[Guide]Protection Paladin Manual 3.3.5a

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You can safely spend those 2 points elsewhere for a 25 man.

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Get Reck by BPC. Get rekt by Shamblings. Get reckt by Living Infernos, or by Halion. Sure thing, your call. Gets those two vindication, period. It has a virtually 100% uptime. Logs support it.

Last Word healing increase is of the order of 5% for small heals (Earth Shield/PoM) and below 2% for larger heals (LHW, HW, HL). Mithios NM is a flat 1.58% avoidance, and you know well that this is over a 20% decrease in the chance of getting 3 hits in a row, and that alone is worth a great deal. So no. Last Word is not a good weapon for survival. Divinity is a talent point that you can take without sacrificing any other avoidance/damage reduction talents, Last Word is a huge sacrifice in survivability if taken. Big no-no there.

You mention yourself the 'hidden' caps in resistance. The magical values that guarantee better worst case.

The AM being broken is that if two or more players are using the same aura at the same time, and one uses Aura Mastery, he cannot guarantees his AM will be affecting anyone but himself, because he may not be the one providing his aura to other players (since two or more players are assumed to be on the same aura). Most likely inintented behavior, when he uses AM he should provide. It is currently not the case. Watch your Shadow resistance while under your own Shadow Aura when another paladin uses Aura Mastery on Shadow Aura too, you'll see.

Its funny how i didnt get Reck or Rekt or Reckt by any of those NPCs ever. And i never speced into Vindication.

Vindication is not a relyable in comparison to both Demo Shouts feral and warrior give, even if they are not improved aka 5/5 in talents. If its duration was longer than 10sec than it would be just as good. Besides, as alrdy stated, going deeper in Holy tree is more usefull than going deeper in Ret tree.
And from what i know, even 1/2 Vindication removes any Shout thats same or better than that.

As for Last Word and Divinity, if you need those 10% healing increase in total, and without it u would die constantly, it is usefull.
Otherwise, if u can live without both of them, i dont think you should use it at all, and that point is when you get close or to BiS itemisation.
I find both Avoidance and extra TPS more usefull there, cos if any of the MDs missclick or fail, you will be able to cover it, and since you are getting instantly topped from heals, avoiding the dmg is better than getting some minor extra healing.

As for AM argument, in a 25m Raid, you shoudnt have a problem where 2 players have same aura.
In any situation you can make a paladin lose/remove his aura so the one with AM can use his.

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Originally Posted by Bleu

Get Reck by BPC. Get rekt by Shamblings. Get reckt by Living Infernos, or by Halion.

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what

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Originally Posted by Bleu

Last Word healing increase is of the order of 5% for small heals (Earth Shield/PoM) and below 2% for larger heals (LHW, HW, HL). Mithios NM is a flat 1.58% avoidance, and you know well that this is over a 20% decrease in the chance of getting 3 hits in a row, and that alone is worth a great deal. So no. Last Word is not a good weapon for survival. Divinity is a talent point that you can take without sacrificing any other avoidance/damage reduction talents, Last Word is a huge sacrifice in survivability if taken. Big no-no there.

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I find it amusing that you're saying this after getting all hot and bothered about people not agreeing that the Divinity talent is mandatory. On the point of sacrificing things for the Divinity talent, you most certainly do. Whether you consider those things valuable is another matter, but that does not change that you are sacrificing other bonuses for it.

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Originally Posted by Bleu

The AM being broken is that if two or more players are using the same aura at the same time, and one uses Aura Mastery, he cannot guarantees his AM will be affecting anyone but himself, because he may not be the one providing his aura to other players (since two or more players are assumed to be on the same aura). Most likely inintented behavior, when he uses AM he should provide. It is currently not the case. Watch your Shadow resistance while under your own Shadow Aura when another paladin uses Aura Mastery on Shadow Aura too, you'll see.

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Is it really so hard for some people to coordinate their auras? We're all uber super amazing pr0z at all these other things, but we can't coordinate exchanging auras.

