[Eravian]

Armory is still listing your Fury spec, so I can't really look at your gear to see what to improve, but either the ToC leggings or the Bolstered Legplates in Heroic VH are nice starting tank legs, with a high defense rating, and either the ToC or AN belt would be good, depends on what you want to focus on. As for hand enchant, Armsman is really one of the best tanking enchants, giving you a tiny bit of parry (10 points) and a solid 2% Threat generation increase. Since tanking is pointless if you can't hold threat, every little bit helps.
Gem-wise, I always stick Stamina gems in blue sockets and usually Sovereign gems (Str & Stam) in red, and whatever you feel you need most in yellow slots - Defense if you're low, hit, etc. There are obviously other ways you can modify your gems depending on what you're looking for, but those are usually safe bets to start with. Bottom-line, though, for raiding make sure you have that 540 defense rating, and build from there.

[Insahnity]

Also cannot see armory, but here goes.

I'd go with the ToC Belt, when gemmed (either solid MZ or enduring EoZ) you get more stamina, which far outweighs the loss in dodge. You also get hit, which is nice. Go for Enduring EoZ if you have defense capping issues, or if you are way over Defense cap, go with solid MZ, a solid 36 stamina improvement. Incidentally, the crafted belt is the way to go if you are serious about tanking and can drop the runed orbs for it. Same goes with tanking boots.

As for legs, for a little while I dropped down from ilvl213 OS25 legs to this one just because of the potential for higher stamina and expertise, but eventially I got back to my OS25 legs.

If you have red slots, please, gem expertise or expertise/stam. Str or Str/Stam is a bad idea at your gear level. Even as a fury warrior you can appreciate hitting 26 expertise skill.

If you have yellow slots, go with def or def/stam until hit cap, and then go for hit/stam until soft cap (264)

The real gravy is making sure you get the stam trinket Black Heart from ToC. Also, if you haven't already got it, chase after Essence of Gossamer from H AN 2nd boss, much more valuable then the belt from Anub'arak.

[Culture_Jam]

Once the Armory decides to update you guys will be able to see my fledgling tank set. I definitely appreciate the feedback so far. I guess I'm primarily trying to get some concrete direction about where to spend my time looking for drops. And it's never a bad idea to open gem/enc questions up to the community. Thanks again for the feedback, hopefully armory will update soon!