Gemming: survival or threat?

This problem has troubled me for a long time. My belief is normally tanks should gem for stamina and/or avoidance, unless you are already outgeared for the contents you are tanking.

However, somehow all of my guild's geared warrior tanks like to gem for threat (hit & expertise). (My main is a hunter and my alt is a tankadin/healadin.) We are a medium level guild that cleared normal ToC 25 and 4/5 ToGC 10. Therefore, it's not the case that the tanks are overgeared for everything, especially we have the new ICC raid now. I talked to one of the tanks. He said maintaining high level of threat continuously is vital to the raid, and the small amount of avoidance from switching the gems is not worth it.

What do you think? Should I insist? Or is my concept about gemming wrong?

If you are using a proper rotation you shouldn't be having threat problems which makes there no need to gem for threat, continue gemming for stamina.

Copied from the Warrior Tanking Best in Slot guide

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Blue Socket

EH - Solid Majestic Zircon: For a pure EH set, unless you have a stamina socket bonus you'll want to put this gem in every possible location (don't forget to include one red gem in your EH set for your meta to work).
AV - Enduring Eye of Zul or Regal Dreadstone

Red Socket

EH - Solid Majestic Zircon: again, use this unless there's a stamina socket bonus (in which case you can substitute a gem that matches the socket color and gives you 15 stamina + dodge or defense or whatever)
AV - Subtle Cardinal Ruby, Stalwart Ametrine, or Regal Dreadstone. The parry gems aren't going to get you anywhere.

Yellow Socket

EH - Solid Majestic Zircon: yet again, use this unless there's a stamina socket bonus (in which case you can substitute a gem that matches the socket color and gives you 15 stamina + dodge or defense or whatever)
AV - Thick King's Amber is the best, followed by Stalwart Ametrine and Enduring Eye of Zul.

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Are these what everyone gemming for ICC? Is there any particular reason/situation for putting in a few +hit/expertise gems?

Follow up question: any suggestions that how I can convince our guild's tanks to gem for survival, without causing drama??? One of the problem is currently my main is a hunter (though my pally was the maintank of my old guild during TBC).

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What do you think? Should I insist? Or is my concept about gemming wrong?

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Need more info :confused:

Are your healers having problems keeping the tanks up? Are your healers having no trouble keeping the tanks up but are sacrificing healing the rest of the raid to do so? Are any of your of your dps complaining that they have to hold back dps to not grab aggro?

The answers to those questions will tell you if there is a reason to ask for a re-gem for survival or if they made the right call to gem for threat. If neither is a problem, then it will be up to you as the (I assume) Raid Leader to decide whether or not it is appropriate to dictate gemming decisions. In hard core guilds I'd expect that to be fine, but in a more casual guild it would likely cause drama. Others can tell you what works for them in *their* guild, but only you know the players in *your* guild well enough to know how that will fly :)

EDIT: In answer to your follow up question - if the warrior tanks are difficult to keep up, especially compared to other tanks in your guild, then this would be a convincing argument for them to re-gem (raid survival at stake). However, what I said about knowing your guild still holds true and from your progression, it seems like survival hasn't been a problem. If keeping them up isn't a problem and forcing a re-gem will likely cause drama, then why do you feel it is important for them to re-gem?

My oppinion:
I've tanked whole content pretty much from AnubRekhan to Anubarac heroic, and including 4 new bosses. During whole this time I never had problem with gemming following basic principle

Blue = sta
Yellow = def/sta

Only difference comes at the place of red gem slot where you can pick either dodge/sta or exp/sta rule of thumb is "if your expertise is above 35-40, gem for dodge". I've experimented a bit with hit/sta gems for yellow slots but defense gives much much more.

And yes I dislike pure stamina stackers since tanking bonuses are imba and people are wasting valuable points by not following gem bonuses.

I agree with your tank the gemming of gear shouldn't be making or breaking a medium level guilds success or failure and IMO its the tanks call.

He may be dealing with retard DPS which given all your tanks are doing it sort of sounds like HOUSTON WE HAVE HAVE A PROBLEM.
I think its clear they are more worried about the DPS than the little extra healing being covered by your healers.