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TL;DR: Once you have picked up all necessary talents, Divinity is your best survivability choice.

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The day people learn to read, they will understand that I never claimed that Divinity was a mandatory talent. I just claimed it being the highest survivability talent point remaining and gave its value. No one else bothered about that. No one. "Elistist Jerks and other guides don't mention Divinity as good so it must not be." So we just discard without even giving it a thought. So we just end up talking overhealing. Nonsense. Pure nonsense. When you die, you need to fix the reason why you died. When you lived, you don't need to fix anything. Were you getting overhealed the moment you died? No, you wouldn't be dead if it were the case. Yet people go around claiming Divinity is going to be overhealing all over the place. Stop. Surivability talents kick in only for the one and only time where they prevent your death. That's. It. Ever, only. You don't even care about dodging when you are getting overhealed and full HP. But you actually care about dodging because it reduces greatly the amount of time spend at low HP, when you are risking death. It's the same with Divinity, it reduces the time spent at low HP when you are are risk to die. Not by the same extent as the dodge or parry talent. But that's what I wrote. People can't read, people can't think, so they discard. Look at that:

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And il repeat it once again, if 99% of the times Divinity will be simply an overheal, not saving ur *** at all, its a waste of talents.

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Which is why the reference to trickle healing (HOTS) was made, because trickle heals are significantly less likely to overheal.

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Divinity wont help you, ever. Any talent point put into it is a complete waste.

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99% of the time the tank is alive and at full HP, so dodging the blow will not be lethal, so dodge is useless. Clever thinking right? Thanks for the reasoning.
99% of the time, heals are overhealing the tank so healing is actually not going to save your ***, so it's a waste of mana.
99% of the time the critical part of a Holy Light will cause overheal, so critical talents are a waste. Supersmart reasoning going on here guys, right?

Now the day some other people learn to read they will also see that picking up Divinity doesn't require you to drop any survivability talent. As opposed to picking Last Word as weapon who requires you to not equip a defense/dodge weapon. I fing it really amusing the fact that all your answer so far bring nothing, absolutely nothing constructive to the thread. What's more amusing is that you don't even seem to grasp the difference between talents and weapons? Nah, you actually are able to tell the difference but that wouldn't allow you to write amusing replies, so you overlooked.

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Originally Posted by Bleu
Get Reck by BPC. Get rekt by Shamblings. Get reckt by Living Infernos, or by Halion.

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Learn to read too. Anytime you are supposed pickup any boss/any adds that your warrior or druid cannot reach, dropping vindication means not having a Demo Shout or equivalent here, meaning higher damage in take. But people don't get the slighest of brains, and can't figure out the meaning of things, so they take it literally. And while I was never able to find out of the amount of damage reduction that AP reduction provide, I estimate it to be roughly around 25% for bosses, and for sure in the 15-30% range. Real bad luck may cause an enraged Shambling to hit you, and an enraged Shambling can hit for a good 60k in your face if not Demo Shouted. That's more than my own HP so I'll go on and Demo Shout it myself whenever it's my job to offtank the phase one.

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Is it really so hard for some people to coordinate their auras? We're all uber super amazing pr0z at all these other things, but we can't coordinate exchanging auras.

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Your ...* comment doesn't change the fact that a player not aware of this behavior won't guess by himself and may fail to provide Aura Mastery from the raid. Luckily someone apparently really stupid and clueless mentioned the current behavior so now people know they have to aura swap every single time. And echanging aura is causing GCD loses all over the place, while that is of no matter for tanks and retribution paladins, your holy paladin will love to loose GCDs. And on top of that, player not using macros for aura swaping used to be not able to swap if all auras were taken.
(*) fill in the elipsis here with whatever you feel like.

Spoiler: Show

Thanks for you extremly constructive comments. Really appreciated.

