Discussion: Building your Gear for your Situation

I see many people almost religiously stating things like "Stamina Armor" is the way to go, then others saying "Avoidance avoidance avoidance!". Then you have your group that says just worry about AOE, max your threat and pick up the rest where you can.

Lets get a running discussion going on here... No attempts to disprove any other poster's theory. We'll start another thread for that later for critique and such. Post your views on what you consider the optimal gear build. If you think there are different gear builds for different scenarios, state that and list it out. Show your math behind your theory if you can.

The purpose of this thread is to give everyone an opportunity to step back, take a deep breath, and to "listen" to what other tanks are saying. Remember, this isn't about attacking other people's opinion or defending yours. Just give your thoughts on the subject and back it if you can.
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I'm still at the stage (pre-25man) where I'm desperately trying to balance uncrushability with as much stamina as possible (which isn't as much as I'd like sadly). If I were more motivated, I might look into tailoring my gear more (more threat/block for trash, more avoidance for bosses, etc) but I'm lazy and afraid that one time I'd forget to make the switch from my trash gear before taking on the boss.

I'm looking forward to getting some of the higher tier gear where I actually have enough item points left over to start really pushing my threat (atm, I have a spelldamage sword, righteous shoulders and spelldamage enchant on my gloves to provide threat).
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http://www.wulfsblood.com - Wow Blog

I find a healthy balance of both is more effective than stacking things one way or the other. If I'm dying to healers going OOM, then I put on more avoidance. It puts gaps in the stream of damage I'm taking and lets them cancel heals and save some mana. If I'm dying to spike damage, I get more HP/Mitigation. Ultimately you can't stop the worst case scenario from happening, so you have to be able to survive it when it does.

That said, due to the high amount of avoidance necessary to become uncrushable, I usually find stamina to be the better upgrade.
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Me, LOL!

For bossfights it's usually max stamina/armor after reaching crit/crush immunity, unless I'm on the first target and it's a weaker target, then I'll try to squeeze in more spelldamage. If I notice that healers aren't topping me (we only have one shaman on the Priest tank at Karatress for example), then it's more avoidance so I take less damage overall.

On trash, I prefer a little more spelldamage as well, so I can do without consecration to keep aggro on my mob. Helps a lot with sheeps around. Tossing AS before there are sheeps helps a lot, though, especially if you hit some targets that are gonna be sheeped. If sheep breaks for some reason, you'll be tanking those mobs instead of the mage that sheeped them.

If I'm tanking a lot of mobs, like Al'ar adds, then Block Value starts to kick into usefullness. Only got around 550 atm, though. T5 ALWAYS drops Defender + Hero lately .
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Zoe's guide to building your tankadin

I try to research the encounter beforehand.

If I know I'm going into a fight with a slow, hard hitter then I wear my avoidance gear because that gear also my max HP gear. When I'm fighting a fast hitter, I switch over to block value gear. For trash or gimmick fights like Void Reaver and Lurker, I wear my spell damage gear.

I am also mindful of my healer mix. For heavy priest, paladin runs, I will tailor my gear to favor the avoidance more, for shaman, druid heavy runs, I'll push out more block value.
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It depends.

I have a fair amount of gear in my bags; I have one set that maxes avoidance for general stuff, and one set that maxes stamina. Minmaxing at the moment costs me around 2k stam for 7% avoidance. Which bits I wear depend on which fight we're doing.

Context : All of my gear is pre-Kara and so far I haven't gotten anything from heroics (stupid Sun Eater drop rate), but I've only been working on gearing this character for a couple weeks now.

You bring the right tools for the job: if you die from burst, wear more stam. If you die from healers OOM, wear more avoidance.

The trick is figuring out what to wear to the party ... ^_^
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Well, I'm not as far along as some of you but I have 8 fullsets of gear and a Healing Switchout (Mace, Shield, Libram). Love Itemrack.

HPS/Block Value Set
Avoidance Set
Threat Set
OT/Trash/5man Set

Along with PVE Heal, PVP Heal, Spell Damage DPS, and 2Her DPS Sets.
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Dragonzbane - 70 Paladin - Khadgar

Right now my gear is like 4 sets.

Heroic/Raid set - High avoidance & stamina
5 man Instance set - less avoidance & stamina w/ more spell damage
Healing set
Solo/dps set

FYI - my guild is just getting into Kara, so I haven't gotten to the point of needing additional tweaks as others have described.
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Armory - http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Glam

"Taking one for the team - Pally Style!"

