Tanking Stats Enchants and Gems IN wow

Once you have figured out your build, it is time to worry about the stats you need for tanking, which directly corresponds to the gear you need. There are various character stats that are required that you need to worry about as a tank; they include Stamina, Strength, Defense, Dodge, Parry, Block, Hit, and Expertise.  The amount you require of each and the priority it should receive is entirely dependant on your class.  For example as a Death Knight you don’t use a shield, therefore Block is meaningless.

The first thing you need to worry about as a tank is getting to be defense capped. This term is a little bit of a misnomer as you can not become capped in defense, it provides bonuses forever, however what it really refers to is having enough defense to remove critical hits from the hit table against you. This is the actual defense score on your character sheet, not the amount of defense you have on your gear.

An Example of a Tanking Build

The amount of defense varies based on your level and what you are tanking. There are many different calculators out there to help you figure out exactly what you need to have, but the most important numbers to know are for the current end game at level 80. To tank level 80 heroics you must have 535 defense while to tank raids you need 540 defense. For players still levelling up you require 485 to tank level 70 instances in the Outlands, and 435 to tank level 60 instances back in basic WoW.

Now that everyone knows about the defense cap, if you are a Druid, ignore it. As long as you put three points into Survival of the Fittest, you can not be critically hit unless the enemy is over 5 levels higher than you are.

Once you are defense capped you can move onto worrying about the other stats. I will repeat that for emphasis: ONCE you are defense capped you can worry about other stats. Meaning until you reach that magic number for your level you will NOT worry about any other stat. Being defense capped is your one and only priority, only after you are capped should you even think about other things. To get to the cap initially you are very likely going to have to enchant and gem for it forsaking stamina and mitigation. Don’t worry though, as this is normal until you have been in the end game for a while.

Once you are worrying about other stats make sure you balance them. DO NOT just stack Stamina. This is a trend I have seen in far too many new tanks to ignore. They want to see big health numbers and miss out on everything else. Balancing your Health, Mitigation (Armour, Block), and Avoidance (Dodge, Parry) is what creates the best tanks.

Ask any healer which they would rather heal: a 50,000 health tank with no avoidance, or a 30,000 health tank with 20% in each of dodge and parry. The answer will be the lower health tank every time. That is because of something called effective health which is long and complicated to explain in any great detail, but can be summed up quickly as follows:

Given a series of 100 10,000 health hits the first tank needs to be healed for 1,000,000 health. The second tank will dodge 20 of the attacks and parry another 20, meaning they will only need 600,000 health to be healed.

Obviously there is more to it than that as mitigation and block also play into the calculation, but hopefully you can see what a difference avoidance by itself can make. Therefore, when you are gearing up be sure to look at Stamina, Armour, Dodge, Parry, and Block as appropriate for your class.

As a tank, enchants and gems are there to help you meet your defensive cap until you have end game gear and can reach it easily.  Once you can reach the cap without worrying about using enchants and gems they are a method to gain health.  Other than meeting your meta-gem requirement all gems should usually be Stamina.  Enchants vary depending on which item they are going on, but are once again usually used to help you reach your defensive cap and then for Stamina or threat (hit or expertise).

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