Vexryn's Cataclysm Master Tank Gear List & Gear Progression

I wasn't a beta tester so I'll let other proof-read the lists.

Looks like a great solid guide.

Thanks for the work.

Ok..guess I screwed up the other post, so will try again. Excellent job on the list, and as I was not a beta tester either, have a question. Is the stam buff from mining going to remain competative with JC or is it time to change....

Thanks in Advance!

OK.. think I found it myself.. on Tankspot, duh! Mining is gonna give 120 Stam at 525, so prob not worth the time and expense to change.. already have 2 other toons with JC, so access to gems not a big issue.

Abuna wrote:OK.. think I found it myself.. on Tankspot, duh! Mining is gonna give 120 Stam at 525, so prob not worth the time and expense to change.. already have 2 other toons with JC, so access to gems not a big issue.

Indeed, I don't see any significant min/maxxing reason to change from Mining to JC for tank purposes, assuming you're happy with a reasonable chunk of stamina.

Mining will provide +120 stamina, and 3 Solid Chimera's Eyes will provide +101 Stamina each, upgrading Solid Ocean Sapphires that would have been +60 Stamina each; the net result is 3 x +41 stamina = +123 Stamina from Jewelcrafting.

I'll grant the JCs have a little more flexibility in gemming choices at least, and the JC trinket is a useful starter option. But I don't think that is an "overwhelming" reason to change to Jewelcrafting, but merely a 'decent' one.

That aside, I think I'm going to try to put a Profession summary list somewhere in the guide as well, as I'm seeing these questions come up a lot. Thanks for the "suggestion".

/salute

Now updated to include Professions too!

Vexryn wrote:

Abuna wrote:OK.. think I found it myself.. on Tankspot, duh! Mining is gonna give 120 Stam at 525, so prob not worth the time and expense to change.. already have 2 other toons with JC, so access to gems not a big issue.

Indeed, I don't see any significant min/maxxing reason to change from Mining to JC for tank purposes, assuming you're happy with a reasonable chunk of stamina.

Mining will provide +120 stamina, and 3 Solid Chimera's Eyes will provide +101 Stamina each, upgrading Solid Ocean Sapphires that would have been +60 Stamina each; the net result is 3 x +41 stamina = +123 Stamina from Jewelcrafting.

I'll grant the JCs have a little more flexibility in gemming choices at least, and the JC trinket is a useful starter option. But I don't think that is an "overwhelming" reason to change to Jewelcrafting, but merely a 'decent' one.

That aside, I think I'm going to try to put a Profession summary list somewhere in the guide as well, as I'm seeing these questions come up a lot. Thanks for the "suggestion".

/salute

If the wraith formula holds the difference will increase when epic gems enter, of course this is a gamble, we don't really know but throughout WoW, production professions have an edge over gathering and min-maxing means, well, maxing, so i would continue to assume that this is true.

Additionally on the flexibility. i will venture a guess (and just a guess) that it may be more worthwhile to choose your gemming. I mean the health difference between a tank and a dps/healter is not that large compared to wraith on beta which would(perhaps) imply that avoidance/mitigation should be much more important.

balloonknot wrote:
If the wraith formula holds the difference will increase when epic gems enter, of course this is a gamble, we don't really know but throughout WoW, production professions have an edge over gathering and min-maxing means, well, maxing, so i would continue to assume that this is true.

Additionally on the flexibility. i will venture a guess (and just a guess) that it may be more worthwhile to choose your gemming. I mean the health difference between a tank and a dps/healter is not that large compared to wraith on beta which would(perhaps) imply that avoidance/mitigation should be much more important.

Indeed, I would expect that when epic gems enter the picture (patch 4.1? Or 4.2?) that the buffs from professions will have to be rebalanced. Hopefully(?) that will be applied in a relatively even manner, although of course we'll see what happens.

I'd agree that flexibility is nice though. Arguably from that perspective, your top two profession choices would be Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting, which allow not only the current +120 Stamina "buff" for the profession, but allow you to choose different gems if you prefer.

First of all, outstanding work!

However, going through the gear plan in my head and checking some things on wowhead, i realised that the crafted blacksmithing pieces require "Chaos Orbs" to craft them. And since those appearently are BoP it would become very difficult (or expensive) to find a blacksmith with enough orbs and the willingness to use them at a payable price, in an early phase of the expansion.

Therefore I think the crafted pieces may be very difficult to get. For exmaple, the crafted chestpiece already needs 3 Chaos Orbs i.e. you have to "pay" the blacksmith for 3 heroic runs, not even considered his luck on roles.

After that you still have to factor in the Truegold Bars, which have to be transmuted by alchymists, 1 per day and you need 6 of those just for the chestpiece.

So crafting all 3 pieces is going to be insanely expensive early on.

Or am I missing something?

HammU,
Thanks for the feedback on this.

