I always look at avoidance after armor impacts. I.E. if I would not have avoided that hit, my armor would have soaked it. When you look at it from that perspective, it tends to make the comparisons a lot closer. In your example, the tank has a 2.53% variance in dodge. However, if you discount both dodge rates for the effective mitigation on each tank (assume both are able to hit 60% mitigation from armor), you're only talking about a 1% variance in overall mitigation through a cycle. It's still 13% better avoidance than the other tank, but I don't think it's all that significant when you consider that stamina soaks magic damage.

The main value of avoidance to me is that it saves shieldblock charges (which increases the likelihood of avoided crushing blows) and it reduces the need for sustained healing (which reduces healer's mana strain). In a fight like patchwerk avoidance only helped buy your healers time to get all the HS tanks topped off. You still got instagibbed if your armor rating wasn't adequate. Avoidance is also useless when you're stunned, feared, or otherwise incapacitated.

Personally, mitigation comes first, but only because I can buff the hell out of stamina. Mitigation/avoidance are much harder to buff. I also have a hard time placing a lot of value in defense rating once I'm past 490 skill. You can get base block, dodge or parry rates much cheaper, particularly when you look at sockets.

Posted this in another thread already, but this is just not true. 8 defense rating is almost as good as 8 dodge rating and far better than 8 parry rating.

As for HP vs avoidance, I try to find a good balance. Especially after getting a certain base amount of HP, I like getting avoidance up for the same reason as above poster (Shield Block charges). This of course always depends on the encounter as well.

Something I didn't go into in my post -

I'm assuming we're looking at day 1, no attempts previous, first engage new boss stuff here.

In that situation, I value effective life (and thus ac/hp) over everything else. Each extra second you live is another incremental chance to find out something new about the encounter and is one step closer to a dead boss. Finding out about ground slam in one attempt instead of two, or about maexanna's stun, etc, etc, etc...Every time you get "unlucky and one rounded" before a mechanic shows up just adds x minutes onto your learning time.

As you progress further into the encounter and the ratio of "known" to "unknown" information changes in your favor, you can start to back away from "I am a mountain of hit points and armor" if it's appropriate. That's when I view avoidance itemization (items that are not the best effective life pieces, but do contribute signifigant amounts of applicable avoidance be it resistances or parry etc) to be interesting - because it will help cut down on the "cost" of learning how to execute correctly.

I view a new encounter in 4 stages:

Stage 1 - Gathering information
Stage 2 - Deciding on a strategy
Stage 3 - Refining the strategy or Axing it and going back to 2
Stage 4 - Repetition until it works and the encounter is defeated (zelda music)

It's really only in stage 4 (after you decide on and see progress in a successful strategy) that avoidance gear should show up. Before that point, you're still trying to learn what the boss does, and you're more focused on "live as long as possible to learn as much as possible" not "kill this guy before something horrid happens". Incidentally, this is the same reason I use to explain why dps should have a stamina/survival kit. Getting mages to bank a second set of "stamina heavy" gear was like pulling teeth sometimes. "But it doesn't have xx +dmg!1!11!!!" "That's nice - It has xx +Raid Member Living and Finding Stuff Out"

well the proc still does 280 damage thus its like a sunder for free. the other debuffs where a nice bonus but are not required for single target threat really.

+ wearing tf still is a big plus cause you dont need to bother of imp TC against single targets/bosses.

we made it into karazhan yesterday and imp TC becomes very handy!

I too have suspicions about this whole 25% block needed to block all crushings with SB up thing. As many of the posts here and in the referred to thread have show there is less than conclusive evidence. I think the whole combat log lag thing makes a more stingent testing mechanism needed. Just the other day a warrior in my guild got "1" shotted after using intervene on an arcane protector but taking 2 hits instead of one. Maybe this is not the thread for it and it should be moved to a more visible location?

Also does anyone know where the concept of each point of defense increasing your incoming mis rate by .04 originated? It seems this came after the rest of the defense breakdown (dodge/parry/block/minus crit), and im wondering if there are any caps or non-standard behavior in increasing a mob's chance to miss you. I also wonder if it applies equally to specials and white hits.

I think it originates from the misconception(?) that def is the inverse of + weapon skill.

I use Tankpoints a lot to compare items. On close calls, I look specifically on stamina and armor values, and start to value defense a lot less.

Basically I find it to be a good starting point to evaluate the items, but in the end it's about what stats you need most.

I rely heavily on TankPoints.
I find it gives me solid empirical comparisons between items.
It helps me make informed decisions regarding how much survivability I trade for aggro generation.
IE Timewarden VS Leggings of the Bold.

That's a fair point, I shouldn't have mentioned parry.

