Posts with tag wow-gear-guide

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Last week, we talked about gearing for heroics: what stats to focus on, which ones to avoid, and what sources you can exploit to gear yourself quickly for that first step into the endgame. Well, here we are just a week later (wow, you geared fast! ... er, right?), and now it's time to take that next great leap forward smack dab into your first raid.

There's a whole new set of priorities that you should carry into Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, or any of the other tier 11 raids. Dig into the wealth of tanking gear available in the heroic 5-mans, and then we'll explore the deal with threat and how best to boost your survivability. And in no time, you'll be standing before the dripping mandibles of Magmaw, shield in hand, prepared to survive a good chompin' while lesser tanks are munched into something resembling a squeezed can of spoiled Spam.

Ok, Casual and non-raiding 2 hand wielding Death Knights, you might want to sit down, because I have some big news for you: You may finally be able to chuck that Titansteel Destroyer. That's right, we're getting a new, higher level epic weapon in Patch 3.2's 5-man Crusader's Coliseum. The loot we're seeing come out of the Coliseum is all epic, and all amazing, and if you haven't even been to Naxxramas yet, either by choice or by lack of time or opportunity, you're going to have a reason to love the coliseum.

Weighing in at a whopping 203.7 DPS with a high end damage of 856, the Edge of Ruin is pretty much the dream for any serious casual Death Knight. It's right up there with Death's Bite or Armageddon from Naxxramas. The only downside is that it's an axe instead of a suitably awesome sword, and that it switches out hit rating for armor penetration, which means you may need to do some regemming to stay at the hit cap. Other than that, this is probably the number one thing you want to be gunning for once the Coliseum goes live. It even has a big chunk of strength and stamina, making it great for tanking as well.

Of course, that's not all you'll want to grab out of the Coliseum. Let's start with the tank loot.