Post-Kara tanking question

Hey all.

This is something that has been bothering me for quite some time now, seeing alot of Gruul tanks and beyond that favor avoidance on my server. They all think im crazy to socket purely for stamina. Now I have read many many posts on stamina vs avoidance so i dont want to bring that up.
I'm main tank for my guild, we have cleared kara and are looking to move onto Gruul's Lair. I know some fights favor higher than usual avoidance, and I go with my full stamina set for progression purposes, but how do i know when i should use more avoidance?
With my current gear i have 14100 Armor and 13900 HP unbuffed, roughly 18k raid buffed but I can still go from full HP to dead in 2 sec's on Prince.
I now know prince favor's avoidance, but I still have trouble deciding what I should be using for different boss's.

Another thing is the main tanks on my realm gear massively for defence, some upwards of 550! is this common?? using the 5stam 6defence gems. They tell me they try to push crushing blows as far off the combat table without shield block up, as far as im aware that is only possible with Black Temple end game gear and gimping your overall stamina to a large extent.

A few have told me avoidance is better for Gruul's, My HP exceed's alot of tanks that outgear me by far.
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edit// can't wait for jewelcrafting 18stam gems with star of elune :)

Yeah it's a common disease. Avoiding damage sounds so much more apealling then mitigation, so many people go for it. Well it isn't wrong perse, aslong you don`t gimp other stats.

Gruul isn't a avoidance battle, Gruul is is Armor/Stam (and Aggro). In the beginning you need alot of Aggro and in the later phase you won't relay on Luck.

Prince fight, IS an avoidance fight, because he Dual Wields in Phase 2, and he get the same penalty on the hit rating like a player. But that's not all, he attacks fast and you need to keep your shield block charges up, which avoidance clearly helps alot. Did i mention that with high avoidance, you are less likely to get sunder armor from him? And you know, those trash attacks aren't much of a problem either with enough Avoidance.

Defense don't push crushing from the tables, my guess is, that the 4 Defense 6 Stam socking is a try to be more balanced, getting some stam and avoidance.

Hope that helped you a litte.

Yeh, unless they can push their overall avoidance+block (Miss chance/Parry/Dodge/Block%) to over 85% without hitting shield block, then +def gems won't help. All they are actually doing, is reducing the # of white hits, and almost ensuring that when they DO get hit (through their avoidance) it will probably be a crushing blow.

White hits get pushed off BEFORE crushing blows, so until they have >85% avoidance/block they are just pushing whites off. and to get over 85% you need BT gear I believe. So they are kidding themselves. Stam/Mitigation for Gruuls, lets you survive more Grows, he hits like a dump truck, and sure if you avoid it you're golden, but then you have no rage, and lose agro, and wipe the raid. If you DO get hit, you're dead because you lack hp/ac. You're better off going stam/ac for this fight, and ignore the rest of your ignorant tanks on your server. Most of them don't do the research and just follow each other like sheep. Like my friends who think CB's can be pushed off by Defense stat alone (they think 550 is the uncrushable # simply because our MT has 550+ and they "never" see her get CB'd) and I say... its cuz she keeps Shield Block up, because she has so much avoidance, she hardly ever eats both charges!

Gruul himself is one of the fights that most favors stam/armor/block value instead of avoidance.

Early in the gruul fight, you are rage starved with too much avoidance, and you need to have the MT build threat above the OT, who is above the raid, so you cant affort to be dodging too much. ESPECIALLY for the OT.

Late in the gruul fight, your stam/armor determines how many grows you can survive. Its better to be able to reliably survive a couple grows higher, than to have a lower chance to be hit.

Also, very high avoidance gimps your threat generation, and thus limits the dpsers. You want to be able to heroic strike on almost every swing against a boss, to generate maximum threat. High avoidance will give you periods of low threat, and thus lower your threat generation.