Update Failsafe Gearing Guide Maintankadin, 4.3, finalized

It's now in a 'live' state.

Update Failsafe Gearing Guide Maintankadin, 4.3

Still lacking PvP gear and crafted gear, but it should be usable for the average pugadin by now. Head over to the failsafe guide and have a look.

Update Failsafe Gearing Guide Maintankadin

My failsafe gearing guide at Maintankadin will be obsolete when 4.3 goes live. While I plan to update said guide accordingly, you'll have to accept some lag. I prefer to confirm that the failsafe gear is actually there to get, in the form I say it is in and at the cost I state it has.

Loot update: 4.3 raid

Head over to MMO Champion for a read on the candy dropping from the upcoming Dragon Soul raid in patch 4.3.

Being pugadins we're likely to be most interested in the drop table for LFR. A short summary below:

Shield: It's as close to perfect as it can be. Ok, both gem-slots aren't yellow, and the socket bonus is dodge rating. Still, remember that we're likely to cap 102.4 even as pugging tanks, so excess mastery isn't as welcome as before.

Sword: Highest dps with RNG self healing instead of defensive stats. It's an interesting alternative.

Axe: Mastery and crit rating, the latter for reforging. I'm not entirely positive we'll be allowed to use the new spec-based need option for this one.

Bracers: What's there not to like about these ones?

Belt: Avoidance, avoidance, everywhere avoidance. I'm not entirely happy about these, but two yellow sockets are nice.

Belt: This is rather obviously a dps belt, and as such you shouldn't expect to be able to roll for it for a long time. When that time comes, however, I wonder if this belt isn't better than the tanking belt due to the mastery if we're sitting shy of the 102.4.

Shoulders: Another dual avoidance items, and again with a yellow socket. We can't forego mastery in too many slots if we want to hit the 102.4.

Shoulders: Dps shoulders for the mastery starved. Same story for this one as for the belt.

Feet: A pretty perfect pair of boots. Sure, dodge had been even better alongside the mastery, but some of our gear has to come with parry on it.

Ring: An absolutely superb ring. You want it.

Ring: The dps counterpart. If you can grab this one you can reforge away the hit-rating into dodge.

Trinket: Stamina with an RNG six second shield should you dip below 50%. That said, the shield soaks 43%, so it's rather sweet for fights where you're getting huge bursts of damage infrequently. I still dislike the RNG though.

Trinket: Stacking avoidance. 78 dodge rating on your attacks, and max ten stacks. If you're above 102.4 and have decided to go the MDR route, this is the item for you.

Trinket: Stamina with RNG mastery on your attacks. It's an unholy crapton of mastery, so on proc you'll hit 102.4 almost no matter how you decided to gear. We're talking in the order of 20% increased block chance here.

And the LFR drops tier 13 tokens as well.

4.3 and valor slots

So, the quoted blue post on MMO Champion is quite interesting. We learn that any hc, including the first Cata ones, will yield 150 VP at the end, with a weekly VP cap of 1000 instead of today's 980. The new LFR splits the new raid into two, and yields 250 VP upon completion of either half.

We also learn that VP will buy you gear for a lot of slots "including cloaks, rings, ranged weapons, necklaces, trinkets, chest pieces, helms, gloves, bracers, boots, and belts, all of which are ilvl 397." From earlier posts we've gotten to know that tier pieces won't be there for VP any longer.


So it would seem we're depending on either the new five man heroics for an ilevel 378 version, or the LFR for an 384 version of slots helmet, shoulders, weapons, shields, one trinket, one ring and legs. Obviously FL will become supremely puggable, and thus a 391 ring and a 378 trinket becomes available from AH reputation, not to mention 378 drops from that raid. Given what people have had to say about Shannox, you could get lucky and get a shot at 391 loot from that specific encounter; a little bit like the lootship fight in ICC.


If you're lucky enough to pug a proper raid then loot tables for normal mode drop 397 gear. The big guys who knock Deathwing over can look forward to 403 loot. Hardmode versions yield 410 and 416 loot respectively.


