Loading ...The 3 Sets of Tanking Gear
When you are first approaching 70, upgrades are fairly easy to distinguish and generally speaking you only need 1 set of tanking gear. This changes very quickly as you progress at level 70. It is extremely advantageous to have 3 unique tanking sets.
1. The Mitigation set
This set focuses primarily on maximizing your Stamina and Armor. It is ideal for progression as it results in allowing you to the take most potential damage. Basically, this set is made to guard against Burst Damage. I guarantee that wearing this set will result in you requiring more healing, but at the same time there is a much smaller chance of you randomly dieing to an unfamiliar encounter. You will need this set for 25 man content.
Example: [item]Gilded Thorium Cloak[/item] with a 120 armor enchant
2. The Avoidance set
This set focuses primarily on maximizing your Dodge Rating. It is ideal for an off-tank as it requires the least amount of healing. The downside of this set’s focus on Dodge is that you’ll end up with less Stamina and Armor making you much more suceptable to Burst Damage. The high avoidance can also result in being rage starved making maintaining steady threat generation much more challenging.
Example: [item]Devilshark Cape[/item] with a 12 agility enchant
3. The Threat/Aggro set
This set focuses primarily on maximizing your Block Value. It is ideal for tanking trash mobs, 5 mans, and encounters on farm status. This set allows you to generate significantly more threat because Shield Slam does more damage as your Block Value stat increases. The downside of this set is that it won’t have as much Stamina, Armor, or Dodge Rating as either of your other 2 sets. Basically, this is not a tanking set for even remotely challenging bosses. It’s intended for zipping through content quick and doubles as an effective grinding set.
Example: [item]Farstrider Defender's Cloak[/item]
Now just be thankful that we’ve got 18 and 20 slot bags because you probably will want DPS gear kicking around for fights like Shade of Aran as well as whatever resistence set you seem to be using frequently. Suffice to say… a warrior should never spirit rez 
June 16th, 2007 at 8:28 am
That’s.. odd. It makes sense, but to be honest, I can’t name any tank friends that carry multiple sets besides resist and dps sets. Now, I’ll admit, I have a spare chest, pair of boots, shield, and so on for whenever I want more stamina, or I want more of a certain thing like dodge. But usually, I just use my current gear I have equipped.
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June 21st, 2007 at 11:37 pm
[…] So basically, other than a decent Arcane Resist set you can pretty much get by with just your regular old run of the mill tanking sets. Although as I’ve said previous, I recommend 3 standard tanking sets. […]
August 21st, 2007 at 9:03 am
[…] isn
November 13th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
The idea of three sets is a good one. For endurance fights where you don’t expect to be hit like a truck, having a high avoidance set makes sense. You CANNOT wear that to tank a boss that hits hard and/or fast…you wouldn’t have the stamina and armor to be healable. Both of those sets are overkill for killing trash where the mobs live for a short time and it isn’t fun to wait for a tank to build threat.
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November 29th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
With the new pieces to come out from badges and ZA, you can easily merge the “Mitigation” and “Threat” sets into one if you’re willing to research the right gear and get the best pieces that don’t have shield block value on them (Necks, Most Rings pre TK, belts to name a few items)
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December 14th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
mitigation/high threat and decent avoidance are possible in a single tank set, thanks to badges and hit raiting/expertise.
I have that type of set up and it works great for what I’m tanking, I only switch out trinkets for certain fights.
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February 21st, 2008 at 6:30 am
Any plans to put up fulls sets of gear - not just one item?
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June 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Even a “stock set” posted for each set, would give people an idea of what to build with what they have available. But I think the one item listed in each “set” up above, shows the main stats you should focus on, etc.
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June 28th, 2008 at 2:44 am
I’m currently tanking in ssc, tk and hyjal and im only using 1 set. It’s a combination of threat, avoidance and mitigation gear. It works well so far but our main tank in the guild is talking of the importance of having different sets for threat and avoidance and this makes me a bit confused. Do I really need 1 set for threat, 1 for avoidance and 1 for mitigation? In my opinion a combination of all three is what’s best and just a few items that can be replaced on certain boss fights where the threat is mroe impotant than be able to take much damage (voidreaver for example).
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June 28th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I carry more gear than you can possibly imagine. My outfitter sets are:
Raid DPS (hit, expertise, AP, crit)
Solo DPS (crit, AP, hit, exp)
Hydross (frost)
Max EH (S4 chest, kael’thas trinket, vengeance, all high stam pieces)
Tankpoints (highest rated tank points gear, so blend of avoidance and health)
Avoidance (maxed out dodge/defense)
Standard (hit at 7%, exp at 31, 16,700 health, 507 def, 24% dodge - a good balance of threat, avoidance and health)
Trash Clear (uncrittable to a 72 mob, lots of BV, hit, crit, AP - lots of vindicator’s gear)
PVP (for me this is high crit high block value high resilience, but I’m crazy)
AoE tanking (for grinding cash or the wyrms in mgt) - Sporregar shield with spike, highest block value and block rating gear I can muster
It ends up being four chests, four legs, three hats, three wrists, three boots, four shields, three shoulders, three main hands, three ranged weapons, three gloves, three belts, a bag of trinkets and a half a bag of rings. I don’t need all of it - but I’ve found if I leave any of it in bank I miss it sooner or later. Bagspace is at a premium.
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July 30th, 2008 at 8:37 am
well i understand this concept of 3 sets..
but seeing as im a big noob.. i dont know 3 differnt good gears that can do that..
so i would like to suggest that you place in your topic post, 3 sets
1 for each part 
thanks btw because it did help
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July 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Maybe the threat set should be updated to include hit/expertise.
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July 30th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I always have with me the following sets:
- Tank Set (usual set) = Around 16684HP and 18k armor unbuffed with almost 31% dodge and 20% parry.
- Fire Res Set (Off-tank Ilidan) = Around 14kHP and 16k armor unbuffed with 301 FR
- Shadow Res set (off-tank Hyjal and Mother) = Around 15k HP and 16k armor unbuffed with 300 SR
- Fury set = around 11k HP and 10k armor with 185 Hit Rating and 115 haste rating
I also carry with me my SoulCleaver and other few DPS parts for those enconters (or farms) which I’m not tanking.
As Veneretion said, Res from the spirit healer is not an option for me!
About my bags, I have one 20-slot (zul’aman) and the rest 18 slots.
Another best comment is to use Closet-Gnome or Item Rack or any other gear manager to avoid catching your gear in the bag, specially in Hyjal in the middle of waves.
Best Regards
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September 9th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Hmm I’m starting to become aware of the tanking needs in game (lock pretending to be warrior nowadays;)
My biggest problem is “what” I need, atm my gear keeps me up quite well..but the surprise deaths is what worries me.
And “nowadays”, what mentioned in this post, rage build..I’m starting to see more and more “parry” “dodge”.
anyone have like example focus gear for the 3 mentioned sets.. for a warr hitting SSC? ’cause now I have the feeling that I have good mixed gear (Smiralia / eu: hellscream alliance)
right now my focus is the badge gear (just got the 100 badge chestpiece, tonight have the 35 badge wrist)
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