Help out a new tank

[Ghanjo 37]

Hey hey, I hope you can all help me. I've picked up my alt paladin and started gearing her for protection, but mostly by doing world bosses and events, and by going ret in LFR with protection loot specialization.

This is my armory:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/defias-brotherhood/Monroe/advanced

I don't really know much about tanking, and I have a few questions:

1) Which stat priority should I go for? Haste, Mastery or Avoidance? I have read that most people recommend haste, but is that only for endgame tanking, or is it good while gearing up as well?

2) How much stamina is enough stamina?

3) Is it viable to gear up to 480 by grinding justice, converting to honor and buying honor gear? Or is the pvp gear bad for tanking?

4) Since people on LFR seem to be rather hard on underperforming tanks, I haven't tried tanking in there yet. Do you think my gear is good enough to tank MSV-HoF-ToeS? And how much do I need to tank ToT?

5) Is there an easy-to-read how-to-tank-LFR guide somewhere? I know the encounters as mage, but I don't really know about the tank-specific stuff.

I checked the forum to avoid reposting questions that have already been answered. I hope I haven't missed something and reposted a question.

Looking forward to your help :)

[Furiyers 10]

You look like you're definitely on the right path so I'll just throw some of my insight out:

1) The control-haste build is becoming more and more the "right" way to go with higher gear levels. While getting to that point I would focus on getting "enough" stamina and you'll be reforging/gemming so much to reach hit/expertise caps that you won't have much room to stack haste anyway. But once you start approaching the 500 ilvl range you can start piling on some haste while maintaining the hit cap and expertise hard cap.

2) It's a hard question to answer and is really dependent on experience (or asking your healers how annoying it is to heal you). I tank normal ToT on my paladin with a full control/haste setup and I'm somewhere around 600k HP. I still use 1 stamina trinket and a stamina meta gem but I may try swapping them out and see how squishy I am.

Here is a link to my armory (I log out in ret gear 99% of the time but I'll try and remember to swap to prot gear when I get home from work today)

http://us.battle.net...Furiyers/simple

3) I would avoid PvP gear if you can unless it's a massive ilvl increase (pvp drop off Nalak compared to an ilvl 450 blue for instance). The best way to gear up is run heroics for blues and use the valor to get some stuff from your Isle of Thunder daily faction or the 5.0 factions for some cheap 489's. Any str gear that does NOT have crit is viable tanking gear. Also, go snag a key to the palace of Lei Shen, you can cap your elder charms in 1 run and that will give you 2 chances for loot on every single boss in MSV/HoF/ToeS.

4) LFR can be intimidating for a new tank but I'm a firm believer that the best way to get good at something is to actually do it, you'll get way more experience by throwing yourself in the thick of it than you will reading about it. I think your gear can definitely handle tanking MSV/HoF/ToeS. The first couple of ToT wings are pretty easy to tank even at 480 ilvl. I just leveled a monk tank and I've tanked every LFR encounter in there with around 485 ilvl and it wasn't too bad (just let your healers know you'll need a little more love from them). The best advice I can give any tank is to just know the fights. Knowing when the big hit is coming so you can prepare your SotR or bring out your guardian will help you out way more than any stats will.

5) I haven't seen any LFR-specific guides out there but the normal/heroic guides on Icy Veins have been a great help to me. Even if most of the encounter mechanics are ignored in LFR you'll still take less damage by following them yourself and it will prepare you more should you decide to jump into a normal mode someday.

I hope this helps clarify some things for you and if I missed something or confused you even more just let me know!

Edited June 20, 2013 by Furiyers

[Desos 18]

Hi,

don´t be afraid of tanking, especially in LFR. Stay cool and say that you´ve not the best gear or experience. I personally won´t kick anybody that is so thoughtful to warn the group and tries hard than some heroic equipped char that scratches 20k-30k dps "because lfr!!1". The encounters are designed for this gear level so you shouldn´t have a problem from this way. Read the guides here at IcyVeins, this should minimize the room for critique.

