Enchant Guide
What a touching moment today. Two protection warriors are going to Karazhan today in our guild’s raid, and none of them is me. May the ‘youngsters’ kick some ass. 
One of them was all excited about getting Steelweave enchant to cloak today, which made me groan, but I managed to stop her, and promised an enchant guide for prot warriors (applies to other tanking classes, in some cases).
Weapon Enchants:
Until you have one of the epic tanking weapons, you can either get your weapon enchanted with +20 strength for threat or +20 agility for avoidance. Once you have King’s Defender or Sun Eater, you can go Mongoose (Procs “Lightning Speed”: Increases agi by 120, and increases attack speed by 2% (associative) for 15 seconds). In the rare case you have both (I know I am a lucky bitch), you could slap Executioner (Executioner increases your armor penetration by 840 for 15 seconds.) on the King’s Defender and Mongoose on the Sun Eater. Whatever you prefer. Mongoose is the avoidance enchant, Executioner is the threat enchant.
Gear Enchants:
Head:
I am simply assuming that the broad majority of tanks these days will not have access to Zul’Gurub enchants. If I ever get bored, I should pursue that, honestly. A guide to obtaining Presence of Might can be found here. Yo, mah peeps, can be 3-manned, this guide says, who’s with me?
For those of us scrubs with no access to ZG enchants, grind your Keepers of Time rep to Revered and buy Glyph of the Defender.
Shoulders:
Depending on your faction choice you’ve made in Shattrath, you’ll have to try to get either the Aldor Greater Inscription of Warding at Exalted or Inscription of Warding at Honored, or the Scryers equivalents Greater Inscription of the Knight or Inscription of the Knight. Overall, the Aldor enchant has a slight edge.
Cloak:
We have several options here. Don’t get too excited about the new Steelweave enchant. Once you’re above the defense cap, there’s no real reason to invest into getting more defense when there are much better avoidance options out there. Best enchant goes to +12 agility, followed by the +12 dodge rating enchant. Both offer superior avoidance. If you can’t shelve out the dough for those, go with the cheap option, get 120 armor.
Chest:
For tanks, only one enchant worth mentioning. Get +120 health.
Wrist:
Again, several options, either +12 stamina or +12 defense. See above for cloak and come to the logical conclusion that more health will serve you better than defense above the cap.
Gloves:
Several very good options here. You can either get +15 agility for more avoidance, you can get +2% threat or you slap on a heavy knothide armor kit for +10 stamina. I am currently using agility for extra avoidance. If you have trouble with TPS, you might want the threat enchant. This is a very flexible slot, you can get whatever suits your current needs best.
Boots:
Two options here: either +12 stamina (or +10 with a heavy knothide armor kit) or Boar’s Speed. I lean towards the latter. Boar’s Speed provides a minor speed increase and +9 stamina. Especially when you have to run from one mob to the next, the speed increase is a help. Also, running past your raid members after a wipe gains extra cool factor (and curses). 
Legs:
Find a friendly leatherworker and grab a Nethercleft Leg Armor. If you don’t have a lot of gold or the pants will be replaced soon, a Clefthide Leg Armor will do okay as well.
Shield:
Last but not least, we have a shield to be enchanted as well. +18 stamina is the choice of champions and of lesser creatures like me.
June 29th, 2008 at 3:49 am
In regards to cloak enchants, I think that all 4 (agility, defense, dodge, armor) have their place. Defense actually does offer more avoidance than Agility though and if survivability is what your leaning towards than Defense certainly is better. Agility is essentially the Threat enchant for cloak since it offers Crit.
30 Agility = 1% Avoidance
19.7 Defense Rating = 1% Avoidance
18.9 Dodge Rating = 1% Avoidance
Often times, I encourage tanks at early levels of gear development to get the Defense enchant just because it’ll allow them greater flexibility with their other gear. Finally, the Armor enchant I’ve always found my favourite and use it with whatever I want to tank hard hitting bosses the most with.
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June 29th, 2008 at 10:52 am
@Veneretio - Thanks for sharing! I will have to clean up that section then.
I did tell that girl in my guild that with agility she would get avoidance plus threat, so I wasn’t all wrong. 
I mostly run heroics with a little bit of Karazhan and Zul’Aman raiding, so I use agility on my cloak and it’s worked out fine for me. If Illhoof ever coughs up his cloak, I would probably get it enchanted with armor, good call.
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June 30th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Is it bad, i hardly ever waste my time with gear enchants anymore? I’ve replaced things so fast on most my toons, even epics that the short time i’ve got the gear the enchant isn’t even worth it.
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June 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
@WoW Macros - Every new piece of gear I get is a usually a money pit. I have to buy gems, enchanting mats, all the good stuff. Still, I think enchants are worth it in the long run.
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