Expertise
For a Protection Paladin, you ideally want 26 Expertise. Less is acceptable and not critical, but going below 16 is already undesirable, because a Paladin’s threat generation comes from both physical and magical attacks.
For a Blood DK, Expertise is not needed at all, because the vast majority of threat comes from the magic ability Icy Touch, and Expertise does not apply to it. In BiS gear, your Expertise will be 31, and you cannot realistically reduce it further (with Glorenzelg 25 Heroic and 4T10.3 legs).
For a Protection Warrior, Expertise directly affects threat generation, because most Prot Warrior abilities (except Thunder Clap and Shockwave) are direct physical damage or modified weapon strikes. That means stacking Expertise is essential; otherwise, even with threat-redirection pre-pulls, it can be hard to hold the boss.
In BiS, all blue sockets are filled with Stamina gems, all red sockets are filled with Stamina + Expertise gems, and all yellow sockets are either Stamina, Hit, or Hit + Stamina. The key goal is to reach at least 35 Expertise, because on the current server Expertise is broken again. Why “again”: admins keep changing how it behaves—sometimes bosses still parry at 56 Expertise, sometimes they stop parrying at 27. With 35 Expertise, boss parries typically drop to around 1–2 over a two-minute fight.
Extra Expertise Set for Heroic Sindragosa and Halion
For heroic Sindragosa and heroic Halion, it is recommended to have a separate gear set that stacks extra Expertise to reduce parry-haste incidents caused by the tank.
For those who do not know: parry-haste is a mechanic where bosses such as Halion, Sindragosa, and Sapphiron, after parrying any player (it does not matter which player), perform their next auto attack much faster. With bad luck, you can get two parries in a row and die in under 2 seconds simply because the boss swings four times within 2 seconds. On heroic Halion, each boss auto attack hits for roughly 40–45k damage.
Defense Rating Minimums
The minimum required Defense Rating for any tank is:
540 against level 83 mobs and bosses (all Wrath of the Lich King raid content)
530 against level 80 mobs and bosses
Low Gear vs Near-BiS and BiS Gemming Logic
In low gear, you can gem for Defense to reach the cap if needed. As your gear improves, it becomes more effective to stack Stamina, because Stamina has no diminishing returns, and your effective HP increases mainly through gems and trinkets with high base Stamina (e.g. Sindragosa’s Fang, Scarab).
In near-BiS/BiS gear, after you reach the caps your class needs (such as Hit and Expertise), all remaining gems should be Stamina, because it is the only stat that is not reduced by debuffs and is not affected by diminishing returns.
With the current 30% ICC buff, everything is very doable with enough skill. After you gain experience, you can clear all bosses even with DPS trinkets and Strength/Agility gemming. However, that is an extreme approach, and I only recommend it if you are fully confident in your own performance.
