Loading ...The Fundamental Gearing Principle
The Fundamental Gearing Principle is a rule of thumb that extends beyond just gearing and applies to enchants as well as your spec even. In a nut shell, it’s all about customizing yourself as much as you can to best suit an encounter. I somewhat jokingly think this concept originated from tanks that wanted to justify getting as much different loot as possible, but the reality is there is method to the madness. (and of course madness to the madness…)
Socketing
Really? Always Stamina?
Nope, but when in doubt, Stamina. The reason is Stamina is the only stat that is advantageous for a Warrior’s Avoidance, Effective Health, Threat and Trash Set. It’s simply never a bad stat and up until late T6 content there’s really very little reason to socket for anything else. The reason you shouldn’t socket for anything else is not so much because set bonuses don’t start becoming good until T6 so much as that it’s not until that point that you start getting very focused pieces that you can dedicate to a particular set.
Regardless of set, blue sockets should always be Stamina. When socketing for threat use Hit Rating gems for yellow sockets and Agility / Stamina gems for red sockets. When socketing for avoidance use Defense Rating gems for yellow sockets and Dodge Rating gems for red sockets.
Enchanting
It’s been said many a time by many a smart tank and it’s said so often because it’s true. Enchant to the strength of the pieces. Now this is the part where in the past, I’ve shown you it with cloaks, but it’s about time I gave you more. The following table looks at enchanting every commonly enchanted piece for Effective Health, Avoidance and Threat.
| Effective Health | Avoidance | Threat | |
| Back | 120 Armor | 12 Dodge Rating | 12 Agility |
| Chest | 150 Health | 15 Defense Rating | 6 to All Stats |
| Feet | Boar’s Speed | Dexterity | Surefooted |
| Hands | 240 Armor | 15 Agility | 2% Threat |
| Head | Glyph of the Defender | Presence of Might | |
| Legs | Nethercleft Leg Armor | Nethercleft Leg Armor | Presence of Might |
| Weapon | Mongoose | Executioner | |
| Shield | 18 Stamina | Felsteel Shield Spike | |
| Shoulder | Fortitude of the Scourge | Scryer/Aldor | |
| Wrist | Fortitude | 12 Defense Rating |
You’ll notice that not all pieces have an enchant for a particular set. Substituting either of the other two alternatives generally is okay in this situation.
Specing
Specing for an encounter is probably one of the least discussed topics in tanking. When you’re spending well over 50g on consumables and repairs on a progression night, it doesn’t sound like such a crazy concept though. In the past, I’ve thoroughly discussed it in regards to Serpentshrine Cavern, but what we’ll look at now is the concept behind that article.
There are two specs on essentially opposite ends of the specing spectrum. (quite the tongue twister I know) On one end, the pure threat spec (12/5/44) while on the other, we have a full survival oriented spec (8/7/46). For threat fights like Void Reaver or Survival fights like Tidewalker, the choice of spec is simple, but what about fights like Magtheridon or even Teron Gorefiend?
The standard route to finding the ideal spec for a fight is to find a middle ground between the two specs, between survivability and threat. It’s why you see so many tanks featuring middle ground specs like 10/5/46 or 8/5/48. These all-purpose specs are attempts at striking a balance between survivability and threat. They are attempts at finding the perfect spec, but sadly we aren’t DPSers. There is no 1 true tanking spec because our role is more complex or at very least can be described as more fluctuated. The key to specing for an encounter is identifying the focused talents. The following are focused talents:
- Improved Demoralizing Shout (survival)
- Improved Shield Wall (survival)
- Improved Defensive Stance (survival)
- Improved Heroic Strike (threat)
- Anger Management (threat)
- Improved Sunder Armor (threat)
Simply trading one focused talent for another can dramatically shift a spec from being survival to balanced to threat oriented. How you determine what to trade or what to keep has entirely to do with what it’s important and what’s useless. Gruul does no magic damage so Improved Defensive Stance is useless. Al’ar only does magic damage so Improved Defensive Stance is essential.
