Im doing it wrong

[kumiho]

I started tanking midway through wrath so I still have the mentality of stam stacking. I know in cata heroics, avoidance has been a key stat as well as health pools. I play a protection pally. I believe.the magic number is 102.5% and I'm only at about 50%. I am aware.that will change with gear.
My questions are
1) I'm not hit or expertise capped, should I be stacking hit/exp gems instead of stam to get capped?
2) should I also reforge avoidance to be hitting these caps if gemming and enchanting isn't enough?
3) after hitting those caps should I ignore straight stamp gems, even in blue sockets, for stam/avoidance or stam/mastery?
4) my spec also needs some work, have been reading ej and will get that fixed when I get home from work. But any other crtisism would be appreciated. Including glyphs.
Here is my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../kumiho/simple

[xenogriff]

i might be wrong about the way i'm doing it but so far i haven't had a lot of complaints

i'm using glyph of seal of truth and a human prot pally, so expertise wise, its not that hard to hit the cap, only need to get 16 expertise

after that, blue gem slots i'm gemming stamina, yellow i use the green dodge/stamina, red i use the purple expertise stamina until capped then use the parry/stamina gem instead

for reforging i'm trying to keep parry and dodge more or less equal so will reforge whichever is higher to hit until capped then focus on getting mastery up.

your stats look about right, i'm currently at a 337 gear level equipped and have 12.53% dodge, 11.89% and 29.78% block = 54.2% roughly

again, that's how i'm doing it, if others disagree, thats fine - everyone can have their own opinion

[Selene]

I thought total avoidance was something like 10+dodge+parry+block or dodge+10 + parry+10 + block+10

[Dannyl]

1) I'm not hit or expertise capped, should I be stacking hit/exp gems instead of stam to get capped?

A lot of people are saying tanks should be hit and exp capped but I just find it a bit silly. For me, these are purely threat stats now that taunt no longer requires hit rating and parry-hasting was removed. Some argue that you should be hit capped to never miss an interrupt but we are always using melee DPSers to interrupt, so it's not an issue. They will be hit capped by default so it makes more sense that way.

So IMO, no, you don't need to be anywhere near the hit- or expertise caps. I'm at Exp 7 and Hit 6% and having no issues whatsoever.

2) should I also reforge avoidance to be hitting these caps if gemming and enchanting isn't enough?

I am unsure what the general idea is for pally tanks (I'm a warrior tank) but our pally tank is doing the same I am doing, which is following with gems:

Yellow: mastery/stamina
Blue: stamina
Red: parry/stamina

I go parry instead of dodge because parry is slightly more useful to warriors because of Hold the Line talent. Might be worth more for pallies to do dodge, not sure.

3) after hitting those caps should I ignore straight stamp gems, even in blue sockets, for stam/avoidance or stam/mastery?

For now, I think this schema of gems works quite well. You will get truckload of stamina from blue sockets and gear by default. No tank deaths so far, for us, has resulted from low HP pools, but always rather a specific boss mechanic. The two aims I had, when I was gearing, was to hit 130k for HC and 140k for raids, but those aren't set in stone. I get over 150k in raid buffs which is quite enough for normal encounters. Hard modes ofc, might require an alternate plan.

[Reev]

1) I'm not hit or expertise capped, should I be stacking hit/exp gems instead of stam to get capped?

Is your lack of hit/expertise causing you trouble? Are you unable to hold threat or missing key things, like interrupts? If so, you should probably get more hit/expertise. For my part, I find I hold threat quite well already, but sometimes I miss my shield bashes, which frustrates me. I generally have good interrupts with me in the dps players I play with, so it's not too bad, otherwise I'd grab some hit/expertise. The basic answer to the question is "get hit/expertise if you need it, not because you need to hit some predefined cap."

2) should I also reforge avoidance to be hitting these caps if gemming and enchanting isn't enough?

See above.

3) after hitting those caps should I ignore straight stamp gems, even in blue sockets, for stam/avoidance or stam/mastery?

