Tanking Gear

What gear are you all running with when tanking? Currently I'm using:

Head: Hyaline Helm of the Sniper (24 Sta gem) (Will gem with Stamina/Armor meta and Argent Crusade Def/Sta helm enchant when I have some time to spare)
Neck: Pendant of the Dragonsworn (24 Sta gem)
Shoulder: Rift Stalker Mantle (104AP, 15 Crit enchant / 2 x 24 stamina gems)
Chest: Valorous Cryptstalker Tunic (DPS chest, 32 AP, 16 AP, 12 Stamina gems / +10 to stats enchant)
Wrist: Slime Stream Bands (DPS wrist, 54 AP gem / 50 AP enchant)
Gloves: Valorous Cryptstalker Handguards (24 Sta gem) (will enchant with whatever's the best when I have time)
Legs: Rift Stalker Leggings (55 Sta, 22 Agi enchant / 41 Stamina gem)
Feet: Pack-Ice Striders (12 Hit, 12 Crit enchant)
Ring1: Ring of Invincibility
Ring2: Strong-Handed Ring
Trinket1: Figurine - Monarch Crab (41 stamina, 14 hit gems)
Trinket2: Figurine - Ruby Hare (16AP, 12 Sta x2 gems)
Melee: Black Ice (110 AP enchant)
(Backup Betrayer of Humanity and Staff of the Plaguehound)
Ranged:Envoy of Mortality (40 crit scope)

The servers are on maintenance now and I logged out in PvP gear so I will just do it from memory:

I use Titan-forged helm http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44903 and try to hang on to two pieces of T7.5. I am trying to complete the set of Icy scale gear http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43593 to which I want to add the Essence of Gossamer http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37220 but having trouble convincing PuGs to let me roll on it.

The rest is pretty much the same as my dps gear with a preference for stamina and armour of course.

Thanks for suggesting the Figurines Nordh, I will be looking into that as soon as the servers come back up


Looks like this is only for Jewelcrafters. Grrrr....

I've got the Essence of Gossamer in my bank, but since the shield isn't given to the pet, I don't really fancy it that much. Might be a decent enough pvp trinket though.

Something to add is that I have all 5 parts of T5, so I'm able to switch out if I find a new pair of shoulders, for example, that would benefit my tanking set. I suggest people to try and get at least 2 pieces.

I usually use my tanking gear for soloing, so if you check my armory, there's a good chance I'll be wearing it if I hadn't been raiding that day. For the record:

Head: Circlet Of True Sight with Arcanum Of The Stalwart Protector, Austere Earthseige Diamond, and Solid Sky Sapphire.
Neck: Favor Of The Dragon Queen with Vivid Forest Emerald *
Shoulder: Valorous Cryptstalker Spaulders with Balanced Twilight Opal
Back: Shawl Of The Shattered Giant enchanted with +22 agi *
Chest: Valorous Cryptstalker Tunic with Delicate Scarlet Ruby and Enchanted Tear(for meta bonus; haven't replaced it yet), enchanted with +10 stats *
Wrist: Slime Stream Bands with Solid Sky Sapphire, enchanted with +40 stamina.
Hands: Gloves Of The Fiery Behemoth with +44 ATK enchant *
Belt: Torn Web Wrapping with belt buckle containing Delicate Scarlet Ruby *
Pants: Leggings Of Failed Escape with Delicate Scarlet Ruby and Balanced Twilight Opal, as well as Icescale Leg Armor *
Boots: Crippled Treads enchanted with +22 Stamina
Ring1: Inscribed Band Of The Kirin Tor enchanted with +32 attack power *
Ring2: Ring Of Invincibility enchanted with +32 attack power *
Trinket1: Essence Of Gossamer
Trinket2: Darkmoon Card: Greatness *
Weapon: The Undeath Carrier enchanted with +110 attack
Ranged Weapon: Envoy Of Mortality with +40 crit scope *

* These are pieces of my DPS set that have yet to be replaced/regemmed for 100% tanking, or replaced with tanking equivilents.


I have never actually owned two pieces of T5, for what it's worth. I somehow managed to avoid ever getting T5 tokens when we ran SSC and TK, skipping right to T6 stuff. I'm not yet sure whether keeping some around for the bonus would be more useful than the enormous stats that come with the newer gear, but I'll see if I can't keep some around if I get hold of it.

I have been asking the guild about actual *tank* tank gear, but so far it seems most tank gear nowadays involves +strength, rather than +agility, unless it's leather. Considering the armor trickle-down to the pet, I've not yet decided whether I want to jump down to leather armor to tank with; maybe the next time a nice high stamina piece gets 'sharded' for lack of druid or rogue in the party...