Gearing - A Practical Example
Threat
Survival
Differences
The transition between a threat and a survival oriented set is very rarely done by swapping every piece and instead done by just swapping a select number. In the above example, I’ve swapped the gloves, shoulders, cloak, boots, ring and bracers. You’ll notice very different levels of Armor, Stamina, Avoidance, Hit Rating and Expertise Rating between the two sets. (there’s a sizable difference in Block Value as well, but you won’t see that nonetheless it’s significant) The following were the moves made:
Wrap Up
What you’ve read here is possibly overwhelming and yet incomplete at the same time. I could fill in more of the blanks, but the reality is I can’t fill in them all. As much as I hate the idea that we all have different playstyles, we do, in fact, all have different playstyles. The spec you see in the gear pictures above is the survival oriented spec mentioned earlier in the article. It is also the spec that I knowingly used for the Teron Gorefiend fight. A fight often heralded as The Threat Fight. I did this because when first doing this fight, I won’t have to hold threat over DPSers wielding 4 pieces T6 set bonuses and I won’t be being healed by healers using equivalent level gear either. I will however be getting poked at on occasion by a construct or two and being able to survive that while learning and ultimately defeating the encounter, I felt was worth the risk of potentially holding back a DPSer or two.
Interestingly enough healing me on the encounter wasn’t terribly challenging for the most part nor did DPSers have to hold back other than a hunter whose feign death was resisted numerous times in a row. The result is I could have gained a marginal advantage specing on one end of the specing spectrum or by specing on the other. What you could take away from that is that all of this is pointless, insignificant, over-complicating of a simple game. Of course, you could also decide to believe what I do. You could believe that when you combine all those small advantages, the end result is a rather massive edge.
August 6th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Nice post. Consider the T6 Chest though. It’s likely to be the final piece of gear you pick up from T6 content (apart from the other Illidan drops), and it’s an incredible item. You are also unlikely to recieve a duplicate, unless you are very lucky with drops. However, when gemming, you have to be looking at SWP as your next conquest, and therefore the inevitable Brutallus attempts. What do you gem it with? Do you go for a full avoidance piece, matching the socket bonus (defence/dodge gems), do you aim for a ’rounded’ item, along with the socket bonus (agi/stam, hit, defence), or do you ignore the bonus and go for the ‘blue is best’ approach?
You could look at the ‘when in doubt, stamina’ mantra here, but when faced with the option of making farmed content easier for your healers, or looking forward to the future, the answer isn’t as simple as socketing blue.
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Rochelle reply on August 6, 2008 8:28 am:
With Ilidan dropping three tokens per kill, it isn’t THAT farfetched to think you can get two BPs for different gem configurations. And if you have just recently gotten your first kill, then you are probably going to be spending a few more weeks in BT to make sure your DPS are decked out before making serious attempts at Brutallus. That said, if you only have 1 T6 chest, you ought to socket and gem for EH until you are ready to make serious Brutallus attempts at which point I would at the very least change the enchant to 15 def and strongly consider regemming.
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August 6th, 2008 at 1:41 am
VERY nice post Vene.
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August 6th, 2008 at 1:58 am
It’s scary how alike you and I think, Vene. Excellent post.
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August 6th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Thanks for the post Vene
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August 6th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Possibly the most helpful post you have done, and with the wealth of knowledge I have gained from this site, that is saying something. Keep up the great work.
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August 6th, 2008 at 4:49 am
That’s a very well thought out reference! I like the way every time you post a guide of this sort I get “caught out” on something. This time it’s the boots enchants. Off to replace +12 stamina with Boar’s Speed…
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marklar reply on August 6, 2008 3:37 pm:
would someone explain this one to me please? is it just to avoid AOE effects more quickly?
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Vrathmat reply on August 7, 2008 6:30 am:
It’s not enough just being able to win guild foot races??
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Kavtor reply on August 7, 2008 7:23 am:
Getting out of AOE’s, being able to get to loose mobs quicker, just moving in general. I can’t think of too many fights in TBC where it isn’t important to move at some point, and there are quite a few where moving is really important.
