Rawr gear suggestions, can it be wrong?

[Amburgur]

This is kinda a two part question involving tanking basics and gear so here goes;

Last night a friend of mine input all my information and gear choices into RAWR. I gained 2k hp and around 1% parry but lost 32 points of defense which dropped me to 508 defense as opposed to 542.

My question is should I ignore RAWR and put back on the blue items with Defense rating or do I keep with it and leave on the Epic DPS gear until I get an upgrade to the items it asked me to change out?

I'm new to tanking and have looked on Wowwiki, and a number of other sites before coming here. If I'm not tanking a raid boss is being 30 points low on defense going to kill a group farming heroics?

[Insahnity]

please move us to HALP forum!

please link us your amory

[geros]

You need at least 535 defense (without resiliance) for heroics and 540 (again, not talking with resil) as a pally/warrior/dk. Rawr won't necessarily take that into account.

[Amburgur]

thanks

[drae]

It may be that Rawr is also taking into account any resilience you may have lurking around on your gear.

I know I can get away with lower defence because I carry some resilience (shoulder enchant)

[MellvarTank]

I would say priority for a tank is defense cap. Tempered saronite gear, or Epic craftables (Tempered Titansteel Helm/boots) will get you where you need to be.

Oh, and rep rewards! Can't forget those, Argent rep, sons of Hodir rep, all of that good stuff.

[Viridios]

Rawr can absolutely be wrong. The person that made it is human, and makes mistakes.

However, that doesn't sound like what happened here. Keep in mind that Rawr is a tool; it will do exactly what you tell it to do.

When you optimize, make sure you use the correct criteria. Specify either defense > 540 or crit chance = 0% [I don't remember which is normally used, since I play a druid main]. The choose your other stats depending on what you want.

Generally I don't use the Overall setting anymore; it's too varied for my tastes. One piece might have an incredible overall score because it has a ton of threat stats, but no mitigation and not much survival.

For my druid, I use:
-Survival [best score obtainable]
-Mitigation [obtain 80k rating]

This gives me a good-but-not-incredible mitigation rating - basically, a lot of dodge, armor and maybe some crit/AP for SD procs - and then maxes out my stamina and armor value so I can survive for longer when I get hit. However, this isn't always the best option.