Prot Paly needs help...

[hutchmang]

I've been googling forever but still new to WOW so alot of the stuff talked about is like chinese:

I'm a Prot Paly with i lvl 353
Armor gives me: 61% reduced damage
Dodge: 13%
Parry: 14%
Block: 37.5%

Expertise is 16
Mastery is 14.5%

Hit rating is almost 5 (like 4.8 something)

I have strength gems in right now to get me up to 8-9k avg dps in heroics.

I know I am probably "retarded" and need to know:
1. what to spec with (mastery / stam / etc)
2. what gems I should be using
3. anything that might help me tank better for guild upcoming raids

Any help would be most appreciated and thanks in advance

[Sebadoh]

Mastery is your stat du jour, not Strength. Threat isn't that hard to come by, and even if you did need threat stats, Hit and Expertise > Strength.

You want to gem almost entirely Mastery (orange and green Parry/Mastery or Mastery/Stam gems are okay, but only if the socket bonus is halfway decent). Reforge for Mastery wherever possible.

[Tengenstein]

In addition to Sebadoh's response; Theck over at Maintankadin.com has written alot of stuff for protadins

[hutchmang]

Awesome thanks for the help guys, last wuestion been reading about the 100% to avoid crit hits.

Got:
Armor at 61%

Block and Parry at 14% (both)
And Dodge at 51% (21 mastery with gear right now)
What am I adding up to get to the 100%?

Dodge + Block + Parry?

I remapped the skills and glyphs to match tail, am I good (and have had crap healers haha) or am I still in progress?

[Tengenstein]

You're confusing things, you should be effectively immune to Critical hits in PVE due to talents (beleive sanctuary is the pally version reduces the chance to be critically hit by 6%). However if you raise your Dodge+Block+Parry+Miss to a total of 102.4% you have effectively reduced your chance to be hit to 0, any attacks against you can only be dodges, parries, Blocks, or misses, this is known as having full combat table coverage, or being "unhittable".

[theodisius]

You want 102.4% combat table coverage to avoid unblocked hits (we avoid crits through talents). It's block+dodge+parry+5% (for miss). It's 102.4% not 100% because we are fighting L88 foes. Use this macro to check it:

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage to be capped. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

I think you mean you have 51% block and 14% dodge, rather than vice versa. Your numbers sound ok and will go up as you gear up. Many top palatanks are not yet block capped, so don't stress - it does require good gear unless you want to make big sacrifices elsewhere.