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Machus reply on August 9, 2008 12:16 am:
Boar’s Speed: +9 sta, +10% speed
Fortitude on boots: +12 sta
Solid Star of Elune: +12 sta
Solid Empyrean Sapphire: +15 sta
On my realm, Stars cost 50g while Sapphires cost 300g. So that 30HP at the end of your tank’s development is worth 250g. The fortitude enchant costs about 15g, while Boar’s Speed over 150g.
So for a tank, putting on Boar’s Speed represents a cost of about 400g to gain 10% running speed. I’ll have it. It’ll make a difference when picking up a mob off the healer, re-engaging the boss after a knockback, moving out of death and decay, or even walking back through an instance and starting faster after a wipe
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Ridlyblade reply on August 9, 2008 8:56 pm:
Boar’s speed (or run speed if you’re that old) is amazing, I learned early on in classic a healers natural instinct when taking damage is to turn tail and run…
Thankfully we did get intervene to make picking the mob back up a hair easier.
But healers still turn tail and run…and if you’re lucky enough in vent…they screech like a girl. So they’re at max range for a heal (outside of intervene range) and they’ve already turned and started running, so boar’s speed helps close the gap that much faster (mostly cause what healer gets anything with a run speed increase).
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August 6th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Perfect summary of the process of constantly working to maintain the balance between threat and survival. Very well done. On another note, I kind of wish the armory would let you log out with multiple sets equipped. Sometimes I’m reading tanking stuff and can’t log into the game but would really like to see some of my threat pieces/stats…
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August 6th, 2008 at 7:20 am
I guess all that would make this the “perfect tanking song” would be a list of the Mount Hyjal and Black Temple Bosses and whether you consider them ‘threat’ bosses or ‘effective health’ bosses or avoidance ‘bosses’… maybe a joint post with Ciderhelm… who knows, would rank up there with the ‘perfect country western song’… rofl
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Rochelle reply on August 6, 2008 8:37 am:
I don’t think any boss can be a threat boss while your guild is working towards its first kill. You have to approach every progression boss as an EH fight. Maybe the boss will have a slight lean towards threat or avoidance, but until your raid is farming the boss, EH is going to be most effective.
Once you have gotten a few kills, you will have a feel for which way to adjust your gear to make the fight easier. And as your raid begins to outgear encounters, they all become threat fights.
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admin reply on August 6, 2008 8:45 am:
The one true threat fight in the game is probably Void Reaver. He barely hurts even a moderately geared tank and you can easily threat cap anyone in your raid without an aggro dump.
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Ivanstone reply on August 6, 2008 11:04 am:
Honestly, I think you should try to do the fight properly from the start. Gorefiend for example is a more threat orientated fight because its not a good idea to let the fight run any longer then you have to. In this case better threat is better survival. In contrast Azgalor uses a similar raid gimping mechanic but he largely impairs most DPS classes so threat is rarely an issue. Having an beefy Orc Farseer and his friends to pick up the slack speeds the fight up somewhat.
Unless you’re on the cutting edge you’re likely going to have some previous knowledge of the fight. Anything that can be reasonably deemed a threat, I’ve worn threat gear for. Same for more survival orientated fights. I’ve made some small changes due to gear progression and strategy refinements. As time wears on though, with the exception of RoS, I haven’t made any fundamental changes. The latter fight I previously adopted a strategy based around surviving Phase 1 (absurd block value) to one to performing Phase 3 correctly (because that’s the hard part of the fight).
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Rochelle reply on August 6, 2008 1:06 pm:
Gorefiend is certainly threat oriented, as is void reaver, but when you are going for your first kill and your whole raid is pushing the limit of their gear, the tank is making a mistake if he is doing anything but gearing for survivability.
I said the fight may lean towards threat and so the tank will want to change a trinket or a ring or an enchant, but if the tank changes his EH gear for a threat set instead just because someone said ‘its a threat fight’, then the tank is making a mistake.
The only time a tank should change survival gear for threat gear on a progression boss is if the raid is hitting an enrage timer. Until the raid consistently hits an enrage timer, the threat is sufficient. If the raid is in fact hitting the enrage timer because people are threat capped, then and only then should the tank start taking off survivability gear in favor of threat gear.
