back from a break from WoW

So, with my account being hacked and overall bored of warcraft, I took a break during the middle of ICC. I come into Cata and I see this mastery stat, defense being removed, parry taking over dodge, etc.

What should I gem/chant/gear up for when tanking? What's the expertise and hit cap? What's the parry/dodge ratio I should follow (and don't give me the stamina vs. mitigation argument please), are there factions I need to get reputation from, or do I have to go to the sons of hodir and argent crusaders for my tanking stats?

Same questions for arms (different stats from tanking for obvious reasons)

Any and all help appreciated. Thanks

Mastery is you sex stat, you want to keep your parry rating a bit ahead of your dodge rating (~1/3%) once you reach unhittable with SB up you can either go more stam or more mastery depending on the content (stam for magic fights, mastery for physical fights)

Earthen Ring (Vashj'ir) does your head enchant
Therazane (Deepholm) does your shoulders
Dragon Maw (Twilight highlands) Sells your BiS boots till you get an FL drop or an FL craft
Hellscream's somethingorother (Tol Barad) does a very very nice trinket
Ram'kahen doesn't do much
Guardian's of Hyjal do a cloak that's superceded by the Elemental Bonds questline reward.
Avenger's of Hyjal (molten front) can after enough Dailies give 1 trinket, a neck, some other boots, 2 rings

what's SB? and thanks :)

I was told by a guild member that Mastery is a stat that should not surpass any other worthwhile stat. Is it different only for tanking?

Heres a quick primer to catch you up.

Welcome to cataclysm tanking! Currently avoidance is king. Block has been majorly change, currently a 'block' will only absorb 30% of a hit, and a critical block will absorb 60%.

Mastery for a prot tank gives you a greater chance to block. Your goal as a tank in cataclysm is simply to become 'unhittable' which is better prased as 'Full combat table coverage' aka when an attack from a boss hits you it will be dodged, parried, or block. Only right about now are warrior's starting to reach 'unhittable' with H t12 loot.

Basically you want to stack stats like dodge, parry, mastery. Threat stats are gone and dead, recently threat was hotfixed to be 500%, extra bonus. Its stupid, even fury warriors getting tricks of the trade, blowing every cooldown with portion and blood lust won't pull off of a decent tank.

So as a warrior you want to stack parry dodge about even, slightly more parry to favor procing hold the line. Then you just stack mastery, more mastery the better.

I used to gem hybrid gems back in WotLK to favor both avoidance and stamina. Should I do the same for cata or simply get pure gems for avoidance?

Is it true that agility no longer gives armor and dodge?

yes

strength now gives some parry.

If your in 25's you tend to go a bit more stam heavy... so avoidance/stam

Most 10man tanks I've seen go
mastery/stam and parry/mastery
And that overs every slot XD

So basically I don't have to stack parry. I can stack strength for both aggro and parry ratings like Death Knights used to?

no you have to stack parry. the conversation rate is very very very low, its enough to consider to max/min your gear to the nth degree, but for just starting out its not that big.

With t12 gear, i'm noticing that i'm reforging from parry a little to keep parry:dodge somewhat close to balanced (2-3% base difference). So you will get a fairly substantial amount of parry from strength, but it's nothing to lean on. For the most part though you gear is going to take care of things for you, with some minor reforges now and then to balance dodge and parry. Gemming is pretty straightfoward: Red, parry/mastery Blue, stam/mastery Yellow, mastery Prismatic=Yellow Meta gem use the stamina/1% sheild block. So really the only thing you're "stacking" is mastery.

Thank you all for your help :)