The Best Gems for Tanking
In the advanced levels of "World of Warcraft," the right tanking gems can make the difference between success and failure of your 25 man raid. You can tank with a warrior, paladin, druid or death knight. Each one has different abilities available to them to enhance their ability to take damage, also called "tanking."
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Avoidance
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Avoidance tanking is when you emphasize abilities that allow you to get out of the way of damage. Parry, the ability to deflect shots, and dodge, the ability to get out of the way of incoming attacks, are key to avoidance tanking. When "gemming," you want gems that focus on your dodge and your parry rating. Both of these abilities suffer from "diminishing returns," meaning that the higher they get, the less value you get out of the same rating. Therefore, the best way to build your gem load out is to keep your dodge and parry rating as close together as possible.
Mitigation
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Mitigation is how well you handle damage when you are hit. All tanks use their armor to reduce the damage they take. Warriors and paladins use their shields to further reduce damage by blocking a percentage of the incoming damage. If you use gems that affect your mastery rating, these will increase the class-specific defenses that help you mitigate damage. Mastery is a close second in importance to dodge and parry gems.
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Socket Bonus
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When you load up an item with gems, many have a socket bonus. This is additive points above and beyond the points from the inserted gems. It is important to look forward to what your socket bonus will do. If a socket bonus gives extra parry rating you should socket dodge so they can stay equal. If you have a strength socket bonus you should use gems that give a dodge or agility bonus, as strength adds to parry and agility adds to dodge.
Stamina
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Stamina is an attribute that flat out adds hit points. While hit points are important, avoidance and mitigation are far more important. If you have an extra few thousand hit points from some stamina gems that is nothing compared to the effective hit points of better mitigation and avoidance. Being able to dodge hits that would do 50,000 points of damage is much better than having an extra 50,000 hit points. Remember, you will always have healers keeping you alive. Your job is to make that as easy for them as you can, and proper "gemming" can give you that extra protection.
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