defense & avoidanceFollow

so, i started a new toon the other day with my girlfriend. whe wanted to make a healer, so i was going to make a tank.... i have a lvl 25 warrior i plan to level as tank already so i made me a 3rd paladin to level as a tank. still low level, but i was rereading the tanking sticky here. one thing that caught my eye was the roll table for hits. i was wondering if once you have 102.4% you really still need the defense? it seems if you push crushing blows off the table, critical strikes would be off the table too. are there situations where your holy shield would run out on a mob that could crit? my understanding was that it was mostly bosses and a few other mobs maybe that could crit. once you hit 102.4% avoidance would it be acceptable to trade defense for more pure avoidance or stam as long as you stay at 102.4% avoidance?

Once you hit uncrushable, it's "possible" to trade defense for dodge, but in all honesty, it's not all that much more. I wouldn't bother re-enchanting or re-gemming anything. Don't feel bad about defense over 490 because it still gives worhtwhile avoidance.

I think the question (as I understood it) was that once you hit 102.4%, you can only block/dodge/parry/miss and can't be crit, so therefore you can let your defense drop below 490, because crits against you have been pushed off the table.

Only problem with this is you don't walk around at 102.4%. You have to use abilities to bring it up there, like Shield Block or Holy Shield. When they are brought down by multiple attacks eating up your charges and it's on cooldown you would be able to get critted while you are waiting to pull it back up.

Also, removing defense also removes your avoidance as it adds to your block/parry/dodge/miss as well. And while dodge increases your pure avoidance faster, and block definitely does, it is not worthwhile to leave yourself open to the possibility of being crit.

Making sure you can't be crit is your #1 priority as a tank before all else.

For Warriors and Paladins, every point of Defense Skill:
- Increases the chance to be Missed by 0.04%.
- Increases the chance to Dodge by 0.04%.
- Increases the chance to Parry by 0.04%.
- Increases the chance to Block by 0.04%.

Anotherwords 1 Pt of defence = .16% avoidence. I wouldn't advise droping your defence.

Didn't mean to imply that you should skimp on def, esp if you are in the early stages of gearing, but once you can comfortably hit 102.4 avoidance without the libram of shield block you can afford to cut back on def and gear for other stats, depending on what you will be tanking.

One of the most important things about pally tanking is gearing for the situation, and knowing what stats you need to max/min to optimize your role in those situations. For instance, if you aren't MT'ing and need threat, swap def for spell dam, if you're aoe tanking melee mobs(Hyjal for instance) you'll want more block value and shield block as well as the spell dam to hold them all.

In Hyjal I use a set that has 475 def, so i can max spell dam(450 buffed) and block value(620) while still being above 15k hp(unbuffed). The 475 isn't a problem because i'm always flasked which adds 10def and none of the mobs i'm tanking are above lvl 72.

um, dazed? i honestly never knew that 490 kept you from being dazed. i'll keep all this in mind though. thankyou all.