So, i guess if you ever make a Blood DK tank, you would spec into 2/2 Improved Blood Presence cos u get 4% of dmg dealt as HP, and you want to get as much heals as posible right? Mark of blood, great tool noone use and still manage to down bosses, but i guess they are also dumb for not speccing into it? Doesnt matter if its never going to help you in any way, or make any diference. (I guess bloodworms are also an awesome 3 talent points to have aswell, right?)
Supersmart reasoning here aswell?

Also, avoidance is there mainly to save you in a tough spot, where healer has to move, or is grabbed by a valk, or something else happens. At that point you want 5% more avoidance rather than 5% of more healing that is not happening in the first place.

1 talent for 1% increase in healing is not a good trade.
End of discussion.
Reason behind it is simply cos heals are too strong for that 1% to matter, on top of tanks constantly being droped and healed by 50% of their HP which is arround 40k HP.

You can come here and go in a circle all day and keep saying how Divinity will help you, it simply wont.
There is a good reason tanks are not dieing without that talents, and that is cos it does not matter.
You can simply drop both Divinity and Last Word and keep surviving to prove me right, but i guess ur ego wont let that happen.

The only trade you have is TPS for Divinity, and if you are confident in your aggro to lose 5 talent points and never have any issues with it, feel free to go Divinity.

As for GCD lost, u are just playing SS3dumb now.
To lose **** ton of raid dmg, for 1 gcd, is nothing in comparison to all the extra healing you would have to do otherwise and all the mana lost on top of it all.
You can change the aura while repositioning yourself as a healer and not lose anything btw, but i guess you are too dense to admit even that.
Idk where and how you raid, but in an organised raid with Discord or TeamSpeak, people talk about CDs and if they have AM or not. Also, you talk about it way before the dmg even happens, so you have a lot of time to ajust before it hits you.

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Reason behind it is simply cos heals are too strong for that 1% to matter, on top of tanks constantly being droped and healed by 50% of their HP which is arround 40k HP.

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Hum, well it happens that 50% of the tank HP is 28.4k. And we are not getting the 30% increased healing from the ICC aura... because it is not here. Heals are not too strong.

The ICC aura is roughly equivalent to a permaent 30% damage reduction (when compared to not having the aura). Lots of things change we you have have such a strong CD permanently on you.

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The only trade you have is TPS for Divinity, and if you are confident in your aggro to lose 5 talent points and never have any issues with it, feel free to go Divinity.

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So finally we aggree.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming AM shouldn't be used and as a matter of fact we use a clear AM rotation,Ii'm just mentionning it's bugged/buggy/annoying and causes GCD loss on your Holy Paladins. And at some point on LK 10HC in phase 1, a GCD at the wrong moment on a healer could mean a that the tank would die. 45k hits when you have 52-58k HP, you know.

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0.00: The Lich King's Attack -40.5K (37.7K)
-0.73: Akwart's Beacon of Light +12.6K (37.7K)
-1.45: Zabourhend's Ancestral Awakening +7.0K (25.1K)
-1.77: Zabourhend's Earth Shield +3.6K (18.2K)
-1.81: The Lich King's Attack -44.0K (58.5K)

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But we were undergeared and there was no way to survive besides pure luck. So it's on us. Divinity would have caused 1.16k healing. Not enough to save him, but closer from being saved.

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Originally Posted by Bleu

Last Word healing increase is of the order of 5% for small heals (Earth Shield/PoM) and below 2% for larger heals (LHW, HW, HL). Mithios NM is a flat 1.58% avoidance, and you know well that this is over a 20% decrease in the chance of getting 3 hits in a row, and that alone is worth a great deal. So no. Last Word is not a good weapon for survival. Divinity is a talent point that you can take without sacrificing any other avoidance/damage reduction talents, Last Word is a huge sacrifice in survivability if taken. Big no-no there.

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Heroic Last Word is 340 extra spellpower on your healer's direct healing abilities. A look at the spellpower coefficients of Holy Light, Healing Wave, or LHW will clearly show that you're miscalculating its healing increase by more than half. It's a lot closer to 5-6% increased healing on these spells.

Your appraisal of the avoidance on Mithrios is also pretty questionable.