I haven't seen any notes on a quest hub with 'free loot', but given that the PTR is up and running I would have assumed voices on that by now if it were the case. This makes me believe we won't see a crap-ton of daily quests rewarding us with 384 loot like the Molten Front 365 loot.

4.3, gearing and pugging

The announced 4.3 content patch presents us pugadins with an interesting question.

What will drop from the three new five-mans?

If the scaling runs as it has done, then the new normal mode raids will drop ilevel 397 gear. The five-mans, therefore ought to drop either ilevel 391 or 372 gear, given that the trolls drop 353.

I'd personally expect them to drop 372 gear as the instances are likely to explode in the face of puggers jogging around in an average ilevel 365 or so set.

The problem with five-mans dropping 372 gear is obviously that raiders hitting them in 375 or better gear have nothing to gain but their Valor Points from the very start. We won't even talk about hard mode raiders.

Later on that problem would become even more accentuated with raiders geared in 390+ gear running together with puggers in 370- gear. The difference in ability to handle the content should be astounding given a 20+ ilevel discrepancy in gear between a semi-decently geared raider and a pugger who has gained just about everything there is to get from pugging.

Of course a new quest hub, similar to the one in Hyjal, could rectify the problem somewhat. But Blizzard has only announced a new raid, and prior to Firelands they were pretty loudly sending the message about a brand new quest hub with lore, individually changing landscapes and new vendors with upgrades.

Obviously the Firelands raid would see some rather heavy nerfs hitting it to open it up for puggers. The announced Looking For Raid would tie in well with making more players get inside raids, which in reality means more players getting inside nerfed raids. That way 378 gear is theoretically within the grasp of puggers as well.

If this is indeed the scenario, then the hysterical buff to tanking threat makes more sense. While a 365 geared tank should be able to survive a five man with 372 drops, the same tank wouldn't beeven  remotely able to keep threat from a competent 30 ilevels better geared dps.

Stages

The tank stages on Maintankadin may vary a bit in implementation, but they're based on the same assumption. The differences are mainly a matter of granularity and viewpoint concerning the breaking points.

I'll give my view of the different stages, based on a higher granularity than I use myself.

1) Newly dinged 85. This happens the moment you become 85. Theoreticaly all the best gear in the game are available for you from this point on. In reality you are clad in a hopeless mix of gear suitable for questing and levelling. Most of what you have should be a wild mix of 312 greens to 325 blues.


2) Prepared to start your career as a max level tank. This ought to take you a day or two. If you've levelled an alt it could also be a matter of a few hours. You'll run the initial Molten Front quests to unlock the vendor Zen'Vorka and gain access to a couple of ilevel 365 taking items. You also do the Thrall quest chain to get the tanking cloak. Depending on your stash of gold you should visit the AH to shop a few upgrades.

You are now ready to tackle all level 85 five man dungeons on normal difficulty.


3) Prepared to tank hc. This really means that you have amassed the gear needed to tank the first Cataclysm five man heroics, no matter which one chance gives you when you try your luck in the LFD. You have spent a few more days, maybe a week, doing daily quests and tanking normal difficulty dungeons. During this time you should have gained a few ilevel 333 blue items as well as ranking up your reputation with the zone-factions by means of tanking dungeons with a faction tabard.

You are now mainly geared in ilevel 325 and 333 blue items. This set is boosted by three or four 365 items. In all likelyhood you have also bought a couple of ilevel 353 items on the AH as these costs only a few hundred golds. Almost all your gear ought to be properly gemmed and enchanted, albeit with second best in slot gems and enchants unless it's the 365 slots.


4) Prepared to tank the Troll instances. You have spent a week or two learning how to tank when things make a serious attempt att killing you. Running Cataclysm first tier heroics should see you having access to the best shoulder and head enchants in the game as well as getting you the reputation needed to collect a few ilevel 359 gear. While you might still be saddled with a single green quality item you should prepare to get your head smashed in by the trolls.

You are now mainly geared in 346 blue quality items, but your gear is boosted by six or seven slots of ilevel 353 or better quality.


