Ashen Tank ring no longer 3rd BiS?

[Deleted]

Prior to the ICC buff at least, i'd heard many top end tanks who considered bonus armour over stamina actually preferred Loop of the Twin Val'kyr over Ashen Band of Endless Courage. The claims were that the 500 odd armour on the first ring makes up for the slight stamina defecit and that armour procs with a low chance to proc are the pits. So the Ashen Ring is left with a def advantage if you're still using +def enchants or gems to hit the def cap and some +hit for your taunt set.

I was planning on grinding ToGC10 for the ring but just about every nearly BiS tank is actually using the ashen ring instead. Is this a LK HC specific thing?

Edit: Lazeil takes bonus armour 264's over higher stamina 277's but takes the no armour rep ring over the loop.

[Gaffer]

I personally haven't calculated the differences, but would imagine that the stamina to armor trade off is smaller going from the 277 to 264 in the slots he's selected. 277 to 245 is a pretty large item level hit even if it is for a better itemized piece.

[Nillo]

Slightly better EH, at the cost of a rather big amount of avoidance some hit and a proc that is certainly better than nothing => I'd go for the rep ring any time.

[Deleted]

Assuming you socket 30 stamina gems the gap is only 10 base stamina. 150 HP in ICC. You mean pro raiders want avoidance over the EH? I've found avoidance to be quite crap in ICC with the buff on my healer but then again I haven't done many hard modes.