I am noticing that your gear is really being gauged at a glance in this xpac by how much hp you have. I see it all the time, an SK or a monk with 1.7b hp that goes down every 30 seconds with multiple healers, itn3-500m hp worth 50% block and 30% mitigation in your spec? If i spec my paladin for HP i am over 1b unbuffed BUT severely reduce all other stats, when im specced moderatley for hp and defense i am around just shy of 1b buffed........but i never go down.......what is everyones feelings on this?
In my own (and multiple others) tests, mitigation and block have very little effect. Block for plate tanks caps at somewhere between 15-20%, after that it does very little. Ive noticed very little benefit above 30k mit self buffed as well. I've never been one to be a 'paper tank', but honestly with the current mechanics, the plate tank defenses are near useless. Monks are an entirely different story, their abilities/evasions/stoneskins seem to be alive and well (our monk can easiliy out tank our pallies and SK combined). They tend to avoid the big hits much better. The other issue is block/mit does nothing against spells, and a lot of the BIG spike damage comes from spells. Since resists are now pretty generic, the only way to deal with this is more health (which helps both physical and spell damage).
Hp has little bearing on how you will do as a tank. The damage is designed to either outright kill you or you don't get hit hard enough. Outside of brawlers, avoidance (block) does nothing for plate tanks. Your best bet is to use 100% avoidance skills to avoid big hits but that does not always work on some of the scripted incoming damage. I have main tanked everything on my guard up to the first first boss in Vex 2 raid zone and since the launch of RoS my mitigation has not gone above 24k and avoidance around 55% with 8% uncontested avoidance. I think i wear one item with mitigation still and that is the celestial bp from last expansion the rest is mostly cast speed/ability double cast/re use gear. The mitigation/block has been de-activated (although never officially acknowledged) since BoL. As for high hp, i have gone all potency on bardings and hover around 1.4 bil. So far never felt the need to swap in for hp stuff. Not sure why anybody is guaging you by your hp. There is no reason to. Often the thing that will kill you in raid is going to far surpass the hp/mit/block you will ever have. Crusaders get the short end of the stick because whatever mechanic they have in place for tank defense is not equally spread across all plate tanks. We are all caster tanks these days...
So, as my experience as an end-game raider. HP doesn't matter that much until you reach T4 mobs and thats a stretch even, nothing will even come close to killing you even with like 600mill HP, lets be real. Most of it is how well do you temp and how well can you call out stuff for your healers to cover you.
Exactly, as pally we have very few 'stoneskins' and our 40% damage reductions are inadequate at times to keep us alive. We were hoping for fixes to this with the class upgrades, but instead they chose to give us a bit more DPS and better heals. It's hard to heal when you're dead. Ultimately, I still find going for pure health against such mobs buys me the most time. No, it wont stop a 4B hit, but I can get my own health to over 2B, plus wards, damage reductions, etc and I can at least survive a few of the big hits without getting intimate with the dirt....
I find that spending 8 prestige points in Enhanced Vigor and stacking potency and cb like everyone else is sufficient for tanking everything.