Firstly, I'm unclear where you get the 20% decrease from. I'm also not sure that I understand what you're referring to with it.

Assuming 40% avoidance inside ICC, your odds of being hit 3x in a row are 0.6*3 = 21.6%. Bumping your avoidance up to 41.5% (hc Mithrios increases my avoidance by about 1.5%) brings your odds of being hit 3x down to around 20%. I don't see where you acquire a 20% figure. I think you might have been comparing the 21.6 and 20% figures, but even then the latter is only about 8% less than the former.

The other thing that you're losing sight of has to do with the most fundamental issue with avoidance, i.e. its unpredictability. Last Word isn't a sacrifice in survivability; it's a sacrifice in avoidance. Your remaining Effective Health at the moment of a boss hit while at a health deficit (i.e. while not being at 100% HP) is in major part a function of the healing intake you received since the last time you were at full health. Healing-taken increases like Last Word and Divinity therefore directly increase this. The argument for using Last Word over Mithrios shares a similar basis behind why emphasizing Effective Health over Avoidance in general is the favoured tank-building philosophy - it shifts the focus from wild and untamed RNG to consistent and reliable survivability.

Divinity and Last Word both cumulatively offer about ~10% or so increased healing on several of the most critical healing sources, and from a healer PoV it's also stupidly clear that a tank that takes about 10% more healing is going to have a much easier time surviving and being healed up than a tank that doesn't have that.

About Last Word

Refer to DarkenedHue post about the weapon. Didn't expect the mechanics of the weapon the be that much of a powerful healing increase (of the order of 4-5%) according to said post.

About Avoidance vs. Heal increase effect:

About the Mithrios you're right, I had in mind Insect Swarm, who is a flat 3% avoidance (2x as much as Mitrhios). So yes Mithrios is only a 8% decrease (Insect Swarm is the 20% one [14% actually]). And you are always and always should be comparing the 21.6% (3x hits chance w/out Mithrios) and the 20.0% (3x hit chance w/ Mithrios) because what you notice is the relative increase/decrease not the overall one. The same goes for armour, you always compare the relative change : going from 71% to 72% is a 1%/29% = 3.44% reduction is physical damage. A 72% armour tank takes 3.44% less physical damage than a 71% armour tank.

You are right and wrong about avoidance. Yes avoidance is unpredictable. But keep in mind, any tank can be 3 hit dead on Lordearon, even through 20% damage decrease cooldowns : Sindragosa hits for 35k. 3x hits is 105k, bears have around 70k HP while paladins are around 56k. So what do you aim at?

• Reliabable EHP from heal increase? We saw that 4-5% heal increase is in the range of 1.6k - 5k worth of EHP, depending on scenario. You'll still die.
• Unreliable Avoidance by reducing the worst case chance (the 3hits in a row) by a relative 8%? You'll unreliably survive.

The EHP solution may or may not save you. Usually, its on the "may not save you" side. 3 hits in a row mean 105k damage, with 56k HP you'll need 49k healing to happen to save you from dying, and another 40k to get you back to a points where you are able to survive the next blow, all this in the 3.6s+1.8s window of the 3+1x hits. That's 7 non-crit Holy Lights or non-crit Healing Waves (assuming ES/PoM/Seed/hots will have ticked for 10k, reliably).
The avoidance solution may not save you either, but it reduce the chance of that worst scenario by "a lot" and therefore ensures higher uptime on the Ardent Defender talent "life saving" part and therefore... makes you live a little bit more often.

On the other hand, when you are playing with a 30% health increase, then you are sitting at around 73k HP, which means the healing of 105k damage is only 32k to save you from dying and another 40k to make you survive the next hit. That's merely 4 non-crit Holy Lights or Healing Waves (ES/PoM/Seed/Hots will have reliably ticked for 13k).... and there you can very reliably survive by aiming at healing increase effects over avoidance. But avoidance will save you too here, anyway, because your Ardent is very unlikely to go off.