If you are going to insist he gem the way you want the if he has issues with retard DPS are you going to insist on DPS stuff with them????

I think before I did anything I would be asking more questions about who the tanks are having problems with.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm probably biased about the threat issue. Being a hunter, I have no threat problem with any tanks I've met as I can Feign Death and Misdirect (On the other hand, for standing fights, I can pull aggro from any tanks if I want to). So far only our warlock guild leader consistently complains of tanks' threat. Maybe this is the reason why all of them gemmed for threat? Idk. Not sure about if anyone else find threat a problem. I'll ask later.....

I was fine with this during ToC 10 and 25 first 4 bosses, as those are trivial contents. However, for 25-man Anub and ToGC 10, tanks' death were not uncommon. Not to mention our ICC 10 last week. That's why I would like to review this issue with our tanks. I'm only the hunter class leader, so I will not and cannot order our tanks what to do. But as long as some changes can help us to wipe less and kill more, I would like to convince them to make the changes.

Personally, I don't subscribe to pure defensive gemming. If I want to match a yellow or red socket bonus, I would often do it with a hit+stam or expertise+stam (depending also on the armour piece itself). I don't always try to match bonuses though, if it's not stam then I'll probably just ignore the bonus and socket stam. That's a personal preference, and I think provided your tanks are fairly knowledgeable, there's no harm in them having their own preferences.

It's easy to get caught up in micro detail, but chances are that if your tanks are dying there are going to be more factors involved than just gemming choice. Similarly, threat problems are as likely to be skill/technique as stat based. That said, good gemming can certainly make a significant difference in performance. One of the biggest things that someone's gemming can indicate is how well they understand their class and stat requirements. For example, if I see a DPS toon with 95% red gems and 1 nightmare tear (to activate relentless meta), or someone that has socketed to reach an exact hit/expertise cap, I get a very positive impression. If I saw a tank socketing pure expertise/hit or orange gems, rather than stam+x, then I'd be concerned and start asking more questions.

Have a chat with the Healing officer and see what he thinks. I think you were well within your rights to bring up gemming as a concern, but the people who need to make this call are your healers, tanks and RL.

There might also be a middle ground - *generally* only one tank needs to have huge threat. The second and/or third tank are usually off-tanking or are part of a taunt rotation. You could suggest that one tank stay geared for threat and the others gear for survival.

I geared for threat during ToC as well, due to an out of control lock and two mages. Keep in mind it's situational - the only problem areas were the first few seconds of a fight and a few fights like Icehowl if I got a bad string of knock back, head butt and frozen breath. I let my healers know in advance and I checked with them regularly to see if I was hard to heal (I'd switch back if there was a problem). They reported no noticeable difference. Unless your tanks are doing something extreme, gemming will provide an *edge* and shouldn't make or break a fight. Since starting ICC I've re-gemmed for a little more survivability and less threat - Marrowgar keeps overzealous dps in line for me :p

Thanks again. These are some good advices! I'll see what I can do.

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Originally Posted by swelt

Personally, I don't subscribe to pure defensive gemming. If I want to match a yellow or red socket bonus, I would often do it with a hit+stam or expertise+stam (depending also on the armour piece itself). I don't always try to match bonuses though, if it's not stam then I'll probably just ignore the bonus and socket stam. That's a personal preference, and I think provided your tanks are fairly knowledgeable, there's no harm in them having their own preferences.

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Pretty much my exact gemming preferences. Unless he's completely ignoring Stam on gems it's hard for there to be a HUGE survivability gap, and if a tank has a few little boosts to threat in their gems it can only help, but if they're having large threat issues the gems aren't solving it for them either (You're talking about intelligent gemming swaying maybe 1% hit, 2-3 expertise, 500 hp, all plus or minus on an entire set of gear depending on what they're gemming for. These are not significant in either direction honestly).

As long as every gem slot has stamina in it, he's probably fine (As in, at least a hybrid gem IE: EXp/Sta, Hit/Sta, Def/Sta, etc).