I have been doing my research on tanking for quite a while and tanking for the last month. Now I have learned a lot but I cant figure something out. What is the difference if any between having more dodge or parry...is there a prefered? I mean I know they both cause a complete deferrence of damagen, do either of them cause threat when they occur or something like that?

Parry speeds up your next swing by 40%. However, in terms of item budget, parry costs near-on twice as much as dodge does.

edit: to add a question of my own to this thread ... does have your attack parried by a boss make his next swing faster too?

According to some recent investigation I've seen on these forums on stuff that tends to kill tanks, it does.

Yes. There have been parses about this. You can look up the thread "Warrior Tanking and Spike Damage" and there's a combat log there showing how parries were shortening the time between the mob's swings.

Feel free to tear two new holes into your bad frontal positioning melee dps. One for not performing at 100% of what they could, and another for needlessly endangering your tank.

IIRC, the best description of the post-parry haste was as follows:

The time until the next swing (mainhand) is cut in half following a parry. Example below with a 2.0 speed weapon:

00 mh swing
02 mh swing
03 parry mob
03.5 mh swing
03.5 parry mob
04.5 mh swing

From an authoritative source:

"Successfully parrying an attack will reduce the delay before your next attack. The reduction amount is a flat 40% of your normal swing time. The delay cannot be reduced to less than 20% of your weapon"

This holds true on every combat parse I've done to test it.

It is the 2nd time he has posted stating that with definitive language, yet he seems to be copy/pasting from WoWWikki. And we all know that the wikki is far from an authoritative source. What he is saying might be true, but without a better source or quantified testing, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Parry

One of the players in my guild is a programmer that has worked at Blizzard for 10+ years and did a good chunk of the combat system in WoW. We ask him questions, and he tells us the answers that he can without violating any NDA/non-public information. The parry question came up a while back when the tanks were debating the best spec, and were wondering the effects that a parry had on haste rating. That was his answer.

Well then, ask him about the miss chance for dual winding and how it increases with mob level.
Additionally how skill is working exactly now (although he might not know, since you said he *worked* for Blizzard).
... anyone else has some questions?

Do it! Do it! :p

Unintentional use of the past tense. He worked on WoW, and is now on an unspecified project. One of the reasons that I was hesitant to name the source was exactly the 'ask a ton of questions' response. He really just wants to play the game and have fun, not be pestered by guildies for the answers to everything. I won't be passing anything along to him, sorry.

damn you :/
next time better dont tell us then

So he should make unverified claims, or should just not say anything?