TL;DR: Yes with the 30% ICC aura, healing increase can be the way to go, over avoidance. Without the 30% aura, this is not clear cut at all. Mithrios avoidance could be the way to go over Lad Word heal increase.

And that only apply to choosing Mithrios vs. Last Word. You should not favour heal increase talents over avoidance, nor should you be favouring avoidance over armour, will result in you taking 10% increased damage and you'll be dead in 2 hits, and avoidance here will never be of any help. You could, maybe, try to favour Crusader Glory over Mithrios (the highest ilvl tanking weapon with armour), but that's actually a no-no against Dragons (parry-haste). But Mithrios is also big threat weapon over Crusder Glory so well...

Side note: That's why the 4P T10 of paladins is the best set bonus of all tanks. But that ain't really true anymore if you have the 30% aura. It lowers the chance of 3x hit by a massive 47% for whenever your healers are out of commission.
Side note: Tanking ICC with the 30% aura is the same as tanking ICC without the aura but having a 30% damage reduction cooldown permanently on you. Whatever makes you survive ICC without the aura will make you easily survive the ICC with the aura.
Side note: don't go on and quote me saying that I was defending Divinity and now I defend avoidance over heal increase. Cause that's misreading all I'm writing. Divinity is a talent that you can take without sacrificing a single avoidance talent. Last Word is a weapon, blah, blah.
Side note: That's why Libram of the Sacred Shield is a bad choice. Not only is it unreliable because not all hits can be blocked, and the extra 600 block, in the 3x hit scenario is a 1.8k best-case EHP, whereas Libram of the Eternal Tower will be around 3-4% avoidance. It's like replacing Last Word with 2-3 Mithrios.

Edit: Was completely off concerning Last Word mechanics.

@NainVert

Do you even know how spell power and healing spells work?

And how can avoidance be the best stat to go for?
Both DK and Druid 4/5 T10 are a lot better since its more reliable.
Do you even know how bad rng works?
Why are u even going for Armour wrist and belt, even tho they are 264 ilvl, if avoidance is better?

Edited.

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And how can avoidance be the best stat to go for?

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You are posting replies without even bothering to read. Don't bother to post please. Quoting myself since you can't read yourself.

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And that only apply to choosing Mithrios vs. Last Word. You should not favour heal increase talents over avoidance, nor should you be favouring avoidance over armour, which would result in you taking 10% increased damage and you'll be dead in 2 hits, and avoidance here will never be of any help.

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"Side note: That's why the 4P T10 of paladins is the best set bonus of all tanks."

I was refering to this, since DKs and Paladins 4/5 T10 are basicly Armour vs Avoidance bonuses, didnt ask my question right i guess...
Anyhow, still doesnt answers the question about how is Last Word 1.7% healing increase?

P.S. dont you think healing increase effect and armour works a bit similar? One reduces the dmg u take by 10% other increases the healing on you by 10%?

Well armor damage reduction gain happens before the damage is taken while healing increase happens after the damage is taken and that's the only difference. On a tank with an overly massive HP pool, who never gets close to die, x% damage reduction from armor is the same as x% healing increase. On a tank that often gets to low hp, ie. often at a risk from dying, armor is always there, while healing increase once the blow has taken you to 0 hp... is of no use.

Let's put it like that: you have around 60k HP, so a 10% healing increase makes you end up with around 5k more EHP that a tank without that same healing increase. You are taking 35k hits, so that healing increase saves you in the few cases where it brings your from below the 35k HP to above the 35k HP limit. If it does not bring you above the limit, you will die the same ways as a tank without healing increase. So well, make up whatever you want from that fact. Maxing out EHP equivalents (healing increase) is good when you have and EHP which is already really really large in comparison to the boss hits. I'm never talking about not going for your pure EHP stats (damage reduction, armor, stamina) I'm talking about not always going for the EHP equivalent, the heal increase.

Now think about these two not-so-realistic cases:

• A tank with 100k HP, 72% armor, 0 avoidance, 10% healing increase
• A tank with 100k HP, 72% armor, 40% avoidance, 0% healing increase

Who dies, who lives? I'm quoting from the post on Last Word.

