Protection warrior needs advice

[Seltis]

Hello, I have been a protection warrior since level 20, but only have limited raiding experience in Wrath. For the most part I just run heroics. I am looking to start doing raids on a more consistent basis and would like to know what I can do gear/gem/enchant/specc wise to help smooth the transition.

Here's my armory:The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks in advance

[Thaak]

To be honest, you have no glaring problems, and very few things to even nitpick.

1)Switch the rest of your gems to epic gems.
2)Weapon Enchant-I recommend Blood Draining
3)Drop Glyph of Revenge in favor of Glyph of Devastate
4)Level up your Mining/BS-You're missing out on a free 120 stam(60 from mining, then 60 more assuming 2 30 stam gems in the BS sockets)
5)I would switch the cloak enchant for the +225 armor one as its a bit better for EH
6)Rock on!

If I was short a tank for a raid, I'd take you along.

[Breadfast]

To be honest, you have no glaring problems, and very few things to even nitpick.

Agree.

Professions would be the most obvious, as that becomes a HUGE upgrade. Max your professions for a large easy stat boost.

[Aggathon]

Honestly you don't really need to be gemming defense still. I'd say go ahead and change the defense gems to stam.

[Tendo]

Honestly you don't really need to be gemming defense still. I'd say go ahead and change the defense gems to stam.

Agreed. My math might be wrong, but I think you're safe to lose the +16 def cloak chant for armor, or the two 10 def 15 stam for straight epic stam (30).

Once i got the money from mining (selling ore and saving all gems, I saved up about 3k gold), I farmed 35 Large Fangs (took FOREVER but I suggest the Darkmist Spiders in Duskwallow Marsh) and followed the JC leveling guide found on Wowwiki (Note: don't use their mats list, instead find what mats you need from the recipes listed below. They say you need mats that you don't). After powering out JC in one day, I was able to make up for that 60 stam from Toughness with the Monarch Crab trinket and Dragon's Eye gems. Not sure if that's something you want to spend the time and money on, but the benefits were a big tradeoff for me. Trouble is, now I have to pimp out my JC to make gold, it's not as easy as tossing thousands of stacks of Saronite Ore into the AH!

[Thaak]

At the level of content he is talking about the extra defense isn't bad at all. He stated he mainly does heroics and wants to start moving into raiding. For heroics and entry level raiding defense is a great stat because avoidance is still very powerful(not to mention block) and there is little to no chance of a two shot scenario, especially when he is already at 34k+ unbuffed.

IF he did want to drop defense, which i'm not advocating at this point, he could lose ~49 points of defense rating. He has the res patch on his shoulder, so that lowers crit immunity to 535 for raids making him 11 points over. 11x4.89= ~49 defense rating.

[Aggathon]

At the level of content he is talking about the extra defense isn't bad at all. He stated he mainly does heroics and wants to start moving into raiding. For heroics and entry level raiding defense is a great stat because avoidance is still very powerful(not to mention block) and there is little to no chance of a two shot scenario, especially when he is already at 34k+ unbuffed.

IF he did want to drop defense, which i'm not advocating at this point, he could lose ~49 points of defense rating. He has the res patch on his shoulder, so that lowers crit immunity to 535 for raids making him 11 points over. 11x4.89= ~49 defense rating.

Actually avoidance pretty much blows and if he's wanting to look into getting into raiding tanking more steady damage but being more healable then increased EHP will be much preferred. Also my guess is that he'll want to tank the puggable content such as Ony, ToC25, VoA, etc. He'll get asked to go tank again and again the more hps he has. While it may seem kind of a weird way to look at a tank, frankly for WotLK it is true.

You can do all kinds of calculations to show how avoidance is much less damage taken over time than the stam makes up for or something, but the fact of the matter is that tanks don't slowly die over the course of a fight, they die in fast situations where they just need to be able to take a lot of damage to the face. You can say "oh there's only a 3% chance he'll be hit 4 times in a row" but when a boss hits 200 times in a fight its gonna happen.

Edit: if he wants to stick to heroics then he could gem for hit/expertise or something, incoming damage is laughable as long as you're uncrittable.

Edit2: Further more if you're getting into content and not outgearing it then you want stam because the easiest way to wipe is a tank death. *begins foaming at the mouth*

[Thaak]

Actually avoidance pretty much blows and if he's wanting to look into getting into raiding tanking more steady damage but being more healable then increased EHP will be much preferred. Also my guess is that he'll want to tank the puggable content such as Ony, ToC25, VoA, etc. He'll get asked to go tank again and again the more hps he has. While it may seem kind of a weird way to look at a tank, frankly for WotLK it is true.

You can do all kinds of calculations to show how avoidance is much less damage taken over time than the stam makes up for or something, but the fact of the matter is that tanks don't slowly die over the course of a fight, they die in fast situations where they just need to be able to take a lot of damage to the face. You can say "oh there's only a 3% chance he'll be hit 4 times in a row" but when a boss hits 200 times in a fight its gonna happen.

Edit: if he wants to stick to heroics then he could gem for hit/expertise or something, incoming damage is laughable as long as you're uncrittable.

Edit2: Further more if you're getting into content and not outgearing it then you want stam because the easiest way to wipe is a tank death. *begins foaming at the mouth*

He said he wants to move into raiding, I took that to mean he wants to move into entry level raiding, not start out day one tanking ToC25. Yes I agree for higher tier raids you can't beat EH. If you look at my progression gear its all gemmed stam because i understand that. However I went off the assumption that "start doing raids" meant Naxx or possibly U10, not Gormok Heroic25. For Naxx and U10 34k unbuffed is MORE than enough as that should throw him 40k+ buffed. If he is planning on jumping straight into the big shoe raids, then sure, I'll give you he should go for stam, but if what I assumed about "start doing raids" meant is correct, then I stick by what I said.

[Seltis]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, it's much appreciated. I am in the process of levelling up my proffs, should have that done in the next day or two.

And yes, by starting to raid I mean uld10/naxx25 ish. Tanking hard modes is definitely something I want to end up doing, but for the moment 10 mans will have to suffice.

If anyone else sees something else I could work on, please let me know.

Thanks again.