5) Prepared to pug Cataclysm first tier raids. Basically this was true the moment you were ready to take on the troll heroics, but verbal abuse when you tried your hand at the previous tier of raiding content should have forced you to clear up some more slots. This, in all likely hood, is the result of gaining a few drops from the trolls as well as unlocking the vendors from the Molten Front. You shouldn't have to spend more than a few days at this stage.

You are now mainly geared in 353 and 365 epic quality gear. You also have access to one, or possibly two, ilevel 378 items due to collecting valor points. By now you are in reality hysterically overgeared for pugging the initial raids, but at the other hand it's a way to learn the ropes.


6) Prepared to raid. Unless you joined a raiding guild, the previous stage sunk you into a quagmire, and you have easily spent a month pugging for little gain. The problem here is that albeit you are geared for raiding the current content you're unlikely to do so without a guild. Still, 980 valor points weekly and quite a few pugged easy mode raids should have you prepared for harder content.

You are now mainly geared in 359 and 365 epic quality gear. Four slots are of ilevel 378 epic quality, and you are in reality well overdue to tank the Firelands raids at normal difficulty. This is most likely your end-game.


7) Hard mode raider. You got yourself into a guild and have had your arse handed to you in the Firelands raids. However, reputation gained there as well as maybe a drop or two should have you geared to fail miserably when one of the usual tanks don't show up at raiding time. You'll either revert back to a stage 6) tank, or you'll spend most of your free time developing the skills needed to handle content that truly is out to get you.

You're now mainly geared in 365 and 378 epic quality gear. The ilevel 391 gear beckons.


8) Trailblazer. You've killed it all. WoW starts again when the next content is available on the Public Test Realms. Everything is farm.

You're balancing your 391 gear against the lower ilevel slots which in reality are an upgrade depending on which boss you're planning to pull. You're not reading this blog, because 'casual' is about the least proper word to describe you.



Now, we can't have eight tanking stages when we make gear lists. We have settled for five, and that is likely one too many. However, settling for a lower granularity means cutting corners, and that's the reason you see different numbers sharing the same piece of gear. Also, totally unaccounted for is the knowledge among us gear-list makers that a simple rank is very seldom entirely true.

Some fights require extra health, some that you take as little damage as possible when it counts, and some that you simply take as little damage as possible. Where one fight has you scrambling to get that magic 102.4, another might see you stacking stamina like there was no tomorrow. In reality we can't afford, mostly as a result of time (the raid won't wait for us to regem and re-enchant), to be perfectly configured for each fight. So we make gear sets, and those gear sets have no stage ranking. They're simply an assortment of gear available to us to do the best job at the moment.

But I only PvP

I ran into a conversation with someone who wanted to tank but only spends time on PvP.

Now, first of all I have to say that it's a horrible idea to tank without tanking. Gear will never replace knowledge.

Still, let's assume that you do indeed know how to tank, but you spent the last half a year doing nothing but PvP. Now you need to get into shape to take up that tanking again.

Your gear will, correctly, get you kicked out of every pug you join, so there has to be a way to get around it.

Well, there is. At least to get you into heroics, and from there you get valor points without destroying your supply of the conquest points you need to continue PvP.

Buy the season 10 helmet, cloak (or do the Thrall quest chain if you haven't done it) and belt. Get a season nine onehander. Continue doing PvP, but concentrate on getting honor. 375 honor buys you 250 justice points. You should be able to buy one JP piece or two daíly this way.

Do the Molten Front quests. The quick and dirty version is only doing only one day's worth of quests. That's enough to get you a necklace and boots.

You should be good for running the old Cata heroics within a week as tank, and from there on you have 490 valor points available per week. Gearing for the trolls would require the standard grind, and that's better explained in my failsafe gearing guide.

New to Molten Front

So, you've dinged 85 later, or for some other reason haven't had time to do the Molten Front dailies. Now it's time to catch up.

The only really important question is in which order you'll open up the vendors.

No matter what I suggest you wait with filling up that moonwell as the last vendor. While a new stamina trinket is fun to have, it's simply not good enough to merit waiting for the other two vendors.