Since reaching uncrushable (which I feel gives plenty avoidance for most fights), I've tried to focus primarily on stamina since that's where tankadins tend to fall behind wars/druids. Stam, armour and block value (in that order) are important to me so I can soak up bigger hits. If I am needed to MT a slow hard hitter (which does happen), I want to be able to soak up big chunks of burst damage so I don't give my healers heart attacks trying to heal me, or worse, end up taking a dirt nap.

That said, while stamina is my focus, I think it's important to tune my gear according to the fight. I have a threat set for fights like VR and Mag (when I'm on one of the first channelers), an uncrushable mixed stam/avoidance set for prince, a threat/BV set for aoe, and a max avoidance set (which I have yet to use but I like having the option open if the need ever arises).
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(not always accurate, I spec holy for arena)

I don't have "sets" per se, aside from my healing set. But I have lots of crap in my bags lol. I fine tune each fight. If I find I need a bit more avoidance, I'll usually switch out my lower stam trinket for the pocketwatch, and I'll usually trade out my maiden gloves for tier4 at that point as well since I have the extra avoidance and I like more spelldamage All in all, going through the gear I have sitting there... I could probably form up 3 basic sets. All uncrushable, all uncrittable. The difference mostly being the coorelation between health and spelldamage. But in reality, I'm rarely switching out little more than trinkets and rings and such. No major gear swaps, other than my healing set.

The way I figure it, as long as you have 490 def, 17-21% ish dodge, 15-18%ish parry, enough BR to make you uncrushable after that, over 200 +spelldamage (but upwards of 400+ depending on the situation), and as much health as your current gear level allows (preferably over 12k if you can and upwards of 14k+ depending on the fight and gear level), I would call it good. Just remember to fine tune your gear to the fight and that may mean simply switching one item, upwards of 12, or your entire set of gear.

Don't forget to carry a little bit of resist gear around. 18-20 slot bags are your friend. I have 32 slots of crap I carry around at all times... and even a little bit more in my bank. My poor dusty Sun Eater

I have 4 sets :

- DPS ( grinding solo mostly / summoning stone gear ( pvp ) )
- Healing ( +1200 healing , no idea on the mp5 )
- Tankset 1 ( Sun eater gear , 52% avoidance, 50% block )
- Tankset 2 ( threat generation , 300 spelldamage , 48% avoidance, 54% block )

-Puss

Once I realized I could take the hits I stopped being as paranoid about getting hit. There was a point in time I was at just about 50% to be missed, dodge, and parry and it worked pretty well with the old spiritual attunment as well as the fact that I just didn't have any better stamina options then.

After the spiritual attunement nerf and getting gear that allowed me to be uncrushable with more block rating/stamina/armor and less dodge, I never looked back except for vs very fast hitters or multiple mobs that hit for a decent amount each. I found the threat to be more reliable, my healers to have more room for error and overall I just felt more beefy

That having been said I am now faced with a choice between 400 health and 80 spell damage. I reaaallly like the idea of being 14.1k unbuffed with 16k+ armor vs 13.7k but I am concerned I wont be able to keep threat vs people with only 190 or so spell dmg unbuffed. I am going to need to so some testing to see how the threat compares. 400 health is nothing to sneeze at so I hope I can stay with this setup.
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Zeal without wisdom is folly

I've always been a big avoidance freak. However, the watchword in my opinion is balance.

Avoidance is useless without having the HP/armour to eat a hit that gets through. High HP/armour with low avoidance turns you into a mana sponge and drives your healers OOM.

It's all a balancing act. These days I still prefer avoidance, but I look at how the avoidance affects my overall effective damage soak, and compare to the other options. I don't just look at the avoidance percentage.
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Zen Tanking - http://zentanking.blogspot.com

Personally, I don't think there is a "one size fits all" approach you can take when tanking as a pally. Max avoidance vs max stam vs max block vs max spell damage etc. and any mixture inbetween is all situational IMO. Tack on resist gear for certain fights and you could easily keep every bag you have full of gear.

I think basic principles apply: get yourself uncrushable, pump out enough threat to keep mobs on you, and don't give your healers a heart attack doing it

The gear it takes to do that changes wildly depending on the encounter. It also depends on your group makeup and what you are expected to tank.

All schools of thought are useful if you want to open up the most options to yourself regarding tanking.