Avoidance gearing for threat?

I've recently switched from being a healadin to tankadin on my paladin after several years of playing a Warrior. Sorry if this issue has been brought up before but I missed it if it has been... sometimes I experience epic failure when using "Search."

I had a question about hitting the uncrushable mark as a paladin. A lot of the paladins I see have a very high dodge and parry. This confused me quite a bit. I would have thought that paladins would focus much more on blocking as it is a cheaper stat and should produce more threat. I was wondering if this was intentional and I am missing something or whether this was just a by product of the type of gear needed to high a higher base avoidance to become uncrushable.

with holy shield activated on any boss fight, you're more than likely going to see above 50% block rating. so if an attack get's pass your miss, dodge, parry pure avoidance stats, and assuming you're uncrushable (102.4% total avoidance), the hit will register as a block.

higher dodge and parry just basically means less of a chance for a string of hits than usual. I'd rather have

"dodge - miss - hit: 4k (450 blocked)"

than

"hit: 4k (450 blocked) - hit:4.5k (450 blocked) - hit: 4k (450 blocked)"

more avoidance = your healers aren't bitching in your ear

We stack dodge and parry over block the same reason a Warrior does: when you're taking 4-6K hits, that 400-500 BV doesn't' mitigate much.

Like Warriors, you'll find end-game Paladins sporting different tank sets: high avoidance, high stamina, high block value and high threat.

You'll just see a lot of newly made tankadins sporting more block rating since it's easier to come by and stack to hit that uncrushable mark. After that, it's just "upgrading" your ratings.

Edit:
Warrior's can avoid this initial block rating stacking since their Shield Block ability provides that functionality (in a way) and thus focus itemization on other stats like block value, stamina and to hit (for examples).

Ah, ok.

I'm not really as interested in non-linear mitigation as a lot of other people are, and my guild's DPS bitches much more than the healing.

The thing about Holy Shield is that it's a small portion of your threat. If you look at WWS parses of most protection paladins, their top threat sources are usual Consecration and SoR/JoR. Even after Holy Shield's increased base coefficient and the improved talent, it's a small portion of your threat generation once you start donning epics.

You can bump the numbers vs single targets if you make an effort to gear block rating/block value and keep your dodge/parry low, but that usually ends up in you taking quite a bit more damage and your healers might bitch.
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I am the shield that guards the realms of men.

ive seen everything in t5 level get tanked with 45% avoidance...

The thing isnt about taking less damage. It IS about being able to take more..

i'll give you an example,

One of my guilds was learning morogrim and we had a feral tanking him for obvious reasons. The tank kept dying to burst damage. We changed one thing *added commanding shout* tank now had 20 or was it 21k health and he didn't die from the burst damage be it luck or the fact that health stacking does help thats for you to decide.

Recently I have tanked the shaman on FLK and I tried adding 5% avoidance roughly at the cost of 1000 health so a fair trade off of 10% damage reduction in theory for 1000health. The problem is When I did take the burst from the shaman (and i did) I died 1000 less health is no joke. Halaazi is another great example many said he was an avoidance fight but damn I tried the same trade off and it just doesn't pay at all. Same with dragonhawk who has relatively weak melee...Im at a lower percentage health more often in avoidance gear than i ever am in stamina gear.

And it scares the crap out of me. So i tried, im still trying but i have yet to see any reason to gem avoidance, use an avoidance trinket (though the one off ZJ is tempting if i can get it) and yet to see a reason why id change my ways...Avoidance is not the be all and end all of tanking, I can stack 55% avoidance and gimp health or i can stack 50% avoidance and have moderate health or I can go with 45% avoidance and have 1000 more health..

1000 health is about 2000 effective health you'd find that in ciderhelms example 2000 effective health is the difference between patchwork pwning you or survivng...The first fights were done by stacking stamina, every guild main tank gemmed stamina to get kills it worked. Realisticly you can get avoidance on gear it will never be awesome but its something. A stamina tank is not 0% avoidance, its not a balance either its about being as effective and acting as a sponge.

EDF (joanadark's term somethign like effective damage frequency) comes into play when stuff is on farm status. The stories about warriors being easier to heal than druids on pure physical fights are possible but in my honest opinion druids have superb avoidance stats and scale amazingly with buffs. I say these stories are most likely just biased healers. ive had healers say paladin tanks take so much more damage etc. and others who are there to heal and dont complain. To quote the best healer ive ever met 'healing a paladin and a warrior isn't so different'

Fact is if its a new fight, a fight with huge burst damage or a fight with hhuge spell damage stamina is king.

Avoidance tanks do work but I tend to value those extra seconds I live because i stack stamina...

1. More time to use LoH
2. More AD range
3. More reaction space to use a nightmare seed
4. More of a sponge when the shit does hit the fan

As a tank im much better off not being killed by the next hit and rather taking more damage then reducing the chance of it happening.

A golden rule is murphys law...

Nuff said QQ all you want avoidance tanks these points are solid as a rock.

TO the poster:

Block rating is a cheap stat that allows you to stack more stamina, in terms of itempoints a tank geared with block rating could stack about 3000 more health than a tank using dodge rating to reach the same mark. What most do is hit 102.4% anyway they can and start trading for stamina and where possible dodge. Gemming for dodge is mostly a bad idea.
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To face death and glory with an equal smile

Since starting to take on 25 man raid tanking I've been very pleased with the results going with an effective health setup.

The strange thing I'm finding now...the upgrades that are available to me now are generally pushing up my avoidance as a byproduct. I'd reached a point where my total miss/dodge/parry/block was through the roof. When I realized I was so far past uncrushable (~110 or so) I decided I'd play around with some gear/spec changes that go away from a pure effective health approach and move towards a more balanced effective health/avoidance/threat approach.

As of right now I'm running uncrushable (raid buffed) with only 2 points in deflection and w/out the shield block libram. This has allowed me to pick up both Improved SotC and PoJ (first time playing around with PoJ) and run with a Libram of Zeal, all while keeping my unbuffed health to a respectable 15257.

I'm find I'm constantly trying out new tweaks to my spec...a nice side benefit to speccing holy once a week for 2v2.
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Oops...typo...

15257 unbuffed
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thank god
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To face death and glory with an equal smile

Got a chance to test this out in Gruul's last night and I was very happy with the results. I've gone with a few gear choices that go against the grain from discussions I've seen in here...the big one being using Justicar Gauntlets (threat enchant) over Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden (stam armor kit).

With this change, my threat is up by about 15%! I was able to maintain in excesses of 800tps on a single mob/boss while still downranking Concecrate to rank 4. I'd chalk this tps boost to a combination of the added spell power and threat enchant on the gloves, the 2 item set bonus on T4, and the added holy dam added to JotC by the Libram of Zeal.
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