I want to talk just a little about Gemming as a Tankadin, or any tank for that matter. Forgive me for changing from my planned “Talents and Skills” post. That is still coming sometime next week.

There are two overall types of tanks in WOW. The Main Tank, and the Off Tank. Now the rules I am about to lay out are not always true, and infact have many excptions. That disclaimer stated, let me describe the two, and how they relate to Gemming.

Main Tanks stack two things above all else; Avoidance/Mitigation and stamina. Before you tell me that is three things let me clarify. The Main tank tries to reduce the damage he takes by the maximum amount possible. This is done by having large sums of avoidance and by mitigating as much as possible through block and armor. Likewise they want to have as many hit points as possible in order to better survive the damage that comes through.

Off Tanks stack a bit of everything. These guys generally are picking up adds, running around protecting healers, all kinds of things. Off Tanks stack stamina, avoidance and mitigation as well, but they also try to maximize threat. They give up some survivability to do that, but it’s necessary for “snap agro.”

So what’s the difference in gemming... Well it comes down to min/maxing.

The main tank will have the best stamina gems on the market in every single socket. The only exception will be a defense or defense/stamina gem in order to keep defense cap.

Off tanks are going to try to match a few useful socket bonus’. They may have any combination of stam, strength, and defense in there gems.

Whats the difference? Well lets look at....

Bolstered Legplates!

Now I am currently (at the time of writing) wearing these. They have 1961 armor, 68 strength, 123 stamina, 81 defense rating, 45 hit rating, a red socket, and a 6 stamina socket bonus. (These drop off Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold by the way).

So the stats we are concerned with...

1 Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina

The Main Tank sees 1 Socket. They put in 1 blue stamina gem to simply maximize their hit points. (Best in game is 24).

The Off Tank sees, 1 Red Socket, + 6 Stamina for matching. They put in a Stamina/Strength gem. This gems gets them 8 Strength, 12 Stamina, and 6 Stamina for the socket bonus. That’s 18 Stamina. While this does not maximize health, it will boost their threat output.

At the end of the day, all other things being equal, the main tank will take just a bit more damage, and the off tank will produce just a bit more threat. If you multiply this across 14 to 16 pieces of gear, some with 2 or more sockets, this difference begins to build. The end result can be a difference of 1500 – 2000 hit points, and 350 - 500 attack power.

Neither of these methods of gearing are wrong. Quite often a main tank will have a threat set, and an off tank will have a stamina set.

There is one more type of gemming that can be done. It is very very rare however. Gemming for Avoidance is unusual but not unheard of. There are times when a highly specialized avoidance set can make an encounter much easier. This is rare however because of the amount of rating needed to make 1% of avoidance. Do to stat budgets, 1 point of stamina, strength of defense is worth significantly more then 1 point of avoidance. This type of gear set should only be built if you already have a stamina and threat set and have encountered a fight where this is needed.

So that’s my take on gemming. There is no wrong way to go about it, however what you do, will help to determine what roll you are best suited for.

Light be with You
~Bloodgarde