Back after long break, have i understood it correctly?

Hey Maintankadin uses, i have been on a break since the beginning of WOTLK and have gotten back to a completely new system.
I have send the last couple of days reading the forums, and as far i understand it is that our first priority should be to get 7.5% hit and expertise, to get as much SHoR up-time as possible, and then once i have the 7.5% hit and expertise should i start getting dodge and parry. Am i correct in this?

I have basically just hit level 90, and do therefore not at 7.5% hit or expertise yet, then will an item giving Mastery and Hit be preferable to an item given Mastery and Parry for an example?

My character http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... %A9/simple

Yes and no.

Yes, Expertise and Hit are very important. But no, Dodge and Parry aren't next in line.

First, you can mostly forget about Dodge: it's under heavy diminishing returns, so much that you should avoid having more than 8-10%. On the other hand, Parry remains interesting longer, but Strength will provide you with what you need.

Second, you should also read Theck's post: Avoidance, Mitigation, and Damage Smoothing and its followups. In a nutshell, for pre-raid gear:

- Aim for hit cap (7,5%) and hard expertise cap (15%) while maintaing a good health pool.
- Don't worry too much about other secondary stats. Avoid Dodge, get some Mastery.

When you finally get your caps, you should be near raid gear. Then you have a real choice to make, and it's between Mastery and Haste. My own feeling about this choice is that Haste-favoring gear is harder to master but gives better results with active mitigation (and also healing and dps). Mastery-favoring gear may give good (but not great) survival without too much hassle, and it will be more than enough for 5-man dungeons.

In the end, Parry and Dodge are your worst stats. Parry isn't really bad, it's just not as good as the others. And yes, you will be calling "tanking gear" some pieces that would have been "dps gear" in the past.

There's essentially no difference between parry and dodge, especially since we're avoiding both. The fact that the diminishing returns curve is harsher is a red herring - the extra parry from strength puts us at about the same point on Parry's DR curve.

Ah, thanks Theck. I didn't think strength gave that much parry.

For the original poster, look at this blogpost just a couple of paragraphs from the top. You'll find the diminishing return curves for dodge and parry.

I'll go and see where I am on each curve.

You can also just put your stats into this spreadsheet and let it tell you which of the two gives you more avoidance per point. Though in practice, it's a bit of a moot point since balancing dodge and parry isn't a high priority for us anymore.

Doe sthat one work for DKs as well theck? - iirc we have the same DR on dodge and parry between DKs and tankadins.

If your DR coefficients are the same, it should.

I'm going to assume they are, since you are quoted on EJ for the DR part.