The only thing that I didn’t like about tanking H Gundrak was that I felt I has too little health. Then I remembered I could make one of the stamina-oriented trinkets that jewelcrafters can make, the Monarch Crab and I would still be above the raid crit cap of 540 defense!

I added a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and a Solid Dragon’s Eye gem to it and with the stam bonus, received an extra 137 stam from that trinket alone! Right now, I have 24,544 health. These numbers are based on the rules of 3.0.3.

Health Pool

Since 3.0.8 was [finally] released today, I get a few buffs to my gear. For my tanking helm, I currently have the Tempered Titansteel Helm.

3.0.3 helm stats

In this patch, this helm gets a new blue gem slot AND a meta gem slot. The blue gem will be filled with a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and the meta gem will be filled with a Austere Earthsiege Diamond. These two gems will give me 56 more stamina, for an additional 560 health.

3.0.8 helm stats

Also in 3.0.8 is a new bracer enchant that gives 40 stamina. So now I’m up to 96 more stamina or 960 health.

3.0.8 bracer stam enchant

Yet another change for prot pally tanks is that the prot talent Sacred Duty now gives 8% stamina (up from 6%). I don’t know the exact number that works out to in my current gear but I’m sure it will be enough to give me over 100 extra stamina (or 1,000 extra health).

All of these stamina increases will put me over 25.5k health, unbuffed! Whatever problems I had with my health pool are now over. I feel very good with the amount of health I have for tanking heroics.