Need some solid advice on Hit rating and gemming

Okay I have been told all different ways on these 2 subjects and the more I search for the answers I become more confused.

First Hit rating: Do we need it? I mean post 4.1 REBUKE had a chance to miss unless you were hit capped. I do not seem to have a threat issue and it seems the more higher level progression tanks that I know are not hit capped. However I constantly run into people who ask me why I am not hit capped.

The other question is mastery stacking and gemming. Here is my Armory link:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/silver-hand/larathus/advanced

My parry and dodge are at 13% roughly. Do I need more or should I lower that and worry more about block? Block currently is 50%. When should I not be adding mastery and exactly what is the formula to figure out where I am?

Thanks for any input or steering me to the proper forums for this. I am trying to make my healers job a bit more easier in raids and thjink I am not blocking enough damage.

Hit rating: You don't need to worry about it, but you shouldn't avoid the stat if its on a piece of usable tanking gear. While not ideal - it does allow you to reforge some of that hit (or expertise) into either mastery or parry/dodge and you get the slight threat/dps/confidence of having some leftover hit or expertise on your items. Rebuke doesn't miss post 4.1.

Dodge/Parry balance with Mastery:

Initially for raiding, you want to aim for a combined 25% - 30% Dodge/Parry rating. Because there are diminishing returns on Dodge/Parry contributions and NOT on mastery, you want to dump most, if not all your discretionary stat points (enchants, gems*, reforging) into mastery stats.

One warning though: stacking mastery should not cripple your health/hit points below generally acceptable levels. These levels depend largely on the content you are attempting to clear, but in most cases - keep it simple and stack mastery over all else whenever you can.

*gems: Use mastery gems unless the gem bonus is +20 or +30 to mastery, stamina, parry or dodge. Stack mastery gems and avoid the gemming bonus in all other cases.

If you find your health pool is too low, gem and enchant accordingly and use flasks and trinkets that boost Stamina. Trinkets are often the easiest way to swap stamina and mastery stats once you acquire a few of them.

I tried to keep this very simple to help you. Flipping through the Basic Training section of these forums (though slightly out of date for 4.1 - the basics havent really changed enough to alter your gearing choices at this point I don't think).

glhf!

Rosenberg covered your questions very well. But, if you'd like to, you can get a lot of this help straight from the guides.

For example, in my guide, as a new raider, you are a stage three tank. Go to the stage three section here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29732#p612214

At the top, there's a statement that reads "A stage three tank has at least 145k health and 78% combat table coverage." There's your bare minimum for raiding.

If you want to drill a little deeper, I made a character model on Chardev of a tank that has just stage three gear. It's linked a little bit below that statement. There, it says that my model has: "148k health, 29.9% dodge+parry+miss, 51.0% block (for a total combat table coverage of 80.8%)". There are stats you can aim for, and even a gear set that shows you exactly how to get them. (My model is for an engineer/enchanter, but your results as an engineer/scribe should be similar.)

My item enhancement guide gives advice on how to gem:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29733
or you can look at the Chardev model from the gear guide.

Good luck!

Thank you for the awesome advice. Sometimes trying to find this type of information is very hard and confusing.

Would you advise dropping the Soul Blade and going back to one of the heroic weapons?

Soul Blade is a good weapon if you reforge the hit into dodge.