Post by zoomie
I dont have alot of experience tanking, but I would respectfully disagree with your statement that str is more important than hit. Hit is more important thatn str UNTIL you become hit capped, then str takes over (there is no point in being beyond hitcapped). Also expertise prevents your target from parrying and dodging (i think) your attacks. From a Melee dps standpoint its not important to have expertise at all (at least not for pallys) because melee dps should always be attacking from behind or at least the sides of the boss. As far as a tank goes, well he/she is always attacking from the front so I would imagine that some expertise would be useful to prevent your attacks from being parried or dodged thus lowering your threat. I could be wrong about all of this but from my understanding of palading class mechanics it seems logical.
Here is a
main tankadin link that discusses all our threat stats and which most affects our threat. It has some nice graphs and easy to read charts. Basically it says that strength is better than hit, followed closely by block value. Hit is basically always lower than strength for threat, unless you are at the block value cap. Because there are diminishing returns on block value, and strength adds to block value, strength loses a lot of its value when you get block value capped. Other than block value, strength also increases attack power which increases hammer of the righteous, seals and judgements, concecrate, avengers shield, and maybe even holy shield. Not sure about that one though. The bottom line is strength affects everything we have that we hit the boss with to get threat in one way or another, thats why it is so good. But once you are BV capped, it drops below hit.
As for expertise, melee dps does in fact need to be soft capped. Bosses can dodge, even if you are attacking from behind. Expertise isn't as important for a paladin than it is for a warrior because (I'm pretty sure) all warrior attacks can be dodged or parried. But for paladins it isn't the case. I can't remember off the top of my head which attacks can be dodged or parried, but not all of them can. I think hammer of the righteous can at least be parried so it should also be able to be dodged. Judgements I believe are either hit or miss, never dodged or parried. Concecrate doesn't get dodged or parried. I read in a discussion someone was saying that the DOT affect of seal of vengeance can be parried. Here is another
Main Tankadin link that discusses expertise. It is useful, but because not every attack can be dodged or parried, it isn't as great for us as it is to warriors.