Personally, I believe that c/s/p are now essential and mitigation yet remains your primary means of % survivability on most, if not all, mobs. This is because:
1. Mobs hit v. hard now - and CRITICAL MELEE HITS ARE BACK! <- feckin sobs!
2. We have gained no significant direct hate generators in aas. Thus dps remains our key factor in hate.
3. Because of point 2 we MUST hit our mobs! even if they debuff us!
As i said in '[expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] have then done to us thread?' we do not have much a benefit as guardians would seem to have, so instead we must focus our abilities the best we can. So that means for
HATE + c/s/p as more hits = more hate. Can also go down dps lines.
MITIGATION + as much as you can. I dont think SoE has properly addressed it, they have nerfed its uber power with higher numbers. Which, maybe partly why we are seeing heroics hit so dam hard.
AVOIDANCE- I still dont believe this essential or at least it shouldnt be, this is the Monks/Bruisers areas of expertise. Granted you should not [Removed for Content] your avoidance... but if you concentrate on it... u will be a monk/bruiser wannabe and coz of the armour bonuses etc we can not hope to match em... so bascially ull just be a [Removed for Content] tank if you inc ur avoidance over to high of a level.
OTHER RESISTS Again if you look at parses i believe ull see that the autoattack on most of the mobs is still the principle area of damage.... so although other resists are more important i still dont think they are as important as mitigation.
Adorments can help you out. The + c/s/p one looks uber, so do the hp and power. I tend to go for mitigation more then nething, but at the same time i would choose more carefull with avoidance bonuses now. Coz its important to balance it now. And i believe power drain/gain proc are better then hp... most raids bosses youll find power a big issue. Once u run out, u cant spam CAs or Taunts.
As for the buckler i still thing its an efficient way of mainting agro, the extra hits it grants you are of great value coz you will hold agro with the double attack more then some who doesnt have it. hence not cheweing power up, it may be small but worth it. And personally i think the penalty removal aa line on def/off stance is still not that great, coz you still loose out on either miti or double attack or avoidance to get the aa points for it. Its better to get a adorment for it i believe, we should get the group c/s/p grp buff not guardians! ffs. Add our single zerk proc to our group proc one and give us that
Personally im tryin out the hp regen lines to see how it increases my % survivability in raids, the idea being that IF its significant enough, it means it may give healers an overall break, and MIGHT negate the guardians direct blocks w/ his/her shield over the looong run... but this is probably a load of balls.
So still think that its Mitigation -> hp -> other resists/avoidance. Instead of Mitigation -> hp -> avoidance -> other resists.... Although less sure of it then before, also im not at 100 aa points and not got all adorments + new lewtz from zones.