Gear suggestion needed.

[JayDee81]

Hello everyone,

I've been following this forum for a while and also the awesome site of Veneretio, TankingTips.com, basically since my Warrior hit 70 a few weeks back to gear up for heroics and Kara.

It was really important for me to read around here how many heroic trash pulls are harder than most of the Kara trash, because when I started trying heroics after I had most of the drops I wanted from non-heroics and got that "oh, a blue tank...." and people leaving after the first wipe or sometimes before the first pull, I got pretty turned down on tanking for a little while.

I feel I have developed pretty well since then, was actually able to finish a couple of heroics and just yesterday finally managed to MT Prince in our third Kara run. I really enjoy tanking again and we have been flying through Kara trash with my group of about 50% Kara newbies (like me) and 50% experienced people gearing their alts.

Today I felt the need to register to get some tips/suggestions on how to develop further, ie on what to spend my honour/badges.

My armory profile is here.

Prince dropped [item]Helm of the Fallen Defender[/item] yesterday. I was actually planning to go for the DPS Helm, because sometimes I enjoy respeccing arms/fury during the week and it's not an upgrade to my googles. My RL suggested to get the tank version and to be able to enjoy the 2-set bonus when the next part drops. What do you think?

He also talked me into getting Battlemaster on my [item]King's Defender[/item], when I was planning to go for Mongoose, which would give me much needed avoidence, especially at my gear level. Anyway, I am going to get Mongoose for my [item]The Sun Eater[/item].
So, what do you guys think I should go for, considering I'll be doing Kara & heroics for quite a while to come? Please consider only gear from badges and honour if needed, I don't have time for Arena currently and am not Exalted with Aldor.

Thanks a lot for any input!

Cheers,
JD

EDIT1: How do I get the item links to work right?

EDIT2: Right now my armory might not show my [item]King's Defender[/item] & [item]Azure-Shield of Coldarra[/item] because I'm questing with DW.

Edit3: Would the [item]Timewarden's Leggings[/item] be a big upgrade? Because I have the rep...

[Tatt]

Armory is not working well for me from work, but I would say get your badges for legs for the biggest upgrade to your gear, if you are doing kara regularly it should not take that long. Get exalted with aldor so you can get the better shoulder glyph. If you can find a trinket to replace adamantite figurine, maybe moroes watch or another stam trinket like violet badge or argussian compass. That and pray nightbane drops his chest for you, I've been waiting for mine for too long Otherwise looks good, think you will need more stam and armor if you want to get any farther than kara.

My 2 cents anyway

[Nikya]

Since you're an Engineer, I would pick the tanking helm with the token. That is because the DPS goggles are better than the DPS T4 Helm. While the same holds true for the tanking goggles vs. the tanking helm, the T4 tanking helm has a meta socket and 39 BV, which equals lots of shield slam fun come patch 2.4.

All the pieces of badge gear that came out in 2.3 would be upgrades for you. I would say that the bracers or belt would be the biggest upgrade for you, though the legs, cloak, and pally chest are all very good as well. And yes, get the Timewarden's Leggings; they're much better than what you're using.

[JayDee81]

Hey, thanks for the replies!

I adopted the idea that the badge pants would be the most visable upgrade after chatting a bit in the shoutbox and reading your comments.
Anyway, I decided to get [item]Timewarden's Leggings[/item] prior to our Kara run yesterday and pack it with +12 Stam, because I really don't care for virtual money and figured if it would just help my raid/guild that tiny little extra bit, then it would be worth it.

This was my 4th Kara attempt (all with the same raid/guild) and this time we pretty much flew through to prince, except for 2 or 3 stupid wipes at Aran. We wiped 3-4 times at prince last weekend and then 3-4 people felt like giving up/they didn't have any more time, so we went in the next day with 3-4 people from the guild and filled the other spots with well equipt randoms and friends. That time we first tried prince.

Today again, we tried him 4 times and didn't succeed. I would've been up to a couple more tries, but same story as before, people wanting to go party or getting tired. 3/4 tries we got into phase 3, the remaining one failing really stupid just beginning of phase 2 because of infernals.

