Tank Gearing for Heroics at 85 - Use Common Sense

If you check with Elitist Jerks, they tell you to reforge everything to Dodge Rating. If you check with other camps, they say Hit/Exp > Dodge; although they also recommend reforging haste and crit to Dodge Rating. To make it more confusing, EJ suggests all stam gems and others suggest agi+stam gems, agi or stam gems depending on bonuses.

What to do?

Stop. Drop and roll. Then calmly think about the situation you find yourself in most often. Gear to compensate for that.

For example, if threat generation is a problem right now because your dps is better geared than you (how did you ever let that happen?!!) and you are missing too often, then you need more hit/expertise. There really are not any fights right now where two tanks are taunting off of each other (yet) and most mob-level heroic taunts are going to work out fine with a lack of hit/expertise gearing. However, if you are simply not generating enough threat in the first 3-6 seconds of a fight due to misses - you need to patch that hole.

On the other hand, I am finding I have absolutely no threat issues and am so far ahead of dps and healing threat that I really should stack more stamina and agility for improved survivability and mitigation to give the healers fewer gray hairs while they are gearing up.

In other words, for me right now, stam and agi stacking is more important than hit or expertise; however, I fully expect once the healers gear up appropriately, to be able to convert some of that stacking to hit and expertise.

And then of course, we will see epics change all of that in the first tier of raiding! Invariably, pre-heroics, heroics and raid gear are all balanced around different stat levels. And we need to adjust to that as we progress and as our group progresses. Common sense, right? Well you'd be amazed at how many people just look up EJ and gear without thinking about it. They forget that EJ really was targeted to a very skilled group that took many assumptions in stride and did things as part of the SOPs. When EJ became "mainstream", their audience took on people who do what EJ says without understanding why to do it that way or more importantly when it is most appropriate and when it is more appropriate to alter the advice.

So gut check your fights and see where you need to patch holes. I'm a huge fan of the "order of contact" gearing approach.

The what?

The order of contact gearing approach. Separate post.