On magical damage reduction
If there will be no percent damage reduction or magical damage reduction folded into Primal Tenacity or Survival of the Fittest or King of the Jungle it could be added onto Enrage (as a base ability or via King of the Jungle) like:
"While enraged you take 10/20/30% less magical damage" - given that we might reach insane armor values again, the armor penetration by Enrage could be higher though then - or one could add "... but take 1/2/3% more physical damage".

This would make us "different" - but not too much - just a different flavour. Where there is spiky magical damage we could cope with that (maybe instead of having Shield Reflect) and where there is steady high magical damage we have a reduction once a while (10sec out of 60 sec) - should be (10 / 60) * 30 = 5% flat magic damage reduction all time if activated all time - less than other tanks, but that's okay.


On the life-stealing mechanic mentioned above:
It is very speculative - and it does fit more into the Death Knight Lore scheme.


Simpler suggestion (on avoid mechanics)
Lets make the check for miss, dodge, parry not a 1-hit-table-check but a 3-times check - and that just on bosses (to save cpu bandwidth) and just on a boss-hits-you way, not the other way around. Max damage reduction should be 80% - in addition to that the DR/Armor cap could also apply to any form of damage reduction that is not by avoidance - like Shield Wall and a like.

Why you ask?

Multiple stage hit table should (I am no mathematician - but it should) work against the exponential scaling of avoidance (if you have 80% combined miss/dodge and add 5% you effectively take 15% instead of 20% damage which is 25% LESS) - checking at multiple states will move that into 4 parts - its still effective as a mechanic, but it is weaker.


Currently, if you had 15% miss, 30% dodge and 25% parry you would end up only taking 30% of the hits: (1 - (1 * (0.15 + 0.30 + 0.25))) * 100 = 30.

With multiple checks and the same values you would end up taking: 1 * (1 - 0.15) * (1 - 0.30) * (1 - 0.25) * 100 = 44.62500 % of all hits.


Adding 5% dodge in the one-check case - you would end up taking 25% damage instead of 30% which should be (1 - (25 / 30)) * 100 = 16,6666667 % less relative hits by adding 5% dodge.

Adding 5% dodge in the multiple check case - you would end up taking: 1 * (1 - 0.15) * (1 - 0.35) * (1 - 0.25) * 100 = 41.4375 % and it should be
(1 - (41.4375 / 44.62500)) * 100 = 7.14285714 % less relative hits by adding 5% dodge.


If one currently went for 20% miss, 40% dodge and 30% parry he would get 1 - (1 * (0.2 + 0.4 + 0.3)) = 0.1 - 10% of all hits.

If one would went for that values on a multiple check:
1 * (1 - 0.2) * (1 - 0.4) * (1 - 0.3) = 0.336 - he would still take 33.6% of all hits.


If both added 5% to their miss chance - results would be
A: 1 - (1 * (0.25 + 0.4 + 0.3)) = 0.05 = 5% - a relative change of 50%
B: 1 * (1 - 0.25) * (1 - 0.4) * (1 - 0.3) = 0.315 = 31.5% - a relative change of 6.67%


If both added 5% dodge instead of miss chance - results would be
A: same as above 5% more total avoidance and 50% more relative avoidance
B: 1 * (1 - 0.20) * (1 - 0.45) * (1 - 0.3) = 0.308 or 30.8% hits taken - a relative change of 9.09%.

As you can see stacking ONE TYPE of avoidance would still be "more beneficial". Knowing that an avoid cap of maybe 50% (of one type) would be good (max 50-60% miss and max 50-60% dodge and max 50-60% parry).

A warrior with 15% miss, 30% dodge and 25% parry would then take (1 - 0.15) * (1 - 0.30) * (1 - 0.25) = 0.44625 - 44.6% of all hits - while a druid with 5% miss and 50% dodge would take 0.475 - 47% of all hits.

A death knight with 10% miss, 20% dodge and 30% parry would take: (1 - 0.10) * (1 - 0.25) * (1 - 0.30) = 0.4725 47% of all hits. Maxing parry to 50% and dropping dodge to 20% he could reach (1 - 0.10) * (1 - 0.20) * (1 - 0.50) = 0.36 - 36% of all hits taken.


The above calculations just show off possible different mechanics - currently having more and more avoidance gives you more than more benefit (exponentially - like it is the case with Armor Penetration)

A multiple check for being missed, dodging, parrying would help greatly to balance out avoidance vs armor IMHO.

The one-hit-table is contra-logical and is just there to save up CPU-power on the server side, nothing more. its cheaper to have one check than to have 3.


(edited: calculation errors, theory mistakes on avoid caps, added extensive calculation examples)

Previous poster beat me to it

Don't we already do this with imp LotP? Though it is crit based with a cooldown, rather than a percentage of every hit's damage.

It would not have the same tactical use though. Think, for example, of a boss that deals sudden spikes of damage. This would give the Druid an active way to mitigate it, and would involve a bit more skill on the part of the druid.

Let's be honest, today in TBC, once the fight has started the druid is MOSTLY at the mercy of the healers. The druid can do very little short of maybe have a couple of trinkets to help his mitigation once the fight has started. Warriors and Paladins have a shield that they can actively block with, and other tools. I'm suggesting to give Druids a tool like that which would introduce another skill variable to druid tanking, while at the same time improve our spell mitigation and AoE threat.