Gemming for agility and stam instead of dodge + stam, what are your thoughts?
Gemming for Strength vs. Agility in an avoidance set?

In the OP you can find all information about agility. It is indeed a powerful tanking stat and most definately a viable option to the "standard" 8 dodge / 12 stamina for red slots.

A choice between agility and strength I would put my money on agility for both a mitigation and an avoidance set. Whereas strength "only" provides threat and mitigation, agility gives theat (crit), mitigation (armor) and avoidance (which is all Ulduar tanking is about!)

Quick comparison (forgive me for any wrong calucation!):

8 STR= 16ap, 4bv (Before applying Redoubt, Kings and Divine Strength)
8 AGI= 16armor, 0.15% crit, 0.15% dodge and (before adding Kings)

I kinda am as well, but there are a lot of fights in Ulduar where there is an add component. I end up tanking adds and not the boss in most situations because we run with 2 warriors and myself and a dual spec resto/feral druid. Warriors are just god awful at add tanking, so they end up on the bosses most fights while I keep the adds under control.

I don't mind it much as it is far more entertaining than spamming a boss with cooldowns and once in a while using DP.

Basically,

agility = good avoidance + slight mitigation + tiny threat (from crit)
strength = slightly more mitigation than agility + good threat/dps.

Technically strength is better than agility for mitigation, but even in a mitigation-stacked set you're probably better off going for agi anyway. Strength is only worth stacking for threat and dps.

Generally I think people make too big a deal about the chance of a heal to screw up AD and get you killed, but there's definitely more reason to worry about Blood Draining than about other heals because the heal from BD is specifically triggered the instant you enter AD territory. It's much more likely to help than to hurt, and even if it does hurt you it's highly unlikely to result in your death, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth having BD over another enchant (Blade Ward being the obvious alternative.)

I think I still like Blood Draining, but like I said earlier if it were triggered at say 25% instead of 35% I'd be a lot more comfortable with it. (I definitely like the idea of having a save-your-ass enchant that triggers at low hp.)

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Re the whole MT/OT thing, I think most people at this point would agree that a good 25-man raid needs multiple tanks each capable of doing both MT and OT/add work depending on what the encounter calls for.

But there's also a matter of what people are good at. MTing, in my experience requires a different skill set than OTing. Being a good MT usually means reacting quickly to emergencies by using the appropriate cooldown, whereas being a good OT usually means having good spatial awareness of the "battlefield" and being able to track multiple objects at once. Some people are better at one than at the other. (Personally I think I'm pretty good at picking up adds, but I'm a klutzy MT -- we wiped a LOT on Brutallus due to me missing cooldowns and such.)

Really, MT and OT are just words. If they have useful meanings for you, then use them. If not, then don't.

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As far as the guide goes, I'm still recovering from wisdom-tooth removal. Should be back to playing and working on the guide next week.

From everything I can tell... (based on lots of rawring/chart seeking)
Gearing for excess def is only beneficial over dodge/agi if you aren't at the block cap.
After the block cap, dodge/agi are the best gem mitigation stats. (armor excluded...)
Agi yields less mitigation then dodge.
Agi yields additional survival points.
Agi yields an overall increase in threat, where addition dodge lowers your threat.

So unless that additional avoidance from dodge vs agi puts you at the block cap, agi does seem to be the better stat for tanking. In terms of survival/TTL, agi and dodge are very similar, though agi will actually help if you get an avoidance streak fail. In terms of threat agi is nearly as good as AP.

How are folks looking at their upgrade paths in Ulduar25? I'm considering where to spend the first set of conquest badges at this point, with the help of Rawr, and the first decision is whether I'll want to shoot for the 4 piece aegis set bonus or go piece-meal and pick up non-set item upgrades for some of those slots.

No doubt the 4 piece bonus is nice for mitigation and threat, though beyond the chest piece none of the items are really best in slot, per say, according to Rawr.

If not going for the 4 piece, the conquest badge gloves seem like a smart buy. If going for the 4 piece, the shoulders are a good candidate to keep as the non-set piece, meaning that badges are better spent on the chest and helm while waiting for the aegis glove token to drop.

Looking at effective health, the Unbreakable appears better with the higher stamina, armor and extra block rating. However, your avoidance would drop. So it matters how you view health versus avoidance.