Indeed, the Truegold bars are created by Alchemists via a transmute (and presumably, eligible for transmutation specialization procs), but while I expect these will be expensive early on, I would anticipate it will be more like Titansteel Bars were early in Wrath (which likewise were a core for much crafted gear and were only created by miners on a 20-hour cooldown). The demand was huge, though, and a LOT of people were selling them; even early on, the going rate for our Titansteel Bar daily cooldown was about 50g, which is high but not crazy. Although I admit I hadn't looked in detail at the mats for the Transmute: Truegold and the mats themselves won't be cheap - 10 Fire, 10 Air, and 10 Water, of what appears to be the Cataclysm equivalent of Eternals. 30 "Eternals" for gear will have a good sized price tag!

Perhaps of more concern, though, is your point about the Chaos Orbs. Yes, Chaos Orbs are the new Frozen Orbs (so you get one for the group to roll on at the end of an instance), but I have to admit I did not see that they are BoP! That certainly changes the dynamic! I'll be curious to see how these go, though; they are only used by crafting professions, but does that mean anyone can need on them, even a Skinner/Miner who couldn't use them without a drastic profession change? I don't know. It does mean, though, that the Blacksmith pieces will be a lot harder to get, especially if Blacksmithing isn't your own profession as a tank.

I've got a few other updates I want/need to do to the prioritization discussion as well, but this definitely merits some alterations. Thanks for pointing this out!

This is an awesome gear list, thanks!

Have you looked at the PVP gear? My understanding is that Arena/Rated BGs will give access to epic weapons and shields without a personal rating. If so, we may be going back to the BC era world where the easiest path to getting an epic weapon is PVP.

Certainly the PVP weapons and shields you can get pre-Cata are now competitive with almost all PvE gear. With weapons in particular, a slow high i-level dps weapon is very attractive to tankadins and PvP ones usually don't waste much on resilience. (With shields, the case is weaker but still strong.)

econ21 wrote:This is an awesome gear list, thanks!

Have you looked at the PVP gear? My understanding is that Arena/Rated BGs will give access to epic weapons and shields without a personal rating. If so, we may be going back to the BC era world where the easiest path to getting an epic weapon is PVP.

Certainly the PVP weapons and shields you can get pre-Cata are now competitive with almost all PvE gear. With weapons in particular, a slow high i-level dps weapon is very attractive to tankadins and PvP ones usually don't waste much on resilience. (With shields, the case is weaker but still strong.)

I had not looked at the PvP gear, although I'll grant that if the formula turns out to look more like TBC than Wrath, the PvP gear may be relevant. Given the heavier focus on survival, though - it's not all about EH anymore - I'm not sure PvP gear with no points in mitigation will be appealing. But we'll see; some gear with a huge chunk of stamina and some mastery may pass for tank gear, and a PvP weapon with slow swing speed and epic-quality base damage may still be a pretty solid threat option.

I'll start poking around the PvP list, once I update the gear priority discussion per HammU's comments about the difficulty of obtaining Chaos Orbs. If I see something that really seems relevant, I'll look at adding it to the list.

On the other hand, there's no indication that PvP gear will be as easy to obtain as it was in TBC, even if the epics are of useful quality. In other words, we need to see how the points can be accumulated; otherwise, the reality may be "PvP epics are decent, but if you want to gear up for PvE, that time is still better spent grinding 5-man dungeons than doing PvP content for honor/conquest points."

Thanks for the suggestion though!

I think you'd be giving up a lot to use most of the pvp gear. Since uncritable is no longer an issue the resilience is a complete waste, thats a lot of wasted stats on the pvp gear.

There may be certain encounters (magic heavy) or particular slots (weapons?) it may make sense for but i think i would have to be looked at very much on a case my case basis.

balloonknot wrote:I think you'd be giving up a lot to use most of the pvp gear. Since uncritable is no longer an issue the resilience is a complete waste, thats a lot of wasted stats on the pvp gear.

There may be certain encounters (magic heavy) or particular slots (weapons?) it may make sense for but i think i would have to be looked at very much on a case my case basis.

Indeed, that's my gut response as well, but I'll poke around at stats a little and take a look. I suspect the pvp gear will look very inferior to other i359 epics... but if it turns out the comparison is i359 pvp epics versus i333 or i346 blues, it might be more interesting...

Vexryn, just want to say thank you ever so much for all your hard work. This list is a great place for any tank worth his/her salt to start. You've done a wonderful job of explaining everything we need to know to get a 'jumpstart' in the upcoming expansion.

Having been a tank for 4yrs now (Kandoril, realm of Cairne, Guild: Midnight Sun) I am quite impressed with all you've done here. In fact, this posting is all I am going to study for the next few weeks. It's quite comprehensive. Again, I salute you and hardily handshake your hand for a job well done. Thank you!

Questions, comments, or concerns relating to WoW tanking or this post, email me here: cinciknight@gmail.com

Kandoril wrote:Vexryn, just want to say thank you ever so much for all your hard work. This list is a great place for any tank worth his/her salt to start. You've done a wonderful job of explaining everything we need to know to get a 'jumpstart' in the upcoming expansion.

Having been a tank for 4yrs now (Kandoril, realm of Cairne, Guild: Midnight Sun) I am quite impressed with all you've done here. In fact, this posting is all I am going to study for the next few weeks. It's quite comprehensive. Again, I salute you and hardily handshake your hand for a job well done. Thank you!

