Pre-Heroic Upgrades

I'm logged in more or less in my tanking setup - PLG + Platinum Shield of the Valorous.

The ugprades I'm working on are: Spaulders of the Righteous, Vindicator's Hauberk, Sha'tari Vindicator's belt, Devilshark, Flesh Beast's Metal Greaves, Figurine of the Colossus, and Dabiri's Enigma.

The question is, once upgrading those slots with those items, can I reasonably expect to survive tanking a caster light Heroic instance. I expect to be gemming predominantly for stamina, if anyone thinks this is a truly bad idea I'd like to hear it before I sink too much cash in.

I did try and find a post that explicitly stated Entry Level Heroic Stats, but unfortunately I came up short, apologies in advance if I missed the obvious and I won't be offended if I'm locked, (not that it matters )
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You should go for the jade skull breastplate or the righteous breastplate (or in addition to; both would be good upgrades) over the hauberk - but other than that, you should be okay. You don't need as much avoidance/defense for heroics as the bosses are only level 72, not 73. You need 485 defense and (IIRC) 98% avoidance. The eternium band is also a good one for an upgrade at the ring.

There's no specific benefit to hitting full uncrushability on heroics since nothing crushes (e.g. going from 20 to 19% crushability is no more or less effective than going from 1% to 0% in terms of the amount of damage reduction you get). That said, 101.6% is the number to hit to never take an unblocked hit in heroics.

Thanks for the feedback gents, I guess one thing I was hoping to document was a ballpark hp/ac/mitigation number for unsquishyness. I realize that if I were to walk into a heroic right now still wearing 3 greens and having about 470 defense I'd be subjecting my party to a world of unhappiness. But how many of those upgrades (if not all) that I mentioned before am I looking at as required.

There's no hard and fast answer to this since it comes down to spec and group makeup as well, which is why I say ballpark, and so as not to avoid this becoming a gear check thread.
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The main reasons I was so fired up about the Vindicator's Hauberk was the whopping 47 defense rating on it, and the fact that my avoidance is low so I'd like to stack up dodge rating where I can.
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The Vindicator's Hauberk is a great piece because of all that defense....I used it until I got my T4 chest.

Pre kara, IMO:

Vindicator's Hauberk > Breastplate of the Righteous > Jade Skull
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First off, thanks for all the replies, more than I honestly expected.

When you take my gear in total, adding 2% avoidance is huge, and it really means making up for me not getting smushed *as much*. The fact is I'm still wearing a couple greens, I've gemmed heavily at the moment for stam where I can. My avoidance is pretty poor, so when I do make it to heroics, I'm expecting to take a buttload of incoming damage so I'm far less worried about making it through with mana than I am about not getting beaten into a bloody pulp. My block value is low, my block rating is low, and I can't get the trinkets I want most until I'm already in heroics, thus my focus on getting figurine of the colossus and dabiri's enigma, that at least gets me something for trinkets where right now I have... not much.

In 2.3 I will be continuing to pursue a 49/12 build despite really really wanting PoJ, I will be dropping my points in reckoning to round out precision, WE, and lastly putting two points in spell warding. So yeah, I'm going to be emphasizing stamina.

My intentions down the road are of course to pursue mitigation and avoidance upgrades in pursuit of uncrushability in addition to 490 def, but I have to be realistic in that my playtime per week is generally 1-2 nights, one of which is an hour or so, and the other ranges from 2 hours to 5 hours. I also hit 70 not all that long ago and I haven't done a majority of the quests that get me the blue tanking gear that many people suggest as entry level uncrushability gear. I've planned out the quests I need to do in order to maximize my return on time. Vindicator's hauberk seems like the biggest return, as my chest is my single worst piece of tanking gear aside from my trinkets. Next will be dabiri's enigma, followed by the sha'tari vindicator's belt. Dropwise I hope to get lucky and get righteous shoulders and a figurine of the colossus, but unlike the first 3 items, drops are fickle. Of course all along when I run SV I'll be hoping for a righteous BP and a devilshark cape, but I can't count on getting them.

I'm a long time MMO and fps player, I consider myself fairly decent at performing my role and keeping my eyes open, the minute I'm capable of surviving a heroic with my karazan geared friends (normal group is a feral druid, pvp/cat geared, a holy priest, and either a mage or shaman played by one guy, and we'll round out a 5th for heroics, normally we 4 man everything else).
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Never finished my train of though...
The minute I'm heroic capable, I plan on being there, it's just a question of knowing when i'm ready.
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If you've got at least 485 defense and 10-10.5k unbuffed HP, you're ready to start heroics.