is my suggestion :P

props to Honors for that.

1. Farm regular ToC. This can be done in a single afternoon and is easily doable in your current gear. The Black Heart is an excellent trinket, and you shouldn’t stop until you have it. The belt is largely a side grade to what you have now– better for threat and EH, worse for avoidance. The boots, gloves, and legs, though they devote a fair amount of their item budget to expertise, are all still upgrades. Just be sure to socket them to make up for the defense you will be losing from the rep items they replace. As an added bonus, the fact that they are ilvl 200 epics replacing blues will help to quiet the concerns of others regarding your gear score. Also, pick up pieces that nobody else wants for your ret/holy sets, as being flexible regarding your role in groups will get you into more runs.

2. Do h ToC every day. The helm, sword, ring, neck, and shoulders are all significant tanking ups. You’ll also pick up 3 Emblems of Conquest per day. Again, roll offset on any ret or holy ups to improve your ability to DPS or heal at need.

3. Farm heroics for Conquest badges. As others have stated, start your own groups or go as DPS. Getting into heroics any way you can is going to be key to improving your gear quickly. There isn’t anything outside of raids for the chest slot that compares to the t8.5 piece (unless you count the crafted one that uses Crusaders’ orbs). The neck, gloves, and belt are also nice. Trade some emblems down to Valors, and snag the cloak and boots. When you’ve gotten all the badge tanking gear you need, keep running heroics. Use excess badges to get epic gems for your tanking kit. After that? Use excess badges to buy off set gear and gem it.

4. Do the daily heroic and spend your Triumphs wisely. The first slot I’d upgrade were I you is the ring.

5. Level mining and blacksmithing. Mine while looking for heroic pugs to join. Take the ore you gather and use it to level blacksmithing. Your goal is to hit 450 mining for another 60 stamina and 415 blacksmithing to allow you to socket your bracers and gloves, netting another 60 stamina (or 48 stamina, if you are using rare gems). Also, hitting 415 BS means you can make eternal belt buckles, which (at least on my server) reliably sell for a 30-50% profit. That being the case, you can make a couple of hundred of gold per day very easily by just buying all of the mats you need off the AH and listing about a dozen of the buckles. That will allow you to start looking at crafted upgrades.

6. Get into VoA and Ony pugs any way you can. Often times, pugs won’t be too picky about the gearing of a final DPS or healer. Read up on the fights ahead of time so that you can step in and contribute as much as your gear will allow you to. Understand that you may have to put up with some folks whining about your 2k DPS or whatever. You may get unfairly blamed for wipes. Just stay focused on your goal of improving your toon. Again, there are some potential big ups there from the drops, and you’ll earn both Triumph and Conquest badges. Even if you are coming as DPS or healing, it is fairly likely that you will have a shot at rolling off spec on any tankadin drops from Emalon or Archavon, and, if nobody is a prot pally in the run, you may even have a shot at ilvl 232/245 tanking helms, pants, and gloves.

7. When you are afford crafted gear, look carefully at the degree of upgrade it will give you, other possible upgrades that are available to you, and the cost of making the item. Balance these to get pieces that are a real upgrade, that you will be keeping for a while, and that won’t prevent you from pursuing other improvements. For example, the Tempered Titansteel Helm is a nice up from the DPS helm you are using; however, it’s not a huge up compared to the Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger (h ToC– which you should be doing daily). On the other hand, the Spiked Deathdealers are clearly superior to anything prior to the Greaves of the Lingering Vortex (ToC10, twin val’kyrs– which you probably won’t be doing regularly soon). Consequently, it would make more sense to spend the extra gold on getting the boots made, since there isn’t anything on par with them on the horizon.

By the time that you are spending badges on gems, looking into high end crafted gear, and so forth, you should be geared to the point that finding groups isn’t a problem. When you’ve reached that point (and congratulations are in order for putting in the work to achieve that goal), Hopefully, you’ve done alot of tanking in 5 mans and may have even tanked a bit in 10s/25s by this time. Just remember to keep looking for ways to grow as a tank. Gear defines the limits of what a character can do, but it is the skill of the person at the controls that determines how much of that potential is fulfilled.

I always explain the fights and tricks to new tanks, even if it takes longer. If you don’t know a fight ask. Don’t try for achievements until you are bored with the instance, and make sure everyone can do it. I gladly make guns for free for new warrior tanks, (they do have to provide the mats.) We need more tanks, and I prefer good ones, not ones that have a, “well I tried that, but I couldn’t keep up” attitude. I want you to enjoy tanking. I want you to understand the fights. I want a successful run. Which to me means a new tank that understands the dungeon better, even if we wipe, because he made a mistake. The rogue who wanted a 15-20 minute Nexus Heroic, because it was lolNexus was universally added to everyone else’s ignore list. I even let the rogue tank, he just yelled at me. I warned him, you want to tank then tank, otherwise shut it.

