Avoidance Vs stamina Vs exp/hit for DS heroics

There's a lot of discussions going around in different threads about this but I didn't really see a dedicated topic for it even thought it's quite important.

For a while now after I hit the 102,4% I have been gearing for stamina, and that's been going as such a thing goes, you get more HP. Lately I have been thinking though, is it really necessary with more? I guess you can never have too much and it's always going to help you survive more, but now when DPS is such a big problem in DS with the tight enrage timers, I thought I would try with a more hit/expertise oriented build, while still staying above the 102,4%. I also replaced windwalk with landslide since I didn't really value the dodge proc at all.

Anyways this is what I got with my current gear: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/r ... d/advanced

It's fairly passive considering I haven't changed any enchants to DPS ones and I'm also still using a stamina/mastery trinket.

I went from these stats:
203k HP
16% dodge
16% parry
64% mastery

to these:
196k HP
14% dodge
16% parry
66% mastery.

What I gained though was about 4% increase in hit and 13 in expertise (I'm not exactly sure on those numbers, but it's around that) which should help my DPS by quite a big margin, while not affecting my survivability all too much really. There's also the option of switching out the stamina trinket for something more DPS heavy depending on the encounter, as said I still don't know how hard the heroic bosses hit.

What do you guys think?

Would you rather focus on survivability and let DPS be a job for the DPSers, and be prepared for a lot more worst case scenarios tank death wise, or would you rather help beat the enrage timer and still have what should be enough survivability, but have the raid wipe at times?

I can more or less guarantee that we are going to have a DPS problem in my guild, which is why I geared the way I did, but I'm curious what more progressed paladins would say and their experiences.

I use 2-piece prot t12 and 2-piece ret t12 when I tank 5-mans. Full dps trinkets, dps ring, and bracers, too. My defensive stats drop down much lower than yours, which is fine. We still have lots of abilities to use if you get in trouble/over your head even if your healer is lackluster. Experiment, and don't be afraid to outdps your dps.

I would argue that it's fine to swap stam for hit/xpt right up to the point where it starts getting you killed. This is going to very from raid to raid, and what you and your healers are comfortable with. (Of course you should never compromise CTC for threat. But afterwards?)

Generally speaking, the improvement in Raid DPS via increasing tank DPS is a pittance compared to getting the actual DPS to step up their game. There's only so much the tank can do to carry the raid, but there's a point where you just can't do more.

The only reason I've started advocating for more hit/xpt lately is because it translates directly into small -- but real -- survivability benefits due to Souldrinker and 2pcT13 bonuses. Back in the day my progression set had 0 hit and 0 xpt, and it was glorious because every iota of itemization was spent on keeping me alive. This level of "purity" isn't necessarily relevant anymore.

It depends. A tank's dps is often not a laughable porportion of a raid's total dps in a 10-man raid. In a 25, well, hopefully you don't have dps issues in 25, because one person cannot fix them.

In my experience, learning a new fight is 95% surviving long enough to learn the mechanics. Nothing beats stamina for that. Once you're comfortable with the fight it makes sense to push some more DPS to make it quicker and easier, but not until you're reliably wiping to a failed DPS check with 10/25 people alive.

As you can see by my stats I chose the advoidance route. I've always favored advoidance over stam and generally feel a lot more comfortable this way. Damage feels a lot more steady.

As for dps, I can definitely agree with your route of turning stam into exp/hit since most of the heroic fights have big DPS requirements. The only fight I worry about hit/exp on is heroic ultraxion, since its a huge dps race, and I actually use my threat set on that fight.

Other then H Ultra, like Solare said a tanks DPS is a small portion of the raids overall dps and usually isn't the make it or break it situation.

Stamina is always the winner tbh.
But you cant really always choose anyway.
Block cap is nice, and its prolly best to atleast be as close as possible for most heroicmodes (spine/madness however doesnt apply)

But, avoidance feels pretty useless.
If i want CTC i go for mastery, if i cant choose to get mastery, id rather take "threat" stats than dodge/parry.
But id still prefer to be block capped for most bosses, zonozz, spine and madness are prolly the only fights where its pretty useless beeing capped.

Just a little hit/exp goes a long way, you might not think you are doing that much more dmg, but you are increasing your dps by 3-5k easily with just a few reforges.
3-5k more raid dps might not seem like much, but if everyone is pushing their dmg, its enough to matter.