Heroic Tank, Gear is "Rank"

[Dewayne]

First off I'd like to thank all the people who take time to read and post in these forums. I've been playing WoW since its release, (as druid pvp and warrior tank) and have never seen a more precise, informative, and helpful website as this one. More than once I've wished that I had a resource like this for my healing needs.

That being said, I've "pugged" for practically my entire wow career. When you've played the game this long friends come and go. The only constant is the pug. I actually used to pug Molten Core and had BOTH bindings drop in one run. Subsequently, I had to pug the rest of it and then hopped on with another group to get all the mats for my Thunderfury. So, jokingly, I have dubbed myself the "King of Pugs".

The problem is there is no long term in pugging. I've seen a couple of wings in 25 man Naxx as tank. The problem is the raid only needs two tanks, and tanks now on my server are a dime a dozen. My gear is a hodgepodge mix between heroics and whatever I can buy/pickup.

So my question is what should I do--gearwise? I am confused as to whether I should be stacking dodge, parry, or shield block. I don't have a lot to choose from, most of it is whatever I can get my hands on. I'm not going to tell you how many times I ran H Azjol to get the trinket, or that I ran a 6 1/2 run to try to get the heroic bracers (I had 13 people in and out of that party)

Any help would be sorely appreciated. Here is my armory link:

The World of Warcraft Armory

Once again, thanks so much for the forum, this is an awesome resource to have!

[westernfox]

A couple of things I can see, looks like you're missing enchants on your bracers and cloak. For the bracers there's the new +40 stam enchant and cloak there's always +16 defense, you can also upgrade your shoulder enchants via exalted with Sons of Hodir rep.

I believe that the belt from Emblems is better than one you have (40 emblems I think) and there's also a nice dodge trinket you can get with emblems to upgrade the pocketwatch (40 emblems also if I'm not mistaken).

In the meantime why not try pugging OS and Vault (along with Naxx) as much as possible ? I know on my realm I'm always getting asked for pugs for these instances so I would assume a similar amount of raid pugging is going on with most medium/high pop realms?

As far as what you should be stacking, Dodge is the cheapest pure avoidance stat you can get (so I would suggest gemming for dodge instead of parry), I'm not suggesting gimping block (which is mitigation) however I'll leave that question up to the experts in warrior tanking (I'm a pally tank/healer and our mechanics are a bit different when it comes to block). You might also consider the defense enchant for shield instead of the stam one as it will provide some additional avoidance as well as some crit cap "buffer" for gear/gem/enchant swaps.

Lastly, personally I prefer the accuracy enchant for weapon (+25 hit/+25 crit) probably a matter of personal preference but it's worth considering.

Hope that helps.

[Crommi]

First of all, /salute on your dedication to put so much time and effort into tanking pugs.

I can understand that parry/sta gems seem like a nice choise because they're so cheap, but dodge/sta gem would offer more avoidance. Can't go wrong with expertise/sta gem either, especially since your dodge looks pretty good already.

Badge belt vs. what you have is really toss of a coin, both are good pieces of tanking gear and I'd rather spend those badges on trinket to replace good old Pocketwatch.

[blahism]

I agree with post above - if its red, go expertise & stam. If its blue, go stam. I carry 2 shields around chanted different depending on the occasion. One for mega defense, another that has more general stats (badge shield) enchanted with hit, I also forked over for the crafted tank ring and the dodge trink so i could have flexibility - especially in heroics where 535 defense is enough and i'd like to muster out more DPS/threat and get more hits to keep rage up

[Rhyseh]

I agree with the above aswell.

As a warrior there is no longer any real need to stack dodge, sure its good to have an avoidance set, but as a general tanking set expertise, hit and stam is pretty much where you should be looking to invest points, particularly when it comes to selecting enchants and gems.

I'm not saying you should ignore all other stats, the warrior class is all about balance, but with the new focus on DPS you should be looking at a few key areas before going down the avoidance/shield block path.

The way I run is that you first reach 540 defense (obviously) then build to 26 expertise, from here aim for around 190 hit then, once your hit is around the 200 mark, start balancing the two stats (I personally focus more on expertise at present but it comes down to personal preference).

Remember that 26 expertise will only push dodge's off the table, for parry's to be completely taken out of the equation you are going to need ~14% expertise (different bosses vary so carry both expertise and hit food with you to give the required stat that extra little boost).

Again do not ignore all the other stats here, balance is key with any tank, all of our stats are important its just that expertise and hit are of a higher priority than the others at this point in time.

Rhys

[Arvandor]

you can also upgrade your shoulder enchants via exalted with Sons of Hodir rep.

I was wandering around and questing in Storm Peaks to see if I could stumble upon whatever I needed to start doing to gain Sons of Hodir rep.

Instead I did some quest for Thorim and became hated with them. Wtf? Now I can't find any other related quests (I've been doing random BS for a camp just north of Thorim).

Have I boned myself? What can I do for SoH rep?

[Niian]

Nope, I believe you start of hated with them and do a long quest chain with Thorim.
Then you become neutral or some such.

[Arvandor]

Thorim has no quests for me though? What gives, is there some other chain I'm missing here? I'm pretty sure I did the entirety of the Vyrkul junk (it's what brought me to Thorim in the first place, afterall).

[Juon]

The chain to start the rep grind is at K3 "They took our men!"

[Dawlin]

Thorim has no quests for me though? What gives, is there some other chain I'm missing here? I'm pretty sure I did the entirety of the Vyrkul junk (it's what brought me to Thorim in the first place, afterall).

When you kill the Stormforged Iron Giants and Fjorn for this quest, there is an item that drops, this one. It starts the quest-chain that ends with you becoming neutral to Sons of Hodir (friendly if you're human).