Tanking stats levels 60 to 69

I have seen the guides for tanking once I hit 70.

However, I am having a hard time finding a guide on how I should gear and what my stats should look like as I am still leveling up from 60 to 70.

What should I have at 63, 64, 65, etc?

Has anything like this been done yet? I am looking to spec prot again at 64 and start tanking the Ramps, BF, SP, and Underbog.

I want to make sure my stats are good before I get started though.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
V

Honestly...you should probably just spec Prot and try it out. Try out a cluster of mobs outside an instance first to get the feel for it, then get a group together and hit up a dungeon. Should give you a pretty good feel of where you are, and what you need to tweak.
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I've already tanked ramps twice and blood furnace once.

The second ramps run went south - people kept standing in the fire at the end, and the shaman rolled on the sword that dropped from the first boss...

But the other runs went very well. No need to 'wait till later' to spec Prot. Your guild will appreciate you learning how to tank as early on as possible. You definitely do not want to be learning it on your first kara raid.

I've also tanked everything from SFK all the way up to lBRS. Vital experience.

My gear is not great, but might give you a guideline about where you can go in terms of things to look for.
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the 2 stats you should focus on right now are rep and levels. do your rep the right way so you get the xp for all the killing and runs (makes it slightly more entertaining) and save the quests for when your 70 or close to it. I would recommend not doing any quest that gives rep till you are at revered or close to it. the grinding will give you xp now but not later and you will have to do it anyways.

actual stats i would stay stam and spell dmg. 200ish spell dmg is fine for a 70 but if your pugging an instance and you have a lock thats 2 levels higher than you its nice to have some extra threat. stam is always good, get some and you will like it.
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Real Dwarves tank in Crusader Aura

I been prot all the way except for one day of holy shock goodness

Tanked everything from Deadmines up and have enjoyed it all the way.

The other great thing is I have also healed one or two runs through pretty much every instance as well without changing my spec at all.

Healed ramps for 1st run then tanked for 2nd @ 60 and have tanked/healed bf/sp/underbog as well so far.

All quest rewards with some instance drops and the odd "Of the champion" piece in tank set and I also grab whatever healing pieces I see floating around as well (+500 ish heals at mo with 88 mp5 while casting with mana oil).

Pallies are awesome.

Stats you should aim for...

Well - tbh it doesn't matter, I have tanked with my semi decent stats and yeah it goes faster and the pulls are bigger but I've healed very average warriors through the same places and they do fine, just takes longer.

Don't stress about things - instance as much as you can and do the quests that give you gear to use while saving random quests for gold or rep later.
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the only stats you should be focusing on, for tanking, is spell damage and decent armor.

You wont get good drops or rerun a few instances a dozen times, just get the ones which have decent "warrior" tanking stats and use a spelldamage weapon. It should be enough to keep agro.

Most tanking classes arent so good until they hit 70 and have atleast some decent gear then.
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you really don't need to worry about your tanking stats too much from 60-69.

You can look on the AH starting at 58 for 'of the knight' (sta, def, sdmg) or 'of the champion' (sta, str, def). I think when I first got into the outlands I had about 6k HP, and had about 9k by 66-68ish. Keep in mind this was probably above the norm, as I was wearing mostly blue quality, high stamina items.

On my rogue, I only ran through each of the 60-69 outland instances once or twice. On my paladin, I ran them much more for several reasons. First, pick up all the plate you can. By the time you get to the 66+ instances you can start to pick up gear for a healing and retribution set too, incase you decide to change your spec. Secondly, you're learning to tank, and leveling at the same time. Nobody wants to jump into a group at 70 with a tank that doesn't know what they're doing. You'll probably run into some pissed off people and end up getting dropepd from the group. Most people expect people to know how to play their roles by the time you hit 70. That's what all the 60-69 instances are for -- their difficulty is ramped down significantly. Finally, you'll be getting a fair amount of rep just by doing the instances, allowing you to go back and do the quests for a boost later.

But ya, to answer your question, all you really need is to build large stamina pool. When you start to get some gear with sockets, gem everything you can (ignore socket bonus) with the cheap +9 stamina gems (1-2g on the AH), and don't worry too much about defense, block rating, dodge, parry etc until you hit 70 and need to worry about things like uncritable and uncrushable.

As long as your wearing tanking pieces and not healing gear or retribution gear, you will be fine. They don't even have to be paladin oriented tanking items. Warrior tanking pieces will suffice (str, block value, etc).

I am lvl 66, you can check my EU armory under the name Owneri on trollbane.

I am feeling I have low block/dodge rating and low spell dmg, I have pretty many aggro problems.
But otherwise it seems pretty okay!

EDIT: I have around 4.6k mana and 9.1k hp (I think) unbuffed.
Funny, I found a HC druid with the same lvl and he had 10k hp unbuffed in tauren form, and bear form about 12k lol.

2nd EDIT: Btw, I can pull 2 groups at the same time in underbog without any problems but I had a holy priest with me.
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I am paladin.

Thread TLDR.

./thread = get 'tank' pieces of gear, level to 70, get quest items mentioned in uncrushable thread on the way.
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I have ADHD and OCD...I keep forgetting to wash my hands.

Honestly, most of the stuff will come to you. Start off in Ramparts, aside from the dragon it's a fairly easy instance to tank. If you're not familiar with the instances before you do them, it would probably be a help to offspec heal through them the first time and get a feeling for what the tank has to do on various fights. It's a lot more entertaining then autoattack questing though, I've gone 59-64 doing very, very few quests on this char.
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