Warrior tanking

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zippy

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So I hit lvl 85 last night. I have been levelling as fury as all my Lich King gear was all fury. I have picked up some tanking kit on the way.

Now I want to focus on gearing up to tank.

I have read in some blogs/forums that on reaching level 85, a warrior tank can expect to be tanking with the following approx stats

Hp 107k
Armor 31k
Dodge 7%
Parry 10%

Dodge and parry seem low. Doesnt sound right to me. My dodge and parry is a bit low, but that is expected since I only have about 7 slots with tanking gear.

So I have 2 questions on starting to tank normal lvl 85 dungeons. Also assuming that survivability is the priority instead of threat at this stage.

1. What is the recommended dodge and parry?
2. Are sta gems still a better choice than avoidance gems ? Some blogs/forums argue that avoidance is better in cataclysm, others still say stamina.

Thanks.
 
Not so sure about the details, but from a healer perspective dodge/parry/block > stamina. I have healed tanks with 145k HP that go down like soap in a prison shower, no matter what I throw at them. I have healed tanks with 110k hp but with high dodge/parry/block stats and it is easy. You must remember that a big HP pool makes you live a little longer but the way healing works now, no way your healer can get you back to full health with the small heals we have at the moment. Saving damage totally makes your healer's job much easier.
 
It depends on the fight to be honest. Some fights favour more stamina (lots of magic damage) and avoidance for melee attacks. If I had to start with 1 set though I would go for the avoidance set because with smart use of cooldowns and skills magic damage can be mitigated.
 
I tank palladin and I have to say that before you start getting into gear from raids...your stats will be a bit low. I currently have about 13% for both dodge and parry and about 35% for block. I have 4 epics pieces and my general item level is 339. Get used to lowish stats for now, it will be the norm. Learn to use ur survival cds and get a tricket that ups your parry/dodge rating for 10 seconds. Pop them as needed, but never all together...always make sure u have 1 in cd, one coming out of cd and one open...that way when u see you are going down you have sumthing to pop. Also, CC is your friend, so mark before you pull. This isnt like WOTLK, heroics cc is a must.
 
So does that mean gear gets worse at lvl 85. Im currently lvl 82 warr tank. Sitting on 10.33% dodge, 11.93% parry and 39.24% block.
 
Woops posted my reply in the wrong thread, its over here: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...-Dungeons...?p=5305231&viewfull=1#post5305231


Tinuva said:
As as Warrior you should aim for the following:

75% avoidance in general.

Of which you should try to get to about:

50% block
12.5% dodge
12.5% parry

Trust me, healers will love that more than you just going ape with dodge/parry. What it does is, you take a teeny bit more damage, but its more predictable, thus healers can get into a rotation to save mana and use their big cheaper heals, or if needs be there will be plenty time to heal up a dps or 2 that took aoe damage because again, they can predict your damage taking.

If you go over 50% block, don't worry about it, you can keep on stacking it, any extra block will be turned into critical damage reduction so its not a waste of time either.

How to reforge items:
- If the item has hit on but no mastery, reforge that into mastery
- If the item has dodge and parry on but no mastery, take the one where you have the most and turn that into mastery.

This is the big move all warrior tanks at least on elitestjerks ect. are making and for good reason. I've started raiding with these stats, and even though my main role was suppose to be fury dps, tanks didn't show so I stepped up and tanked. Our 1st 2 bosses went down with 1shots.
Click to expand...
 
Ty for the advice. Reforged as suggested. Sitting on 41%block 6%dodge and 9%parry.

I have some dps items which I reforged to mastery where I could, alternatively to dodge.

Will start the normal rep grind now :)
 
Heh yeah, I used the ring from Ramakan revered for tanking since it has a lot of mastery on and some expertise which is not totally useless.
 
Tanked my first heroic last night. Guild run. Did Lost City of Tolvir.

Avoidance is:
Dodge 11%
Parry 10%
Block 42%

HP is around 132k

We had good cc. Lock, Mage and hunter, so the trash was easy. When I did the right thing, the bosses where easy too. :)

The dps we had was very good. My gear still needs lots of work. With a weaker group the healer would have struggled to keep me alive. I wouldnt say that the above stats are good to start pugging heroics. I will still be farming normal as I don't have any factions on exalted yet.
 
That is actually not so bad, considering my equipped ilvl is 347 my stats are unbuffed:

Approximate Avoidance 78.75%

Dodge 11.64%
Parry 13.05%
Block 49.05%
139485 HP

Though I will probably soon fine tune a bit more, some of my gems are not correct yet and I am still about to replace my ilvl 333 chest (the last one in tank spec apart from trinket)
 
I have reforged to mastery wherever possible. Alternatively to parry. Enchanted to the eye balls as well.

My weak areas are expertise and hit rating. I'm trying keep expertise to a reasonable level. This is mainly why I won't pug heroics yet. Its easy to explain to guildies that my hit is low and therefore threat may be an issue.

The guild is scheduling heroics 3 times a week which is helping a lot. Gives the chance to properly balance 2 to 3 grps depending on how many healers and tanks are available. We schedule a single event then see how many grps we can make and try to give as many a chance as possible.
 
We all just log on at 8pm and then make up 2 10mans and go from there.

I just want to give you a tip for when you start raiding, make sure your stamina is not too low. Now don't go and stack stamina everywhere, but just make sure you have at least 2x stam trinkets for those bosses that are doing magic dmg only (Four Winds north boss) or some ability like Magmaw in Blackwing ect.
 
Well tanking is Protection spec, if you pro protectection then you'll become a pro tank
 
I eventually tanked 2 normal dungeons tonight at 85. I must say we take quite a heavy beating, healers really have to be on their toes but i must say that so far everything seems pretty good.
In Lost city of tolvir i was 2nd DPS and in HoO i was 3rd, so thats quite cool. Threat seems to be good aswell, no mobs going wayward and stuff. Now time to HC !
 
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