My poor tank has become a mess...

[M1A1 Moo]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...e&cn=Kaeltanas


Alright, so here's the deal. At time of writing this little guy is an Unholy tank who may in the near future become Blood tank. If y'all take a glance at his gear, you'll notice that I've become rather messy with my gemming priorities. In truth my gemming has been a series of reactions to missing one cap or another, and here a couple weeks down the road of progression he's now a total mess and I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how to fix him.

With Frost presence he currently sits at;

42,012 HP Unbuffed
30448 Armor
542 Defense
26.89% Dodge
24.16% Parry
266 (8.11%) Hit
26 Expertise

I just recently picked up the Gargoyle Spit Bracers from deathbringer 10 man and am chomping at the bit to use them but the loss in hit over the Saronite Swordbreakers will cause my gem and enchant mess to get even further jacked up.

The long story in a box that I'm asking is that if there's anything I can do to unscrew this mess of gems and maybe get some order back into place, without falling dangerously below caps, or am I just kinda screwed and have to deal with it?

Thanks for your time.

[Raysere]

Ok, first off. Hit and expertise aren't a big deal if you don't need to worry about threat issues. Glyph Dark Command in situations when having it hit is critical. Do not sacrifice vastly better items just to maintain Hit/Exp caps, your main goal is survival!

Wear the bracers. They are delicious! Better then the normal 25-man ones, you're lucky to see them drop.

Gems: replace every non-Solid gem with a Solid, except for your head and belt. In your head either leave the hit gem if you really want or replace it with a Sta/Def Enduring Eye. Leave the Sta/Exp Guardians in your belt or replace it with an Agi/Sta Shifting, this is to activate your meta.

Enchants: I don't know much about DKs but shouldn't you be using Stoneskin Gargoyle? It's 2% stamina, that's pretty le crazy...

Shoulders, Greater Inscription of the Gladiator, 10k honor from PvP vendors in Hall of Legends, Orgrimmar.
Gloves, 18 stam or 240 armor glove reinforcements, both LW patches.

Also, Tauren look funny. heheh.

[M1A1 Moo]

I'm changing to orc in the near future, this big guy is just clunky =P

I appreciate the advice very much, I'll wait for a few other opinions to roll in before I start acting.

[M1A1 Moo]

Did some calculations.

Currently my gem structure adds 420 Stamina,

If I go full solid I will jump to 543 Stam, a difference of roundabouts 1230 HPs. That's not counting regemming or re-runeforging my weapon. A solid gem in my weapon will increase that HP gain to 1530.

However, I stand to lose 50 Expertise, and 70 hit, give or take. Ouch.

[Raysere]

But unless you play very poorly for your gear level, which I assume you do not, the loss of those stats will not be detrimental enough to cause you any threat problems. ICC gear is lacking in both hit and expertise, the more pieces you obtain the more difficult it will be for you to maintain 8% hit and 26 expertise. You'll have to compromise very strong survival pieces in order to do it. Threat is not an issue for tanks in ICC, it's absolutely pointless to sacrifice much needed survivability just so you can sit at 200% of your DPS' threat rather than 150%. Gear for more threat when you need more threat.

[Mawini]

You could probably search and confirm that, yes, Raysere is right and you need to quit worrying about threat stats. I can promise you that any tank class with only the base threat stats on whatever gear they wear will be able to maintain a threat level above a raid full of equally geared dps if everyone is playing their class correctly. Gem/enchant for EH only.

[Kurtosis]

DK threat is particularly not reliant on hit and expertise, since Rune Strike does in the 40%-50% range of our single target threat, and can't miss or be dodged/parried. I'm assuming you have RS macro'd to you major abilities...

You really only need to worry about hit rating on fights that require the tanks to taunt off each other (admiittedly about half the fights in ICC), and just carry a stack of Glyph of Dark Command for those (I don't even bother changing out glyphs anymore, just use that one permanently).