If you're a blacksmith, then it's easy. Get those armaments up and ready and craft yourself a new weapon with good itemisation.

If not, well, Ricket's bracers are a huge upgrade from the Ramkahen 359 you're likely to sport as a casual tank. So stick to those armaments.

That leaves the druids as your second pick. While the Lyagar ring is a good piece of equipment, it's not that much of an upgrade compared with the Justice Point option.

Oh, don't despair if you can't find the quest giver for the new quests when you have reqruited one of the mini-factions. Sometimes it's waiting at the secondary quest hub.

Difficulties getting that elusive slot

We have one very problematic slot as pugging tanks, and that is the helmet. While pugging Cata tier one raids is perfectly doable, a 359 helmet isn't all that much of an upgrade compared with the 353 one that eventually will drop if you farm the trolls for Valor Points.

So we need to find us a replacement. That replacement would be the 384 PvP helmet. Now, a PvP item doesn't sit all too well with most of us, but this one comes with a bucket load of mastery. The Resilence is, obviously, a dead stat, but at ilevel 384 it comes with a big chunk of armour and stamina to make up for close to 300 points of wasted stat.

Now, I'm not even remotely arguing in favour of this helmet compared to a 378 PvE one, but that's the catch. You need to pug down anything dropping a 378, and that might prove difficult for a casual tank. So we're stuck with a 359 or a 353, and compared with those the PvP piece doesn't look too shabby.

Now we have another problem. 2200 Conquest Points. Doing arena as prot is more or less out of the question. I've spent a lot of time dying to cram out a few wins, but you'll make yourself an unhappy partner.

Pugging rated battlegrounds, however, isn't entirely futile. A tank is quite often handy there, so you can pull your weight properly.

Still, you may be a casual tank for the simple reason you can't spend a lot of time gaming. Then you're unlikely to want to spend the time you have available smacking other players over the head.

So your last resort would be to convert Valor Points to  Conquest Points. At least it's done at a ratio of 1:1.

I'd suggest that you wait with it though. There are quite a few items which should come higher on your list, but eventually you're going to run out of truly appealing items to buy for VP. That's when this helmet, and of course, the PvP cloak starts to look appetizing. The helmet because it's the best we casuals are likely to lay our hands on, and the cloak because it's the second best there is in the game.

Strange failsafe in 4.2

The failsafe tanking gear is somewhat confusing in 4.2.

First you get an absolutely fantastic cloak from the Thrall quest chain. Then it gets weird. The neck-piece you get after a day's worth of questing Molten Front is a threat piece, and a good one at that. The 378 cloak from Avengers of Hyjal is a direct downgrade compared with the Thrall quest one, unless you're desperate for hit-rating.

The 365 boots are a downgrade from the rep 359 ones, and the reward for pushing to honoured with the Avengers of Hyjal, a 378 belt, is suspiciously close to a side-grade from the crafted 359.

While you should eventually be able to grab some good bracers from the Molten Front quests, your 378 Valor Points option is likely a downgrade.

All in all we're getting stamina and armour force-fed to us, but the other stats are mildly put strangely distributed.

Now, the boring thing is that if the increase in stamina and armour is great enough, then it is indeed an upgrade, but as both stamina and armour are linked to the ilevel of the item, very little remains for personal configuration. At least in you stick with tanking gear. Now, if you go insane and start looking at dps and PvP gear, then you could find some gems of superior tanking gear.

Weird is weird.

PvP gear for tanking

Even though it doesn't make me feel very happy, for those of you out there who never see a drop, the PvP helmets make a very good substitution.

The new ilevel 371 Vicious Gladiators Scaled Helm is better than anything you'll se before the Cataclysm tier 1 raids. You could get ilevel 359 tanking raid drop -helmets that aren't as good as this one.

The ilevel 384 cousin doesn't fare as well when compared with its Firelands ilevel 378 tanking cousins, but it's obviously a step up from the 371. Observe that 'not faring as well' still means that the 384 PvP helmet qualifies as a perfectly valid 378 tanking helmet, albeit poorly itemized.