That said, it has been my experience, in that situation, that the threat ceiling is not actually the problem. The real problem is that the slow learners havent figured out how to move/dps efficiently in the fight so their % dps time is far less than is needs to be. That forces the good players to really push it to cover the gap and so those good players are threat capped while the slow people are lagging behind. Having random raid members die early in the fight is something that commonly happens while learning a fight and it further contributes to that problem. The solution is not to raise the threat ceiling so that those few people who are pushing it can go harder, the solution is for the slow dpsers to figure the fight out and pull their own weight.
Bottom line: If you are hitting enrage timers and all of your dpsers are surviving and performing putting out comparable numbers and they are ALL threat capped, then yes, you should take off some survival gear and put on threat gear. But if some of your dps are dying early and some of them aren’t carrying their own weight, then you need to address those issues before sacrificing tank survivability as a quick fix.
Like I originally said, every progression boss is about survival first. Raising the threat ceiling when that isn’t the real problem might get you a boss kill in the short run, but it will hurt you in the long run.
Ivanstone reply on August 6, 2008 1:54 pm:
Does Gorefiend not have an enrage timer? There’s no convenient stopwatch but nevertheless the clock is ticking.
The way I see it threat fights can be crudely broken up into 3 types:
1 - DPS races. The sooner the fight ends the better. Everybody needs to do as much as possible. Not even the tank is exempt. Gorefiend and Kazrogal fit this kind of fight.
2 - Control fights. Better threat is required in some manner. I’d rather take more damage then have the boss running about smiting people. Leo and VR fit this idea.
3 - Laughable bosses. I will not nor will I ever, use or recommend a survival kit for Rage Winterchill. Ditto Solarian and Lurker. Yes, this wanders into the dangerous realm of opinion but easy stuff will happen from time to time.
There are limitations to these ideas but there is a minimum amount of gear you need to do anything. Bottomline is not everything is dangerous to the tank. Going back to Gorefiend, yes he hits fairly hard but its very manageable damage. Keep yourself properly buffed, him properly debuffed and its nothing really to worry about. After all, you’re not the one getting pounded with Incinerate or getting turned into a ghost. Hell, it could be the safest place in the raid.
Rochelle reply on August 7, 2008 4:16 pm:
Thats all true, but my point still stands, unless your are hitting an enrage timer, be it hard (VR) or soft (Teron), then your threat is just fine, and if your threat is fine, then why on earth would you make the fight harder by sacrificing your survivability?
Everything IS dangerous to tank. The boss is trying to kill you.
This whole discussion, at its most basic level, is about what a tanks priorities are. Job #1 is threat - if you don’t have aggro, it doesn’t matter how much EH or avoidance you have. But once job #1 is locked up, you must move to job #2 - staying alive.
PieterB reply on August 8, 2008 4:50 am:
It is the tps of the tank that sets the smallest possible time for a raid to kill a boss. You need high tps if you want a fast kill.
Bosses have special (nasty) events most always on a timer. Having as little as possible of these events dramatically increases the chance for succes. So as long ass you stay up, tps is the way to got.
#1 Aggro.
#2 Staying alive.
#3 Producing as much threat as possible to make the fight fast and increase the chance of success.
You are gimping your dps if you don’t try to get as high tps as possible.
Don’t make the fight harder by sacrifcing surviability, but if the healers can keep you up, don’t go overbard in it either. Then threat really is the way to go.
Spaz reply on August 8, 2008 7:47 am:
Some of these posts are starting to sound like a “have your cake and eat it oo” attitude, saying to focus on staying alive AND your threat output. The idea is to gear/gem/enchant for the situation. And I have to agree with Rochelle that when the situation is new content/progression, and the raid is seeing a fight for the first time, you go survival. The DPS will make mistakes. The healers will make mistakes. Their mistakes may cost you, the tank, and therefore the entire raid. So by going straight out survival, you increase the chances of pushing through those mistakes. Once the fight is known and understood by all, everyone knowing their individual roles in the fight, you can gear/gem/enchant for avoidance or threat if that’s what’s needed.
Zelgius reply on August 8, 2008 7:57 am:
But don’t forget the point mentioned in the article that if you are new on gorefiend, chances are your threat set is only padding your lead, not increasing the raids DPS.
