Gear Sets and Where to Use Them

[Zurena]

In looking at Halandir's awesome BiS list for Prot Warriors he has a quote that says something along the lines of "...I've found many tanks to be more reluctant to swap out gear per encounter than they should."

I know that I fit in that category as I'm still trying to understand gear sets. Here are some of my guesses as to what set/focus would be needed for the ToC fights:

Northrend beasts - Avoidance
Jaraxxus - Enough hit/expertise to make sure the interrupts land but other than that?? (And I don't know about the adds tank)
Faction Champions - PvP if you have it
Twin Valkyr's - EH
Anub - MT - Threat for the freezing slash, Avoidance for the adds tank(s)

Am I going in the right general direction? Is this off? What sort of guidelines do you use for which type gear you use for a particular fight?

[Stompya]

you got it wrong on NRB and Twins, its the other way around, you need EH for beasts and avoidance will help you against the dual-wield on twins.

To be honest, your safest bet in ToC is EH all the way, unless you are tanking anub's adds in heroic mode, with an unhittable set.

[krc]

Use EH for fights which will kill you through magic damage or physical burst (which is most). Avoidance for the few bosses that will kill you through consistent melee damage or avoidable debuffs. Threat for threat intensive encounters or encounters you out gear. And block for trash or light hitting adds. That's a quick summary although you can go much more in detail.

Northrend Beasts are in no way avoidance, because the only things that will kill you is Gormok's melee, Impale, bleed or Icehowl's Headbut. Both of those are unavoidable and will burst you down with in a few seconds unless you have quite a bit of EH, making EH the only thing that will save you.

Jaraxxus it's pretty irrelevant which gear set you use, you could probably tank him naked.

Faction Champs pvp gear isn't really that useful, probably better to just put on some dps gear because of the armor mechanic of the melee.

Twin Valkyr's Also kind of irrelevant which gear set you use, might as well use EH to keep it safe.

Anub EH because like Northrend Beasts the only thing that will kill you is unavoidable. Adds use a 101.6% total dodge, parry, block and miss set.

[Rukrow]

i use my EH set but switch out bracers/boots/weapon/grim troll for hit raiting for threat.

Twins i use a DPS items with armorpen/crit use a slow 1 hander but remain crit capped.

Anub block set

I wont go 100% EH untill ICC again because atm TogC is a joke

Heroic/normal both insanity

[vine]

I gear a little differently than you.

Beasts: +Armour
Jaraxxus: +HP
FC: +Hit (around 400)
Twins: +Armour (there is magic damage, but 80% is still physical)
Anub: +Armour (add tank)

Armour is how I like to gear now, it reduces a lot of incoming damage.

[krc]

Why use armor over a higher amount of EH of stamina, they are very similar in keeping you alive although armor is slightly better for physical damage the more un mitigable damage there is in the burst of damage that will kill you the more armor you points you need to keep up with each point of stamina.

[vine]

Why use armor over a higher amount of EH of stamina, they are very similar in keeping you alive although armor is slightly better for physical damage the more un mitigable damage there is in the burst of damage that will kill you the more armor you points you need to keep up with each point of stamina.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/5...ve-health.html

[krc]

That still wouldn't really justify using a lower amount of EH from armor over using a higher amount of EH you could be getting from stamina. I'm not saying that armors bad, I love armor but there is just no point in only going after armor with out considering stamina especially how much it's value gets hindered through magic damage.

[vine]

What are you talking about krc? Are you thinking that I have 0 stamina and 40k armour? All I'm swapping is ~2k health for 2k more armour, which, according to Satorri's guide is more effective damage mitigation for my HP pool.

I'm not dying to any of the big hits, so increased stamina is wasted. The logical step is to then reduce the average incoming damage via armour.

[krc]

Oh then I misunderstood you, I thought you were saying that you were trying to add armor no matter the correlation to stamina it has. Then yeah you are doing the smart thing because like you said the more health you have the more valuable the armor becomes.