The Value of Defense - A Reminder

I posted this in a Defense discussion on the official Tanking forums, but thought I'd repost it here for anyone who happens to be looking at all the Defense they're having to stack for uncrittable and wishing it was Dodge or even Parry instead:

It's worth pointing out that, for Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights, Defense rating gives more raw avoidance per point of item value than Parry and only slightly less than Dodge.

Assuming level 80:
40 Dodge rating = 1.02% avoidance
40 Parry rating = 0.81% avoidance
40 Defense rating = 8 Defense skill = 0.96% avoidance (0.32% each of miss, dodge, and parry)

Basically I'm just saying don't look at all the defense rating on your gear and go "Man, what a waste." You need 689 defense rating for 140 defense skill (the number required for uncrittable). You get a combined total of 16.8% raw avoidance from all of that. 689 dodge rating gives 17.51% dodge. So, swapping all of that Defense rating to Dodge rating would only net you another 0.71% avoidance.

This is to speak nothing of the extra block chance you get from Defense as well, nor the fact that Miss and Parry are both superior to Dodge in their own ways.
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Station wagons are my favorite things.

Very valid point Lore, I think sometimes we look at the avoidance stats we had in TBC and want the same level of avoidance statwise immediately and panic [generally around levels 74-75 when the majority of us with Kara/ZA gear start throwing our old purples into the bank]. These can lead to overstacking, which isn't sensible with diminishing returns, and the bottom line is that as we need to get to 540 defense anyway, that should be the goal before attempting to turn yourself into an avoidance machine like Worldie was in TBC, which is going to be difficult with DR.

It is amazing how much of a solid foundation to build upon defense rating will actually give you. Do not ignore it!

Barathorn
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I missed something.

Why is miss better then dodge? Is there a "dodge recovery time"?

Parry you get the haste. Anything else there?
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Shot in the dark here, but I think the miss is better because there is no other type of "miss rating" to stack so it suffers from DR less rapidly.
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miss > dodge because u can be missed while stunned while u cannot dodge

So basically Dodge is a useless stat at the moment?
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OFFTOPIC:
haha!! I made it into someone's signature!! Barathorn's even! **BLUSH**
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a little off topic, but was it figured out yet how the diminishing returns of miss works yet? If not, how can we know when we are at 102.4% after diminishing returns without knowing the amount of miss that is contributed from defense?

I believe the mod Ratings Buster is calculating diminishing returns. I'm hoping Blizzard fixes up their character panel to show things after DR.
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Station wagons are my favorite things.

Ok so I am at about 557

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Detheroc&n=Towelliee

Being I am about 17 points above uncrit, should I choose to gem differently? Or from here its basically just the gear upgrades.

Also any ring suggestions better then the Hiyjal Ring?
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after i hit 540 i went back to regem for stam as much as possible.

as for gear conisderations, anything with BV and rating i will use over avoidance.

there are some that say an avoidance set for malygos would be good, but he really doesn't hit fast enough for that to be an issue...blocking 1000-1500 of his attack i think is much better.
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Paladin/70/Illidan
Armory Link:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Illidan&n=Soraki