DK tank Gems??

[sfbr]

ive noticed all kinds of DK tanks ALL with + stam gems why? is that the best gem to get? i thought they were supposed to avoid getting hit NOT eat up the healers mana <.< >.> i must be missing something and would LOVE to know what it is.

[Deathalot]

Avoidance sux in Ulduar. Our maintank regemmed Avoidance and dropped like 4k hp. Guess what. Steelbreaker broke him.

[Kayvas]

avodance i great, BUT is not a sure thing,especially now that you are in progres and not in BiS, you prefer to stack stamina for fight whic u may have a hight spike of damage, and the time to heal is very short

exaple:
if u have very hight avoidance and 40k hp while fightinga boss who can hit for 22k, or multiple sort of damage at once, if u are "lucky" in 2 hit of boss u can avoid all damage, or avoid 1 attack and stay at 15k hp, or being hit by 2 attack and die.

if u have 45k hp , if u avoid 2 attack you are very lucky, if u avoid 1 attack you are at 50% if u being hit from 2 attacks u survive at 1k, is not much but most probably a heal can reach you meanwhile

[plagueshard]

Once yout hit ~42-43k hp raid buffed it's a good idea to start using stam/dodge gems as to avoid becoming a mana sponge.

Before that point though, the idea is to get your HP up to a point where you can take 2-3 hits without any heals and survive.

[Viskahn]

i just look at it by colour

Blue = Stamina gems
Red = Dodge/Stamina gems
Yellow = Defense/Stamina or a Solid Dragons Eye (until next patch at least).

It also depends on spec - Unholy scales better with avoidance due to the mechanics of bone shield, whilst Blood scales excellently with stamina due to vampiric blood and the +6% from VotTW.
Generally though, my healers can keep me up fine if i have enough HP, im not worried about being a mana sponge - the healers can handle that, they cant handle it if i am bursted down in 2 quick hits however.

[DespiseExecutus]

Not looking at Uluduar, say, heroics or Naxx10 at best, what should a tanking DK gem for? It seems like the discussion is only talking about Uluduar 25 progression. I understand tanks get hit much harder there, so should a heroic going, Naxx10 DK aswell stack stam? Or avoidance?

[richay]

sta in all with some exceptions of socket bonuses.

[Xs]

Balance avoidance with a decent health pool, you'll probably need a decent amount of defense gems and stuff instead of stam anyway so you'll be getting your avoidance up that way

On my DK which is pretty much only a t7 content tank but mostly 10/5 mans, I went for the TPS route with gems once I got 30k unbuffed (because I usually go with people in quite a few BiS pieces or full Ulduar gear) but thats only because I still have Titansteel Destroyer and can't get the luck for a 213/219/226/232 weap :/

Currently sitting at like 29.8k with just under the melee hit cap and about half way to exp dodge cap