Do you think my gear should be good enough to tank prince with a similar equiped group (mixed kara/badges/quest gear)? All three wipes in phase 3 were caused by multiple crushes in a row.
I even took a screeny of the combat log after the first wipe, really hilarious;

Prince Malchezaar Melee You 2868 (Crushing)
[You] Shield Block fades
Prince Malchezaar Melee You 4807 (Crushing)
Prince Malchezaar Melee You 6473 (Crushing)
[You] die

I was a bit confused he crushed me with Shield Block up (at least it seems?), allthough for pretty low damage. Is this a normal occurance? I have never really looked at combat logs before...

It seems at our current stage I really do not need to worry too much about dps pulling aggro, so I was really concentrating 110% on keeping shield block up. I know this would only push 2 crushes within 5 secs off the table, but how fast does he actually hit? The other 2 wipes in phase 3 were similar, allthough not as extreme, but anyway always involving crushing blows.

My HP was slightly over 19k fully buffed, maybe I lack avoidance? Or we were just unlucky? Or our heal should push to overheal even more? We really didn't have any mana problems, the fights were going really well (apart from the dps warri always in the dust...), until I was dead from one second to the next.

Anyway, this kinda went a lot into boss encounter strategy I guess and I was planning to ask about gear. If anybody has a suggestion to the above I'd be happy anyways.

Everybody (in this thread and shoutbox) has been suggesting the badge tanking pants as the next major upgrade, but today [item]Wrynn Dynasty Greaves[/item] dropped for me (and also [item]Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch[/item] dropped, I was lucky today). Would you still consider the badge pants the best thing to do? I am at 56 badges, so it's really not a long way to go. Also, would you suggest putting all +12 stam in the greaves or maybe mix some dodge & def to get socket bonus? I mean +6 stam is much better than most other socket bonuses and I a lot of people are saying at Karazhan progression level avoidance is probably still worth more than later on.

Really looking for input, thanks to everybody for the help!

Cheers,
JD

EDIT1: Ok I made all +12 Stam because everything else sucked. I also got +40 Stam / +12 Agi, allthough it hardly gives me a huge boost of Timewardens, except for a bit more than 200 Armor & 1% Avoidance. Anyway, We are going to try prince again tonight and I want to maximize my possibilities as much as possible.
Any ideas what else could help?

[Kuon]

Your biggest upgrades would probably come from either picking up [item]Bonefist Gauntlets[/item] or [item]Iron-tusk Girdle[/item]. Those are the two I would pick up first since your other possible badge replacements are pretty decent.

For you neck I'd would swap it out for [item]Strength of the Untamed[/item] which you can get at Revered with Cenarion Expedition.

For your shoulders I would either PVP until you get S1 shoulders or just run heroic Sethekk Halls for [item]Spaulders of Dementia[/item], you'll probably get them on the first try like I did. ^_^

I would also PVP to replace your shield with the S1 shield. It has a lot more hp and armor on it.

These would all be solid avoidance and in the case of the belt / gaunts / shoulders / shield EH upgrades for you as well.

Prince is a bitch of a fight in Phase 3, so potting up when you're trying to kill him for the first time is not a bad idea. [item]Ironshield Potion[/item] or even [item]Greater Stoneshield Potion[/item] are a nice boost in armor for when he hits Phase 3.

Also in Phase 3 I don't hesitate at all to pop healthstones, Shield Wall, or Last Stand when low hp and I feel heals might not land soon enough.

Oh and one final thought. I would use Suneater with a Mongoose enchant to tank Prince if you feel threat isn't a problem. Its a much better avoidance weapon than King's Defender.

[Dunmail]

COT Legs are a cheap way of stacking stam, especially if curator is being tight, with 2 badge options depending when patch 2.4 lands. They make a massive difference as you probably noticed, especially with the gems and patches.

The Shoulders mentioned above are also a decent upgrade, and do drop easily. on 3 runs recently I've seen them twice, just took me 2 runs on my warrior to get them.