Tanking Weapons

[quiet_andy]

I currently have a 70 druid and am grinding rep for the Earthwarden. I was just wondering whether people thought this was a good idea, or should I wait for some of the Lich King weapons. Currently I have not seen many weapons with armor on them and am concerned about loosing the armor which it would give and probably give me problems in tanking the new instances.

These are the weapons I have found from Lich King so farm but not sure where they all drop.

Stave of Shrouded Mysteries
Bloodwood Greatstaff
Staff of the Plague Beast
Origin of Nightmares

[Blafasel]

not quite sure about that, but I think i read something about tanking druids.
It was something like "we want to go away from insane amounts of armor to more avoidance". But I'm note quite sure where i saw that :-/
So Armor shouldnt be that important anymore, actually there are no items with "bonus" armor on it anymore as far as i know.

[Koumaru]

Tanking weapons for bears still have armor, as do some off-slot pieces like rings and at least one cape, and now even a level-80 epic necklace!

Bonus armor on leather is gone. Armor on weapons and other gear slots is not.

Grinding for Earthwarden isn't a bad idea. Or you could try to tag along on some SSC runs for the Wildfury Greatstaff.

[Taznak]

Wildfury Greatstaff from SSC is definitely better than Earthwarden if you can hitch a ride on an SSC raid. On the other hand, the idea is that you shouldn't really need Outlands epics to tank the early 5-man instances in Wotlk, so if the only reason you're grinding CE rep is to be a better tank in Wotlk... you might be better off concentrating your efforts on hoarding gold, honor and battleground marks instead. Gear you will replace sooner or later; gold and honor (but not arena points) do carry over and will most likely still be useful in Northrend.

Now, compare Earthwarden (http://thottbot.com/i29171) to Hungering Greatstaff (http://thottbot.com/wotlk/i37073), which you get from a quest in one of the two starting zones (Borean Tundra) in Wotlk. Considering Defense is an awful tanking stat for Druids in Wotlk, the more relevant differences between these are:

Hungering Greatstaff offers 116 armor, 1.5% less chance to be dodged or parried from Expertise, and 64 AP on top of Earthwarden; Earthwarden compensates with 39 more stamina, and .9% higher avoidance.

It's not obvious which is better- which means, it's probably not worth your time to grind a lot for Earthwarden if you want it only for Wotlk.