Which Gems should I use as a tank?

I'll try to be short and precise here, but let me say something clearly first: equipping a tank is always about a balance of stats. It is never about all this or all that. For specific encounters one may swap a bunch of pieces or even prepare a full kit maxed out for one aspect, but for your bread and butter tanking, you do want a good balance.

I'll list the gems by socket colour and include the non-epic choice for budget gemming.

Please note:

1. You don't _have_ to match socket color, you'll only loose the socket bonus. However, the socket bonus can be qutie nice. You should definitely get each +sta socket bonus.
2. Don't forget to get an [Eternal Belt Buckle] for that extra gem slot.

Blue Sockets are the easiest to fill. All tanks need stamina to build up their effective health.
[Solid Majestic Zircon] (30 sta) or [Solid Sky Sapphire] (24 sta).

Red Sockets are our second choice. Dodge (or Parry) plus Stamina improves Avoidance and Effective health at the same time without wasting any budget. Druid's benefit more from straight agility and can not parry, so avoid the Regal and Defender's cuts if your tank on all fours.
[Regal Dreadstone] (10 dodge+15 sta) or [Regal Twilight Opal] (8 dodge+8 sta).
[Defender's Dreadstone] (10 parry+15 sta) or [Defender's Twilight Opal] (8 parry + 12 sta).
[Shifting Dreadstone] (10 agi+15 sta) is the druid's choice.
[Delicate Cardinal Ruby] (20 agi) is a good alternative, especially for shared cat/bear gear pieces.

Yellow Sockets are a bit of a bother. Tanks usually do not need to gem for hit, expertise or crit, so we need to find a good use for those.
[Enduring Eye of Zul] (10 def+15 sta). Great for all plate tanks.
[Stalwart Monarch Topaz] As the plate tank budget alternative.
[Nightmare Tear] +10 all stats or [Enchanted Tear] +6 all stats are the bear's first choice for yellow sockets. I'll still need to see what to take next if needed.

Meta Gems are very easy:
[Austere Earthsiege Diamond] (32 sta + 2% armor) is the smart choice for effective health.
[Eternal Earthsiege Diamond] (21 def + 5% SBV) is a great choice for shield tanks running heroics or T7 content, or of course for use in a block set.

Of course the list above won't make it into the next expansion, but I hope it will be of some use until then.

What should I spent my badges on?

As this matrix below shows, you can get a 2xT8.25+2xT9.10 set without ever setting foot into a raid. Considering that not all equipment slots have an equal amount of item budget and that the item budget for head and chest is high, I'd recommend the following shopping list:

[Emblem of Conquest] (you can get about 50 per day)

• 58x T8.25 head token
• 58x T8.25 chest token
• 39x non-set legs
• 28x belt
• 19 neck
• anything else

[Emblem of Triumph]  (You can get 53 per week: Daily heroic 2/day, ToC10+25 30/week, VoA10+25 4/week, Ony10+25 5/week)

• 30x T9.10 shoulders
• 30x T9.10 gloves
• anything else

Tips:

1. Shift-click the lower level badge and type the number you want to downgrade.
2. Triumph badges can be downgraded next to the vault in the Dalaran Sewer Inn.

See also:

• Craftables using Crusader Orbs (ilvl 245)
• Craftables using Runed Orbs (ilvl 226)
• BindOnEquip raid drops ilvl 213, 219 and 226
• BindOnEquip drops ilvl 245

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Badge-Type	Heroism	Valor	Conquest	Triumph	Triumph
Slot	ilvl 200	ilvl 213	ilvl 226	ilvl 232	ilvl 245
Head	crafted	n/a	58 (T8.25)	50 (T9.10)	75
Shoulders	n/a	60 (T7.25)	n/a	30 (T9.10)	45
Chest	80	n/a	58 (T8.25)	50 (T9.10)	crafted
Legs	n/a	75 (T7.25)	39	50 (T9.10)	n/a
Gloves	60	n/a	28	30 (T9.10)	n/a
Belt	n/a	n/a	28/crafted	n/a	n/a
Bracers	n/a	60	n/a	n/a	crafted
Boots	crafted	40	crafted	n/a	n/a
Back	n/a	25	n/a	n/a	n/a
Neck	25	n/a	19	n/a	n/a
Ring(s)	n/a	25	n/a	n/a	35
Trinket(s)	40	n/a	n/a	n/a	50
Relic/Idol/ Sigil/Libram/etc	15	25	19	n/a	25
Weapon	50/crafted	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
off-hand/Shield	25/35	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

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/inspect

Quite frequently I see someone ask for an Enchanter, Blacksmith or Jewelcrafter and am happy to help them out. As a tank, I am of course qutie partial to help out other tanks. Several times now I have had a look at a tank's gear, gems, enchants, talents via /inspect (and at their glyphs via the Armory) and asked them if they'd like a bit of advice. Since I play all four tank classes, I have pretty good visibility on what there is to know. =]

The overall response has been quite positive, and I am sure to have pointed a number of tanks into the right direction. I do note however that what I do actually tell each of these tanks happens to be virtually the same each time. For that reason I'll go and write down some of these things here. I'll make a deliberate effort to not write 'the mother of all guides' because there are lots of places already with those. I'll focus on a particular aspect and go for it.

As a first topic, I'll take this very generic one: What should I spent my badges on?

[The Culling of Time]

I've been trying for a while now to do the Culling of Stratholme heroic as a timed, multiboxing. My last post already described what changes I made, but neglected to mention one that may not be obvious - I stopped looting any trash a while ago. Yes, there may be good stuff in there, but I don't want to waste the time. It may be a reflex and may not seem to take any time, but it does. The real difference however was using the druid's swipe to counter the zombie-daze threat to /follow and doing the PvE changes as detailed before. This morning I managed to get to the end of the gauntlet with 4 minutes remaining on the timer.

My short dash to the sides street with the timed mob was interrupted by some frantic untangling of my shamans from some of the flavour scenery, but the I got what I wanted to archive - CoS heroic timed while multiboxing! That puts me at one of four drakes for the PvE shaman group. I'll try my luck again to complete the set.

Heroics take 2

In the last few days I have used my fresh bear tank rather than my imba-geared tankadin together with four shamans in heroics. To my absolute surprise, this works better, even though there is a serious difference in gear.

Having the ability to hit everything around you with swipe on the move makes things like Culling of Stratholme much safer. Nothing is more annoying than missing one shaman being hit by a zombie and then drop out of /follow range due to being stunned. Spamming swipe does away with that problem.

The paladin works fine, but requires more attention than the druid. Having three buttons for boss tanking (mangle+maul, fairy fire and lacerate) and one button for aoe-trash tanking (swipe+maul) allows me to focus a bit more on what I am doing with the shamans. As a result their damage output improved to around 2k each. Not that much, granted, but enough to get solidly into the comfort zone in a heroic.

Today I missed doing CoS timed as narrow as it gets, less than a minute too slow. I had to drink a lot to keep the shaman's mana up. Taking a hint from this, I bought dual-spec for the last three and gave them a PvE dps spec rather than the vanilla PvP setup. Next to that, I set up a different gear set for PvE. Currently that changes just a couple of pieces: rings, one trinket, neck and the odd item here or there.

However - the difference in setup is clearly noticeable. I'll go and save up some badges now to get some more PvE gear and see how it goes.