So you’ve just hit revered with Lower City, bought your [item]Auchenai Key[/item] and are ready to head into heroics? Tanking heroic dungeons can be a challenging and fulfilling experience. Or it can leave you in a quivering pile of flesh and bone…

Agreeing to tank a heroic is not something you should do lightly if you have never done so before. Obviously you will need to have some decent gear, which you should have anyway if you have run enough normal instances to get your heroic key.

Be Prepared!

As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to be able to hit 12,500 hitpoints and armor, although you could probably do it with less. Make sure you have 490 defense so you can avoid those crits. If you have the luxury of multiple gear sets, for heroics you’ll want to focus less on avoidance and more on mitigation (stamina, armor, shield block).

Know Your Encounters

Next up is knowledge. You’ll need to be familiar with what is different in a heroic vs. a normal dungeon. You may need to build a resist set depending on the encounter. For example, having a Shadow Resist set for Pandemonius can make the first boss in Heroic Mana Tombs a joke (I’m sitting at about 265 in my shad resist set). Head over to www.wowwiki.com and read up on the changes to trash mobs and bosses.

Group Makeup

Group makeup is also important. For most heroics you’ll want multiple forms of cc, which CAN include bringing along another tankly type as an offtank! A good healer is also required as heroic mobs just dish out too much damage.

You’ll need to make sure you are capable of handling multi-pulls as a loose mob can often one shot healers and other low armor targets resulting in a probable wipe.

Phat Lewt!

Here are some of the better loot items you can get from heroics:

• [item]The Sun Eater[/item] – Mechanar *practically a must have
• [item]Argussian Compass[/item] – Underbog
• [item]Girdle of the Immovable[/item] – Slave Pens
• [item]Ironscale War Cloak[/item] – Slave Pens
• [item]Boots of the Colossus[/item] – Mana Tombs
• [item]Crystal Band of Valor[/item] – Mana Tombs
• [item]Warp-Storm Warblade[/item] – Mana Tombs
• [item]The Fel Barrier[/item] – Mana Tombs
• [item]Fanblade Pauldrons[/item] – Auchenai Crypts
• [item]Maladaar’s Blessed Chaplet[/item] – Auchenai Crypts
• [item]Spaulders of Dementia[/item] – Sethekk Halls
• [item]Lieutenant’s Signet of Lordaeron[/item] – Old Hillsbrad
• [item]Resounding Ring of Glory[/item] – Old Hillsbrad
• [item]Truncheon of Five Hells[/item] – Hellfire Ramparts
• [item]Lion’s Heart Girdle[/item] – Hellfire Ramparts
• [item]Eaglecrest Warboots[/item] – Blood Furnace

You can use this link to browse more over at the armory.

Heroics can grant you some needed gear upgrades and can be very fun and challenging, just be sure you are up for the challenge otherwise you may end up with expensive repair bills

One of the best tanking breastplates in the game that is not too terribly difficult to obtain is the [item]Bulwark of Kings[/item]. In order to get it, you first have to craft the [item]Breastplate of Kings[/item]. In order to do that, you need to farm or buy a lot of materials, primarily lots of Primals.

[item]Breastplate of Kings[/item] requires the following:

8 x [item]Primal Might[/item]

8 x [item]Khorium Bar[/item]

6 x [item]Hardened Adamantite Bar[/item]

6 x [item]Eternium Bar[/item]

For the Primal Might, you need 1 each of [item]Primal Fire[/item], [item]Primal Water[/item], [item]Primal Mana[/item], [item]Primal Air[/item] and [item]Primal Earth[/item]. Since you are already a Blacksmith, it is likely that you are also a Miner. Which means that Primal Earth won’t likely be a problem. It is all the rest that can give you a headache.

First off, hopefully you have a guild member or friend who is a Transmute Specialist in Alchemy. This could help save you some time. Have them do transmutes for you if they will. Hopefully they can not only make your Primal Mights for you, but also transmute your excess Primal Earth into Water. With some lucky procs, this could save you lots of time and money.

Farming for the rest of the Primals can be a tedious task. Farm [item]Mote of Air[/item], [item]Mote of Fire[/item], and [item]Mote of Water[/item] at the Elemental Plateau in North East Nagrand. Farm [item]Mote of Mana[/item] from the various Warp mobs in Netherstorm. Another good place to farm Mote of Water is by killing the worms in the lake in Terrokar NE of Shattrath. Obviously get your [item]Mote of Earth[/item] from mining. Mining Fel Iron Deposits will also sometimes get you [item]Mote of Fire[/item] as well.

In addition to outright farming Motes, make sure you run the Daily Quests for Skyguard, Ogri’la, and Netherwing if they are available to you. Use that extra cash to watch the Auction House for low priced Primals and Motes.

Once you have all your primals (you did have your Transmute specialist do the Primal Might transmutes, right?), just craft up the other pieces.

For the [item]Bulwark of Kings[/item] the biggest problem are the [item]Primal Nether[/item]. My heroic of choice is Heroic Mechanar. Not only is it fairly quick and easy to get to and kill the final boss, but you also can get [item]The Sun Eater[/item] and [item]Vanquisher’s Legplates[/item]. Let your group know before the Nether drops that you need it for your Breastplate and if they are willing, roll after the fact and let them know you will buy looting rights if they win the roll. I have had good luck using that strategy. Farm up your 10 Primal Nether and 10 Primal Mana to craft your [item]Bulwark of Kings[/item]! Once you have it, I would recommend gemming it with 3 x [item]Solid Star of Elune[/item] and enchanting with Enchant Chest – Exceptional Health (+150 health) to finish it out! Enjoy

When generating threat, it is good to know what skills and abilities generate the most thread. The currently accepted level 70 threat values are as follows:

Notice that it only makes sense to use Devastate when your Devastates hit for at least 200 points of damage, otherwise it is better to just use Sunder Armor from a Threat point of view!

EDIT: As Nokozon pointed out in an email to me, a little more info on Devastate damage.

… that with five sunders the damage from devastate is increased by 165 damge without the 50% weapon damage this is because devastate gains a extra 35 damage from every sunder that is applied to the target …

Thanks for the clarification, Nokozon!

You can read more about threat and sustained threat here

Executioner vs. Mongoose: a preliminary view from the tanks’ perspective – TankSpot – Warcraft Warrior Reference

Armstrong has posted up a speculative article comparing Executioner enchant to Mongoose enchant. As it stands, typically Mongoose is the defacto tanking enchant. That may all change with the addition of the Executioner enchant.

Assuming a similar proc rate as Mongoose, Executioner will out threat Mongoose on all but the most heavily armored bosses. We’ll see how it pans out when patch 2.3 comes out!

EDIT: I had incorrectly put that this enchant would come out in patch 2.2, but it is to come out in patch 2.