The argument over EHP vs. Avoidance hasn't been settled yet. It's all good for you. People are leaning slightly more towards avoidance right now, but the fact is that you can reforge to avoidance and you can't reforge to stamina, so I'd still lean towards stam in sockets for now. I'm meeting all my socket colors for the moment as well. This will probably all change soon, as the theorycraft catches up with the new content.

4) my spec also needs some work, have been reading ej and will get that fixed when I get home from work. But any other crtisism would be appreciated. Including glyphs.
Here is my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../kumiho/simple

No time to look at your armory atm, sorry.

[Bluezoo]

I was having issues tanking, and after talking to someone on an EU realm I have it figured out. I just had to make a few changes to see big ones.

First and for most always use Word of Glory. Not only does the heal help, but the possible damage reduction if it over heals helps as well. To get the most of it look at my spec, and glyphs. Secondly you do need to be hit, and expertise capped. It helps with threat, and when there is a boss that needs to be interrupted its mostly our job. Being a Blood Elf I have three. It might be harder to do as anything else. If you have to interrupt then only use Avengers shield for it. Being hit and expertise cap means you'll build a lot of threat still with Sader Strike and Judging. Consecration is a joke now, and should never be using it. Also on gemming if its a blue slot put a stam gem in it. Any other gem slots should have the green gem that gives Mastery and Stam. You should reforge yourself so you get hit and expertise capped. No need to gem for it. As far as enchants go using the stam and minor speed to boots, expertise to gloves, and anything that adds stam else where. I did dodge to bracers to help a bit. Also Mending on weapon is the best tanking enchant. My armor is in my sig if you need to look over my spec, gear, and glyphs. If you have any questions ask them here or PM me.

EDIT: Also once you get more gear you'll want parry and dodge to be around 18%. The big thing now is Mastery Rating. If you dodge and parry six times then you get diminishing returns. So being able to block as much as possible is important. It's why Mastery is such a big thing. It's better now to adsorb damage then to be missed now because of the diminishing returns.

[kumiho]

ty guys for the input.
im not having an issue with threat unless is some dps beating on a target that my AS and HotR isnt hitting, which has seem to become the norm. Apparently, some melee dps that i have encountered dont understand that if they beat on something im not beating on, they are gonna pull.
I just wanna make sure that im doing everything i can to ensure im not hard on the healers mana pool. i know healing has become a problem due to all the mechanic changes so i just wanna be helpful as possible.
thanks again for the input

[Mr.Winkle]

Regardless of where the debate on avoidance Vs stam settles on the forums, currently when tankign heroics i find i spend a good deal of time at a lot less than max hp, hence i perosnally see avoidance as a more valuable stat.

[uglie]

If you dodge and parry six times then you get diminishing returns.

Not quite accurate. Each time you dodge or parry your chance to dodge or parry the next attack is not lowered by the game like how the more dodge rating you get the less each point gives you or how each time you stun a target in a row each stun does not last as long as the previous. Hypothetically let's say you have 50% chance to dodge on your character sheet. You enter combat and off the bat you dodge the first attack, just because you dodged that first attack does not mean you have a 45% chance to dodge the next one, you still and always will have a 50% chance to dodge the next attack. This is the same as drawing from a deck of cards were each time a card is drawn it is reshuffled into the deck. You will always have a 1 in 13 chance to pull out an jack. Now if each time you pulled a jack the jack was set to the side until a non jack card was drawn, then you would get 1:13 chance to pull a jack the first draw, 3:51 chance to draw a jack the second time, a 1:25 chance to draw a jack a third time and finally a 1:49 chance to draw a jack 4 time in a row.

However dodge and parry ratings do suffer from DR. This means that the more rating you get the less % chance to dodge or parry you get from each point of rating. This is like when climbing a mountain. Let's say task A takes 100 units of oxygen to complete. At sea level you only need to take 1 breath to get the required oxygen, at 1000 ft up the mountain it'll take 2 breathes to get enough oxygen, and at 2000 ft up it'll take 4 breaths to get the required oxygen. The farther up the mountain the more breaths it takes to do the same job.