HP or Mitigation/Avoidance

[Tideturner]

Greetings All,

I've been tanking as a pally since BC, and my impression of the level of importance of tanking stats have always been Def-capped > Mitigation > HP > Armor

But of late, I've noticed a significant amount of tanks who gears towards high HP, at the expense of Mitigation/avoidance. Even the Tier sets seem to reduce my mitigation/avoidance. But probably due to having experienced the stringent requirement for tanking in BC - a must to be uncrittable (yes, I'm aware that it has been removed from the game, but more avoidance is still better, no?), I feel increasingly "unsafe" while wearing my High Stam Gear.

Might I enquire which set should I be wearing actually, for MT'ing Raids, OT'ing Raids, as well as tanking for Heroics. Is there actually a difference when a tank is geared beyond 102.4 for avoidance? Comparing to one that is not.

In-addition, might I also seek help on understanding how come the +armor engineering glove enchant is believed to be better than Armsman Enchant?

Thanks for your time, constructive advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Suicyco]

For heroics for fun run in your unhittable set (102.4) With BoS up you'll never OOM and you'll have fun pulling the whole drake room in UK as long as you can manage threat on everything. For raiding it really depends on the fight requirement (as much as I hate to say it) your simply not going to be able to tank certain fights without a set amount of EH no matter what your avoidance is at. Once you hit 38-40K unbuffed you start to have some room to put avoidance back into your set and although there are many who would say it's pointless, I'm a firm believer in balance favoring on avoid, get to the health threshold and stack on avoidance. Your healers will love you and that 60K drooid will hate you for outliving him.

[krc]

For current encounters N-EH > Avoidance > threat stats. N-EH is very similar to EH but it can take into account magic damage, for 100% physical burst killing you a rough ratio for stamina to armor is 1 stamina = 11 armor, at 10% magic burst 1 stamina = around 13 armor, at 20% 1 stamina = 14.62 armor.

Why EH is favored is because of the way bosses are designed for the majority of bosses the only way you can prevent a death is by having more EH, there are a few exceptions such as Saurfang and the Gunship Captain. But don't neglect avoidance, even on EH favoring encounters once you get so much EH it starts to get useful.

Why the glove enchant is better than Armsman is because now days the extra threat is almost useless, making it 10 parry vs. 885 armor which is no contest.