MOD Edit: No more cataclysm discussion, MoP discussion goes here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1169016
So after having some time in heroics and on a few raid bosses I am noticing these things about level 85 tanking:
1.) Boss threat is a non-issue after first few seconds.
2.) Stamina is not the greatest end all stat anymore and more avoidance will help my healer's mana pools
3.) My self healing abilities and cooldowns are making those big hits I am taking not so bad and thus mastery very strong.
So I was originally reforging all my gear to get as close to hit cap as I could and as close to soft expertise cap as I could and then dumping the rest into mastery. I found that this dropped my overall dodge and parry by a significant margin while upping my blood shield mastery about 12%.
So I am thinking that since I already have decided to go down the route to Lichborne subspec (strong cooldown btw) that I could dump some of the filler points into one-handed spec for the 3% hit and switch to two tank one handers. I still want to be close to hit cap because interrupts are still important, but for threat I am currently not concerned with it (I know it will change as gear improves). My thought is to go with two tnak one handers and forgo the gargoyle enchant for the 4% parry total and dropping all my reforges I should be able to net about 8-10% avoidance in exchange for a small amount of stamina and the loss of hit cap. I don't feel like there are any downsides except for the occasional miss on an interrupt.
Right now with my two-hander with gargoyle and my average 341 iLvl gear where I went avoidance>mastery>hit>expertise for reforging I am at:
1.17% hit
9 expertise
77% blood shield
29359 Armor
15.38% dodge
14.31% parry.
Before the reforge it was more like 10% dodge parry and hit caps. If I drop the gargoyle and go with parry that drops about 2k health and about 1k less armor which I think is a super trade for 4% parry and basically free 3% hit.
What do you guys think?