Now that the craziness of the Holidays are over and I’ve done a little bit of skiing, snowmobiling and relaxing, I’m here to present to you part two of the gearing guide for new tanks in Wrath of the Lich King.  This series started with Beginning Your Tanking Career, Getting 540 Defense and, as promised (though a bit late), here is the loot from heroics and badge items that you should be on the look out for now that you’re decked-out in all of your beautiful blue gear.

Note: “Badge” in this case refers to Emblems of Heroism, not Emblems of Valor of Badges of Justice.

Items Without a Badge Replacement

If I were you, these are the items I would focus on getting every day while accumulating badges to purchase other items.  This is especially the case if you don’t have a lot of play time.

Weapon: Run Utgarde Pinnacle until you’re blue in the face and pick up the Red Sword of Courage.

Bracers: Head over to Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom and get yourself a pair of the Bracers of the Herald.  Just make sure you didn’t do what I did and bring a Death Knight who wants to tank; they will win the roll and force you to come back nine or ten more times to get your own pair.  As an aside, I’m not bitter.  Really I’m not.

Ring: At the end of Drak’Tharon Keep is the most boring boss in the expansion, Prophet Tharon’ja, but he drops Keystone Great-Ring so it’s not all bad.

Pants: Violet Hold is where you’ll find the Bolstered Legplates which drop off of Cyanigosa.

Shield: I hope you enjoy the Culling of Stratholme since you’ll want to run it every day until you get the Royal Crest of Lordaeron. Not only is this an awesome shield but it looks amazing as well, one of Blizzards best-looking models ever.  Note: there is a badge-shield available but unless you got really bad luck with the drop from Stratholme, I don’t really think of it as a replacement, per se.  Plus this shield looks amazing while the Badge one looks like some hairy skin pulled over a metal frame.

Items With a Badge Replacement

Belt: You can find the Ancient Aligned Girdle clutched within Anub’arak’s talons at the end of Azjol-Nerub.

Gloves: And finally in Gun’drak you’ll have to beat a silly troll named Gal’darah senseless to get him to drop the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets.

And Finally… the Badge Gear

I’m not really going to bother repeating everything that Veneretio over at TankingTips.com has already said.  Go read his Emblem of Heroism article entitled, The Badge err… Emblem of Heroism Pick Order.  It should have everything you need to make an informed decision on what pieces of gear to get next.

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You’ve just hit 80! Congratulations! But I can see you asking yourself, “now what?” Well, read along. I’m going to assume in this guide that you leveled as Fury or Arms and haven’t picked up a single piece of tanking gear along the way and you are a loner with no friends who can craft anything for you.

Drops from heroics and badge items will be included in another post later this week.

Step One – Reputation

The very first thing you’re going to want to do is make sure you’ve done all of the quests in Dragonblight that have to do with the Wyrmrest Accord, this will save you massive amounts of time getting to Revered and picking up their amazing tanking pieces. I completely missed the long question chain that starts with A Strange Device and it cost me; don’t be like me. This quest chain also leads to the ability to do the Wyrmrest Accord daily which you should run every day until that magical limit has been reached.

• Honored – Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions
• Revered – Breastplate of the Solemn Council
• Revered – Sabatons of Draconic Vigor

Make sure to pick up your tabard and wear it in level 80 dungeons!  Once you hit Revered, switch it out with the Argent Crusade Tabard and start working your way to Revered with them for the helm enchant.

Step Two – Crafted BoE Items

If you know a blacksmith, are a blacksmith, or have some gold laying around to spend on the Auction House, then I highly recommend getting these pieces to bump you up to the defense cap. These items should last you quite a while until you replace them with pieces from Naxx and heroics.

• Tempered Saronite Belt – 6x Cobalt Bars, 5x Saronite Bars
• Tempered Saronite Bracers - 13x Saronite Bars
• Tempered Saronite Gauntlets – 14x Saronite Bars
• Saronite Bulwark – 14x Saronite Bars

Total materials: 46 Saronite Bars, 6 Cobalt Bars.
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When I first hit 70, I ran heroic Mechanaar only twice before the Sun Eater dropped for me.  Other tanks in my guild had run it until Exalted without even seeing it drop, let alone getting it.  Well apparently the World of Warcraft gods are cruel and unforgiving because I have run heroic Utgarde Pinnicle every day since dinging 80 and the Red Sword of Courage has yet to show it’s face to me.

A priest, a hunter and a DPS warrior in my guild have for Pete’s sake, but I haven’t even seen it drop.  In the meantime I’ve had the Abomination Shoulderblades drop from Gluth in Naxx-10 (which according to WoWHead have a drop rate of 0.7% from Gluth since he drops everything else in the zone).  My frustration has peaked to the point where the others who have it wear it around me before pulls and I’m going crazy.

Not to mention the Hammer of Quiet Mourning is one of the ugliest models and skins in the game.

Anyone else running into frustrating drop rates?

UPDATE (12/5/08): Woohoo it finally dropped for me!

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The Petrified Lichen Guard is one of those fantastic anomalies in the game; a low-level item with a proc so good that you should still have it in your bag even at T6-level content.

The reason for this is simple: it makes your life a lot easier as a Warrior when you’re trying to AOE tank. Since the fantastic changes such as Damage Shield and and removal of the target limitations to Thunder Clap aren’t yet in the game, this shield still has it’s place especially when you throw a Felsteel Shield Spike on it.

Places to use this shield:

• Magister’s Terrace. In the room with all of the mana worms if you slap on this baby and tell your group to wait until you’re at half health before doing anything you can watch and giggle mischievously as those Mages and Warlocks go crazy and can’t pull aggro off of you.  Glorious!
• Zul’Aman. The Dragonhawks adds on Jan’alai can be frustrating as a warrior tank, no doubt about it.  Use this shield along with a well-place Earthbind Totem or Frost Trap and it becomes much more manageable.
• Ata’mal Terrace. Nothing like some relaxing AOE grinding to keep you feeling refreshed.  Equip this sucker when fighting the hordes of Demon Hunter Initiates and just stand there as they kill themselves.  Loot and profit.
• Shattered Halls. There are some grossly exaggerated stories of how hard Shattered Halls is to tank, especially if you have a patient group and this baby on.  Seriously try this out and you’ll see Shattered Halls in an entirely new light.
• Auchenai Crypts. This shield is especially useful on the large groups of mobs right before the last boss.  Have your DPS burn down the big guy while you get some passive threat on the skeletons.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of other places where you can use this shield but that’s a pretty good list and should show you the versatility of carrying the Lichen Guard around.  To top off everything I’ve already said, this shield only requires Honored with Sporregar, 15 Glowcaps and level 62 to acquire!  For the amount of use you’ll get out of this thing it’s basically free.  Hell, the mats for the Felsteel Shield Spike will cost you more gold and time than the shield itself.

Here’s to hoping Blizzard has another shield like this one in the expansion!

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