Mists of Pandaria pre-raid Plate Tank gear

So. Um.

My Warcraft life is in such an upheaval that as soon as I settle into a role and set my expectations, I get a, "Well, actually....", and wind up changing my role.

So far, I started Dragon Soul as Protection, swapped to Retribution (1) when we got a second tank in, swapped to Holy (2) when we needed a 3rd reliable healer for Heroic Zon'ozz, swapped back to Retribution (3) until we hit 6/8 heroics, switched up to Tanking (4) again for Heroic Spine, back to Retribution (5) for a couple of months, and now, back to Protection (6) for Mists. I count SIX spec changes in one tier. Holy crap. But this is a really good change, I'm excited about it, and I'm hoping that I'm up to the challenge and that the change sticks. We'll see how it goes in a few weeks but I'm hopeful. Assuming my laptop behaves.

Anyway, because of said change, I wound up making another list, and so here it is. This one is for all the plate tanking gear that you can get pre-raid.

One big difference from the DPS gear list is the lack of Justice gear - not to worry, there is a complete set of BoE tanking gear that you can craft with what look like relatively cheap materials, if you have access to a Blacksmith. There is also an especially good Valor trinket that I plan to pick up pre-raid for sure.

WEAPON AND SHIELD

All the benefits of easily gearing up to 450 iLevel with crafted gear comes back to bite us when we look at weapons and shield. No bones about it, we're kind of screwed.

For the weapon, we're dungeon farming for this one sword that you'll share with every single SMF Warrior and DW Frost DK. Good luck. It's either that, or using the one-hander reward from the Arena of Annihilation Scenario. It's one full tier behind the Dungeon gear. Ugly.

If lady-luck spurns you and you don't mind having a sword with Crit and Mastery, here is the solitary crafted one-handers that you could potentially sub-in out of sheer desperation. Have fun paying a few thousand gold for it, assuming you're on a high population server with some options. Low population servers are likely to see this thing go for tens of thousands for the first few weeks.

The shield situation isn't much better - but at least there is a decent crafted shield that is pretty cheap to make. Otherwise you're left farming for this dungeon drop from Heroic Shado-Pan Monastery.

Basically, make friends with a Blacksmith. Like, really good friends. In case you're wondering, yes, I have a  Blacksmith. And I can be your friend. For a price. A very high price*.

ARMOR

Here is the list for the rest of the armor. I've highlighted the crafted set a bit so it's obvious:

And here it is as an open Google Doc for you to copy and change as you wish, and the broken down lists on WoWHead:

• Justice
• Quest Rewards
• Crafted
• Valor

Okay, I'll hit up Mail, Leather and Cloth next, as soon as I get through some stuff in the next day or two.

* - the price is materials.