(Cata) Noob Tank Dungeon Progression

I came back to WoW about four weeks ago and have been reading up on things in the Tank world here non-stop. You have seriously put together the best Tank resource I have found so far.

So I've played on and off since 11/04. Last trip through was as a DK until the fall of 09. My (then) guild was clearing Naxx, so I tanked all the big baddies of the time as a Frost DK. Needless to say the state of things today was a shock for me. I have the DK at 85 but it just seems Prot Pally is the way to go now and I don't want to spec Blood for some reason. I started a Pally last weekend and he's 65 now (man, has WoW made it easy to level!).

So my question is, as a returning Tank in Pally clothing, what is the order of Cata dungeons I should progress through? I've looked all through here and the common sense of "regular, then heroic, then raids" is all through the board but no list of "Do Dungeon A regular, Dungeon B regular, then Dungeon X Heroic, etc." Sorry if I've missed it, if so, just point me to it. This assumes I probably will just level and not start doing dungeons until 85.

Thanks.

Chilicat wrote:I've looked all through here and the common sense of "regular, then heroic, then raids" is all through the board but no list of "Do Dungeon A regular, Dungeon B regular, then Dungeon X Heroic, etc." Sorry if I've missed it, if so, just point me to it. This assumes I probably will just level and not start doing dungeons until 85.

I'll start off by saying that waiting to start dungeons at 85 is probably not the best idea for the following reasons:

- Some of the lower lvl "normal" dungeons drop loot that will be crappier and lower ilvl than what you'll get as quest rewards in higher zones. For example, normal BRC is an 80-81 instance, and the ilvl of the boss drop blues is low.
- You should be able to get enough gear just by leveling, crafting, and rep rewards to be close to running Heroics when you hit 85. I wouldn't waste too much time on normals, just make Heroics your goals.

If you were to run any Normals at all, make it Lost City of the Tol'vir, Halls of Origination and Grim Batol, all of which drop ilvl 333 gear.

I wouldn't skip the other Normal dungeons as I was coming up, there's some nice leveling gear to be had in them, as well as extra xp and quest rewards from associated quests.

Thanks for the advice. Yes, my old DK is now a 525 JC and I will have this Pally a 525 BS by 85, so plan to gear myself up with a lot of craftable items. It sounds like tanking has gone back to a much more Vanilla style of play and my thought was more in getting reaquainted with those dynamics and learning the dungeons. I was also just thinking I should run my DK as dps through some dungeons and watch what the tank does. I think I might do that as I don't want to be "that tank" all the dps post about on the Warcraft boards.

For questing route through Hyjal until you at least claim the Regrowth for 4.2 dailies, Deepholm until the end, Uldum until you finish off the quests for the cat people and then Twilight Highlands until you finish your faction quests there.

I recently leveled a second tankadin and was able to get 332 ilvl before doing a single normal mode 85 dungeon just from questing and snagging a pair of BoE valor boots.

Chilicat wrote: my thought was more in getting reaquainted with those dynamics and learning the dungeons.

That's not a bad idea, and again I recommend running the dungeons at level when you get the quests for them and all that. The Normal modes aren't that punishing, but will help to knock some rust off and at least you'll be familiar with trash pulls, patrols, boss location, etc., even if the boss fights themselves are pretty different between Heroic and Normal.

Thanks for the replies. That path of questing really helps and I will do exactly that.

Cheers

Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep are decent runs for a marginally-geared tank starting heroics, because they don't tend to have large trash packs that require a lot of CC. I have found reliable CC to be a rarity in PuG heroic groups.

There are a couple of tricky bosses that you need to be onyour toes for, and you should look up the encounters prior to running them so that you know what to expect, but from a things-beating-on-you perspective, they are OK.

I recently dinged my 2nd pally tank to 85, and was able to equip him in a lot of gear right away. There are several BoE troll items that are useful, such as Spiritguard Drape, Amani Armguards, and Gurubashi Punisher (sucks for tanking, really, but in go-go-go heroics you'll want the threat of a higher-dps weapon). You can also get Hardened Elementium Hauberk, Elementium Earthguard, Hardened Elementium Girdle, Rock Furrow Boots, and Notched Jawbone. From JC you can get Elementium Moebius Band (x2 as they are not unique-equipped).

With those items, you should be heroic-capable, and with only a few more items you will have the ilvl for the troll instances.

The bad news is that the BS gear takes Chaos Orbs to make which are BoP from heroics, so you need to run heroics to get the gear you need to do heroics. By the way, did you know if you look up "recursion" in google it says "Did you mean: recusrion". True story.

Ugh, did not know that about the chaos orbs. Thanks for pointing it out to me.