Veneretio reply on August 8, 2008 8:33 am:
I did also mention though that I did hold back one hunter and I should note that while I did use a survival oriented spec for gorefiend, I also used my threat gear for the fight. That being said many will notice that my threat gear is still pretty survival oriented.
Rochelle reply on August 8, 2008 10:09 am:
PieterB is correct in saying that making a fight shorter is often going to make it easier, but for the vast majority of progression encounters, raising the threat ceiling is not going to have a significant impact on the length of the fight.
For a progression encounter, only the very best of your DPSers are going to be able to execute ideal dps cycles for a majority of the encounter. Most encounters require movement and until you have done an encounter countless times, a lot of the people in your raid won’t have figured out the best paths and the best positions to allow for max DPS and some of them will struggle to find paths and positions to keep themselves alive. That holds true for the tank as well. The tank is moving around and probably isn’t putting out ideal threat cycles until he is really comfortable with the encounter.
So, while shortening an encounter to reduce the time you are in danger is a good idea, you are going to be much more successful by getting your DPSers to learn the proper movemenets so that they can stay alive and put out good dps cycles. Likewise, the tank will be able to increase his threat by improving his threat cycles as he gets more comfortable with the movement required.
Machus reply on August 9, 2008 4:41 pm:
I’m not a guild tank so for me progression is getting a good PuG and killing something new in ZA or Gruul’s Lair. Without being deliberate about it I ended up approaching the gear in this order:
EH -> Threat -> Avoidance
I try to get as much EH as possible in the first place because it would be embarassing to pull the boss and get two-shot! After that I stack threat, because I’d much rather get a solid lead on omen and a neat fight than have threat issues. Then, once I get a rough estimate that my HP and threat are more than enough, I start to swap items for overall survivability like a Sun Eater or Pocket Watch.
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bosephus reply on August 8, 2008 1:23 pm:
Whether a fight is a threat fight or not can be debated, but I think there are certain bosses that are nearly always survivability fights, because the DPS will not challenge your threat output as they have to worry about lots of other stuff at the same time. On Archimonde and Gathios the Shatterer, for instance, my threat lead is usually so far and away all the dps that it just does not make sense to try to gear or spec for threat.
So maybe Veneratio and Ciderhelm could still write a few verses for that “perfect tanking song”!
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Ridlyblade reply on August 9, 2008 9:08 pm:
I’ve always leaned for a mix between EH and Threat. Having been both a tank and a DPSer (the later is the current role I fill due to merger agreements) I personally hate hearing “this isn’t a dps race”. Once you kill a boss for the first time, unless half your raid wears helmets or receive donations from telethons, you should be able to walk in and kill him again.
Learning a fight is one thing. I’ll put on my Commendation over my Auto-blocker or a minor change here and there. I much prefer to allow my healers to learn the fight of how we’re going to do it once we have it on “farm”.
I’m not a big fan of letting my healers get complacent having to go from healing me with large amounts of avoidance to my EH/threat set.
Having the auto “oh hell” trinket is about as much slack as I’m willing to let my healers get away with.
And honestly…I enjoy nothing more than taunting my dpsers in vent about having a solid 100k threat over them and I’m not even trying.
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August 6th, 2008 at 7:56 am
My offtank (who main tanks 1/3 of our raids because I can’t make them all) mentioned the other day that he “only has 1 tanking set.” I just about shit a brick. It does explain why he enchanted The Unbreakable Will with Executioner, though (he never got lucky enough for the mallet).
Very nice post, though, Vene. Is there really any option besides Glyph of the Gladiator for Effective Health? 8 more stam than PoM. Or do you figure the SBV and defense makes up for it?
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admin reply on August 6, 2008 8:29 am:
Ya, I just find that Gladiator enchanted doesn’t offer enough when compared to PoM. That being said, for resistant sets it’s potentially better than using a 20 resistance enchant on your helm. It also certainly has a place with new 70 tanks as it’ll allow them to acquire uncrittable status that much faster. However, once the resilience has lot it’s benefit the enchant loses a lot of it’s luster.
