Prot. consumable question

[sarad]

This is far, far away, as my Paladin is only 65, but I was bouncing some ideas around earlier that I could use a little help with as I'm grabbing various BoE pieces and making consumables to get a head start.

Assume that I'm geared enough that if I gem a bunch of yellows, I can hit CTC cap. I'd assume, then, for raid consumables, I'd use parry or dodge food and a steelskin flask (but I could be wrong here xD). Could it, then, be benefical to replace 6 Mastery gems for stam gems and use elixir of the master (225 mastery) and a deep earth (900 armor) in place of the stam flask? It'd be 360 stam (gems) vs 450 (flask), but I'd gain 900 more armor.

This is my first plate tank (done some work tanking as a bear...much simpler; agility is the answer to all questions haha), so any help would be much appreciated.

Also, what happens when we pass CTC? I know warriors build crit block, but what about us?

[learntotank]

Assume that I'm geared enough that if I gem a bunch of yellows, I can hit CTC cap. I'd assume, then, for raid consumables, I'd use parry or dodge food and a steelskin flask (but I could be wrong here xD). Could it, then, be benefical to replace 6 Mastery gems for stam gems and use elixir of the master (225 mastery) and a deep earth (900 armor) in place of the stam flask? It'd be 360 stam (gems) vs 450 (flask), but I'd gain 900 more armor.

Yes, 900 Armor or 90 Resist (depending on the fight) would both be better options that Stamina. Only exception would be if that extra health is the difference between you getting living and dying (HMadness Impale).

Also, what happens when we pass CTC? I know warriors build crit block, but what about us?

Nothing, Mastery is wasted.

[Kurzior]

What you may actually want to do in a lot of cases is Elixir of the Master + Prismatic Elixir (+90 magic resist, all spell schools), as this will be more beneficial than a small amount of armor on most DS fights. Morchok is the only fight with no magic damage and Blackhorn is mostly physical, so deep earth is still a good choice on those fights. Stam is good too though, so that question is better answered by how geared/skilled your healers are. If they tend to have mana trouble, mitigation is going to win because you take less damage. If they tend to react slowly to damage, but don't have mana trouble, stam will give you some extra buffer to survive hits. If they don't have problems with either of these things, go with what works best for you.

As far as what we do beyond ctc, you'll reach that point fairly quickly. A few JP pieces and some gear from the Twilight heroic dungeons should get you close, and you'll definitely reach it in LFR gear. Past that you have a few options.
1 - Go for more dps by capping expertise and hit. Tank dps does matter in raids, especially in 10-man and if you plan to get into heroics. Don't do this at the expense of CTC, but its not a bad thing to go for after that.
2 - Stam. Nothing wrong with it. Plain and simple, it allows you to take more hits.
3 - Improve avoidance coverage. Although its less efficient in terms of stat allocation, you can try to dump mastery back into dodge/parry to improve your avoidance without dropping below CTC. Ultimately, you'll take fewer hits and less damage.

[underdogba]

If they tend to have mana trouble, mitigation is going to win because you take less damage.

In the current endgame content, tanks are never the reason healers get into mana trouble.

This is a horrifically oversimplified fairy-tale idea of how damage happens in a raid situation, it's just not as simple as "taking less damage". The distribution of the damage in terms of damage spikes is what matters for tank survivability. The reason that "mitigation" is considered the best method of dealing with that scenario is that for Paladins, mastery to CTC cap is the most bang for your buck as far as stat allocation in terms of smoothing out damage spikes, it has nothing to do with a tank taking less damage in general.