Is it worth gemming Expertise over Stamina if Expertise is way below soft cap?

[Contri]

W00t, just tanked Festergut, not one wipe.

Btw, armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...an&cn=Zatheyll

Nice DPS cloak....

[Tormentius]

The only ever time i would advise anyone to gem for expertise/hit (str i count as a tanking/threat stat as it increases parry as well) is if you are unable to keep threat in an equal gear setting with a perfect rotation and no significant buffs...which would be never.

As frost does some spell damage as well as physical its even less useful and more of a waste of time.

Last point when was the last time a boss with parry hasting enabled actually hit hard? tanks dont worry about the majority of physical attacks only the special ones which parry hasting doesnt effect.

[Raptorg]

Expertise is a threat stat. I don't know of any tanks that gem for threat (at least during progression anyway).

So, short answer for the OP is no. Longer answer is use exp/stam hybrids in decent sockets on farm content.

You're pretty good at repeating others, aren't you?

[Zatheyll]

Wasn't expecting to get a upgrade so soon, but got http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50810 which brought me exactly up to expertise soft cap so now I can bring the two Dragon's Eye gems back to Stam. :P

Thanks for the help everything, guess it was a bad idea to gem, but atleast I didn't waste any money and can change it back free also.

I know I have a DPS cloak :P but its either that, or a blue ilevel 200 cloak as I havent gotten better. I would prefer the stats on the 264 cloak and just save up 60 frost for a tanking cloak.

[Zatheyll]

Yup, I did. Not one single wipe.

[Dakara]

The other to consider is your socket bonuses.

I probably have a 50/50 combination of raw stam gems, and hybrid stam's (10hit or 10 expertise, 15 stam) simply because I have a lot of +9 or +12 socket bonuses. Using a 10exp/15 stam gem to get a +12stam socket bonus only costs you 3 stam, nothing to lose any sleep over.

Alternatively, if hit/expertise is not of concern to you, then look at dodge or def hybrid gems for the same socket bonuses.

[jai151]

you tanked fester with that gear? no offense

RNG swings both ways.

We gem Stam and stack EH because it gives us the greatest chance of staying alive when the rolls don't go our way. When the rolls do go our way, someone not gemmed/geared EH can get away with it.

In other words, if you prepare for the worst case scenario, you're always safe. If you don't, worst case scenario wipes you, but there's still a million other cases.

[Albert the fish]

like everyone else said, it depends on your situation.

personally i dont raid tank often, but i do randoms with my warlock friend quite a bit and since warlocks do retarded tps i have a few gems that are expert/stam thrown on for that little extra room between us.

others have better gear than i do or don't roll with a lock often or their raid buffs push them around enough that EH is more valuble than tps.

i'd say in general it's not the best idea, but it's not good to ignore it.
also run the numbers. mathematically remove all gem bonus, to include socket bonus you have right now. than set up a gem combo with expert or expert/stam gems in where you'd want them and run the numbers and see where you lie.

i did that the other day and found i'd lose no stam and gain some expertise, which sparked my personal choice to adopt a few pretty purple gems. you might find otherwise