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ebs2002 reply on August 7, 2008 8:20 am:
I agree, but we’re talking about min-maxing here aren’t we? You’re suggesting 12agi to cloak, which provides so little threat that it’s hardly worth considering, even for a threat cloak (it’s what, like 0.35% crit?).
If you’re including 12agi to cloak for a threat set simply because it’s the best option (even though 12def or 12dodge is an overall better enchant), then I think that the best EH enchant in the game, even if there are better avoidance/threat options out there. After all, it’s an EH enchant, not an avoidance enchant.
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Blithlyle reply on August 7, 2008 10:36 am:
The 24 armor bonus (12 agi x 2) is not really going to help you much with EH. With my current stats it would be trading the extra avoidance for about 35 EH while unbuffed (with full raid buffs it jumps to 43 EH). I’d much rather have the extra .2% avoidance then the extra tiny bit of EH.
Yes min-maxing for EH its technically the best but its almost laughable at that. If you say the .36% crit is hardly worth considering for a threat set then why would you consider .08% (based on my stats) more EH for your EH set?
Blithlyle reply on August 7, 2008 10:38 am:
I totally forgot about the 120 armor enchant, ignore me saying its the best for the EH set.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:21 am
EH Head Enchant: [item]Glyph of the Gladiator[/item]
How could you miss this?!?
Just teasin, vene, awesome post as always
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ebs2002 reply on August 6, 2008 8:22 am:
Aww, [item] tags don’t work
It’s the SSO revered head enchant, 18sta/20resil
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admin reply on August 6, 2008 8:31 am:
Nah, they haven’t for a while. Links to wowhead.com do though. See my above comment in regards to the Gladiator enchant.
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August 6th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Very nice post overall. I think the leg enchants are off though. I don’t know the numbers for SBV vs Crit but my guy feeling is that 15 SBV from http://www.wowhead.com/?item=19782 is slightly worse for threat then the 0.36% crit from http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29536. I may be wrong, and even if I am, I can’t imagine there being a large disparity. And if there is not a large disparity, then the stamina advantage of the nethercleft is big enough to make it a superior enchant for anything except a pure threat fight. And if you are enchanting for a pure threat fight, then http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29535 beats the pants off the other two.
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August 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Fantastic post.
At least 3 warriors passed on the Pauldrons of Abyssal Fury when they dropped for us last week for the first time, which boggles my mind. I wish I’d been in that raid. Building these alternate sets is our “whole new ballgame” once you start pushing into T6.
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August 6th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Again, you neglected Nightstrike! XD
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August 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Aren’t the +10 stam armor kits better for hands and feet when stacking effective health?
+10 stam is more effective health than +9 stam and/or 240 armor, right?
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Grimgorr reply on August 6, 2008 1:56 pm:
…+12 stam enchant to boots would be even better, right?
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Kavtor reply on August 6, 2008 3:58 pm:
If you compare the number of times 3 stamina will be the difference between a successful boss kill and not, against the number of times being able to move out of the fire 10% faster, I think you’ll find that movement speed to boots far out weighs the stamina loss.
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admin reply on August 6, 2008 2:22 pm:
+9 Stamina + Greater speed I find better than +12 Stamina regardless of set. 240 Armor offers more effective health than +10 Stamina to gloves.
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Grimgorr reply on August 7, 2008 9:28 am:
Guess i mis-used the effective health calculator on the 240 armor vs +10 stam…
Suppose I’ll try upgrading both before tonight’s ZA run.
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Veneretio reply on August 7, 2008 9:47 am:
After buffs there’s probably almost identical. 10 Stamina is be no means a silly choice. I simply lack to stack Armor when I can b/c there’s so few places where you can do that.
Hydrix reply on August 7, 2008 9:57 am:
240 armor may offer more effective health (god I hate that term) but that’s only for melee damage. 10 stamina offers you almost the same effective health but also 100 more life than 240 armor on spell damage. For me, that serves as a more general purpose enchant.
PS - I still have never and will never do 2% threat to gloves. Any DPS who could ride that close to me are not gonna suddenly have their threat cap lifted by 2%. If it was, I’m sure they could go a little harder and pop a trinket and pass me anyways. You’ve said yourself Vene that any DPSer if they want to can pull of us, that’s just the sad truth of it all.
