If a tank really needs threat, taunt and grip won't save it. e.g. competing with high damage DPSes, why force them to slow down?

Is the game only about getting big hits in hard modes now?

Because even there, you surely need some more damage from the raid while keeping stamina reasonably high.

Besides, even that 'hard mode ulduar 1-shot' argument isn't solid. Not all bosses hit hard and slow, notably not even the last one.

Balance; surely stamina is the best stat but giving up every other stat for 1 stamina isn't too bright.

Stamina is linear. Ones all the softcaps have been reached and considering DR curves would't stamina be the best stat to stack?

Yes, but with a long list of things you have to point out before just stacking all the stamina you can get. For example, avoidance ratings have DR, but each percent offers increasing returns on damage prevention, so it's more linear than you might think. Same with armor, it's mostly linear regarding TTL increases, and there's an excellent post by Satrina somewhere at Tankspot explaining how the values of armor and stamina interact with each other, so increasing both gives you better returns. All in all, I think ledalax's last sentence sums it up well enough: it's a good stat, it's usually the best stat, but it isn't the only stat. Regarding the enchant, I don't think it's too much of an issue, and would go with personal taste. The perceived value of 2% extra threat will vary a lot from player to player.

On a related side note, is anyone planning to get [Glyph of Indomitability] for EH instead of two Stamina trinkets?

Every tank has to balance his stats, it's not really an argument, it's a known long established fact. However one dimension you're not including in your point is the fact that any decent tank will have multiple sets of gear which he should regularly switch between encounters.
The balance largely depends on your job and healers. For example, if you're tanking Hodir HM and then you're tanking Steelbreaker in IC HM. If your healers are half decent you should have no issues with surviving in Hodir HM, and the DPS are going to push for 14k++ dps there, you are much better off going in full TPS gear, your avoidance and your HP aren't going to get the job done in there.
If you're tanking Steelbreaker in IC HM, you have ages to build up threat before anyone even hits him, from P1 and P2 even if you have 0 hit and 0 expertize on your gear, by the time your DPS gets there you would have at least 900k-1mil threat. If you're going in full TPS gear here - you're not going to kill him - your healers will be oom by the P3 when the real DTPS burst comes.
At least to me it was always a game of balancing the stats tailored for a specific fight given the healers that are in the raid. Trinkets specifically are the first item you should be switching around for the fights. Grim Toll for Hodir HM? Why not?

I completely agree with socketing for the stam only. The reason being you should have multiple sets of gear which you should be switching based on your knowledge of the encounter & raid setup. Look at the very first post in this thread, Suno spent time to come up with multiple tanking sets for a reason, they ALL should be socketed with stam, and even so, look at the vast difference in stats.

if you're saying you only have one tanking set... you shouldn't be posting in " DK Endgame Tanking" thread, simply because any endgame tank would have multiple tanking items that he would know how to switch around to suit the fight and raid setup to the best.

^ Your argument is very solid and you won't get a disagreement from me at any part of it, except where you say all gear (collections), without any exception whatsoever should be gemmed with stamina only; this clearly can't be true in all cases in existence.

"Stamina is the best stat" isn't enough here as an argument, since if it was enough, only the stamina-based collection would be needed by all.

Like others have said, it depends on your personal flavor. Since you were saying you were having AOE threat issues, Armsman might not be a bad choice for you for that extra little edge. If you're comfortable with your threat generation, stamina might be a better option.

As for your spec changes, look good for the most part, I still am against Mark of Blood and 3/3 Scent, but again, personal choice. As far as Spell Deflection goes, so far it works well for me, but I'm primarily doing heroics and 10-mans. It has situational use as well, but for me, I think it works well. I've had it trigger off most heroic bosses who cast direct damage and frontal arc type spells (Argent Confessor, Eck, Lavanthor, Cyanigosa, Prince Keleseth, Dalronn, every single frigging mob in Old Kingdom, etc. etc. etc.) but also of some 10 man bosses as well. So far, any direct damage frontal arc spell (like dragon breaths) that I have tanked has triggered it, which makes keeping me up much easier for my healers. I'm curious if it works on the new Northrend Beasts encounter (the jormungar spit is frontal arc).

And that works for me - it allows me to tank any heroic, even more pain in the ass ones like Old Kingdom, with relative ease.

Anyways, the build you have now looks more solid, especially with Morbidity 3/3 - DnD has a nice threat multiplier which will be better than any amount of BB spam, and should help you keep your AOE threat.

Reclaimed Thunderstrike. That's only the 10 man version. If there's a 25 man version like there is with Vis'kag, then expect it to be the best in slot until you see something with multiple sockets and much much higher base stamina and agility.

But you have to wait for Onyxia to be revamped to get that beauty.

It's not exactly an argument, it's a mathematically proven fact of the matter. I suggest you spend a little more time trolling all the DR, EH, TTL, etc parts around here or at the tank spot where Satrina has done tonns of math around this subject.

Before resorting to personally attacking me, can you give some thought to the above question? I repeat, if stamina being the best stat is the only argument needed to support that all collections of gear should be gemmed only with stamina, then why is stamina-based collections not the only ones in existence in the first place? It is the best stat after all, it's going to be used exclusively after all - according to the consensus you're presenting, why not take it in gear in the first place?

Because there is a very distinct difference between comparing entire items with a potentially large variance in stat allocations and comparing gems to determine which to utilize in your sockets. Stamina gems give a tank more bang for the buck than any other gem just like strength for dps DKs, lucrative socket bonuses like 9 stamina or meta gem requirements being the obvious potential exceptions. Even when you desire higher avoidance for a fight you get more out of a stamina gem in that same socket than you would other gem types. Keep in mind also that the situations where higher avoidance is preferred over stamina stacking are relatively limited. Gearing for one stat while socketing for another is hardly a practice unique to tanks.

