Ok so, a little problem...

[Gordonoth]

Ok, so a bit of background. Ive been a main tank for my guild for quite a while. Today a healer, who is also a main tank for the guild, came to me and said he was a bit worried about my gear.
He said he was worried that i was dieing a whole lot quicker than any of my counterparts in the guild and he thought it might be due to my Gemming etc... Now i trust this guy with anything to do with tanking, he has been tanking a lot longer than i have and it really got me worried that he would see this as a problem. I have used some resilience on my gear, but this is a temporary measure to allow me to upgrade into a MUCH better set of trousers than the 1s i had and according to this macro i found on this sight I’m still uncritable.
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(5.6-((GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL))*.04+GetC ombatRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELEE)),1,0.5,0
Assuming the macro is correct, i am left to conclude i have been geming to much in favour of health and not enough into avoidance.
here is my armoury page;
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Draenor&n=Gordonoth
Like i said the resilience is just until a solution can be found.
Any pointers on where i have been going wrong would be most appreciated, thank you.

[Selyndia]

Alright, looking at your armory, a few things of note:

First, your defense is a bit low, 527 is a bit below the 540 you want for raids (535 for heroics) as a minimum, buffing this will also net you about 1% of avoidance as well, as Defense provides Parry/Miss/Dodge.

You are over valuing Stamina a little bit at the moment. People will give you crap about lower HPs, it’s the way Protection Paladins work… they scale better, but start off lower in health. 25K + unbuffed is fine for almost anything in the game currently though, so don’t worry about it too much.

I would replace the Sonic Booster; if you really want a + Stam trinket, get Essence of Gossamer from heroic AN, otherwise I would recommend Seal of the Pantheon from normal Halls of Lightning.

Rings are fine, no comments there.

Boots are good, maybe put a higher stamina enchant (22) on them, but this is up to you.

Legs, replace the Resilience + Stamina patch with a Stamina/Agility one. It will perform much better for you.

Belt, change your gems around. Instead of a 12 Defense, put an 8 Defense/12 Stamina one in it, and then put whatever you like in the buckle (I suggest either 24 stamina or 16 Defense, depending on what you need). Splurge on the blue gems for the belt, you’ll be wearing it for a LONG time, as it’s one of the better items in its slot.

Gloves, I personally prefer Armsman over Stamina, but Stamina is fine for its much cheaper cost. For the gem, I usually use an 8 Defense/12 Stamina over the 24 Stamina, but it’s a personal preference really.

Helm is alright, I would, go with an 8 Defense/8 Strength gem, as it both helps your avoidance, Defense Minimum, and hits the socket bonus, and helps metagem activation. I also like 32 Stamina 2% armor a little more, but your defense is low so I can see the need here.

Neck is fine; you’ll be using that for a while.

Shoulders are good, but swap the gem (8 Defense/8 Strength for Metagem or 8 Defense 12 Stamina).

For cloak, I don’t really care for the Durable Nerubhide. Get the cloak from Wyrmrest Rep, it has better stats for initial tanking, including a ton of Defense; then put a + Defense Enchant on it.

Chest, I would swap the second gem for an 8 Defense/12 Stamina gem, to boost your defense up.

Bracer is fine, but you will want a different enchant. If you want to be cheap 12 Defense is an excellent enchant if you can find someone with it.

Weapon/Shield and Libram are all fine.

In summary, if you swap cloaks like I suggest, enchant bracers with 12 Defense and change gems as I recommend, and go with the 32 Stamina 2% armor meta, you end up netting 62 Defense Rating (Not counting Trinkets), which is about 1.5% avoidance right there. If you choose to keep your current Meta (Which is fine, they both are very good), you end up with 83 Defense or nearly 2% avoidance.

Also, don’t be afraid to use double avoidance trinkets (Seal of Pantheon, Repelling Charge, Valor Medal, etc).

[Stompya]

He is correct about your gemming, you have too many stamina gems and you are not even crit immune. Gemming for dodge and parry is a waste unless you are over the 540 minimum defense, and even then you get better returns gemming more defense or expertise instead of those 2.

Fortunatelly it is very easy to remedy your situation, what I would do in your place would be:

1 - switch that nonsense attack power enchant on your bracers for a 40 stamina enchant.

2 - get the trinket from normal Halls of Lightning and substitute the nonsense boombox -Seal of the Pantheon

3 - switch the some of the 24 stamina gems for 8 defense 12 stamina gems - Enduring Forest Emeralduntill you get the 540 defense rating.

This will probably yeld some good results for you. You can farm normal HoL for that trinket with a good group at least twice per hour, I doubt it will take over 2 or 3 hours for it to drop (bout 5 or 6 runs)

[Marvel]

The most glaring thing on your Armory page is that you are not at uncrittable - to attain that you need 540 Defense, which translates to 689 Defense Rating. I'm guessing your damage intake is much spikier than other tanks because of this and is why you might die a lot faster.

You are 60 Defense Rating short of the crit cap and have 5 Yellow Sockets in your gear right now. If each of those had a +16 Defense Rating gem, that would be 80 Defense Rating - one of them already has a +12 DR gem, so you can potentially increase your Defense Rating by 68 by gemming alone. This will undoubtedly bring your Health down a little because you will replace a couple of Stamina gems, but should be well worth it in the long run.

I would suggest picking up four Thick Autumn's Glow - Item - World of Warcraft gems (+16 Defense Rating) and one Enduring Forest Emerald - Item - World of Warcraft (+8 Defense Rating, +12 Stamina) and this should get you to 540 Defense. For your legs, you should pick up a Frosthide Leg Armor - Item - World of Warcraft

[kolben]

Marvel, you might want to download and run Acheron - Addons - Curse, it will help you track deaths.

The thing to find out is what's killing you. You probably have about 5.57% total crit reduction with your resilience. Although it's possible that you are getting a crit, I can't imagine that it's too frequently.

Your unbuffed health, armor and avoidance really aren't too bad, I guess it depends on what content you're working on too.

[Gordonoth]

like i said. the res is a temporary measure until the def trinket from HOL does drop (hasnt yet, im very pissed with it =p), once i get it i will throw the stam/agi on my legs. I assumed it was fine as the macro i quoted in my first post came up as a negative number.
Apart from this thanks for all the great advice, ill be looking at swapping some of my stammina around and changing some of my enchants.

[headknocker]

So, you've gotten some good advice above. I'd focus on the cloak as the single easiest thing to do and it will substantively up your defense. Realize that you are uncritable with the resilience, but the higher defense will mean higher avoidance. You're avoidance isn't bad overall, but more defense would make it better. I really only use the t7 pants for a block set. For MT'ing I'd suggest switching to bolstered leggplates from h vh. While there you can pick up the block trinket (laventhor's talisman). Might want to replace your boots with the boots from h dtk if they drop for you.

I would also switch conviction to Seal of the Pure. You'll get more threat/dps out of it. When I go that deep into ret, its to get pursuit of justice.