Questions, comments, or concerns relating to WoW tanking or this post, email me here: cinciknight@gmail.com

/salute

Thanks for the kind words!

I've been getting some great discussion here in the thread and via direct messages, though. Some updates to the guide and priority list discussion are coming!

Hopefully it will just be getting better!

Significant updates to the Gear Priority guide, in light of new information about Chaos Orbs, Valor Points, and other interesting stuff. There were not only additions to the information; some of the priorities themselves have changed. So those who have been following this thread might want to take a fresh look.

Sorry to those who are thrown off by changes, but fortunately nothing has been released yet! I will continue updating if/when more information comes forth that changes any of the gear priority strategies; my hope is that something very solid will be in place by the time Cataclysm leveling is actually possible.

Had to login and say thanks so much for your hard work with this. It's going to be a great help.

kakashi wrote:Had to login and say thanks so much for your hard work with this. It's going to be a great help.

/salute

Thanks so much. And let me know if there's any other suggestions, requests, or constructive criticism.

Love this List, was exactley what I was looking for, Many thanks to you dude, and just a question below.

vexryn wrote:Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (Tier 11) - Essence of the Forlorn token - Dodge/Hit

I believe this to be incorrect. Essence of the Forlorn is used to purchase Heroic Upgrade pieces. The tokons to upgrade class pieces arnt droping from bosses after looking at WowHead.
So you would need to purchase Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard with JP and then to upgrade you need to get a Essence of the Forlorn From Lady Sinestra (Speculation) and with the Essence of the Forlorn purchase a Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror and then you can upgrade your tier piece to Heroic version.

kakashi wrote:Had to login and say thanks so much for your hard work with this. It's going to be a great help.

This, very well done!

Exogen wrote:Love this List, was exactley what I was looking for, Many thanks to you dude, and just a question below.

vexryn wrote:Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (Tier 11) - Essence of the Forlorn token - Dodge/Hit

I believe this to be incorrect. Essence of the Forlorn is used to purchase Heroic Upgrade pieces. The tokons to upgrade class pieces arnt droping from bosses after looking at WowHead.
So you would need to purchase Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard with JP and then to upgrade you need to get a Essence of the Forlorn From Lady Sinestra (Speculation) and with the Essence of the Forlorn purchase a Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror and then you can upgrade your tier piece to Heroic version.

This isn't correct. You need a [Helm of the Forlorn Conqueror] token to purchase a Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (T11). The Valor Point (not Justice Point) vendor only sells the chest, hands, and legs for VP. I checked this myself when writing my gear guide last weekend.

After that you are correct. To upgrade from T11 to T11.5, you then use an Essence of the Forlorn, likely from a selection of T11 raid bosses, to purchase a Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror, and then use that along with your existing Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard to buy a Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard.

The OP is ridiculously comprehensive, well-designed, and helpful. It is the most awesome thing written by anybody ever about anything. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it's fantastic. Thanks a bunch!

Digren wrote:

Exogen wrote:Love this List, was exactley what I was looking for, Many thanks to you dude, and just a question below.

vexryn wrote:Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (Tier 11) - Essence of the Forlorn token - Dodge/Hit

I believe this to be incorrect. Essence of the Forlorn is used to purchase Heroic Upgrade pieces. The tokons to upgrade class pieces arnt droping from bosses after looking at WowHead.
So you would need to purchase Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard with JP and then to upgrade you need to get a Essence of the Forlorn From Lady Sinestra (Speculation) and with the Essence of the Forlorn purchase a Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror and then you can upgrade your tier piece to Heroic version.

This isn't correct. You need a [Helm of the Forlorn Conqueror] token to purchase a Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (T11). The Valor Point (not Justice Point) vendor only sells the chest, hands, and legs for VP. I checked this myself when writing my gear guide last weekend.

After that you are correct. To upgrade from T11 to T11.5, you then use an Essence of the Forlorn, likely from a selection of T11 raid bosses, to purchase a Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror, and then use that along with your existing Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard to buy a Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard.

Digren,
Ahh, thanks for clarifying. I saw the earlier post from the road and had a feeling this was the issue - I didn't catch the difference between the [Helm of the Forlorn Conqueror] (which, I presume, is a raid drop) and the Crown of the Forlorn Conqueror which is the heroic upgrade token that you purchase with an Essence of the Forlorn.

I'll get this sorted out shortly in the list. Thanks.

Digren wrote:This isn't correct. You need a [Helm of the Forlorn Conqueror] token to purchase a Reinforced Sapphirium Faceguard (T11). The Valor Point (not Justice Point) vendor only sells the chest, hands, and legs for VP. I checked this myself when writing my gear guide last weekend.

Hrm, on the flip side... it appears that the chest, hands, and legs are ONLY available for Valor Points. Wowhead only appears to have tokens for the head and shoulders for regular Tier 11. And then the Essence of the Forlorn buys one of 5 different tokens for the heroic tier upgrade.

So it looks like head and shoulders are only drops (for regular Tier 11), while the chest, hands, and legs are only Valor Points.

Updated posted for the Tier 11 corrections, both in the gear list threads and the Valor Point gear priority discussion. Thanks for pointing it out!