Ding! 80.

[Velaegis]

Now what? With regards to getting geared and tanking, of course. What can I tank, what SHOULD a tank, and what should my goal be for tanking stats just to get started?

[Nikachelle]

Your first goal is to read this forum a bit more in depth. Every question you've asked is provided here. Mostly in the stickies.

[Morlin]

Your first goal is to read this forum a bit more in depth. Every question you've asked is provided here. Mostly in the stickies.

This. There is plenty of great information in the stickies and other threads that you should have little trouble getting started.

[Velaegis]

I have to say, I expected answers like these. I looked around and used the search function, but honest-to-God I didn't find what I was looking for.

I'm wondering what I can/should start tanking. How long some of these runs take, what I should know before tackling these starting dungeons, etc. I don't want to jump on LFG then get into an instance with some strangers, then make a fool of myself because I don't know anything.

If someone finds something like this and points me in the right direction to a thread I missed, I will promptly shoot myself in the face out of shame and thank you for your patience. Not in that order.

[Invisusira]

Well your FIRST order of business is to get a new sig generator since you are clearly not L72.

Tank gearing comes in a natural progression, much like any other class in the game. If you haven't already, start upgrading your tank gear. Run L80 5 mans with items you want. Start to do some heroics, and once you have a good enough set (full L80 blues and epics) start raiding. 540 defense is magic number to be shooting for for raiding, it means you're uncritable in raids. 535 is uncritable in heroic 5 mans, but that's something you don't really worry about.

[Offsure]

Dinged 80 Thursday. Today I managed to cross the 30k HP selfbuffed border, admittedly with some drop luck.

My advice is to stack up on Tempered Saronite/Daunting gear and other nice blue BoEs while grinding Argent Crusade, Wyrmrest and Sons of Hodir reputation. Thus you can quite easily get quality gear.

Here's my armoury. http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet ... sh&n=Civus
I know that some of my gear is unenchanted, and I'm working on it.

[Velaegis]

I love you guys. You saved me a face full of bullets.

Thanks! That Armory post is especially helpful.

[Morlin]

Farming normal ToC and doing Argent Tournament dailies is probably the most basic of places to start. There's almost always new 80's or new alts that are looking to get geared up quickly, and if you advertise in LFG or trade "Tank LFG farming normal ToC" you're bound to get bombarded with whispers (DISCLAIMER: depends on your server). You definitely want to try to get The Black Heart trinket. It's one of the best tank trinkets in the game, and it drops from a non-heroic 5-man...go figure. Running AT dailies will net you a good load of cash to start browsing the AH for gear or mats for crafted gear. Once you have at least 535 Defense and a decent health pool (I'm guessing ~30k, somebody correct me if I'm wrong) you should be doing the daily heroic every single day. You should get lucky enough to find other people that are willing to run several heroics in a day. The first 2 pieces you should save up your Emblems of Conquest for will be the tier 8 chest and helm. It's 58 emblems for each one. After you get those, fill out the rest of your conquest gear by getting the neck, gloves, belt, and pants. Once you've gotten everything you can with conquest, you can think about trading down for valor emblems for a cloak, bracers, and a ring.

Depending on your profession, there's another good trinket you can get to start you off on the right path. If you're an Alchemist, you can make an Indestructible Alchemist's Stone. If you're a JC, make yourself the Monarch Crab. Otherwise, run H AN every day until you get Essence of Gossamer. Get Peacekeeper Blade from H ToC, get a Titansteel Shield Wall crafted for yourself.

Other than those things, I'll direct you to some specific links that would be invaluable to you at your stage in the game:

- Eanin's Failsafe WotLK Gear Guide - The most basic pieces to go for when you've just dinged 80, as a starting point. Granted, once you've hit 535 Defense you can ignore the list and you'll just naturally get better stuff running heroics and normal ToC.

- Petrus' WotLK Gear List - Great for looking at a glance which pieces are better than others. If you've gotten into running heroics, this is a near-perfect list to reference to get an idea of what pieces to aim for. For example, if you've been stuck with Tempered Saronite Shoulders (#12 on the list), you can see that you'd really want to try to run H ToC every day for Regal Aurous Shoulderplates (#4 on the list).

- Digren's 3.2 Gem and Enchant Guide - Extremely valuable and helpful guide to (guess what?) gemming and enchanting your gear. To start, you'll probably want to go for a balanced gemming strategy, to make sure you're staying uncrittable (535 for heroics, 540 raiding...to be safe always aim for 540). Since you'll be replacing your gear pretty quickly at the beginning, I wouldn't waste epic gems on this new gear. Just put shifting dreadstones in your red sockets, enduring forest emeralds in yellow sockets, and solid sky sapphires everywhere else. Once you're ready to start tanking 10-ToC, then you can decide to put epic stamina gems everywhere (leaving on good red socket for an agility/stamina combo to keep your meta active).

That's pretty much it gear-wise. If you're looking for advice on tanking mechanics (a.k.a. how to not suck with all this 1337 gear you've obtained) check the stickies in Basic Training

Hope that helps!