[Joozle]

It seems like every Pala (or even tanks in general) doesn't care so much about hit in his tanking gear.
Now i'm changing to T9.x gear and some ToGC/ToC 25 gear and i notice all the pieces are lacking hit realy badly (Warriors/DK's T9,x pieces have 2 pieces with hit rating in it, Pally only 1). I'm not hitcapped atm, lacking 8 hit (260) and i already find that disturbing, but seeying tanks with like 160/180 hit rating gets me frustrated.
How hard should you count hit rating ? Is it bad to miss a taunting action, does it give you less threat not having 268 hit ? The biggest question: am i right with my theory or do pally tanks simply don't need that much hit ?

[Tzobee]

Hit rating is pretty important for threat but at the same time not as crucial as say, reaching softcap on expertise. There is a taunt glyph available that I use on taunt sensitive fights such as Algalon. Reaching 8% is not a bad thing but not something you should do over the expense of EH. Atleast, that is the way I see it.

[jere]

Actually, hit is more valuable than expertise, even before you hit the expertise softcap. The problem is most of the new gear lacks hit, so you have to live with it being silly like that, which sucks. STR is still primarily a better stat than hit for most paladins though.

Check out the discussion/charts here for more info:
Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)

[Casper7526]

hit is more important for threat....but since if your a decent tank, you have no problems with threat...exp not only helps with threat but also survivability

Expertise till soft cap, worry about your hit later.

[Daereg]

The new ToC gear lacks hit, but has a ton of expertise(don't forget the expertise glyph).
Only have 44 Hit now that I've given up Shiver for Honor of the Fallen.
I'd be tempted to gem for it, but threat seems fine as it is.

As for failed taunts, if one taunt misses, use your other taunt...

[Trysha]

Expertise is actually not really important at all for a paladin. Hit>expertise any day. Reason being is expertise effects two things paladins use, which are melee white attack and HoTR. hit effects most everything else.

But also you might want to consider that they might find hit in elixirs and food. Its what I do.

[jere]

Well, white attacks account for the highest percentage of our dps (not tps though), so you can't totally handwave it away. Hit is still better for threat, but expertise does have a nice survivability feature to it.

Expertise affects the following:
melee damage
seal damage (the swing has to land for the seal to proc)
SoV DoT applications
HotR

[Insahnity]

I'd support Jere's assertions, I find the biggest drawback to low hit is the chance for taunt to fail. That is just unacceptable to me, and there are more valuable glyphs to take rather than the taunt one. Don't forget, the melee hit cap (264) doesn't cap you for taunts which work off spell hit (even warriors run off spell hit cap for taunt). The taunt glyph merely bridges the gap in the melee hit cap to full spell hit cap.

[Erichilles]

the t9 legs are hit/BV which to be honest turned me off a bit at first. i like to get some balance in my gear, but like you said, after getting other pieces from this tier of content i found myself low on hit and decided it wouldn't be such a bad idea to pick them up. the onyxia t2 helm is also incredible, 199 stam, def/dodge/hit.

[Chasey]

Hit doesn't concern me much, front load some high threat and it shouldn't be a problem. We have 2 taunts, conc and we can throw a shield which generates a ton of threat. Certain fights, yes threat is huge from hit, but not many. Str is still king and if you want to get informed and have a huge headache afterwards, check out the thread that Jere linked.
After you read that, you might just feel icky about yourself for understanding the concept of the numbers involved in this game....LOL

[Zothor]

Source: Trysha Expertise is actually not really important at all for a paladin. Hit>expertise any day. Reason being is expertise effects two things paladins use, which are melee white attack and HoTR. hit effects most everything else.

This is... for lack of any way to be nice about it, a classic example of giving bad advice because your information is out of date.

Current research has made it very clear that the avoidance value of Expertise in that it prevents parryhasting is in NO way insignificant. Like, it's very significant - more than half as good as dodge rating significant for a paladin tank. Consequently expertise operates as both a threat and avoidance stat. Don't dismiss it anymore, especially if it's on higher ilvl gear that gets you the stamina, armor, and strength you should covet.

Most of us miss being hitcapped in our ulduar gear. The only serious problem with this is missing taunts. Prot Paladins are STUPENDOUSLY lucky compared to the other tanks in that we have 2 short cooldown proper taunts. On fights like Gormok or Algalon where a taunt simply HAS to hit, just use Hand of Reckoning and be prepared to immediately follow it with Righteous Defense if need be. Many people choose to glyph their taunts just to be sure. The tradeoff glyphs you could feasibly use in that slot instead actually have somewhat limited value, and are:

Glyph of Judgement, which is a minimal but real amount of threat
Glyph of Hand of Salv, which is a situational cooldown that realistically can't be used on most fights becaue you can't afford the threatdrop
Glyph of HoTR, which is a trash glyph. There's no trash in TOC.

I don't honestly see a HUGE reason to not use the taunt glyph. YMMV.