I have to disagree with the section on PvP gear. This is purely anecdotal , but I'm sure an enterprising young theory crafter could back it up with solid numbers:

When I first hit 85 on my DK, the Firelands patch had just hit. I didn't really feel much like grinding on heroic instance drops on yet another character, so I hopped on my blacksmith and made all of the new season crafted gear. I queued up for a few heroics in this gear and found myself easily out DPSing characters that were in heroic quality gear or less. So, with just a little money spent on crafted PvP gear, I skipped that whole grind. This meant that my dungeon runs were running quicker and I was getting JPs and VPs easier and didn't feel like I was being dragged through.

Fast forward a bit and I've gotten 1-2 tanking drops from Trollroics, full season 10 pvp honor gear, and a few conquest pieces. Mix that together with the tanking cloak from the thrall quest and the tanking rings, relic, and bracers from Molten Front dailies, and I'm now tanking Trollroics with ease. I've got about 5 pieces of Epic pvp gear mixed in, the rest is standard tank stuff.

Is it optimal? No. Am I going to be tanking raids? Probably not, but I could be soon. But, and this is the most important question, does it work? Oh yes.

So no, don't write off the PvP gear for filling in slots that you can't otherwise easily fill in. For tanking, try to aim for the pieces with Mastery if you need to fill out slots. But don't forget that all that huge armor and strength converts into damage reduction and parry rating. A lot of it. I currently have 14% parry and 10.5% dodge unbuffed. I forget where my mastery is sitting, number wise, but it's somewhere around 100% healed to blood shield ratio.

DPS is even easier. Given the choice between a heroic ilevel blue and a season 10 honor epic that is 25 ilevels above it, I'll go for the honor gear every time. You'll gear up faster and be ready for raiding in no time. You can essentially skip all the way from quest gear to DPSing Trollroics with just some gold spent. Far better than spending endless days farming heroics to have gear good enough to get into troll heroics. You'll save yourself quite a lot of grinding and be that much closer to your goal.

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