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but I would wager a lot that most of the time a tank dies, it's less because he literally received no healing for a small period (...which isn't to say that it doesn't happen), and more because he did receive some healing, but it just wasn't enough.

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The 0 avoidance tank will never make it through, he's getting butchered by permanent 35k hits, chances are the healers will eventually not make it. The tank with 40% avoidance is way more likely to survive because ever so often, the dodge/miss/parry is giving the healers the time they needed to catch up with healing. Of course that example is not a realistic one, there is no 40% avoidance item in the game, blah, blah, but at least it shows that avoidance has an "unexpected" value. On the other hand, if the boss is a soft hitting boss, much like Rotface, that 1st tank will just never die because a single heal with always top him, because the damage intake is to small to ever kill a tank there. There some sort of breakpoint where damage intake on the tank beats the healing output of the healers and where avoidance gains in value by it's ability of cutting down the stream of incoming damage.

For instance, yesterday I was tanking RS inside, and the boss damage is a stream of

• 2300 Shadow damage every 2s(?) from the shadow aura
• 20-25k melee swing
• 20-30k breath

We are running a 2 healer setup inside, and one clear thing is that dodge/miss/parry = I get topped. Also the cases of 3hits in a row are almost always dinging the low hp warning, but luckily Halion is casting breath every 4th or 5th melee swing which are giving extra time for the healers to top me and extra warning about pre-healing the damage. So what do I learn from that? Well that I will keep trying to get as much avoidance as I can (over Last Word heal increase). Because any dodge of any of Halion's melee guarantees me that I'll not get killed till the next breath, and again, breath in the shadow realm is a tank-saver by giving enough time and a fair warning to the healers "TOP THE TANK" kind of thing. On the other hand, extra healing from Last Word here? Between each breath, I'm taking at most 155k damage (25k*5 + 30k). 5% extra healing is therefore 7.7k at most. (Plus I'm systematically getting topped instantly after the breath so the heal increase of Last Word is rather 6.3k at most). Not really going to cut it. It'd rather increase my chances to dodge at least one hit out of the 5 hits by 10% than take an extra 7.7k healing over the course of these 5 swings.

Now on the 4P T10. Imagine I'm in that RS scenario, and my Holy Paladin gets the Soul Comsumption. His nitro boots are not up because he already used them, and my wall is not up because I already used them when he previously got the debuff without the nitro boots. Same deal about Divine Sac, cause I used it on the raid when my Restoration Shaman go the debuff and had no his nitro on cooldown. I'm left with 4P T10. At 40% avoidance, my chances of not dodging with the 4P T10 are 67% lower than without it. So I roll a fairly favourable dice that will give me a 67% chance to dodge 25k damage in the worst case scenario, while a druid doesn't roll any dice and gets a guaranteed 15k reduction in the worst case scenario. If we're not in the worst case scenario when we can't die eitherway, cause one of the hits is a dodge and any shaman will have a million times the amount of time necessary to top either of us. So in the worst case scenario, I'm unreliably going to survive easier than the druid. On average my 4PT10 is a higher damage intake reduction than a Druid's or a DK's. But we agree, it's only on average and it's not guaranteed, RNG can be a *****. So Ardent will proc, ok,

I didnt know Milthrios over Last Word gives u 40% avoidance. My god... The example u made is so dumb, its painfull.

No tank will have 0% avoidance. Ever.
The main diference btwn Last Word and Milthrios is TPS loss and losing 2% avoidance for 5% more healing on you.
Again, i was against Last Word, and im not using it on my Paladin, mainly cos i dont have a problem when it comes to survival.
When facing buffed content with less gear on ur tanks, any healing increase and any extra EHP is more than welcome.
You can pray to rng gods all day long, but that is not the smart way of building your tank.
In your scenario, of 35k constant hits, u are forgeting the passive effect of Ardent, which also gives those 5% extra healing from Last Word some extra value.
Also, on top of all that, if u wer to die with Last Word, u would 99% die with Milthrios aswell (gl with that 1% duo to extra avoidance). In long fights there is no guarante that u will dodge an attack when u need it the most, but there is when u use extra dmg reduction that u will lower any incoming dmg 100%.