Back of the envelop math I get:
- 0.050% avoidance per point of defense rating (0.04% per 1 skill, 3 avoidance stats, 2.4 rating per skill) and a very small amount of block
- 0.053% avoidance per point of dodge rating
- 0.032% avoidance per point of parry rating
- 0.127% block rate per rating point (mitigation value is dependent on block value)

Is it just me, or is parry garbage with the rating conversion assigned to it at 70? I know it resets your swing timer, but I'm not seeing a lot of value for it outside of PVP.

Because the conversion of parry rating to parry% is much worse that that of Dodge, yes parry is a poor stat to stack for mitigation purposes.

At this point, what other purpose is there to stack parry? It's not like we're able to riposte like a rogue.

It's strange indeed that the miss% somehow dissappeared in every discussion. I'm not sure if there's a cap to this somewhere, but looking through my TankPoints it says mobs have 11% chance to miss me atm...

And - Hi Ayu! :> (I used to be a handsome gnome named Bitterman)

funny when i mouse over on my screen it doesnt say anything about miss just the other 4 things

it seems you are missing Miss in your numbers (NPI).

When it says it decreases your chance to be hit, that's the same as increasing your chance to be missed.

Shouldn't be. Block isn't avoidance, it's mitigation. I'm counting miss, dodge, and parry. The amount of block gained from +def rating isn't particularly significant.

How much is it please if you know? I try to create a database of information for my own referencing from stuff I read through these forums and it would be nice to have on my tanking one

0.0167% block per Def rating (0.04% per skill, 2.4 rating per skill)

In general, tanking stats are a package deal. You need to be able to compare 2 pieces of gear, different sets of gems, and different enchants. I wear the Shermanar and Violet Exalted tanking rings. They have armor on them. Did I crunch numbers to see how much mitigation they added? No. They were pretty much hands down upgrades.

Avoidance is not dependable. Armor and stamina are. For the most part, I wear tanking gear with good overall stats and then tack on stamina. I wind up with as much armor as I get. Armor, depending on how you look at it, has and doesn't have diminishing returns. It linearly increases your life expectancy against X physical dps. It removes less and less damage from each hit (where as block value removes a linearly increasing amount). You want to achieve a happy value of armor and then use consumables when you need significantly more. High quality gear generally carries good armor and very few plate pieces have itemization points spent on armor (except felsteel).

Stamina carries the boon of working against both physical and magic damage. Many bosses pair high physical dps with legitimate magic damage.

As far as gems go, the first thing I look at is the socket bonus. If the socket bonus is parry rating or a non-mitigation stat like +3 str, I consider it fair game to be ignored. My favorite gem is +12 stam for tanking. On red or yellow sockets where I want the bonus, I would use hybrid gems that offer 6 stam + 4 agil/str or 6 stam + 4 defense.

I value dodge higher than parry because it works in a 360 degree arc. This is important on multi-mob tanking, moving bosses where you might take a shot in the bum if you turn wrong, or after a nightbane fear that moves you 3 feet before the zerker rage breaks it. It also does not require a weapon to be equipped if you get disarmed. Aggro generation is so far beyond tank DPS, the attack speed response to parry is negligible.

Having typed all that because I am bored at work, I don't MT for my guild any longer. I have given into the dark side of determining the viability of warrior DPS at 70. So far, so good.

Whats necessary, then, is to know the fight you plan on tanking, determine how much HP/armor you need as a baseline, and then exceed that. Additional itemization above and beyond that can focus on some avoidance. In my guild, you would currently gear solely around tanking Gruul as he is the hardest hitting mob we currently fight. For his fight, you need maximum HP and armor. The OT will actually want to take most of the hurtfuls for rage generation but needs to be able to survive as many stacks as possible. Once you achieve the 1 shot OT amount of stacks, your attempt is near over so you want to push that back as long as possible. Depending on dodging/parrying 3 in a row while lowering your aggro ceiling is not an option.

After reading this, im still unsure what to do with my current gear, we are having issues at Gruul atm (still) with me as MT. my gear is: http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...odhoof&n=Tankz but after reading this, im thining about swapping some of the gems out for 12 stam gems. Any thoughts?

Yes, you're definately a bit low on unbuffed hp. Swap some of those yellow +8 Defense gems for either Enduring Talasites (4 Def/6 Sta), where you don't want to miss the socket bonus (girdle maybe), or Solid Star of Elunes (12 Sta) if you don't really need the bonus, eg. in your T4 shoulders.
You have quite nice avoidance, but Gruul will basically onehit you (once he hits you ) after a number of growths :p Maybe Boar's Speed or 12 Stamina might be a better choice for your boots.

And swap that +8 Parry Rating in your Timewarden's for +8 Dodge if you ask me, +8 Parry Rating is probably the shittiest gem in the game, compared to +8 Dodge or even +8 Agi -.-

Yes, 8 dodge rating is almost twice as good avoidance wise as 8 parry rating.
8 dodge = 0,42% dodge
8 parry = 0,25% parry