Our weekly raid quest was for Sarth, so I went in yesterday on 10m, no drakes and ended up having a mage pull Sarth off of me.

That has NEVER happened before. O.O Ever. I did notice I got parried 3 times in succession, so that could have been how the mage pulled Sarth. It could have also been that I wasn't able to grab him and position him before the raid started unleashing...I'm not entirely sure. It wasn't the only thing she managed to pull off of me though, which is leading me to believe this is more of a gear issue than anything else...

When I upgraded my tanking gear to all triumph badge gear, I ended up having over 400 Hit...but no gems or enchants for it. It's all from gear. I'm close to the soft expertise cap, I think...but I am hovering pretty low on dodge now too...shifted and self-buffed I believe I'm around 37k HP, 40% Dodge, 5k+ AP...almost 6% Expertise...

But when I got my gear, I talked with the guild about how to get that gear ready for ICC and ToC and all of that. Their advice was to put Stam gems in all of my yellow slots and agility in any red slots- which left me with about 5-6 Blue Stam gems and only 2 agility gems.

Here's my Armory Link: Destinae (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Durotan&n=Destinae)

I wonder if I should have stuck with my original idea, which would have been to throw some Expertise gems there to reach at least soft-cap and still pick up some agi instead of just pure stam?...I'm stumped. I know tanks need truckloads of stam to tank in ICC...but if a tank's not holding threat...

You'd think by now I'd know what I'm doing =( I'm a little confused on how exactly to gear up for ICC without gimping threat or my Health pool.

Looking for some critiques here =) Oh, and yes, I know I'm missing the chest/weapon enchant. I'm going to grab that tonight =) Almost all of the triumph badge gear has yellow gem slots- normally I'd ignore them...I'm wondering if maybe Crit or Expertise in a few would be better than the stam? So confused =( Thanks in advance all =D

Looking for some critiques here =)

Dest,

How many times do I have to tell you?!?

NEVER trust a mage.

<sorry, couldn't help it> :grin:

>.< I know...and her dps, although it was the highest in the group, wasn't SO high that I should have had trouble with it...Do mages have a taunt spell that I don't know about? O.O

If I knew anything about tanking I'd be glad to offer gear advice, but since I don't, I'll tell you this:

I've seen mages hit their AoE (too early) and pull off the best tanks I know. The tank could be rockin' the highest gearscore available, and if they haven't quite established aggro, a mage (especially a mage) will pull off of them.

Do mages have a taunt spell that I don't know about? O.O

My mage guildie can't even attempt to dps the initial whelps in Ony-25. He waits for the tanks to say "OK dps now!" and he pulls off of them every flippin' time. We now make him stand at the back of the room. I swear just his presence attracts the whelps.

I believe it. I have a guildie that I was calling the "aggro ninja" for awhile on his mage. He's somehow managed to work out threat management on his mage...now it's his hunter...

I was tentative last night about tanking H:FoS as the random I got plopped into, but we seemed to do alright. I only lost threat when the pally or the priest unleashed on stuff that wasn't my main target, but a quick tab+taunt got things under control.

It was also really scary to go in there because the first thing our tree says, "Guys, if you want to replace me...I've never healed this before and I don't think I'm geared enough to do it."

Eeeeeek! But the retadin says, "Tank has 46k HP. Shouldn't be hard to keep her up...throw hots on her and keep dps alive and we'll be fine." We made it through alright. The only one that died was our tree...and it wasn't an aggro issue. It was AoE damage- healed himself last and...well we all know how that goes.

So maybe I haven't made such terrible choices with my gear. I'm going to put Massacre or Mongoose on the weapon and eventually get +10 to all stats on chest and see if that helps.

Not sure if im 100% correct here but my advise would be:

Get stam-defense enchant on helmet and the dodge-defense or stam-resil enchant on shoulders.

For expertise get either glove enchant or switch your agi gem to expertise. Getting high expertise i found to be incredibly important for threat building.

I also noticed in your spec that primal gore was untalented. Get that to make your high threat ability build even more threat.(could easily drop a point in KotJ for that)

If you still feel your threat is somewhat lacking try pop berserk early and spam that mangle for high burst threat. This should keep you ahead of triggerhappy mindless mages ;)

Still lacking on threat? Try dropping KotJ and Primal Tenacy entirely and put those talents in Natural- and Master shapeshifter for more dmg. This could help a bit aswell.

As as personal preference i like glyph of survival instinct better than mangle since i spam that on every CD anyways.

Best regards
Nhexus

Thanks Nhex! I'll look into changing a few of those things out.

I think that's what happened- right off the bat when I grabbed Sarth, he parried me 3 times, back to back. I think that's where I lost him. So, I'm going to try to get more expertise.

