nub tank needs help.

[Checazzoray]

Alright, first things first, I'm an experienced healer and dps who just recently got into tanking. while I've only been 80 on my warrior for a couple weeks now, I"ve geared up quickly, and have tanked everything successfully up to ToC 10/25. While I have seen ICC, it has been on my shaman.

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now, comparing myself to other tanks, I notice I have a bit more mitigation than others, specifically, my block rating is between 7 and 10% higher than some of the top rated tanks on my server. Also, my armor is a bit lower than a lot of other tanks I see.

That said, from my experience as a healer, the squishiest tanks I've healed have all been straight stam stackers, those who only rock +30 Stam gems. But from what I'm reading, stam and armor give more EH than avoidances, and it feels like I have to stack stam to compare to other tanks that I run.

And since I"m still new to tanking, I only have a few trinkets and rings under my belt, and no heroic ToC gear yet, and only one tank set.

that said, my main guild only raids 10 mans, and aside from the core group, most aren't even ToC 10 ready, so my gear choices are limited to getting into pugs.

So... rate my gear and is the 245 Armor trinket worth it?

[Selene]

Avoidance vs EH tanking

Avoidance if you manage to avoid attacks you take less damage, but when you get hit, you get HIT.

EH Tanking, with few exceptions you take a constant amount of damage, so no major health drops from out of no where, which happens to Avoidance Tanks when they get hit.

I think sums it up basically.


Now for the feedback.
Unless you have a source of Expertise from somewhere, you are a below the 26 cap that tanks should try to aim for.
I would suggest trying for the Black Heart from reg ToC as a Stamina Trinket. There are going to be times where Avoidance will be next to useless so you want to have EH trinkets for that, so that means also getting a Glyph from the vendors too.

Beyond those general statements I don't know about Warriors to suggest anything else.

[Checazzoray]

Just a bump, I've gotten a couple extra pieces, but no Black Heart yet. Currently saving up for my 264 cloak. I tanked ICC 10 the other day with no problems at all. Still need an upgrade to my shield though, and a couple off pieces.

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Any other comments or advice for gearing him up? I got a couple expertise gems and chants on some duplicates, so I'm just under the expertise cap.

[Güth]

I would suggest using the triumph helm instead of the one you have, and replacing the expertise glove enchant with your +Armor engineer one.

Also, after switching helms I'd recommend regemming some of your +expertise gems to +stamina. I'd also swap the Ick trinket for a stamina trinket if possible. (Ignore Gearscore, just because it's a 232 dodge trinket doesn't make it better than a lower ilvl stam trinket)

[Checazzoray]

I've been running reg ToC trying to get that stam trinket for a while. I got it the first day ToC came out on my DK, but I've only seen it drop once since.

As for expertise, should I really drop the expertise that I have, since looking at combat logs, I've not noticed any parry-hasting (or I'm just not sure what to look at). I will put that armor tinker back on.

So are you telling me to stack pure stam now? :P

that said, I don't really see the benefit of having the Badge 245 headpiece over the Ony 25 headpiece

[Güth]

I don't really see the benefit of having the Badge 245 headpiece over the Ony 25 headpiece

The benefit is the massive expertise on it, where your current helm has 0. This allows you to remove the expertise enchant and focus on more EH (armor or stamina) as well as allowing you to free up expertise gems for more EH.

Why gem and enchant for expertise at the cost of EH?