No more double stamina trinkets makes me sad.

The defense cap, and the difficulty reaching it, is grossly exaggerated. Wyrmrest accord at honored (possibly revered) give you high defense rating boots, cloak, and chest. Quest rewards give you a high defense rating weapon and two rings. This leaves blacksmithing or some instance drops for shoulders, helm, and legs. Furthermore, there's 12/16 defense to cloak, 22 defense to chest, and 20 defense to shield enchants. Also there's the old scryer shoulder enchant for 15 defense rating, and honored argent dawn with 20 defense rating to helm.

Uncrittable is easy.

Have to agree.

The largest issue is not getting to 540 but maintaining it while you replace high defense blues with medium defense epics.
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Majiben
If we wanted Ret to be a joke, we would have just left the tree as it was, and maybe kicked it a little for good measure. -GC

as a Alchemist, Herbalism Tank I'm having definite troubles. Alchemy blows, the trinket is lvl 75, 75 stam and 50 dodge rating, nothing really special, I see all these Enchanters, Blacksmiths, Engineers, Jewel Crafters and Leather Workers getting Massive stam buff items. Life bloom is the only thing worth keeping.

I'm Defense capped but my health blows

I run the JC trinket and the insignia. 540 def on the dot ATM and I haven't had much issue altering gemming or gear pieces to maintain it... In fact before raids I had in the area of 560 so it wasn't remotely difficult to maintain at first. Anyway... uncrit, at good old 102.4, bit more than 1400 block value, and 27k HP (lol90stam bracers and 3x 41 stam jeweler's gems) all unbuffed. Now to get that 84 def trinket and a new helm...
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yeah, the difficulty getting uncrittable is over rated. I've had 540 defense even before I got rep rewards/enchants or gems in my gear. (maybe being a blacksmith and making my own armor helped) a couple of heroics later and some cheap gems, and im sitting at 25.4k hp unbuffed/uncrittable without havign to use defense trinkets. Like everything else, we just have to do our work.
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closing in on 540...and I still got Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx and Girdle of the Protector equipped!

I long for when I can replace that 14 and 11 def at 80!
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I'm currently using the 60ish defense and +3.7k armour on click trinket from normal HoL, alongside the 111 stam from H AzN (which I farmed specifically for building EH to tank malygos). I often swap in Corren's Lucky Coin (autoblocker clone) for the 111 stam trinket, for more reliable mitigation. I still carry SMI in my bags, but pretty much never use it. I also sometimes use a 550 armour and +health on click trinket, can't remember where it drops. Icon looks like the first aid icon!

I'm significantly over the defense cap, which I enjoy because it gives me the freedom to change my trinkets around a lot. With the 111 stam trinket in, I'm at 27.5k unbuffed.

The whole "how much HP?" or "PST stats" thing is a huge hate of mine though. Last time it happened to me, I calmly replied, the guy invited me and apologised, saying something like "sorry, there are lots of noob tanks out there, you know?" Then I inspected him and saw that he was an enhancement shaman DWing two 1.8 speed daggers. I quickly left the group.

I did a handful of pug heroics after hitting 80, but pretty much as soon as we had 5 guildies at 80 I haven't even considered doing a pug.