What to do about my gear?

[music616]

So currently my item lvl is 331 (328 equipped) and i'm trying to advance my character. I'm a lvl 85 prot pally on alliance side Anub'Arak US. I had a problem a while back where I bought a lot of the Bloodied Pyrium set off of the AH b/c of the primary stat increases. They are great improvements and I was sitting on a lot of xtra gold. The problem is, and this is mostly my fault for being stupid, I don't PVP. I'm a PVE guy and i just want to get into raiding, doing heroics with my guild, etc. I have since gotten rid of some of the pvp gear and replaced it with proper pve stuff but i still have 2 bloodied pyrium things. A couple of questions now.

1) Are you supposed to use Bloodied Pyrium or Resillience gear to get ur item lvl up and improve your survivability in-game?

2) Other than crafting (i haven't seen any approx. item lvl 333 gear on ah atleast) where are you supposed to get the gear to be able to que for heroics? My skill is up there. I regularly fly through normals as tank/heal pally. I just want to help my guild with achievements and make myself a better player by doing more difficult content.

PS- the items i need to replace are shoulder and waist slot items. those are the pvp ones.
Wrist, head, relic and legs are PVE as they should be but they're only lvl 318.

[Thilia]

Chain running normals now nets you decent amounts of JP and there are some nice 333 drops in the normals. Just keep it up and buy JP gear (legs, helm, other pieces that may be lacking) and you can work on rep for the epic tank cloak and epic tank boots from hyjal and wildhammer/dragonmaw. Basically, it is a bit of a grind but take some guildies and blow through normals until you feel ready about tanking heroics.

[Hockeyhacker]

1) Are you supposed to use Bloodied Pyrium or Resillience gear to get ur item lvl up and improve your survivability in-game?

2) Other than crafting (i haven't seen any approx. item lvl 333 gear on ah atleast) where are you supposed to get the gear to be able to que for heroics? My skill is up there. I regularly fly through normals as tank/heal pally. I just want to help my guild with achievements and make myself a better player by doing more difficult content.

PS- the items i need to replace are shoulder and waist slot items. those are the pvp ones.
Wrist, head, relic and legs are PVE as they should be but they're only lvl 318.

1)Ilvl doesn't improve survivability, if you don't PvP then resilliance is totally useless.

2)85 normals drop 333 gear and you only need an average of 329 to que, plus don't forget that this last patch made it so level 85 normals now give some JP off bosses and so you can actually farm your JP gear set without doing heroics. Sure getting into heroics having to roll on 333 gear isn't fast, but that is exactly the point, make you run some dungeons and learn the fights to run heroics, just be glade that it isn't like early BC where you needed revered with said dungeons rep to be able to buy a key to do the heroic version.

[music616]

I realize that resilliance is useless in pve but when the strength and stamina stats are improvements, does that carry any importance?

[MiseriaScH]

I realize that resilliance is useless in pve but when the strength and stamina stats are improvements, does that carry any importance?

Well the biggest thing about Tanking now is to be able to Survive at low levels of gear, sure you may have the added Threat/Stam but missing on Mastery (our biggest avoidance stat) Parry/Dodge just lowers your chance of survival. Gearing is easier now than it was at the beginning with JP (30) coming from Nomal bosses. Your Daily Reg. 140 JP+If you got HoO 210 JP = 350 JP

Combine that with just queuing up for HoO since it is fast and the boss mechanics are easy enough and in less than 10 Runs of HoO you will have 2.2k JP to buy Chest (since legs/helm are meh). Sure you may hate HoO after that but you will have basically all the gear you need from that instance (which for a tank is a lot) plus having offspec gear (Omega Breastplate for Holy <3) then you can chain specific others.

That's how I geared one Normal at a time without the added JP until I got all the gear I needed from that Instance and never did it on normal again. Tank = Ridiculously fast queue.

Best thing you can do if you want to help your guild out, is learn what stats are important for your class/spec, and the best gear you can get without Heroics or spending a lot of gold. Visit maintankadin.com for gearing process and what would be best, there was a link on here somewhere for that site I now longer have it bookmarked sorry

[Prentice]

2)85 normals drop 333 gear and you only need an average of 329 to que

Didn't they raise the ilvl required to queue for heroics to 333? I recall reading a post about that a week or two ago. That's also part of the reason why normal dungeons give JP for bosses now.

[music616]

Well the biggest thing about Tanking now is to be able to Survive at low levels of gear, sure you may have the added Threat/Stam but missing on Mastery (our biggest avoidance stat) Parry/Dodge just lowers your chance of survival. Gearing is easier now than it was at the beginning with JP (30) coming from Nomal bosses. Your Daily Reg. 140 JP+If you got HoO 210 JP = 350 JP

Yeah I was wondering about that. Is mastery for Tankadin THE biggest tank stat? If so (which i assume it is) would or should we trade any parry or dodge for mastery or just take everything we can get? I know hit is also a needed tank stat too.

[DeanyKong]

I was running with a lot of Bloodied Pyrium pieces in the beginning of heroics simply because thy were better than a lot of the 308-316 loot I had from lower level normals. That's not a foolish statement, they actually had 0.3 to 1.5% more avoidance on them and far more Stamina. However, the PvP pieces did not do well for me in Heroics. My damage income was very spiky. I'd advise you to chain a few 85 normals to get a few pieces of 333-349 loot before trying out heroics.

[MiseriaScH]

I refused and still do refuse to use PvP gear on any 85 toon to bump my Ilvl. Easily enough find the best Honored/Revered Gear you can get for your spec from MH/Vash quest there for Rep. You level though the place as normal or stop in Uldum after the Ramhaken chain and go to TWHL. Usually by level 85 you should be Honored/Revered with the all of the major factions excluding HR / BW netting you some nice 333 gear. Combine that with some of the later quests in TWHL and Uldum and your gear is looking good, Chain normals to fill out the rest of the 333 Gear you can get (which can get get a entire set of 333 from questing/85 normals(besides Relic I think, which is Cheap through AH). I was full 333 besides relic and Gloves (Rahj hated me now Setesh does FFFFFUUUUUUU helm).

I know now going into Heroics undergeared as ANY Role hinders your progress a lot unless you are being carried which from what I have seen and done does not happen a lot, this fact is even more so for a Tank or Healer.

TL : DR - Not hard to get gear don't cheap the system or your group member by inflating your GS with bad gear.

[beingmused]

Look at all of the rep factions, look at which have good 333 or 345 upgrades at honored/revered, do all of the quests that get honor with that faction, easy heroic quality gear.