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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There has been a lot of false information spread around the bowels of the internet lately about what the actual stat caps are for a tanking warrior at level 80. I’ve read up on TankSpot, Elitist Jerks and Something Awful (I highly recommend all of these links, by the way) to bring you the end-all-be-all of what you should be looking for as a tank in terms of your stats.
Defense for raiding: 540
Defense for heroics: 535
Hit (level 83 boss): 295 raiting
Expertise (remove dodges): 25
Expertise (remove parries): 57
If you would rather look at raiting required then these are the numbers you need:
Defense: 689 defense rating
Expertise (dodge): 205 expertise rating
Expertise (parry): ~500 expertise rating
Hit: 295 hit rating
Here’s stat conversion at level 80:
1% hit = ~32.8 hit rating
1% dodge/parry reduction = ~32.8 expertise rating
1 expertise = 8.1975 expertise rating
1 defense = 4.9 defense rating
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