Gearing a DK Tank

[noraarm]

hey guys i currently play a druid and moonkin/resto, and my dk will be hitting 80 soon and i want to start tanking on it. my question is how do i go about getting tanking gear? do i just need on tanking gear and take the flaming and possible kick from group? thats the easiest/politest way to gear a new spec?

[Grunthunter]

I say get guildies to run you due to the fact that you can be kicked at the start of instances now. Que as DPS with guildies so you get those faster ques, rack up the badges, get a few t9 along with the various off peices you pick up from heroics and then go tanking, people are to LEET now so its less likely that people will let you tank with "sub-par" gear

[geryon84]

First, use some of your other char's cash to get the Blacksmithing gear made. There's a lovely set that you accumulate all throughout the 80's.

Additionally at this time, Look into getting the crafted epics as well. Tempered Titansteel is cheap/easy (iLvl 200, epic quality) for boots/hat. If you have more resources, get the iLvl 245 and below crafted items as well; they were recently lowered substantially in price. A few Frozen Orb thingies and maybe some badges and you'll be good to go.

Generally, I'd gear up enough to run ToC and the Icecrown 5-mans (normal modes) as a tank. Get what you can from there. In the mean time, queue up as DPS with guildies, or by yourself. I generally sent a whisper to the tank in my 5-man heroic groups telling him/her I'd be rolling need on items that dropped. I never once had any tank object, most already had all the gear they wanted.

Spend Triumph badges on triumph badge gear. I generally prioritized stamina-per-badge as an upgrade. If a chest got me 60 stamina but cost 75 badges and gloves got me 45 stamina but only cost 30, I'd pick the gloves. I also kept an eye on any gear that would be 'adequate' from dungeons, and avoided replacing those with badge items.

Once I had around 24k-26k health, I tanked my first instance and was terribly overgeared. Since then, I always queue as tank, and get instant pop.

Overall it took about a week to a week and a half until I had enough gear to offtank the first two wings of ICC-10 successfully. I had a lot of help from guildies/friends, but it was a really smooth ride. The hardest part was just getting enough gear so I felt adequate to tank a heroic, and I regret waiting as long as I did

[tofu_soldier]

I find one of the stickies is mighty helpful:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/class-de...ank-gear-list/

See if you like it too.

[geryon84]

The problem I had with gear lists like that is that they're SUPER out of date.
There are amazing drops from ToC and the ICC5 normal dungeons, as well as easily obtainable high-level crafted gear that aren't mentioned on there.

It's way more worth it to farm a few of those instances for 219 iLvl epics than it is to farm reputation with 6 different factions just for iLvl 200 blues. I'd use those as a guide for "what can I get now" and "which instances will get me the most bang for my buck", but ultimately I started by looking at (1) crafted items (2) high-iLvl normal instances (3) heroics I could easily DPS in. My reputation grinding was mostly for the head enchant and a few harder-to-find pieces.

[Zao]

THen check either the new tanking stick or the old one.

[Squishie]

You can craft yourself a full set near enough of defence gear mixing 175,200,226,245. With some normal instance drops. This way you can build yourself a defence set that will allow you to tank heroics with ease. Then procede to build gear from Triumphs.

Check all the crafted gear, pick the best for each slot. Make it then check which pieces you need to fill, rings trinkets ect. And see where you can pick them up from. Once you hit 535 defence and have 20k HP unbuffed you can tank heroics. But with the crafted gear I think you would be closer to 30k. Just get help with the tougher instances of guildies or friends TOC5 can be a bitch to tank when your gear is poor. But some very nice drops from there.