The Ruthless cloak, at ilevel 384, clocks in as the second best tanking cloak in the game, only beaten by an agility based dps cloak. You have to love Blizzard for itemizing gear properly.

So, what's so interesting about these metal hats? Well, you can buy Honor for Justice Points, and you can buy Conquest Points for Valor Points.

Reforging and regearing 4.2

Don't forget to hit a friendly reforger close to you before you venture out in the world. Make sure to ditch any agility gear where you already have access to better strength based gear first.

Getting the 200 more dodge rating than parry rating will be rather hard, but make sure you get as close as possible. If you're way, way down on the CTC curve you could as well ditch mastery for avoidance, but even a CTC as low as 80% makes this advice a bad one. If you can somewhat reliably block, then having access to an active block-bonus will be better for you.

If you're below 70%, though, stacking MDR should be better for you, and that means stacking avoidance up to some 13% dodge and parry is better for you. Thankfully the gear where you gain from stacking avoidance is quickly replaced. Napkin math has gear as low as ilevel 346 favouring mastery stacking.

New gear

Run the Thrall quest line as soon as possible if you haven't already done so. At the end you'll be rewarded with an ilevel 365 cloak that is a direct upgrade to the Hyjal reputation ilevel 359 one.

Some odd 4k Justice Points ought to make the previous 359 VP gear available to you. Even if you have already gathered up most of what you want you could still pick up the boots, the retribution legs and the tanking cloak to make your threat set a little better while still maintaining decent tanking stats.

Oh, do pad out your PvP set immediately if you already have a partial Vicious set. You want the spare room for gaining more honour to make sure you fill the set when you start grinding Conquest Points next week.

Apart from that it's time for the slow and boring grinding of dailies to unlock the 365 gear that is sure to be a benefit to us casuals. While it's mostly superfluos for hacking away in five-mans it's certain to come in handy when we start making serious attempts at the first Firelands bosses.

Saving money on expensive gear

This is a rather short advice for people, casual or not.

If you plan to keep your gear in order a week from now, start buying gems, and especially enchanting materials, now. Preferably you started yesterweek, but there's still time.

The same advice goes for whatever materials crafted gear which you plan to aqquire needs for completion.

With the new expansion a sudden influx of upgrades will swamp the servers, and whatever is currently stocked up on the AH will be woefully insufficient to meet the needs during the first weeks.

One item in particular will be very hard to come by, and that is the enchanting shard from disenchanting blue quality gear. Players tend to run the troll instances rather than the old Cata heroics, and the troll ones only drop green and epic quality gear. You may want to spread your VP grinding between old heroics and troll ones only to get a chance to aqquire the enchanting materials.

Oh, and do get the materials needed for the new tanking leg enchant. Plate tanks won't even have to wait for an upgrade to feel the need to get that enchant.

Head over to MMO Champion to get a heads up on which upgrades are available to you without you needing to raid. For the same reason, if you aren't already decked out in all the VP gear that you need, remember that those will be available for Justice Points in a week. Doing this will give you a rather good idea of what gems and enchants you're likely to want within the short future.

4.2, parry and dodge

After a forum conversation with Chicken on maintankadin (thanks for the info, btw) I can give a pointer on how to rebalance balance and dodge.

Currently we try to keep parry about one percent higher than dodge raidbuffed.

Come 4.2 we want them to be exactly equal raidbuffed.

For the tankadin standing by the reforger without raidbuffs this should translate to about 200 more dodge rating than parry rating.

The difference should be covered by BoK (or similar) and Horn of Winter (or similar).

Edit: If you're eating from a feast prior to pull, you'll get 60 or 90 stamina and 60 or 90 in another 'useful stat'. That useful stat is dodge for us tankadins.  You'll have to take that into account when you tweak the difference between your ub dodge and parry.

If you know you'll always eat a feast for 90 in two stats, then a bit more than 100 higher dodge than parry is a better goal than the 200 I've stated here.

Threat 2

Ok, now it's time to break the rule.

What rule?

To never ever gear away from survival.

