So, I think he’s right, and what it means is dodge is still the best avoidance stat, because you can’t deliberately gem/gear yourself below the 20% dodge threshold, which was the premise I had relied on. I changed my OP above to reflect this now, also commenting on time-to-live as a good measure for avoidance vs stamina.

That said, the second string of my argument holds: avoidance, at such low levels, does not have the same relative gains as it does at high avoidance levels, so it’s (imho) not worth it compared to stamina. That’s for the same reason stamina is currently (and always has been) so popular.

Recall, this is only in regards to your discretionary item budget, which is gems and enchants, so perhaps ~5% at most avoidance, or its equivalent in stamina about 337 stamina (3400 hp or so).

On the stamina point – I agree that healer throughput is a key driver, and it remains to be seen how much “wiggle room” we have in gearing to gear for reduced damage rather than having to stack stamina to be a mana sponge.

My premise is that healer throughput is not the problem (ie. health/second healed), therefore stamina is going to net the most tanking benefit relative to avoidance, given parry is crap (diminishing returns) and dodge is now worse (aura), meaning also defence gems are less valuable for DKs (new thought:  maybe defence will be more valuable for block tanks since it improves block too?). Avoidance helps offset low healer throughput.

If healers have enough throughput, then stamina gives a great return (which is my view at the moment).

If I’m wrong on healers, then avoidance will have some value even in its diminished/aura’d state. How much would take more maths.

On avoidance, if you have 60% avoidance now, you’ll have 40% in Icecrown (if you had > 20% dodge, which is a reasonable assumption). In Icecrown if you add 1% avoidance, that’s a gain of 2.5% avoidance, or inversed (more useful), you take 1.7% less damage (ie. 59% damage recieved instead of 60% received). In contrast outside Icecrown, at 60% if you add 1% you gain 1.6% avoidance and take less 2.5% less damage. We know this, just re-stating it for convenience. At high avoidance levels, an incremental 1% is worth a lot more than at low avoidance levels in terms of how much damage you take. Therefore, since the total avoidance is now 20% lower, my view is the gain (1.6% less damage) is not as great as what you get from stamina.

Chev, yah. I remember healing on my druid often felt like whack-a-mole! I do like the point about more disc-priest-style healing changes; that could be fun.