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Kavtor reply on August 7, 2008 12:57 pm:
Still, an extra 10 stam is just increasing the damage you can take, rather than decreasing the damage you take. Once you can take enough damage to make it through the encounter, you’re much better off decreasing the damage you can take.
And imo, 2% threat is probably the best glove enchant. 240 armour is what, 1% of your raid buffed AC? 10 Stam is less than 1% of your buffed HP. So 2% threat is twice as good a return in that slot.
Ivanstone reply on August 7, 2008 2:16 pm:
Some fights require you to rebuild threat because of wipes and reductions or the need to develop as much threat as possible in a short period of time. In this case 2% threat is better.
Conversely, its worthless on other encounters where DPS is restricted from going all out.
My current threat gloves (T5) have 2% threat. My current survival gloves (T6) have 15 agility for now. Though as Kavtor pointed out, 2% threat is a stat “rich” enchant. It will likely do more for you then any single enchant on most piece of gear.
sanelora reply on August 21, 2008 8:18 am:
2% threat to gloves is so awesome because it is a percentage. it scales ( a hell of a lot) with the modifiers from defensive stance and defiance. this makes it a higher percent than stated. it is something like 3.(whatever)%
its midnight here and i CBF doing the maths :p
August 7th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Very nice Post. I fully agree.
Looking at Specs, I change it according to our raid schedule. In times, when we mostly do already killed bosses (equipping for next bosses, new raidmembers, holidays), I spec more into threat. When everybody is here and new challenges are upon us, survivability is the way to go. If I’m not able to predict, what we’ll do 8/5/48 is my standard spec.
Everything else - the much bigger part - comes from equip.
), Avoidance, Threat and PCI (passive-crushing-immune).
My Closet-Gnome knows 5 different tanking sets: EH, pure Stamina(Kael is my friend
Some items of course are part of more than one set (Sunguard Legplates anyone?).
On the other hand I’ve got for example 3 different chests:
- Glory of the Defender (Avoid)
- the badge one (EH)
- Chestguard of the Warlord form Zul’jin (Threat)
Gemmed and enchanted in the right way, as pointed out above, the differences aren’t big between the 3, but if you do that in every possible slot, the differences are huge!
With these sets I can gear for everything that may come.
Oh, and: I love my boar’s speed enchant
Keep up your nice work Vene!
Greetings from Germany (so sry for bad english!),
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sanelora reply on August 21, 2008 8:20 am:
your english is good
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August 7th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I’m SO glad I found this site, it’s perfect for my level of gear and content. (We’re 3/9 BT, 4/5 Hyjal so it’s a good time for me to reevaluate my gear.)
Despite my name, I’m not the guild MT… though, I have been MT for a previous guild.
I’m glad to see I wasn’t going crazy when I found my SBR down around 17% in my dodge gear, that is pretty much correct… YAY! And I had the best compliment I think you can get as a tank the other day, on azgalor MT’ing when the guild MT dc’ed (again) - “You were surprisingly easy to heal”.
Anyone think of a nicer comment they’ve recieved?
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vorp reply on August 7, 2008 3:44 pm:
I know that feeling Emtee. That’s an awesome feeling. [brag] Our main healer priest with 2000 or so +healing says that she gets bored healing me because all she does is cast renew. I *love* hearing that. [/brag]
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August 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I just respecced to prot from a MS spec and your enchanting chart helps me so much! thnx !
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Judorange from Warsong reply on August 9, 2008 10:38 am:
oh, add the ”Glyph of the Gladiator” head enchant
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29193
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August 13th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The post I’d like to see is a post telling when to gear for Avoidance, and when to gear for effective health. It seems to me, that there are very few clear times to gear for avoidance, especially on progression fights. Normally with me, I gear for EH on progression against tough melee mobs, and threat for most other fights.
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September 19th, 2008 at 5:33 am
How Does the +12 defense to cloak enchant fit into the equation? Does it have any value if I’m already beyond the cap?
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October 1st, 2008 at 10:38 pm
would not the head enchant from the shattered sun offensive count towards effective health?
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