Is reaching the hard expertise cap what you mean when you say to aim for high Expertise? Meaning- Eliminating BOTH Dodge and Parry from targets?

I'm also going to look into the talent changes you suggested. I need to see if this was just a bad series of events or if it's an actual threat issue. I don't mind sacrificing a few guildies in order to find out >=)

Hello!

I'm very anti expertise gems because the value they provide is actually pretty low. Just gem agi instead! If you need expertise, instead try to pick up a few expertise items. You could stand to lose a lot of hit.

There's a belt with conquest badges that has a good chunk of expertise on it.

As for mages pulling aggro. It'll happen. The best thing to do on a boss like that is on pull, enrage (the armor loss won't kill you on a boss like Sarth) and pop beserk and beat the living crap out of it.

Expertise cap is very hard to reach though not impossible with druids with all the expertise on ICC gear. The crafted boots, just about like all gear. It's pretty ridiculous. I'm at 12% without trying and I haven't gotten the boots yet because I'm waiting for a couple more pieces to drop.

KotJ isn't a good tanking talent but if you hybrid a lot I'd keep it. Naturalist is a better investment than Master Shapeshifter if you can only chose one. I still go with clear casting in my tank spec because...well I don't know I just have always. I like the sound it makes.

Gemming pure stam isn't a bad option but that sure won't help your threat. If you feel like you can drop some stam, swap out pure stam gems for 10 agi/15 stam gems.

I'm at work so I can't really take a look right now but I'll try to look at your talents and stuff but I'll try to take a peek later. Also you seem to be in your resto gear when I query you on the gear check sites.

I tend to prefer healing lately. It's just easier to learn fights for me that way...(and lately, it's been easier to get into raids that way, since the guild really doesn't do much of anything anymore).

I'm going to tinker around with the gear a little. I had heard that you were required to be at 40K+ UNbuffed in order to be able to tank in ICC and I was only at 36k. Raid buffed I can get well above 40k. Also, I've been meaning to redo my tanking spec, but since I rarely tank anything beyond 5 mans, I haven't really thought too much about it. When I get more time I'll play around with it.

For ICC 10, it's probably better if you have 40k+. I healed a tank through with 42k raid buffed in 10s, it's not so bad if they're decently geared. But if you're pugging or if you're healers aren't super geared I'd aim for 42-45k buffed.

Healing is probably easier to learn the fights but it's actually harder output. A lot of fights are pretty tank easy in ICC. I can only think that Putricide, Deathwhisper, Valithria and Prince Council are any level of difficult (well Arthas too) for tanks. Rotface if you're silme kiting can be a little tricky as a druid.

A lot of fights though are just stand there and smash buttons. I almost fell asleep tanking Saurfang one week.

I think I'm easily over 43k 10 man raid buffed...I'd have to really look. I have a feeling though that my threat generation isn't that amazing and I'm afraid I'd struggle to maintain aggro. I'll have to tank a raid boss to find out how my threat management really is these days. I haven't tanked much since dual spec came out. =\

Also, I figured that KotJ would be a decent tank talent because most of the time we enrage prior to pulling...so you start off the pull with a little bit of a damage/threat buff. That was my thinking. Also, I use enrage on boss fights every time it's up. If you combine that with berserk it seems like it might be a nice fluffy threat boost. Is my thinking incorrect?

For threat, it's a decent enough buff but getting 5/5 Naturalist or even specing into Master Shapeshifter are consistent threat increasers versus a once every minute threat increase.

I think it's not a terrible investment depending on the fights. 4pt10 means you get to enrage like whenever you want. Before I had that I used to time enrages pre-pull just to have some rage but not so I had the armor debuff. If you find it useful keep it. I find tank builds a little flexible though personally I don't spec into KotJ. This being said I do spec into Brutal Impact which a lot of people find silly so I can't really lecture about the most perfect spec.

For threat it can be a little iffy. I find myself working hard lately against mages and their hax0r 4pt10 bonus or warlocks. Pop beserk on pull once you get a good hard punch in the face for a full energy bar and a few stacks of lacerate. Then try to pop that whenever you can.

If you find aggro is really an issue, swap some pure stam out for shifting stam gems and look for some leather gear with expertise/hit on it.

What's your hit/expertise at?

My hit is through the roof...last time I checked it was over 400- but I have NO hit gems or enchants. This is all just from gear and weapons...it's frustrating because it's now a wasted stat where I could have AP or agi =( I don't recall what my Expertise is at, but I'm pretty sure I'm not capped out on that.

I rarely tank these days and honestly, my guild hasn't done any raids together in quite a long while. We had a decent core group, but people keep coming and going and I think if I am ever going to want to raid, I'm going to have to leave and join a more established guild to do so. =*(