Get a healer who helps you, paladins and druids are good for this. They can be both tanks and healers, so they get more invites if they do both. They also know the fights from a tank’s perspective and can explain mid dungeon, while keeping you alive. I will give up my concentration aura for Devotion if the tank needs the extra stamina, (usually warriors and DKs.) Get a healer like that, add them to your friends list and treat them like the Hot Girl that you always wanted, but you thought would never give you the time of day. When you see her on, ask if she would be kind enough to do a dungeon with you, preferably the daily, but whatever she is able to do is fine. If she is nasty, or rude keep looking, she might have had a bad day, it happens. Nice healers abound, it is what we do, stand in the back and keep you alive. Add them to your friends list. I like getting invited to heal dungeons and raids. I will tank if I have to, but if you will do it. /cheer Plus it is either that, dailies, or going back to BC and Classic to finish out loremaster, boooorrring.

I would also suggest farming ToC 5 regular. The instance is not tough on reg and contains a nice tanking belt, pants that have more stam then the ones from HVH, and gloves. Not to mention the Black heart trinket is also in this instance. If you group with the same people for the most part you can kill two birds with one stone and get some upgrades for your offset as well.

After that, just run Naxx/Sarth/VoA as much as you can. When 3.3 hits this option will be far easier to do as everyone will be farming old raids.

Good luck

Funny you posted this article, because yesterday a noob in a similar position asked the same thing basically.

He wanted me to help gear him out which i told him no since i don’t know him and he can ask his guildys if he wanted such a freebie. But i did offer him my advise for new aspiring tanks.

Imho Rhi, my fast tank fast track guide is that…. noobs should not tank to get gear… (gasp). I know what your thinking but listen out first.

Nobody wants a crappy geared tank. Best you can get is invites to 5man normal or heroic if your lucky. And this is after doing the minimum gear upgrades most of which is crafted gear which you mentioned Rhi, but also the NPC reputation level for gear purchases.

But the reason why i say focus on other specs like dps and heals is because they are more easier to get into 5mans and raids compared to tanks which is the most demanding in terms of gear, experience and skills…

So for a dps or healer, just make your own 5man heroics and do toc 10 normal and heroic. All the starting gear is all there. You can forget spending shitloads of gold for gear. Just getting toc gear will set you on your way. Any fillers you can then get by trading conquest and triumph emblems for. Now your done and fully geared to handle Ulduar 10/25, Toc10/25 …. (assuming you got the itemlevel 226+ conquest and triumph vendor gear as i suggested).

When making your own pugs, REMEMBER to inform the raid/group your mainspec rolling on tank gear, so people don’t say you ninja and you don’t compete with other dps specs looking to get offspec gear against you. Keep people who need your gear to a minimum. Check Atlas loot for what instance drops what you need exactly. Don’t just randomly pug instances without knowing what exactly drops or you just waste your time.

Once your geared, does not mean your a good tank. Now you can go practice by tanking in 5mans to get the EXPERIENCE which is needed to learn how to tank properly. Holding agro, situational awareness, understanding of boss mechanics for the instances and that jazz….

10man and 25man raids are more challenging for new tanks to learn. The best method is to pair up with an experience tank and ask questions what to do and for any tips. Any supplementary help can be done by watching Utube to get a basic understanding and PRACTICE PRACTICE and more practice ingame till you get it….

Thats not to say your method isn’t fine Rhi, just that it takes much longer getting there gearwise compared to my suggestion :)

To be frank, it starts with the first pull. If you can pull nicely and hold on to the aggro without the mobs going to the healer or dpsers. They will continue the instance with you. If everything fail, just let the pug know if they are not comfortable after the first pull, they can switch you out should be able to get you an invite to heroic

In my guild we have been helping a Warlock’s Warrior alt gear up for tanking. He never tanked before, so he wasn’t much more advanced than you are now. In a week and half he upgraded many heroic blues and quest rewards with ToC-5 Heroic and Emblem Gear (and some nice heroic drops).

If you have cool guildmates to boost you through heroics and easy raids like Naxx 10 or 25, you can get some nice drops and emblems to buy Tier 8.5 quality. Buy crafted gear if you can afford it. Farm some dailys to make money to buy gems/enchants and possibly crafted gear. Don’t forget your Sons of Hodir dailies! They are the key for your shoulder enchants.

Well, I think that’s all. Good Luck!