Here’s the gems in priority order that I see being most important at level 85. Stamina stacking will be a thing of the past for druid tanks when we all get to level cap again, finally it will be important to get dodge and focus on avoidance again. It was getting a bit boring when the Agility on gear caused dodge diminishing returns in ICC.
- Shifting Demonseye 30 Stamina 20 Agility
- Adept Ember Topaz 20 Agility 20 Mastery
- Puissant Dream Emerald 30 Stamina 20 Mastery
- Regal Dream Emerald 30 Stamina 20 Dodge
These other gems will be useful, but less so than the ones above. Full stamina is going to be less valuable than Stamina + some avoidance stat, and full avoidance is always a bit of a gamble as a tank. Expertise might be useful, but in my opinion it’s not worth gemming for. There is plenty of expertise on gear and since it’s mostly a threat stat I believe it’s better to go for avoidance in the first tier of raids.
- Solid Ocean Sapphire 60 Stamina
- Delicate Inferno Ruby 40 Agility
- Fractured Amberjewel 40 Mastery
- Keen Ember Topaz 20 Mastery 20 Expertise
The jewel crafting gems are always good too:
- Solid Chimera’s Eye 101 Stamina
- Fractured Chimera’s Eye 67 Mastery
- Precise Chimera’s Eye 67 Expertise
Here’s a comparison that lists all the gems that are on wowhead at the moment:
http://cata.wowhead.com/compare?items=52231;52238;52204;52212;52233;52224;52260;52269;52261
Not all the gems are currently listed there, so if you want to find more, go to MMO Champion’s gem page.
For people who are saving some cash on their first gems here’s the downgraded versions of the best gems:
- Perfect Shifting Nightstone 23 Stamina 18 Agility
- Shifting Nightstone 23 Stamina 15 Agility
- Perfect Adept Hessonite 18 Agility 17 Mastery
- Adept Hessonite 15 Agility 15 Mastery
- Perfect Puissant Jasper 18 Mastery 26 Stamina
- Puissant Jasper 15 Mastery 23 Stamina
- Perfect Regal Jasper 18 Dodge 26 Stamina
- Regal Jasper 15 Dodge 26 Stamina
Eao's excursions 
This is good, but you might want to read what the stats give you now, agility no longer gives a druid dodge. They took that out. It only gives crit now. Either way its going to be stam and Mastery. or Something and dodge, but its useless to even get agility now, unless you need the aggro.
Hi, I think you are referring to the change where other tanks no longer get benefits from Agility. I remember something like that from one of the old patch notes.
However, druids do get dodge from agility. This is easiest to check by removing gear that has a lot of agility on it (maybe a trinket, but any other piece will do). You will see your dodge value in bear form go down.
I dont see anything anywhere about agi adding to my dodge at all and every pug healer that heals me says im the easiest druid to heal and im all dodge and stam gems. Maybe im missing something but every agi gemed druid i heal on my healers they take a shit ton of dammage.
Here’s a list of rating values from on of my other posts:
– Dodge rating gives 1% dodge for 176.7 points.
– Mastery rating requires 179.3 points per Mastery Point.
– Agility gives 2 attack power, 0.55 critical strike rating and 0.72 dodge rating per point.
So gemming for dodge will cause you to end up with a higher dodge value, but lower savage defense absorbs and lower dps.
While gemming for dodge is not standard, I’m sure you can tank most content just fine in that setup. It’s a bit like the dodge/mastery reforging debate – one side is better in theory, but the overall difference when playing the game is minimal.
If a druid tank takes heaps of damage, they are probably not using their cooldowns and getting their debuffs up. Doing this makes the biggest difference to damage taken, and I’ve seen a lot of tanks who don’t bother with cooldowns.
Hey i was a really good druid tank back in Wrath and i stopped playing for a long time now im 85 and got some really good gear but idk my rotations anymore has it changed or is it the same (i know this sights about gems but i just htought ide ask)