If we're gearing for stamina and armor alone, the Icy Scale family, with stamina gems, is a very solid choice:

Icy Scale Chestguard
Icy Scale Boots
Icy Scale Belt

Is it worthwhile to invest in a +threat enchant to the gloves for more potent MD's?

I only think the damage caused while using MD gives the target threat. I seem to remember Distracting Shot didn't work before it became a taunt. But no, it's too minimal anyhow. Average scenario, MD only gives 6000 threat. +2% threat is only 120 extra threat. And that's every 30 seconds. You'd gain more on using an AP enchant.

Yes your right it isn't worth it MD used to work best with distracting shot before the change though, I suppose we have no chance of getting it reverted now though.

I picked these up yesterday on my 71 hunter. Are there any equiv at 80? or better legs at 80? Because right now these seem pretty sick since the stats go directly to the pet.

[wow]31328[/wow]
Leggings of Beastmastery

While I am still working on a pre-raid wishlist, I'm thinking along the lines of the following rules of thumb:

- hit chance from talents + gear should reach the hit cap of 8% if tanking lvl?? mobs
- for tanking mobs that do physical dmg, Mail is preferable to leather in almost all cases.
- for hunter builds that include the GFTT talent, enough crit should be stacked to ensure adequate focus for your pet's needs (specials, focus dump)
- you should stack stamina until your pet reaches acceptable levels of effective health
- You should stack attack power until your pet reaches acceptable levels of threat.

your gear should focus on the factors outlined here. I expect different equilibrium points for different talent builds, encounters and group composition variability.

cheers
-ACH

jfragment,

Those legs will be just fine through almost all of the items that are available in game today. They dont scale as well with pet health as some of today's options but those are far and away the best legs as far as pet armor is concerned. As for threat they hold there own with the overall pluses to pet AP, however hunter AP which leads to Pet Spell Power and Growl threat take a hit.

Overall those legs will suit you very well if you dont want to upgrade them. And there is not a lvl 80 version of those that i know of.

As for the rules of thumb,

As a pet tanker i would almost rule out worrying about crit. Yeah it can help with cobra strikes and GFTT, but in the end Hit/Stam/AP is all that really scales to the pet. Threat can always be helped by several classes so i dont worry about that as much as survival.

Dont be so Quick to rule out Leather items as i'll show you:
Leggings of the Honored vs Valorous Cryptstalker Legguards

after raid buffs
LotH:
+34 hunter Stam (348 pet health with survivalist)
+35 hunter AP
+66 Hit

VCL:
+66 Int (becomes AP in a MM pet tanker)
+590 hunter Armor (383 pet armor)

I see that some of the leather pieces like the ones mentioned above show that there are leather pieces that are very viable as far as Pet tanking, especially if you are specing for survivalist.

Zwicky wrote:I see that some of the leather pieces like the ones mentioned above show that there are leather pieces that are very viable as far as Pet tanking, especially if you are specing for survivalist.

Indeed. The biggest problem with the leather pieces is that it is a very large loss in pet armor. I use mail only at the moment for that exact reason: I didn't want to lose a lot of pet armor as well as stamina, since every point mitigated is another little bit of survivability.

Still, that said, some of the leather pieces are extremely tempting what with their massive agility and stamina. After all, agility goes to armor as well, and stamina goes to HP. So I'm a bit up in the air still over which is better.

If your that in love with armor get the leggings of beast mastery and they will provide more than 300 more armor than any Mail peice in the game. That and for the reasons listed in my above post.

However i'll post this
Effective health (a measure of armor and health)
with VCL:67432
with Leggings of beast mastery:68039
with LotH:67359

With buffs the two legs will catch up some on the LoBM but they will not catch it. (see jfragment why those are very nice)

You see they are all very close, but the massive amount of hit is making me drool since we dont get many hunter tanking pieces with hit on them. i am more than will to sacrifice a few pieces of mail for that much hit (which will save me talent points)

Amazing insight. Thanks zwik!

Zwicky wrote:You see they are all very close, but the massive amount of hit is making me drool since we dont get many hunter tanking pieces with hit on them. i am more than will to sacrifice a few pieces of mail for that much hit (which will save me talent points)

From what I've heard, pets are now getting the +hit from the talent. If this is true, then we can afford to sacrifice a little +hit and get something like those leggings, instead. And I'm not going to deny: just looking at the stats that come with those make me drool. I'm not sure why I hadn't noticed them before. Probably because I was focusing only on 'new stuff yay!' aside from the T5.

