Prot Warrior & PvP Gear (85 Heroics/Dungeons)

[miharkula]

So obviously I'm not stupid I understand that avoidance stats are 100% necessary but wanted to see what people thought of the effectiveness of using pvp gear for a starter tank set would be.

With the pvp gear being higher item level than the pieces I could find in normal dungeons there is much more armor and stamina on these pieces (albeit no avoidance stats & itemization wasted in resil). For example a iLvl 333 chest piece of dungeon tank gear has 401 stamina and 3128 armor whereas a 352 pvp chest piece has 480 stamina and 3357 armor.

Given the options to start working heroics to get the heroic tank gear would it be better to have level 352 pvp gear with higher health and armor but little avoidance or just grab level 333 normal dungeon pieces and have less health and armor but slightly more avoidance? In the case that the dungeon gear truly is better and it would be suicide to tank heroics in pvp gear do you feel that the pvp gear would be sufficient enough to atleast tank normals?

[Katzazi]

Heroics are more about doing them right than about your gear. If something is important about tank gear when the group does not have good gear it's saving healer mana. You will never die during 2 or 3 hits. You will die because the healer runs out of mana or because somebody did screw up. Stamina does not save healer mana. Armor may do so. But the difference is only about 230 armor. A 333 piece with two out of dodge, parry or mastery should save more mana than those armor would do. Sure it may be helpful in a slot where your alternative is really crap. But in most cases I would not recommend to collect PVP items just to enter heroics as a tank.

333 Items are quite enough to start heroics and you will get PVE upgrades to them very soon by doing heroics. (Either as drops or by JP.)

[Kojiyama]

Don't forget that you can always reforge to Dodge or Parry as well. For instance, a Mastery/Crit item can be reforged to be Mastery/Crit/Dodge and actually be a decent tanking piece.

[Andenthal]

Heroics are more about doing them right than about your gear.

^
What Katazi said.

Although....if you're needing to farm up gear, blue tanking gear is probably just as easy, or easier to get than PvP gear AND better. If you all ready have PvP gear, but no tanking gear, go for it. If you have neither, get blue tanking gear over PvP gear.

For example a iLvl 333 chest piece of dungeon tank gear has 401 stamina and 3128 armor whereas a 352 pvp chest piece has 480 stamina and 3357 armor.

The other stats on the 333 gear (Dodge/Parry/Mastery) will likely make it a better piece though. This isn't ICC where Stam and armor are the end all be all, and everything else is garbage.

[scotty]

i read your thread and got me interested on what the actual difference would be. so i bought a full set of pvp gear from the honor quartermaster (- the shoulders) and the difference between my current tanking set and wearing the pvp was; the health and armor was minimal 5k less hp and 600 less armor, how ever my dodge dropped about 4.0% and my parry dropped about 3.5%.

and then a ran a couple heroic's with a healer from my guild to test it out... my dps was insane! i realize that tanks shouldnt worry about the dps there doing... but it made holding threat infinitely easier... seeing how i was out dps'n the group in aoe. as far as taking damage though, i diffenetly took more, but my healer said wasnt that much harder to heal me then with my tanking gear (that being said he is one of the best healers in know, a pug healer from a random might start b*tching at you).

so back to your original queston. yes it makes a good starter set - especially if your just learning to tank as a warrior or have'n problems holding threat. but im not so sure if it will be as easy once you start doing harder bosses or raids

im definitely going to hold on to the pvp gear though and test it out some more, and i would also like some other peoples input on what you think about it.

[Muffin Man]

Actually I did a partial guild run (3 dps + healer) the other day.

Pug tank was in 339 pvp blues.

He was basically made of paper; the main problem is resilience isn't reforgeable and Bastion/ect make resilience obsolete even as a pseudo-tanking stat. So you end up working with literally half the secondary stats that you should have.

It didn't help that he had Heart of Thunder (normal) and a dps trinket...

That said, I can see getting away with using the higher ilvl pvp gear though. The started pvp set is a full tier higher than the crafted pvp set and ever so slightly higher than heroic gear.

And of course if you trust your healer.

But overall I don't see the point using pvp gear except for the ilvl increase. You're better off swapping in pieces like: http://www.wowhead.com/item=62384 or http://www.wowhead.com/item=62384 which give you more threat *and* stamina (assuming you're pre-raid).