+Avoidance vs. +SBR/SBV

[Heartwood]

As I've been getting further into Ulduar I've been watching the gear drops for tanks (specifically Prot War in my case), moving away from dodge/parry and towards SBR/SBV. I'm not sure how I feel about the move, as I'm an old tank nestled in my comfortable EH + Avoidance = Win world.

Avoidance is easy, the more it goes up, the better my chances to completely avoid an incoming blow. In Ulduar, there are some very hard hitting bosses, and avoiding a blow is a big bonus. Comparing the move from avoidance to +SBV/SBR gear though has me a little puzzled over "is it worth it?"

+SBR means more hits blocked, which leads to more generated threat/damage, and reduces the incoming damage by a standard or critical shield block. Along with +SBV this helps increase the amount of the blocked damage.

My question however is this: In the longterm, over the entire course of a boss fight, is it better (in general) to stay with +avoidance or +SBR/SBV whether its a slow/hard or fast/light hitting boss.

Anyone run any actual numbers on this?

[hbombs]

A good mix of stam and avoidance is still the best way to go imo. Those fancy pieces with a lot of block value are amazing for trash/farm content but not the hard hitting bosses in ulduar.

[Abalaster]

first of all, we have to consider other factors that make BV a more viable option, sacred shield, which can be cast on a single target by multiple paladins, and trinket pops, such as essence of gossamer, allow for far greater cumulative mitigation, suddenly that 2k mitigation has increased to something approaching 5k.
Yes, these have internal cool downs that will impede them from effectively stacking on each hit; however, i'd wager that they'd over lap enough to show a discernible difference...

the other major player in this would be ardent defender...ok, before i go further, i have absolutely no BR/BV on my gear, but i've been finding that a large number of bosses in ulduar seem to be dropping me just past the 35% AD threshold, so even if i don't find a heal before the next swing...i'll live... shearing an additional 5k from a hit would both further mitigate those already below the threshold and give you a better chance of finding yourself there.

[Shadevarr]

I have a block set sporting such ninfy things as being unhittable and close to 2k block value. I only use this on bosses where threat isn't a concern and they hit in the 4 digits. 44% block that can spike as high as 9k blocked can be quite awesome. Seeing a full block on a raid boss always makes me smile. I originally built this set for loatheb, then found it useful for sarth3D and now it has several uses in Ulduar.

It will have substantially less health, but that is made up by being able to add sbv to your EH.