I think I'm going to keep an eye on the AH for one of these puppies. And hope the price will have plummeted what with the new level 80 cap.

i managed to pick mine up at the AH for a mere 100 g a few days after the release of WotlK. To say the least i was very happy as in the days of BC they were ~1000g on the AH. I leveled all the way to 80 with those and my gorilla and man was PvE ever easy. I can't imagine a huge market for those as most people dont realize just how good they are for pet tanking and solo/leveling.

I just picked a pair of the Leggings Of Beast Mastery up for my pet tanking outfit. I figured I would give a comparison on them versus my usual pair of pants, when it comes to my own stats and the pet stats.

The following is Leggings Of Failed Escape slotted with +16 agility and +16 ATK/+12 stamina, enchanted with +75 ATP/+22 crit VERSUS Leggings Of Beast Mastery enchanted with +55 stamina/+22 agility

Kurasu:
HP: 22642 vs 22705
MP: 11546 vs 10556
Agi: 1179 vs 1131
Sta: 1442 vs 1448
Int: 452 vs 386
Power: 4005 vs 3666
Crit: 31.58% vs 29.26%
Hit: 197 vs 169 (ouch)
Armor: 10827 vs 10165

Panzer:
HP: 19899 vs 20650
Sta: 1477 vs 1542
Pow: 1784 vs 1760
Damage: 588-639 vs 582-633
Armor: 21899 vs 22178

So as you can see, it's painful what it does to my +hit, but I think I can make it up with trinkets. However, comparing the pet's stats, other than a loss in attack power (which is small enough to be negligible, I think), everything is a boost (even a *big* boost when looking at HP and stamina!) even though it's only a level 100 epic. Therefore, I have to agree that if you are purely pet-tanking, rather than trying to do damage, these legs are worth the price. Particularly since I bought my pair for only 213g.

Kurasu, you're comparing with leggings that has DPS enchants and gems on them. Not really a good comparison. Not to mention that it's quite a big drop in threat for the pet, even if they were tank pimped.

Well, that's part of the point here: that level 100 TBC epic legs are vastly out-performing (other than +hit) a pair of fully raid-pimped DPS level *213* legs when it comes to tanking. That's why the comparison, I felt, was important: this is how good they are performing for your pet. That best-in-slot (arguably) pants for pet tanking can't hold a candle to them other than for pet damage, and even *then* it's only 5 or 6 DPS difference.

After all, I doubt I'm the only raid-pimped pet tanker out there. Getting a realization of how good 'old stuff' is when pet tanking is better, for me, when someone puts numbers down and *shows* me, rather than just tells me with stats that... well... really mean very little in-game. No offense to those people displaying their 'equivalent health'.

You may well be right about the drop in threat for the pet, though. I hadn't considered the loss of 5 or 6 DPS to be that large, but I suppose it *does* add up. And there's no doubt that the big drop in my RAP will make the 'Growl' loss felt. But for survivability, there's still no remote comparison.

I had 2 pairs of those myself, one for me, and one for my alt hunter. They are probably still in my bank, but after the growl change I put them to the side because I felt that if I was going to tank with my pet, the aggro would have to be as good as possible. I do however hope Blizzard makes more items like that, and I'm a bit surprised that they haven't already. Why only make one single item like that?

I have heard that Blizz wants to change the way pet stats scales with hunter stats eventually since it is causing scaling problems at the higher end. I hope that problems like this one can be resolved some other way in the mean time.

Doug wrote:I have heard that Blizz wants to change the way pet stats scales with hunter stats eventually since it is causing scaling problems at the higher end. I hope that problems like this one can be resolved some other way in the mean time.

I admit, 'I have heard' are three words that long since ceased to worry me. Hearsay can make a lot of weird things happen. I'm not quite a 'Screenshot or it didn't happen!' person, but I do like to get a more solid idea of where something like this is heard. Because the most dangerous thing in the world is 'FOAF' hearsay.

I roam the Blizz forums quite a bit and is is one of the ideas that have been floated by blue text at one point.

Or at least it has been made known that there is a concern with the way that pets scale with hunter/warlock stats. There is no intention at this point to actually change it. Will try to find a blue post later.

I'd be very interested to read that blue post if you can find it. Blizzard changing pet scaling scares me a little since they can botch stuff up, but lately changes have been good so perhaps it would be legendary.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864747291&postId=158632502301&sid=1#42

Read into that what you like lol.