Level 80 Rare Tanking Gems for Warriors

**  UPDATE Please check out our Level 85 Tanking Gems post for updated info for Cataclsym!  **

This list is made up of the Rare tanking gems available in Wrath of Lich King broken down by desired category and color.  I am going by the following assumptions.  You typically look for 3 things when looking for gems.  Avoidance (defense), Effective Health (Stamina and Armor), or Threat (Strength, Crit, Expertise & Hit).  What I have listed here are my recommendations for gems you should slot based on the color and going by the assumption that you want the socket bonus.  There are many other gem combinations available and I encourage you to research and decide what is best for your tanking needs.

Avoidance

Effective Health

Threat

Your choices for threat gems might instead include To Hit, Expertise and/or Crit, but I think it is too early to sacrifice opportunities for defensive stats to go with pure threat gems.

The Oculus

The Oculus is not your standard instance in any way. There are several elements not found in other places that make it a very interesting instance.

Once you enter the portal to the instance, you’re confronted with a long, circular hallway. The trash needs to be cleared entirely up until reaching a portal on the other side. Crossing that portal leads to the first boss.

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New patch with new glyphs

There area bunch of new/reworked warrior glyphs in the next patch and they are all awesome.

Glyph of Bloodrage – reduces the health cost of your Bloodrage ability by 100%. (up from 50%).
Not a huge deal, especially in a raid when you are going to be healed anyway, but it’s a nice change for soloing or pvp when all HP is precious. All in all, its pretty nice for a minor glyph.

Glyph of Cleaving – Increases the number of targets you Cleave hits by 1. (Old – reduces the rage cost of Cleave by 5.)
I have a glyph of cleaving sitting in my bag that I have been meaning to use for a few weeks but I keep forgetting to apply it. I use Cleave a lot. Like… all the time. The only place I don’t use it is for bosses. But bosses are easy enough that I feel safe using one of my glyphs simply for trash/heroics. This change makes it even more attractive and turns this into the #1 non-boss tanking glyph. If your threat and rage are acceptable for bosses, I would definitely suggest using this instead of Glyph of Heroic Strike or Glyph of Revenge.

Glyph of Moral Strike – Increases the damage of your Mortal Strike by 10%. (No longer reduces the healing penalty)
This is an excellent change if you like to respec for your pvp.

Glyph of Bloodthirst – Increases the healing you receive from your Bloodthirst ability by 100%. (Up from 20%)
This doesn’t make a big difference for fury warriors in a raid, but it is defiantely nice for any soloing or pvp – just like Glyph of Bloodrage.

Glyph of Whirlwind – Reduces the cooldown of your Whirlwind by 2 seconds. (Old – Increases the number of targets your Whirlwind hits by 1.)
Means this isn’t as good for trash, but should be a dps increase for single targets/bosses.

Glyph of Victory Rush – Your Victory Rush ability has a 30% increased critical strike chance against targets above 70% health. (Old – 90% health)
This one is kinda meh. It’s a nice change, but not super useful.

Glyph of Rending – Increases the duration of you Rend ability by 6 seconds. (up from 3)
This is a really great change for pvp. In the past you could tell a good warrior from a bad one in pvp based on rend usage. The guy who put rend on anything and everything is not very good. Sure, it’s a little more damage and it helps with Blood Frenzy uptime, but it really hurts you from a damage/rage and damage/GCD perspective. The only time you want to use rend in pvp is to keep a rogue out of stealth. Rend was great at the before because it lasts for like 3 weeks and its even better with this glyph because it will last for 3 weeks and 6 seconds. With some changes in WotLK to rend, its not as clear cut as it used to be. With talents like Taste for Blood and Trauma and the increased overall damage of Rend, it might seem like it’s more useful in pvp than every before. But it’s really not. You still have to be in battle stance to apply it and you have to be in battle stance to Overpower and that means you lose whirlwind, pummel and intercept and you are throwing away rage on stance changes. Overall, Rend is still less damage/rage and less damage/GCD than just sticking to berserker stance. For PVE, this glyph could be a dps increase because it means you have to push your rend button less often, but really, this glyph doesn’t change the fact that Titan’s Grip beats the pants off any arms spec for pve dps. So don’t let this glyph fool you, Rend is still bad for just about everything – but the one thing it is good for, stopping rogues from stealthing and re-opening on your healer, just got better.

Socketing at 80

Following a random Naxxramas raid yesterday evening, I sat down and had a chat with the MT of the run. It was refreshing to talk to a tank that actually does his homework; most just blindly socket stamina because “everyone else” does it and don’t really know what they are doing.

The discussion, of course, revolved around socketing for avoidance.

Now, in these early stages of WotLK, I believe the primary issue for most tanks is to achieve crit immunity. Arguing about the effectiveness of EH over avoidance is a concern probably best left for the future. However, it might be interesting just to put some figures together.

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