Why would we ever gear away from survival?

Because it's damn fun.


OK, so it's fun. Even tanks like to watch big yellow numbers from time to time. Even a raiding tank could find pleasure with it. There are, however, a few rules we ought to keep.

Your fun shouldn't:

1) Make the run unfun for the others.

2) Disabling you from properly tanking the content.

3) Disabling an eventual co-tank from properly tanking the content.

So it all boils down to being distinctly overgeared for the content. How much is overgeared? I'd say it depends on you and your group. I have fun in the old Cata five man heroics during pugs. I also have fun in an average ilevel 355 set designed to kill stuff. That's grossly overgeared.

Some have fun in content at their own gearlevel, or at least not very much below their own gearlevel. Like having fun in 359 gear with the earlier bosses in Cata raids. I doubt they're pugging it.

That said, how do your start having fun?

Kick your hit-rating to whatever means never missing your target. I hiked it to 8% because I consider the BH 10-man raid to be distinctly easier than some of the old Cata hc:s, and hence I tank it as one. If you'd never consider tanking anything but five-mans in a threat set, then you only have to get hit rating enough to fight level 87 targets.

Kick your expertise to 16. That makes you soft-capped with glyphed SoT. Then kick it as high as you can without feeling squishy, but never higher than 46, because then you hard-cap expertise with glyphed SoT.

Rather obviously, glyph SoT.

Take the best weapon you don't need for surviving stuff that actually tries to kill you and enchant it with Landslide.

Take a very, very greedy look at the PvP gloves, especially if the Conquest Point version is available to you. +5% damage to the attack you'll use almost 50% on boss-fights is an appealing reason.

Glyph SotR and HotR if you feel like having really fun.

Go kill stuff and match DD dps.


There are ways of having even more fun, as can be seen from the link in this post, but this is The Pugadin blog, and pugging tanks don't get to have fun in proper raids, at least not until 4.2 is released.


Now to some stuff to keep having fun without getting kicked.

You'll take a lot more damage than you're used to. The difference between my MDR raiding set and my threat set is a hulking 19% CTC. That's a LOT more physical damage incoming. That's the main reason I don't have fun in the troll heroics. I'd give my healer a heart attack.

While things running away from you basically becomes a non-issue, that extra damage warrants the use of your stun just after you pull a big pack of mobs, and you do want to mark skull. The combined result of DD focusing on your target, your own higher dps and six seconds of target inactivity makes life a whole lot easier for your healer. In effect that target will die very shortly after it's allowed to attack you. Use glyphed Holy Wrath early on stunnable targets for the very same reason.

The above tactics will actually lower your dps a little bit as you take less than maximal damage, but I strongly advice you to follow them until you feel confident that you'll survive the extra damage anyway.

In difference from what I have done, which should work as a reminder to myself to get my act together, don't nerf mastery to increase hit and expertise. Now I didn't go and actively nerf my mastery, but I have been lazy.

When a piece of gear comes with avoidance and hit/expertise I simply don't reforge away from threat into mastery. That's stupid. Mastery is better than avoidance for survival, point by point. What I should do is to reforge, for example, hit rating into mastery and then reforge, for example, parry into expertise. That way I get the same amount of fun, but I effectively convert avoidance into mastery, which is a net gain in survival.

For the very same reason I should probably see if it is at all possible to keep one of my Tol Barad mastery trinkets, preferably the one with strength on-use, and convert 321 points of avoidance into hit/expertise instead of blindly slapping in a hit-rating trinket. This would also allow me to get rid of the inferior 'fun-trinket' with agility.

Then, of course, as gear become more and more grossly better than the content we want to eradicate, we can give survivability less and less of a thought. Eventually we'll tank the content in pure dps-gear, but honestly, I doubt it'll be as fun.

A short piece of advice, reforging

Reforging is the mechanics which can drastically change how a piece of equipment work. Basically you remove 40% of an unwanted stat and gain those 40% as something you want.

There is a caveat. The piece of equipment can't already include the stat you want.

So, how do we reforge?