To be fair, the hard mode legs drop from algalon, so untill that point tier 8 legs are best in slot. (imo)

I'd never go for 4 piece unless -possibly- in a TPS set, block rating is just too much of a wasted stat on us.
I personally went for the gloves with my badges (to upgrade t7) but that's only because I will soon get the crafted belt. (had boots crafted because there was no belt crafter, half an hour later the belt pattern drops for some guild..)

I have a whishlist in the bookmarks of my other pc, but it should all be pretty obvious I think. The only thing bugging me is shoulder slot. From what I've seen, the best shoulders are still tier 7.
Oh, and a hard mode weapon (and shield) without expertise on it would be nice as well, but we may get to see that now the moved algalon weapons.

@Artroxa: If you do insist on gemming for avoidance, you should gem dodge over parry. The diminishing returns are much bigger on parry.
How's that gemming working out for you? In my stamina gemmed tanking gear, I have 0.7% less dodge, 2% less parry and 6k more hp, I'm not sure if I'd want to run ulduar with a 38k hp fully buffed tank honestly.
I'd highly recommend putting at least 1 point in SA as well. I'm not sure if the tradeoffs you made for Crusade and full Conviction are worth it either, TPS hasen't really been an issue in Ulduar so far. (and where it is, I just swap in some hit rating items and darkmoon deck)

About my gems: Atm some of them are abit wrong ( mostly the def gems ) since ive been switching around in some random gear etc and happened to run out of gold so yeah.
Im not sure about my stamina tough, in a 10 man i have around 36k hp buffed and it hasnt been a problem yet. In my oppinion my avoidance i superb, i can easily solo tank Emalon 10 man, and alot of ulduar 25 man bosses.

And about regemming to dodge from parry, as im quite high on dodge now wouldnt the dodge stat cost more since i have very much already as it is?

Theoretically there is a point where that is true but in practice you'll never reach those kinds of dodge/parry. So dodge rating is always better point for point than parry rating.

Bleh disregard that, I can't read, somehow took it to mean that dodge had no DR.

My use of the MT / OT distinction was simply based on progression ideologies, where in a min/maxed situation you'd ideally have a single tank designated to gear up first with the 'best' loot to tank hard hitting bosses, while the 'off tanks' put slightly more emphasis on DPS gear for fights like Hodir / Vezax, or gear tailored towards tanking groups of smaller hitting adds. Some guilds adhere to this, others don't, I wasn't making any judgement calls, or insinuating any sort of lower status for the 'OTs' in any way. In fact, many of the fights these days challenge OTs just as much as MTs.

As Prinsesa stated, they have different DR curves. Check this thread out for more details:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t29453-c...gs_level_80_a/

I'm showing an inconsistent tps from omen's reading and im wondering if i am misssing something. im currently specced 0/51/20, but i notice quite a few people going 5/5 in conviction over PoJ and Crusade.

my other concer is another threat gen trinket. i have the DMC greatness and i read some places consider [Anvil of Titans] as a better threat trinket than [Dying Curse]. i'm not desparate for threat at the moment, but i am trying to get to a point to max tps for individual tank encounters, i.e. malygos, hodir, and others.

The World of Warcraft Armory is my armory, any thoughts on how to max out tps in current gear.

my main problem is that although i can average anywhere from 3.9 to 5.5 tps, my hunters are averaging 5.5k tps. i need to up my threat to improve the potential of the dps classes i am running with.

Yesterday i got [Conqueror's Aegis Legguards], they have replaced my previous legs [Legplates of Sovereignty], I have gained some avoidance and HP (about 200 hp),dropped my Def to 541 down from 545.
Lost 8 expertise (26--> 18), lost softcap. At the moment i use [Cloak of the Shadowed Sun], I also have [Platinum Mesh Cloak], [Saronite Animus Cloak].
So I wonder which items combination will be the best, (btw am going to take T8 Gloves, change rings and craft [Plans: Spiked Deathdealers] so i afraid of losing Def Cap).
Feel free to check My armory and comment\Give an advice.

P.S. Sorry for mistakes, English is not my first language.

This actually piqued my curiosity the other day, so I did some simulations to see exactly what Blood Draining does for your overall Time to Live (TTL). While there are a few approximations involved, the conclusion was that Blood Draining never actually decreases your TTL. While it does create situations where you'll get healed out of AD range and get leapfrogged, it also creates situations where you get healed within AD range and thus survive the next otherwise-fatal blow. The simulations suggest that the latter is always greater than the former, so BD always increases your TTL or survivability.

