How do you start a tank on a fresh character.

[Fornaw]

Maybe I should have asked my question better

What I also do not want to do is...

Have to spend any money - I've NEVER bought BoE items, I'd feel retarded for doing that seems like a massive waste of money. And I don't want to have to level certain professions that take gold to level.

I am not one to spend a ton of gold just to get my ticket to pass go to start doing decent stuff in the game

Not wanting to buy BoEs is a fools errand. If, as I understand it, you ground your way to 80 without picking up any tanking gear you're massively behind the curve. Reputation pieces will help, but honestly Rep pieces are often at least as pricey as having the craftable equivalent made or shopping around for good prices on the BoE drops.

The right way to hop directly into 80 heroics as a tank is to tank your way through normals all the way up from 70. It's pretty much the only way to fill all your slots with tank gear. Alternate routes available this late in the expansion involve blowing lots of gold on BoEs and rep pieces. If neither of these works for you then you need to be running regulars (HoS, HoL, Nexus, UP, CoT) at 80 for gear before you can start heroics. If you won't do any of these things, you really shouldn't be tanking.

Trying to hop into LFD under 535 defense and 24k health (that's blue gear btw) is basically an insult to the other players in LFD. No group is going to want to work with you because not only will you be frequently on the verge of death, but even the world's best tanks couldn't hold threat off Triumph gear with stats like that.

Yes I know that some people successfully tanked heroics with lower stats than that in early Wrath, but they were going to specific dungeons, with a group recruited from guild/trade/lfg instead of assembled for you by LFD and there was an expectation back then that heroic dungeons would take (significantly) longer than they do now. Blizzard has recognized the shift in perception, that's why they've made it easier to get badges and BoE gear. They've also reduced the cost of craft-able pieces in multiple ways over multiple patches.

[Dedweight]

YOU DON'T NEED DEF CAP FOR HEROICS, BOSSES CRIT FOR 8-9K, YOU HAVE 15-25K HP

Heroic 5man bosses aren't normally where the under defense issue comes in play. Having one mob crit you for 8-9k isn't an issue, having 3+ mobs crit you for 8-9k is(bit high on the crit amount but I'm sure you get the idea).

[Myrsky]

How does one actually become a tank starting from a fresh character. I don't mean going from Sunwell items to Naxx items and no I don't mean using a different set of gear to run instances as until you have enough badges for your tank set. I mean going from freshly green/blue geared character in items that are not for tanking to a heroic geared tank.

So pretty much, your character sucks balls and you have no other gear besides quest items, but you want to start tanking.

You just accumulate your gear over time from 15-80. Ofcourse most of the gear you get in Outland and Northrend from quests are better than instance gear. There's nothing hard about it. Once I hit 80, I just bought crafted Boots and Shield and then jumped straight into Heroic randoms at 3k GearScore. FoS and PoS opened up at 3.7k but HoR is still yet to open up at 4.3k... I can tank TotC10 but I can't tank Heroic HoR? So retarded. :P

[Myrsky]

YOU DON'T NEED DEF CAP FOR HEROICS, BOSSES CRIT FOR 8-9K, YOU HAVE 15-25K HP

Lol. You do need to be defense capped. Once you're defense capped you're unable to be critted by mobs. For Heroics (Level 82 and below) it's 535, for Raids it's 540.

[Vasz]

If you find it hard to get gear, just do HC's for badges using dps/healer spec, but buy tank gear. Almost all ank gear that will drop, wont be needed by your MT, so it will go to you anyway.

[dumkin]

Just look at the tank gear you already got, go on the AH and buy blue items in the slots you are missing, use some pvp gear (resi) to reach uncrittable and queue as a tank. You are now ready for the happy world of tanking

I started with 18k hp when I started tanking heroics, and yes, some people had to QQ and left, but they got replaced fairly quick. If you do a descent job as a tank, rotate cooldowns perfect, keep aggro, there is no reason you should not be able to tank a heroic.

Also, farm toc 5 normal. it can be tanked by a dps so this is really a gold mine for new tanks. I still use the Stam trinket from toc 5

And if you're not gonna raid for a while, I suggest you get a talentbuild and glyphs that supports aoe tanking.

[draticus]

YOU DON'T NEED DEF CAP FOR HEROICS, BOSSES CRIT FOR 8-9K, YOU HAVE 15-25K HP

You dont need caps lock to make a point. We don't read it any louder.

It's better to itemize for def cap than go straight stamina and take crits. Crits aren't only bad if they one shot you. If your gear is so low you can't reach def cap then you're going to suck at tanking and you should still be queueing as DPS until you have better gear.

If you think its ok for you to tank in shit gear because you expect your healer to be geared then you're a hypocrite. Don't save yourself time queuing as a tank only to waste everyone elses time with a slow run because your gear sucks.

[Mammoth]

Maybe I should have asked my question better

What I also do not want to do is...

Have to spend any money - I've NEVER bought BoE items, I'd feel retarded for doing that seems like a massive waste of money. And I don't want to have to level certain professions that take gold to level.

I am not one to spend a ton of gold just to get my ticket to pass go to start doing decent stuff in the game

At the start of the expansion tanks had to buy crafted gear to start tanking properly. Tanking was expensive. If you don't want to do it the way we all had to do, then go dps and farm badges.