At level 20 just wear the raw-hide/ringmail/bronze you find. The most important stat for tanking is AC as it will reduce hits from being close to max to around a third of that. At your level heals are flat +hp, so by doing this you are tripling the effectiveness of your healers mana.
Fortuitously it is also trivial to reach sufficient worn AC to reach the point of diminishing returns against group XP content (which is why the armour you loot at this level is more than ample). If you are XPing somewhere that armour your size doesn't drop, or you find yourself often encumbered, then spend 100pp on a set of banded. This will last you until you join a high level guild and you can start to pull some very good armour out of velious for very little cost.
Apart from this grab yourself a weapon with 1:2 ratio. Pay 40pp tops; a skyfire sword or green jade broadsword is sufficient. You'll then want to save for either silver chitin hand wraps (or other 20%+ haste) and some platinum/velium Fire wedding rings. That little bit of extra hp provides a good buffer at mid levels for those 'oh crickey!' moments.
Don't waste time farming plat; the power boost you receive from the time spent increasing your level is much greater than the return you'd get for improving your gear.
TLDR; 1:2 weapon (40pp), banded (100pp), hp rings (500-1kpp), 20% haste (1-2kpp). Don't farm cash, just spend what you accumulate incidentally on these items. Level 46+ planar/quest gear, loot drops from XP content, velious faction stuff.
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