The first round of simulations (without healing) is here, the second one (which includes an estimate of constant healing between attacks to see what effect this has on the results) is on the second page.

Cobbling together a rough summary from those two posts:
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Hope you feel better soon, I still remember feeling like a chipmunk for a week or so back when I had mine removed in high school.

I took some time to read over the guide to check for any inconsistencies with my MATLAB work over at maintankadin. So far, the only one I've been able to find is in the Talents section; you state that Seals of the Pure is better than Conviction for threat. My threat talent comparison suggests the opposite - at Naxx25 gear levels and higher, Conviction should be a slightly larger threat boost per talent point than SotP, and should remain so as gear improves. This is true even with the T8 2-piece set bonus equipped (which was used in that calculation), without the 2-piece SotP falls slightly farther behind. However, the difference is very small, on the order of 2 TPS. That plot also reinforces that OHWS and TbtL are our two best threat talents, which is consistent with your guide.

You don't mention the relative worth of the different buff foods in the Consumables section, though I'm not sure it's that critical. The Weapon Enchant TPS analysis shows that Fish Feast only lags Dragonfin Fillet by 30 TPS or so, which is about 25% less effective.

I'm not sure how you feel about putting images/graphs in guides, but if you'd like to nab any of my plots for your guide you're welcome to do so. The other one that comes to mind as potentially useful is the plot of TPS contribution from different stats in the Stat TPS Analysis for the gear section (the bar plot is probably the most succinct).

In addition, if you'd like a graph produced for other situations, let me know and I'll be happy to generate them for you if at all possible. It's the least I can do for all your hard work updating and maintaining the most comprehensive guide to Tankadinning on the web.

Grats on logging out in PVP gear and for not allowing private messages (I tried to PM first).

I organize my Stats as the following.... Defense cap > Avoidance > Stamina > Hit cap> Expertise cap > Strength. I like my HP pool to be above 42k with buffs to tank 25man bosses. Although anyone will tell you that you go for what suits your tanking needs :-). I often eat food to reach Hit cap.

We can get to your armory from the link in your profile.

Without a WWS or WMO report, it's hard to tell what's going on - maybe you're missing some key buffs (I'm guessing this is 10-man) or maybe it's a question of ability usage. For reference, I hit around 7k TPS on Hodir with a slightly-less-aggressive gear setup than yours the other night: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Since then, I upgraded from Hero's Surrender and possibly one of the rings you've got, and maybe a belt (was Ancient Aligned Girdle).

Note that there were several points where I missed out on TPS - after a taunt during Frozen Blows, (deliberately - I generate a lot more threat compared with Signal) and a couple times when kiting him closer to starlight buffs.

Apparently Blizzard is considering giving us Prot another tanking cooldown. This would seem to go a long way towards catching us up to all the other tanks and making the Glyph of Salvation less mandatory, depending on what the effect turns out to be.

Here's hoping it's not something like a souped-up Divinity: Increases healing done to you by 50% for 12 seconds.

Is there a good guide for Best in Slot gear for Pre-Ulduar and/or in Ulduar? I see lots of them for Ret and Holy, but far less for tanks.

I have one guildie in particular who insists specific tank items are BiS, while I prefer to think in terms of having the right gear for each specific job, but I'd think someone would have assembled a tank gear "ideal" list.

It's as you say: for a tank, gear is tailored to the fight in hand. Obviously, there are some items like Last Laugh, which trump all others, but such a list would be largely meaningless to the majority of people. It might be possible to create a best Avoidance list, best EH list, best Block list etc, but even those would be highly subjective. The only way create a list useful to you is to generate one yourself, evaluating pieces based on how you value avoidance, stamina, etc.

Has there been a formal determination of a change in how DivSac and DivShield work together? I've been reading rumors about Div Sac no longer extending the cap for a while now, but haven't really seen anything definitive. Is it still working as before on live but still up in the air on the PTR?

There are quite a few guides out there.

Pre Ulduar you might want to look at the Maintankadin website as there used to be one on there but I cant find it at present.

For Ulduar try this:

Maintankadin • View topic - Jayson's BiS Guide Discussion Thread