Originally Posted by
Atrea
Blanket statements are bad. Very, very bad.
The simple fact of the matter is, effective health - derived from stamina and armor - is still the strongest method of tank survival.
While dodge and parry are stats that are wonderful to have on your gear, gemming for them produces such mediocre results, that it is often detrimental to do so.
On the other hand, Mastery, at least insofar as Warriors and Paladins goes, is a very useful stat. It is, is in essence, block rating that is not affected by diminishing returns, and scales far better than dodge or parry. Reforging dodge or parry often results in a net gain of avoidance.
The reason effective health and mastery are more efficient mitigation methods, is because it makes your incoming damage predictable. Spiky tank damage often leaves healers overhealing, or even underhealing.
If a healer knows you will take approximately 30000 damage - which is 1/6th of your health pool - every 2 seconds or so, with an occasional stop here or there, they can respond accordingly.
However, if you are taking 40000 damage - which is 1/3 of your (substantially lower) health pool - every 4 seconds or so, with a pause at random intervals - but not always, it becomes very frustrating to heal effectively. The damage sustained is not only an overall greater amount - remember, the second part of Effective Health is armor - but it is erratic, and it basically introduces RNG into an equation with far more variables than people care to admit.
Furthermore, in almost no case, is it a simple tank & spank, physical damage fight.
The majority of bosses so far utilize a fair percentage - I would say it varies from 100% to 25% - magical damage.
There are stuns, movement, etc - all of which remove any dodge or parry (or block for that matter) from the fight.
An extra buffer of 20000 HP can often make the difference between life or death.