Firstly, i am not personally attacking you in any way, there is nothing at all in there that would imply a personal attack against you in any way.
More importantly, with regards to the topic - the most important words are DR and MAXIMIZING the benefits of a socket to a tank.
If you are not looking to MAXIMIZE the benefits of a socket, by all means, you can gem with anything at all.

The reason you would socket avoidance sets with stamina? Avoid death due damage spikes. As for threat sets, you usually have more than enough threat stats with gear only.

Why not do it the other way around? I think it's an opportunity cost issue. Gearing usually boils down to avoidance versus threat, since most pieces have generous amounts of stamina. What you're doing with gemming usually has a bigger impact in your resulting HPs. So, for example, when choosing between "gearing avoidance and gemming stamina" or "gearing stamina and gemming avoidance" you're choosing whether to sacrifice a little threat or a lot of stamina for avoidance.

What is [Sigil of Insolence] ICD? I see it has an 80% proc chance on RS.

I would like to know the average uptime if anyone logged it.

If it has an ICD, it's much lower than 20 seconds. I have yet to see it failing to refresh during a boss fight.

It looks like 100% uptime (after this first proc) under typical circumstances. 20s duration with a cooldown under 10s (I've heard ~5) and, as noted, an ~80% proc chance.

You're mistaking gearing for Stamina with gemming for Stamina. Tank items of the same level have pretty similar stamina, and if Stamina was the ONLY thing to gear for then you'd be in PvP gear no questions asked. The point is that a gem slot, for a DK tank, provides a tremendous health increase, compared to relatively small avoidance benefits from the same slot. DK tanking has effective health stat weighting that is not quite as dramatic as the Strength for DPS DKs, which is to the extent that some use tank weapons when DWing as well as only gemming for Strength. But gemming for Stamina, which becomes heavily enhanced by raid buffs, as opposed to under/around a single % of dodge, parry, or even less of both if you choose defense past the cap in the same slot simply provides more benefit. Every piece of gear in the game is intentionally itemized at sub-perfect, because otherwise all gear of the same level and type looks identical. When given a specific choice to augment an item through enchantments or gems, however, the empirical formula becomes king for maximizing benefit since in that case you CAN 'ideally itemize.' So unlike DK Endgame DPS, where Strength is essentially the undisputed master of all it surveys but has to put up with co-existence, DK Endgame Tanking faces Stamina: First Among Equals.

You guys keep arguing back and forth about which type of gem has more value, and that stamina is always better than any other...but if that were truly the case, no one would go for socket bonuses, or meta requirements. The pure and simple fact is, pure stamina gems are ideal unless it is outweighed by a socket bonus which provides both avoidance and stamina, or a socket match which fulfills your meta requirement (resulting in more stamina/avoidance).

Beyond that, it looks like you're all arguing in favor of the same point, from different angles, and massively misunderstanding each others points as counterpoints to your own...

What I don’t see answered is how that ideal stat doesn’t bias people in choosing it also in gear sets for tanking. Surely as you imply you can’t use DPS, PVP or Mage gear in tanking but you’re going to use Avoidance or Stamina based according to the OP. How that ‘stamina being the ideal stat’ frame of thought doesn’t bias you to ignore avoidance gear sets in the first place and go for the stamina based, severely escapes me.

If you actually read a previous post of mine I said specifically that already figuring it should be pretty obvious that 15+12+X for the socket bonus on the t9 helm would be a good trade off compared to 30 stam or that your meta gem works best while activated and didn't bother repeating myself. Ultimately though only bonuses worth chasing are the stamina bonuses and it's better to fulfill them with stam/X gems rather than straight def, dodge, or parry gems which still reinforces the assertion that you gem for stamina.


What it is is someone didn't understand why gearing for avoidance can make sense but gemming for it is less than ideal in most circumstances(just for you!) and questioned the reasoning behind it.

I honestly don't know where that logic stems from. I accept that you are gemming for stamina at any chance. I accept that you are ignoring avoidance bonuses for more stamina. I accept that stamina is the best stat. What is mindbogglingly irregular is how you are going to use Avoidance gear over Stamina gear (a swap that - let's spell it - trades stamina for avoidance) when you are in that frame of thought.

There are only a few examples where Stamina is traded off against Avoidance (PvP gear, Resistance gear, occasionally DPS gear), and for this gear the wasted itemization points on mostly irrelevant stats are not worth the increased Stamina, except for encounters where you are required to soak a big hit and meet an unreasonable stamina threshold (Sartharion with 3 Drakes often required Druids to wear Frost Resistance gear for the additional Stamina, for example).

In most scenarios, you are trading between: Bonus Armor, Dodge Rating, Parry Rating, Expertise Rating, Defense Rating, Hit Rating. From these trade-offs, you build your different gear-sets, and then the rule-of-thumb is to gem Stamina for the best gains in survivability, unless there is a compelling reason not to (Being uncrittable, Stamina socket bonus, Trivial content, etc.).

Ledalax, the reason that tanks do not use pure 'of stamina' gear is due to item budget. Every item in the game has a certain stat budget based on the item's ilevel. There is a diminishing returns effect of sorts with regards to statistic distribution. Take for example Adventurer's Cape of the Bear which has 9 stamina and 9 strength compared to the Adventurer's Cape of Stamina which has 14 stamina, not 18. So while Stamina gives you the most benefit per point of the stat, an item with a balance of useful stats will give the most survival per item budget point.