Anyway, a pala is imo an easier tank class to start with, since you have so many oh-shit-buttons and with seal of insight and WOG such a great selfheal. I recently started gearing my prot pala as my 4th toon(all the others have cleared ToTnhc) and went directly into LFR after hitting 460er ilvl. Got some mocking about my life(400k buffed but without any hp-trinkets or flasks) but did not die one time. But I have to say, that I used more of a mastery/avoidance gear strategy to be not so squishy for the start. Will go more into a control/mastery build and get here and there some haste pieces to get to some control/H+M build.

For the guides, after a quick search, I stumbled across this and after a brief scan, this seems to be adequate.

http://nolifeat90.bl...ide-part-1.html

There are short descriptions of every role and if you scroll through all the blog entries, there are guides for every lfr part.

Edit: typo

Edited June 20, 2013 by check0790

[Decision 7]

In my honest opinion it wont matter to much if you're just going to do LFR.

But if you want to max your character you should go for hit7.5%>15%exp>haste>mastery at any given time.

Regarding stamina levels, you dont need more than what's already on your gear. At all.

The reason for this is that you will get more selfsustained wich will help a TON in 5man heroics and LFR as you can never rely on your healers or co-tank to do their job properly.

And well, regarding your insecurity about tanking. You shouldnt worry about it one bit as most LFR mechanics are forgivable, I.E you wont get one-shot because you stand in the bad AoE.

For your gearing concerns I would recommend doing normal runs as often as you can, as even MSV normal gives better loot than terrace LFR.

About ToT, yes you are certainly going to be able to kill atleast the first 3 bosses with your current gear as they're not hard hitting bosses.

If nothing of this makes any sense to you then dont spare the questions.

[Vladamyr 169]

At your ilvl the gearing strategy you pick isn't a big deal. I would go Stamina (to about 600k) > Hit (to 7.5%) > Expertise (to 15%) > Haste > Stamina > Mastery > Dodge/Parry

[Nemo 27]

I'll just join the choir of voices suggesting that you throw yourself into tanking lfr.

The mechanics are pretty forgiving and people are friendlier than their reputation :)

Also it's great experience and - most importantly! - it's a lot more fun playing what you want to play!

Go for it man, with the amount of interest that you're expressing I'm sure you'll do very well :)

[FrostByte 1]

I just wanna make a contribution to your self esteem - the fact that you even posted in here asking for help leads me to believe that you're not gonna be a derpy tank.

Even if you get into LFR and wipe the raid (which I very much doubt will happen) your stats will go up and you can just try again. People in LFR are doing the same thing you are. Even if they (probably a hunter, lol) start throwing some abuse at you in /i, just make it clear that you're gonna learn from your mistake and kindly tell them to kiss your booty.

LFR will not only get your gear raid ready, but it'll give you experience to get your mind raid ready.

GO FOR IT.

[Tarazet 144]

I've been in the same kind of position. My Paladin is my second alt - I have a bear tank main and an Unholy DK. I had been healing on my Paladin until last week when I got it into my head to try tanking again. Started from nothing and got some dungeon blues, 476 PvP gear, Darkmoon trinket, and a couple of LFR drops by healing with Prot loot spec (didn't even use any Elder Charms yet) to meet the threshold for ToT. It helps that I know how to tank all the encounters already, but so far, so good. Taken a couple of dirt naps when things didn't go my way, but tanks die.. we're the only ones who will give our lives for everyone else in the raid.

Edited June 23, 2013 by Tarazet

[AnaxesRaheal 0]

This may have been posted above but i didn't see it. I want to emphasize that you probably wont be able to expertise cap with the gear you have now so your best option will be to aim for the expertise soft cap(that is unless you can reach both hit and expertise caps). this is because if you are at 10% expertise you are wasting the reforge that you could dedicate to haste on a stat that isn't benefiting you.

