Wrathblood, in the consumables section you recommend Mirrors Elixir (750 dodge) over Mantid Elixir (2250 armor). I think that recommendation is backwards. Armor should be strictly superior, both for TDR and smoothness, and it's guaranteed to be in effect in the bad situations. Theck's stat weights tend to rank armor as better point-for-point than avoidance.

It's roughly the same argument used for Control builds - having the mitigation guaranteed when you need it is far better than rolling the dice.

EDIT: @Ehnoah/bromli - the timing involved in using a haste build is more closely related to good situational awareness. It's about making good choices for using SotR based on things like incoming healing, upcoming healer disables or distractions, and recent high damage periods. If you know that enough heals are landing in the next second or so to top you all the way off, you don't need to use SotR - if you know you're not getting any heals at all for 5 seconds as everyone repositions, you really should be using it. If heavy raid damage has just gone out, getting SotR up might allow your healers to crossheal just a little bit more. That kind of awareness will help you out regardless of what gearing strategy you use, but the argument is Control/Haste setup disproportionately benefits the people who make use of SotR most strategically, simply because it affords them more opportunities to do so.

If your situational awareness is somewhat less than perfect, Control/Haste is probably not the ideal setup for you, because errors will be more costly.

Quartz is a timer/bar addon that I know can display your swing timer, and I believe it can show your target's as well.

You want to make sure to have your SoR up before any big telegraphed attacks: Things like Garalon's Crush and Horridon's Triple Puncture. Im some cases, it is better to use SoR on cooldown-- Another example being in the same Horridon fight, but when on the Adds and not the boss especially for the Frakkari and Drakkari tribes.

So better for me is going on Control/Mastery (Ask Mr. Robot) and time for some hard hits instead of try to hold on CD?

Mel, yes, absolutely true re: elixir choice. Actually had that on my list of things to fix but my internet's been out since Tuesday night (just came back a few minutes ago. stupid gigantic snowstorm). Should be fixed now.

Re: Control/Mastery vs Control/Haste, I'll just add one more brief point then lets drop it. With regard to survivability, Control/Haste takes more damage and (in most situations) worse spikes than Control/Mastery. However, you get more opportunities to time your ShoR (though less time in which to time each one) and its been theorized that if you're good at this, you might be able to make the gap back up. I'm personally not convinced its doable but I recognize that it might be. If you aren't someone who has a knack for timing ShoRs to hit a fraction of a second before boss swings or at crucial moments (playing the meta-game of AM) then Control/Haste will likely be a hit to your survivability.

That having been said, Survivability is important, but its not the only concern for tanks. Different builds have different strengths and weaknesses and they aren't all survivability related. If tank survivability isn't an issue for you but raid dps is, for example then you could totally go for Control/Haste for the dps aspect.

Also, wtb a good synonmy for survivability.

Not sure if anyone tested it on the PTR, but you are unable to track the 2P bonus from the T15 set. Combat log doesn't show any kind of buff or gain, but your block value goes up 40%.

Are there hard numbers on the actual dps difference between Control/Haste and Control/Mastery? I haven't been able to find them and knowing how much dps I'm giving up for more survivability (Which isn't really an issue) would make my decision much easier.

Well, there's a couple ways of looking at it. Over on Maintankadin, assuming Hit/Exp capped and 150k Vengeance, Theck puts the difference between Mastery's dps contribution per itemization point (which is roughly zero. Basically all it gives you is a chance of additional Alabaster Shield procs) and Haste's at about 2.5 dps per itemization point.

In the sim, assuming ilevel 522 gear, the difference between Control-Haste and Control-Mastery is about 12k itemization moving from one to the other. So, setting aside talents and with Focused Shield as the only glyph (to prevent cleaves overweighting things toward AS), the base case (which is heavy haste, but not as heavy as the Control-Haste set) gives about 130k dps. Ballpark, I'd guess the the Control-Haste build is around 140k while the Control-Mastery build is around 110k. Anyway, about 30k dps.

For real fun, the Mastery/Avoidance build drops that 110k down to about 80-85k.

But its fairly Vengeance dependent. If you've only got 75k Vengeance instead of 150k, then its more like 1.5 dps per itemization point, so you'd lose more like 18k dps instead of 30k dps.

On the one hand, there are caveats to this, what if its an AoE situation? Fight mechanics? We already mentioned Vengeance, etc. Fortunately, its pretty easy to do napkin math. Since almost all our stuff scales linearly with Haste, you can kinda just ballpark it by looking at your character sheet.

How much damage do you do on Fight X with a Control/Mastery build? Lets say its 105k for easy math. How much Mastery are you turning into Haste? You can then either look up the amount of the % chance on your character sheet or just divide the Haste you gain by 425 (which is how much Haste it takes to get 1%). Lets say you go from 5% Haste to 15% Haste. Divide your current dps by 1.05 (1 + the amount of Haste you currently have, we're equalizing it out), which gets you down to 100k. Then multiply by 1+ new Haste (so, 1.15), which takes you up to 115K. So you'd be swapping over ~4250 itemization points and you end up gaining 10k dps. Its nice that it happens to be close to the 2.5 number, but I just made these numbers up on the spot so I wouldn't read too much into that.

New work from Theck incorporating Sacred Shield into his sim which is really good for Haste (and he doesn't even include the interaction with SoI which is also good for Haste). Is Nothing Sacred? | Sacred Duty

Conveniently, it simplifies our gearing options:

Approved Gearing Strategies:

Standard Duty Tanking: Control/Haste (cap Hit and Exp, dump everything else into Haste, add Stam as needed)
AoE or Maximum survival Tanking: Pure Avoidance (don't bother with Hit and Exp, throw everything into Avoidance. If you have to add another stat, go with Mastery or Hit)
Heroic Sha Tanking (life threatening hit every 8-10 seconds): Pure Mastery

That's it. Control/Mastery simply isn't competitive.

I'd still consider using Control/Mastery for heroic sha, just on the off-chance that you manage to miss several CS/J in a row and can't make the 3-HP in 8-seconds benchmark. I know a lot of tanks did drop hit/exp for that fight, but when you're pushing 60% mitigation on SotR another 5-6% probably isn't worth it unless it's absolutely required meet the mitigation check (assuming you can't eliminate the entire 7650 rating worth of hit/exp).

Does any of the new information change the viability of your dodge/parry macro?

Breakpoints on Sacred Shield are meaningless for Prot, as there is time to keep it up, and the shield then rolls, each point of haste is worth the same as the previous one.
Further the balanced gearing strategy is a representation of "wear what drops", more than a conscious choice - if I should point to one gearing strategy that hasn't been dataed out, it would be hit/exp to cap, then equal haste/mastery (or as good as equal), due to the synergy between better ShoR and more ShoR.