Originally Posted by
MasterDinadan
There are two schools of thought when it comes it mitigating physical damage.
If you use shield block often, mastery is the king stat. Dodge and parry are next though less valuable because you'll be blocking most attacks that get through anyway. Hit and expertise aren't needed much as you usually have enough rage to get full shield block uptime, extra rage just means the occasional shield barrier.
Other warriors forsake shield block entirely and use shield barrier all the time. In this case, dodge and parry are best for mitigating damage. Mastery does little since you rarely block to begin with. Hit and expertise can be a bit better since, unlike the shield block warrior, your finisher usage is not cool down capped. Every rage you earn can be pumped into barrier.
Neither strategy is better necessarily. The sims I've seen show that the shield barrier warrior tends to take less damage on average, but that his damage is spikier. The shield block warrior takes a bit more total damage but it is smoothed out. Pick one approach and go for it.
Also note that the above only applies to physical damage. The shield barrier approach looks better and better as more unblockable damage comes in, but I don't believe that there are many large unblockable tank spikes in this tier.