Warrior Tank - a couple qestions

Hey all, I had a few questions regarding my gear/spec/gemming...pretty much just the general "how am I doing" questions. I've read many tanking posts and believe I know the correct stat priorities so I won't go into that. Here is the URL for my character

us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blades-edge/marder/simple

With the current gear, gems and reforging, I'm sitting at:
133k health
11.61% dodge
14.45% parry
46.89% block

I guess my main couple of questions would be about my current spec, if you think i'm about ready for raids and my gems. I've been putting +40 mastery gems in yellows, +60 stam in blues, and +20parry/20 mastery in reds.

Any comments, suggestions or criticism that you guys have would be greatly appreciated, just be gentle. Thanks everyone!

Overall it looks quit good for someone asking here. :) Most chars look much worse than you.

Talents: Deep Wounds is better than Cruelty. Move that point over. If you think that you can go without one of the following talents more them over to Deep Wounds and after that to Cruelty, if you want to increase single target threat, further. If you think, that you want to have more utility or more AoE threat, it's ok to not switch them. You should have enough threat even with your spec. (I've done most of the raids with a very utility oriented spec and had no problems.):
- Gag Order (the silence is not working on bosses, anyway)
- Improved Revenge (if you remove it, remove Revenge fromm your rotation, too, as long as you have enough rage for anything else)
- Thunderstruck

Glyphs:
- If you go for Thunderstruck a shortened CD on Shockwave does not do anything good for you. Heroic Throw or Shieldwall (depending on the encounter) may be better use of the slot.
- You probably don't need the glyphs for Battle and Commanding Shout in raids. In most cases both buffs should be applied by other people and especially for Battle Shout people should be near enough to get it, anyway. The duration increas is meaningless since you probably want to use it for more rage, anyway.
- Anyway, you should take at least the Minor Glyph for the empty slot. Good Minor Glyphs are: Intimidating Shout, Demo Shout and Berserker, if you can use a little bit more rage sometimes.

Gems:
For non-heroic raids you don't need to gem for stam. So you probably get more if you go for stam/mastery instead of stam gems in blue slots. If you feel unconfortable with the idea of reducing your HP, keep those gems and switch over to mastery with item-upgrades.

Gear:
Try to get the blacksmith epic shield. It's quite good and not extremely expensive. Especially since you are a blacksmith. Some other items can be upgraded, too, but that's less important.

Overall you look fine to start raids.

Thanks Katzazi! I've been reading up on everything as much as I can to try to learn as much as possible. I figured I was doing everything decent but this is my first tank (and I've only been tanking since Cata) so I just wanted to double check everything.

The regemming the blue gems really was my biggest question so I'm glad that you helped clear those things up for me.

The epic shield is actually next on my list of items to make through BS, just waiting on the orb. I made the belt first because I felt it was the better upgrade at the time.

Once I get off work I'll go look at my spec and see what I should change around from your suggestions. I didn't even think about some of those other glyphs so thanks for putting that part in there.

Is my parry and dodge numbers about where they should be? From what I read that should be about the right position for them then just gear/reforge/gem to keep the mastery going up. Oh and I forgot to ask if anyone knew if there was a number where it's pointless to go for mastery. I'm sure that even if there is, I'm far from it but just want to know if I should be shooting for a certain number.
Thanks again for the quick feedback.

theres still a little bit too much 333 gear... so it might be a bit touch and go... going to heroics ideally you want to be as fully kitted out in as much 346 gear as you can.

ditch the dps ring for a tank ring. elementium moebius band is avail on AH.
get the JP chest asap. dont waste money on the crafted one. those two gem slots and stat upgrades will be a big boost.

for your range slot, you can definitely do a bit better. theres a quest range from twilight iirc thats not bad. if not, just keep running VP for the str/ stam one.

i dont know what other trinkets you have in your bag, but ideally you want to get them all to mix and match appropriate i.e. 346 finger, porcelain crab, leaden despair, 333 impetuous query and of course, the mirror. whatever you do, run those TB dailies every chance you get.

Yeah, that's why I was a little hesitant to start trying to tank for raids. Wasn't sure if the gear level that I had was good enough. I am sitting at an average item level of 344 but I'm sure it's the throwing weapon that's killing me, I just can't get the gun in VP to drop to save my life.

I'm working on my Ramkahen rep to get the ring from them (expertise/mastery) until I can save up the money to get the Moebius band made for me.
I actually just finished running a heroic Deadmines and that gave me the JP that I needed to buy the chest piece, it was the next on my list of upgrades. And while we were in there the Pauldrons of Edward the Odd dropped and my guild let me pick those up.

Besides those I hit exalted with Hyjal and go the epic cloak from there. I also regemmed my blues to mastery/stam so now, with those changes, I am sitting at:
135k Health
11.66% Dodge
14.14% Parry
49.98% Block

I didn't have time tonight to try to revamp my spec or glyphs so I guess I will do that tomorrow. I saw how regemming the straight stam into stam/mastery didn't seem to affect the run too much with my health dropping to bad.

Thanks for all the info and suggestions, it all is helping!

You've got to the "magic number" of block and avoidance for warriors. That's 72.4% combined dodge+parry+block. You actually are at 76.04% without buffs. At this number you can use SB to get you unhittable while it is up. But I guess you know that already.

There is a theoretical cap on mastery, but it is not reachable in current gear and even if it was, you would be far away from it. It's when you can cover the complete hit-table with dodge+patty+dodge. Then it's better to go for more avoidance with upgrades.

There is also content where you may want to switch over to more Stamina. But it's only relevant for heroic raids. Before heroic raids the stamina of your gear and buffs should be enough. Especially when your and your healers gear is relatively low, mastery is much better to help them to keep you up in the normal raids. However it is a good idea to get some stamina trinkets so you can switch them in and out when you think more stamina would be helpfull. As long as you don't drop below the "magic number" try out what helps you the most for each encounter.


Anyway: Yes, your gear can be improved even before entering raids. You have some "low level" items. But you will get upgrades soon (and are even getting them while this thread is up). So this "problem" will be fixed "soon". Maybe before your first raid starts, anyway. And I see many tanks entering raids who may have a higher overall item-level but did not reforge, gem or enchant their items. Or they did it but went for completely wrong stats. This leads to much lower values of the "important" stats. Even while your item-level is lower you should be fine to start raiding. You will not be able to down end bosses with your gear but that's not what I guess you are trying to do.

P.S.: For the ranged slot every 346 item will be an upgrade. So take one, even if it has agi as long as you don't get the right one. We all had no other option than to use those before 4.0.6, because there was just no tanking-weapon.

Edit: You are a BS: don't forget to put the additional gem slots on wrists and hands and use full mastery gems there.

good alternate ranged weapon would be the trown one from HoO (it has hit on it, so you'll get a minor tanking stat). Also try to look for boe 333 bow from AH (it's random instance drop, i use it on my hunter). Or you can do some arenas (after 4 wins you will have enough points to get the trown wep with str. reforge some crit to mastery and voila you have cool ranged slot wep, i did so early in cata and was using it till epic bow with mastery/crit dropped from atramedes)

Imo you should also try to reforge some parry to mastery (mb around 100 raiting, or even more if you'll reforge dodge to mastery on your darkmoon trinket).