[Moraras 1]

From my experience when entering LFR in low gear you default to the role of Off tank. I don't fully understand the fight, I just follow the other tank around unless you are directly told otherwise. Example being the Wind Lord fight in HoF where you might be asked to tank the adds away from the boss or Lei Shi in ToES where you can't stack on the other tank due to spray. Also... when you enter the dungeon, don't be afraid to whisper the other tank and let them know it's your first time and for any tips.

As far as gear. You are more than fine. I tanked all of MSV LFR in blues and maybe 1 purple and this was before item upgrades so exactly Ilvl 460 and lived to tell the tale :) I gemmed all stamina at the start then pulled the stamina gems off as I got a feel for how I took damage and until I got more comfortable.

In regards to mechanics, I always do the fight as though it was normal mode. The mechanics are mostly the same just without the OMFG I KEEL YOU punch they have in normal mode. Especially on your first trip in the instance.

I do strongly suggest you look up some guides before you get to ToT LFR. Especially Lei Shen since that requires a lot from the tanks. Most of the other T14 lfrs are pretty much tank and spank. Know when to taunt, stand in the glowing circle during Sha of Fear, know how to control the construct during the Amber-Shaper fight in HoF and be able to dance during Will of the Emp in MSV and you shoudl be golden.

Happy tanking :)

[Ghanjo 37]

Whoa, so many tips, and encouragement. Thanks. I guess I'll go give LFR tanking a try now :)

[Tarazet 144]

This may have been posted above but i didn't see it. I want to emphasize that you probably wont be able to expertise cap with the gear you have now so your best option will be to aim for the expertise soft cap(that is unless you can reach both hit and expertise caps). this is because if you are at 10% expertise you are wasting the reforge that you could dedicate to haste on a stat that isn't benefiting you.

The point of Expertise is to make your Holy Power generation more predictable. You might have only a 1/20 chance for an attack to be parried, but what if it happens during Holy Avenger and you miss out on generating 3 HP? That's why getting Expertise close to hard cap is the first priority over stacking Haste.

[eft890 0]

EDIT: Yup, totally didn't read the responses that were already here, so what I linked has already been mentioned and my advice is just reiterations. But I guess that just means that those are all important things to look out for...

http://nolifeat90.bl...ide-part-1.html

Short and sweet guides to what you need to know for LFR. They're pretty helpful to keep around when you're getting to know the encounters.

I would really suggest actually reading up on the fights/watching video guides.

Also, i think getting a handle on rotations/mitigation techniques would best be done with a combination of training dummies and heroic dungeons. It's more about knowing when the big damage is coming and using your mitigation (be it Shield of the Righteous or your big CDs) when it's needed.

Edited July 8, 2013 by eft890

[Tengenstein 11]

This may have been posted above but i didn't see it. I want to emphasize that you probably wont be able to expertise cap with the gear you have now so your best option will be to aim for the expertise soft cap(that is unless you can reach both hit and expertise caps). this is because if you are at 10% expertise you are wasting the reforge that you could dedicate to haste on a stat that isn't benefiting you.

1) It's entirely possible to expertise cap in full 463 gear and quite probably at a slightly lower Ilvl too.

2) There is no expertise soft cap unless you manage to tank a boss whislt standing behind it for the whole fight, as this is generally impossible Expertise's doesn't devalue until you hit the hard cap.

3) There's no significant advantage to gearing Haste over Expertise before the hard cap and doing so will increase damage taken whislt lowering your DPS.

[Elro 47]

Just to throw this in there, if you really want the ilvl increase, the pvp shoulders and helm are ok for prot, but the other pieces are crap. This is because the chest, legs, and gloves all have crit, which, as you probably know, is useless for prot. The shoulders are expertise/haste, and the helm has mastery/expertise. These stats are decent, so it's worth getting IF you can't get any better from LFR. I use them on my prot pally as fillers before I can get LFR pieces.