New Eighty: Gear

Well known fact: the defence cap for raiding is 540.

Lesser known fact: the defence cap for heroics is 535.

I make mention of this because the Quest for 540 Defence seems to be a pretty common affliction for new tanks simply because 540 is thrust down our throats by every resource as "the magic number". And it is, when you get to raiding but for now? Screw it.

Alright, so. Even if you've picked up all the dungeon tanking rewards as you've been leveling up you are not going to be defence capped or, indeed, particularly close to it. When you look at the gear that made you a successful tank pre-80 and realise that you're missing a massive amount of defence it can be somewhat daunting, but never fear: Blizzard has provided for us in the form of the crafted armour Aelystriel is modelling to the left there.

These pieces are the Tempered Saronite Helm, Shoulders, Breastplate, Belt, Bracers and Boots with the Daunting Legplates and Handguards. They provide absolutely gigantic lumps of defence rating and stamina at the expense of, well, everything else. There is enough strength on them to ensure your warrior doesn't become a limp noodle, but mostly you're just going to have to accept the single-mindedness of them so that bosses don't splatter you on sight. Alternatives include The Crusader's Resolution from the Crusader's Pinnacle quest chain in Icecrown and any pieces from normal instances you might be sporting, such as the Void Sentry Legplates. I only advocate buying a replacement for a good blue piece you picked up from questing or an instance if you're still below the defence cap - although the crafted pieces listed above are great as boosters they aren't worth picking up just for the higher item level.

Other easily-obtainable upgrades include the Dream Signet, created by jewelcrafters. The correct sort (of the champion) will provide 28 defence. If your gear is anything like mine was, this will be an increase of 28 defence and very useful. Jewelcrafters themselves can create the Monarch Crab figurine which will last you a long time indeed. Tattered Castle Drape is usually on the auction house for a fair price, while the rich amongst us can always pay out for a Durable Nerubhide Cape. Good weaponry can be obtained through the Wanted: Ragemane's Flipper quest in Zul'Drak.

But I don't want to get too tied up in specifics. When I finally finished making myself heroic-ready, my gear was as shown here and if you really want an exhaustive list there's always the one set up by Kaliban. What's more important than the individual pieces, however, is how they add up: health values, defence rating. I would say that, to tank your lower level heroics like Nexus and Culling of Stratholme, you should be aiming for at least 18.5k health, meaning near to 20k with Commanding Shout active. Much less and your health pool is not going to be sufficient to survive more than a few boss swings, even when defence capped. In the harder heroics like Utgarde Pinnacle and Azjol-Nerub you want something closer to 21k. Trial of the Champion demands that much for normal mode, never mind heroic.

So, how can you quickly boost your health? Heavy Borean Armour Kits. You can stick them just about anywhere and the eighteen stamina each one provides will stack up quickly. Alternatively, there are plenty of enchanting options for you to choose from: stamina on your shield, health on your chest et cetera. It really depends on how much you're willing to spend on gear you'll be replacing as soon as possible, but consider the importance of wealth compared to the importance of making a good impression on people you group with before you go with the cheapest option. After all, if you do well and befriend a leatherworker... you have patches for life.

New Eighty: Spec

As any warrior tank who's done even the slightest bit of research will notice, our class is unique in that we have two distinct paths to go down when speccing to tank: threat or survival. The highest threat builds will go deep enough into the arms tree to pick up Deep Wounds while survival builds keep the majority of their points in protection. The benefits of both have been discussed at length across the interwebs where raiding is concerned but what about for the new, poorly geared tank?

My belief is that you should spec for survival. A tank sporting crafted blues is going to have to work hard to maintain threat, yes, but look at it this way: a tank sporting crafted blues is also going to be particularly flimsy. Your threat can be boosted by the party with Misdirection or Tricks of the Trade. Threat-related issues can also be reduced through careful aggro management on the part of your damage dealers. Your survival, however, is entirely down to you and the healer, and while a well played, well geared healing character may be able to keep you up through some frantic spamming, even the best healer cannot outdo their global cooldown. By this I mean that as long as you aren't utterly incompetent, low threat can be dealt with. Dead tank cannot.

With this in mind, my first spec shaped up like this: 5/10/56.

While some of the choices - such as Deflection, Anticipation and Toughness - need no explanation as to why they help to bolster a tank's survivability, some of the others only occurred to me as I was peering through my potential talents.

The first is Improved Thunder Clap. This should really be taken in any build as the rage cost reduction and increased damage are brilliant for AoE tanking and boss fights alike. From a pure survivability point of view, however, it reduces the damage you take by improving the debuff your Thunder Clap applies to enemies around you instead of buffing your mitigation directly. The slower attack speed obviously reduces how many times a mob will hit you before your damage dealers take them out and also provides a sliver of extra time for a heal to reach you between swings.

Similarly, Booming Voice and Improved Demoralizing Shout reduce damage done to you by lessening just how hard mobs are hitting when Demoralizing Shout is up. While Booming Voice is more about reducing how frequently you have to refresh Demo Shout, I found it usually meant I only had to use the skill once per trash pull, allowing me to focus entirely on my threat and positioning.

Gag Order, meanwhile, reduces caster mobs to melee swings thanks to the silencing effect. It also makes it easier to cluster mobs correctly when a caster might have made it more difficult, hence reducing any time in which your back would have been turned.

For the most part, when speccing a new eighty prot warrior you need to consider which skills will come in handy most often in a heroic instance. While Improved Revenge, for instance, might provide some manner of threat boost when fighting a raid boss, in a heroic a lot of your work is in moving groups of mobs around. An uncontrolled stun proc can actually make this more difficult for you. Improved Spell Reflection, on the other hand, lets you protect party members from randomly targeted spells like Novos' Frostbolt in Drak'Tharon Keep or Paletress's Smite in Trial of the Champion, while also providing protection if a caster stands in Grauf's breath while you're doing Skadi's gauntlet event. A lot of what you can find on raid-centric sites does still apply to speccing for heroics, I just feel it's worth keeping content in mind when making decisions between extraneous talents.