I'm assuming you're fixing up your best set of gear for the hardest content you're currently tanking.

Always reforge away from threat stats. Those would be hit-rating, expertise-rating, crit-rating and haste-rating. There is an exception to this. If the piece comes with an unholy bulkload of avoidance (dodge/parry) and a very meager amount of threat stat, then it might be better to reforge away from the avoidance stat. The break point should be about when the threat stat is 60% of the avoidance stat in raw numbers.

Always reforge into mastery. If it's impossible to reforge into mastery, then reforge into avoidance.

As for avoidance, you should aim at having around 1% more parry chance (not rating) than dodge chance after buffs.

While you can theoretically hit 102.4, if you're a casual tank reading The Pugadin, don't worry, you won't. At least not during this expansion.

Cheaper enchanting from pugging

If, for some reason, you're short on gold, short on crafting materials and short on time, getting your gear to the level you want might seem a daunting task.

While doing dailies is a requirement for getting reputation gear, and certainly helps with netting you some needed gold, they do very little to mitigate the cost of crafting materials.

This is where pugging five mans come into the picture. The troll heroics should see you set with maelstrom crystals, but they're also generally a gold sink due to repair costs.

So, rather than doing all seven troll heroics per week, you might consider doing four, or even three, and pad out the valor point cap from running four or six old style heroics. Not only will you statistically receive quite a few extra satchels of exotic mysteries, but the old style heroics are likely to be your main source of heavenly shards. As an extra bonus you're unlikely to wipe as often there, and they generally take far less time to complete.

All in all I'd estimate your netting an extra 500 gold weekly on top of getting the occasional crafting material to help you alleviate the cost of enchanting your gear. You'll also receive the occasional blue quality uncut gem.

A short piece of advice, enchants

As for gems, just do it. Enchant your gear. There's nothing flashing a red light of warning as an unenchanted tank. If you can't be arsed to enchant your gear, do the rest of us a favour and don't pretend to tank content.

That said. What should I enchant where?

Head: Get your reputation to revered with Earthen Ring and buy Arcanum of the Earthen Ring. 90 Stamina and 35 Dodge Rating is one of the most powerful enchants available to us.

Neck: Can't be enchanted.

Shoulders: Therazane reputation first to honoured and then to exalted. Exalted gives us Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quarts. 75 stamina and 25 dodge rating is a very strong enchant.

Cloak: Protection. 250 armour is a pretty lackluster enchant, but it's the only one for us in this slot.

Chest: There are two stamina enchants here. I'll list the expensive one, but be warned that it's a lot more expensive than the secondary option. Greater Stamina. 75 stamina is a good enchant. A bigger health pool allows us to concentrate on mastery.

Bracers: Only one good enchant for this slot.Dodge. 50 dodge rating. We want to pad out that CTC. You shouldn't be so health starved that you want to apply the old WotLK stamina enchant here.

Weapon: If at all possible you should have a variety of weapons available, all with different enchants. I'll only list the obviously tanking oriented ones. Cheap one is Mending. Occasionally heals you for a small amount. The expensive one is Windwalk. With a close to 30% uptime 600 extra dodge rating and 15% increased movement speed is a fantastic enchant.

Shield: Mastery. 50 mastery rating is exactly what we want.

Boots: Mastery. 50 mastery rating is exactly what we want.

Legs: One cheap and one expensive option here. I'll list the expensive one. Charscale Leg Armor. 145 stamina and 55 agility is a huge increase in stats. Currently the agility is worth 35 dodge rating. With patch 4.2 it'll be worth nothing, so I hope it's changed into straight dodge rating.

Edit: Looked up MMO Champion. The PTR notes indicates that a new leg enchant is indeed incoming. 145 stamina and 55 dodge rating. That would be a net gain of 20 dodge rating then.


Belt: Belt Buckle. Gem with 40 mastery rating.

Hands: One expensive and one cheap option. I'll list the expensive one. Greater Mastery. 65 mastery rating.

The above are the default enchants. For specific jobs other enchants might be better, but if you're pulling those stunts you really didn't need to read this guide in the first place.