Im not saying avoidance is bad, as u said it urself, it makes tanking and healing a lot easyer when it happens, but its pure RNG, just as healer getting a debuff inside when u and everyone inside dont have any CDs left (Sacs, Dsacs, All other deff cds). At that point u will die with or without 2% extra avoidance (i know its less than 2, im just giving u some more since it wont matter).

When u are 10000% sure you can survive any situation that can happen without Divinity and Last Word, than you go for Avoidance and TPS, BUT, only if those items give more stats overall, aka 277 ilvl weapon vs 284 ilvl weapon.

4/5T10 is an awesome tool to have with Glyph of Salvation, but its not better than flat 12% all dmg reduction DKs have. And that is a fact.

My example with a tank with 0% avoidance is a (quoting myself) not-so-realistic example to pinpoint what effect of avoidance is the beneficial effect. Of course I'm aware that all tanks will have around 40% avoidance. But you fail to see that I'm just looking at what effect of avoidance saves you. It's not dodging a blow, it's regularly (with really high probability) avoiding hits. I'll do some maths someday to show the probability of having a long (3,4,5 or more) sequence of hits in a row as a function of your avoidance.

Well, 1.5% avoidance... is a 8% reduction in the chance of a triple hits in a row. So it's not "little". And the passive effect of Ardent is here no matter if you have healing increase or not so I don't really see where it gives extra value to heal increase effects. (It actually would give less value to healing increase, because taking less damage means that less heals are required to top you, means that less heals are provided by healing increase).

Minimize the chance of the worst-case scenario, and minimize the damage of the worst-case scenario, Ardent will be available longer, and so you'll leave longer. All in all, anyway, it's a 1 item pickup, and not an overall gearing dilemma. In most cases 1 item (besides a trinket) will never really influence greatly your survivability. For weapons, my pickup is TPS > Avoidance > Heal Increase. Unless I run with a million hunters. Unless I know for sure I'm off-tanking, but that's almost never my case.

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4/5T10 is an awesome tool to have with Glyph of Salvation, but its not better than flat 12% all dmg reduction DKs have. And that is a fact.

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Making the assumption "4PT10 on DK is better than 4PT10 Paladin" leads to the conclusion that "4PT10 on DK is better than 4PT10 on Paladin". The initial assumption could be wrong. Who knows. On average 12% avoidance is always a higher damage reduction than 12% damage reduction. But it comes by unreliable chunks instead of small bits. Which one will yield higher survivability? That ain't a clear cut. I don't die, but I don't have dead DK tanks to compare to either.

I know exactly what you said, my point is that you used a really bad example to prove ur point.
Ur example would be good if 1 tank had 40% avoidance and 0% extra healing, and the other had 0% avoidance and 40% extra healing. See what i did there? 40% healing wins every day. Why? Cos u have more than 2 healers healing, and there is not a single mechanic that will make them all unable to heal u for more than 2-3 sec.
If there wer more trades in items like: remove 1.5% avoidance, gain 5% healing, you think tanks would go for avoidance?

Do you know how low is 8% not to get hit 3 times in a row? On top of that, its just as unreliable as 12% 4PT10 is. But i see there is no use...

One would think that there is a good reason, a really good reason, why, when facing LK u go for Armor and Stamina over avoidance, even tho u chose the lower level items. Realiable dmg reduction is better. End of discussion.

This patch is set in stone long time ago.
Spam healing the tank is the best way to heal end game content.
Getting as much EHP is the best way to tank end game content. If you have trouble surviving u trade avoidance for EHP and any posible healing increase effect. If you are at the point where any extra EHP and healing on you wont make a diference u go for TPS and Avoidance. Its simple as that.

P.S. GL dodging Sindras breath, where, again, DK and Bear 4PT10 is better.