With the addition of the Shifting Twilight Opal in 3.1, we should take a look now at whether this will be a better choice for your red sockets than the Regal Twilight Opal. (Sorry if my numbers aren’t exact to 3 decimal places, I rounded up to keep the math clean).

Regal Twilight Opal (with Kings)

8 dodge rating

• .2% dodge

13.2 stamina

• 150 hit points
• 4.4 spell power

Shifting Twilight Opal (with Kings)

8.8 agility

• .17% dodge
• 17.6 armor [.111% physical damage reduction]
• .17% melee crit [affects everything but taunts]

13.2 stamina

• 150 hit points
• 4.4 spell power

So, switching between the two, you gain 17.6 armor and .17% melee crit, but lose .03% dodge. Not a bad trade, and the avoidance losses are probably so minuscule as to make up for the damage reduction and threat gains.

Holy hell, is Blizzard trying to escape the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of dodge diminishing returns or what?

Check these out (from mmo-champion.com):

This is a serious upgrade to Monarch Crab. Right now I have my crab gemmed with a Solid Sky Sapphire and a Solid Dragon’s Eye, so it’s giving me 138 stamina and has the on-use proc for 300. The Heart is definitely a bump up on both counts.

This is like the Essence of Gossamer without the stamina. It’s nice, but I’d rather have the Heart of Iron. This is definitely a better fit in a trash set, since 205 damage being shaved off won’t be that much help when you’re taking multi-thousand HP hits.

But let’s talk about dodge. Right now I have 305 dodge rating, or 21% dodge. It’s not that much, but I’m already feeling my returns a-diminishing.

With these two trinkets equipped and procced, I’m looking at some serious lost dodge. I’m terrible at math but it looks like around 4% avoidance will just outright disappear.

How much avoidance are we going to see on gear in T9?

Paladins are lucky in that, due to our threat generally being generated via spells, we don’t have to worry much about expertise. Moreover, because of Holy Shield, and the fact that we can easily (well, compared to other tanks) because block-capped, the threat of parrygibs is nonexistent.

When it comes to expertise, a Paladin if talented and glyphed correctly will have baseline 16 expertise skill. 6 skill comes from the Combat Expertise 3/3 talent, and 10 comes from the Glyph of Seal of Vengeance. That 16 skills works out to 4% reduction to your attacks being dodged or parried. A boss has a baseline 6.5% chance to dodge attacks, and a baseline 16% chance to parry attacks. So, to start, Paladins are sitting pretty.

But what are the expertise caps for Paladins, you say?

To prevent a boss from dodging attacks, you need 26 skill, or 214 expertise rating. Due to the 16 skill we already have, we really only need an additional 10 skill, or 83 rating.

To prevent a boss from parrying (which again we don’t need to worry about–seriously, don’t work towards this number), you need 64 skill, or 525 rating. With baseline you only need an additional 48 skill, or 394 rating.

A personal beef of mine is seeing Paladins go out of their way to take gear with expertise on it. 83 is very easy to come by and can be picked up here and there on our tier pieces or items that are already considered excellent for us. There’s no need to dip into the other tanking classes’ sandboxes and take toys better suited for them.

Lastly, for the love of pete, don’t gem for expertise. Ever.