There's enough incidental defense to go around to get crit immune without sacrificing useful trinket slots (or go half/half - Scarab of Displacement is a mini Pocketwatch on use and has tons of crit immunity), but you pretty much have to enchant for defense (head/shoulder) instead of for dps. This definitely hurts for if/when you need it to dps.

You give Treads as an example then go on to refute your own point (which I can definitely see, even if my circumstances don't allow me to agree) by mentioning Tier gear! Suppose you do get crit immunity in those 3 slots, what rings are you going to wear? The Violet Eye and Unielding / A'dal's combination is far and beyond our best options, but the defense is wasted if you're crit immune via Gladiator gear. You could start wearing high Agility DPS rings or Warrior rings, but then you're becoming more and more of a dodge tank dropping armor as you go .. which may or may not be fine depending on your situation.

I am currently in a position where I have to MT for my guild, so at the moment I'm not worrying about reusing tier stuff for DPS. I just need maximum mitigation, healthy hp/avoidance and enough threat that our DPS don't feel capped. And all the reading/research I did on this leads me to believe Tier is better in the 5 slots that it competes against Gladiator, and crit immunity is easily gotten in other slots.

Farstrider, not everyone is a leatherworker for Boots of Natural Grace and I'm quite a ways off BT. But yes, I certainly do plan to rethink my odd choice of shoes at some stage =p

The CE head enchant, [Item not found!] is frequently used as a helm enchant, since it can easily do double duty, whereas the [Item not found!] is purely for tanking. Dodge rating is also not the best itemization for us. So I wouldn't take that 16 def for granted, especially given the plethora of +defense trinkets with interesting on-use abilities.

Personally at the level (early T5) that most people are talking about, I am very happy with the S2 helm. It is 10agi, 84 armor before multipliers, and a smidge of str vs 22(!) sta and 29resil.

This allows you to do two things: worry much less about crit, and enchant/socket your T4 hat for DPS. The DPS meta is actually a big deal, and most people agree that 2pc T4 is the best for DPS at least until 4pc T6. Comparing the stats, the head/gloves are usually the ones people keep, and get rid of the legs first.

My sentiments exactly. I'm still using 4 piece t5 and s2 helm for pure tanking despite having 3 parts t6 - and will most likely continue to do so for the forseeable future. S2 helm, veteran bracers, adals\violet rings, thorium cloak and the badge neck give crit immunity comfortably without having to waste any ipoints on gems/enchants, and these were more-or-less my first choice for tanking anyway without specifically going after crit immunity.

I can think of reasons-- like gemming/enchanting T6 for DPS rather tanking, running up against the soft/hard armor caps, etc. Sure, if you're the MT you might not make that tradeoff. If you're occasionally an OT and occasionally DPS, it might have a perfect spot even at endgame.

On the other hand, two pieces of arena gear and vet's bracers just about get you to the defense cap if you're looking to maximize DPS or threat while maintaining tanking ability. Hyjal rep ring instead of armor ring, [Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem] instead of Juggernaut, DPS or Badge/Moroes trinkets... And at the very least, they provide some nice stam for those magic damage fights.

It really depends on your situation with gear. But the helm, shoulders, and gloves aren't terrible differences from T6, and if you aren't deep in BT you're comparing to T5.

So, I have a comment about the 156 def rating people have been using. As far as I can tell, it's based on a couple of assumptions, which I believe can be easily shown to be false.

1) 2.4 defense rating -> 1 defense (at level 70)

According to WoWwiki (not the most reliable of sources, sadly), at level 60, the conversion is 1.5:1 (and this is exact). The conversion from level 60 ratios to level 70 ratios is 82/52, giving us 2.3653846153:1. To test this, all that's needed is to get enough defense rating that the difference is noticeable. 363 defense rating turns out to be good for this (and exactly my paladin's max, conveniently enough). At 2.4, we should see 151.25, at 1.5*82/52, 153.463. The result is 153 - there is no way to get from 151.25 to 153. Thus, 1.5*82/52 is probably the correct ratio.

2) Defense skill as displayed by the character panel is rounded up.

Now that we have an accurate conversion from defense rating to defense skill, this is also easy to test. At 359 defense rating, we should get 151.772 defense. The tab displays 151. Ergo, the character panel is truncating the displayed value, exactly like one would expect (skill rating -> skill level behaves the same way).

Given this, how much defense rating is needed to reach uncrittability? 154.

I have noticed a double standard used when people talk about seeing crits at 154 or 155 defense rating, versus crits at higher ratings. That is, if you have under 156 defense rating, people will say that you need more defense rating, but if you're above that, they'll say that there was player error (sitting down) or a game bug (equipped item not giving defense rating, talent not giving its bonus). I see no reason not to apply the same reasoning to both situations. There may also be other mechanics at work that are hard to observe, as they come into play so infrequently. Nonetheless, the way to discover them (if they exist) is not to ignore crits, or to rely on superstition, but to accumulate data and create working hypotheses.

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> 31/05/07 Combat Ratings: Level 70 Conversions

That post explicitly states that:
Sure, blizzard aren't always exact (and it does say it's to one decimal place). The haste ratings are pre 2.2 too. Still, it's better to be over the cap than under, wouldn't you say?

We're trying to consolidate all Feral Druid stuff over here, so if you could carry this on over there it would be appreciated!

This has probably been discussed before, but there is a dilemma between Defense Rating and Resilience.

Defense Rating adds + less chance to be crit, dodge and chance to be missed
Resilience adds + less chance to be crit (greater than def) and less damage from damage over time spells.

The dot damage reduction is rarely needed, but it would always be nice to have PvP gear with resilience along for certain encounters, which; I cannot figure out right now. Anyhow, at some levels of gear it might be difficult to keep crit immune stats, and at those levels Resilience will be an efficient choice for the meantime.

Wasn't really any need to bump a 1month old post was there? Yes I believe someone showed that a combination of resilience and agility would perform better at a given item budget than the same budget-worth of defense, but it really could have gone in the feral mega-thread.

Sorry, I posted my question in the wrong thread. I will repost it in the feral druid megathread.