Quote Originally Posted by Shougun View Post
snip
The issue is simply one of scaling, and timing. Mitigation does not scale with gear, apart from a small margin given through Defense, which in turn decreases the effectiveness of mitigating skills, however slightly. Damage and healing will always increase with gear, to the point that frequently the healing benefits of Defiance comes to outweigh the mitigation benefits of Shield Oath or Grit, simply because your healer's stats so outweigh that of all mobs attacking you. As long as the one output is dependent on a group of mobs whose stats will not increase past the largest possible pull (which are continually gated), it will eventually fall behind the one that is not thus gated. At that point the only question becomes whose dps is worth more -- the healer's or mine -- over which stretches of time, and just how much a difference is necessary in order to warrant a change of stance (especially in the case of Paladin, who cannot chance oGCD in either direction).

If you're condemned to a slow DF run, so be it, but that is not an example of *any* sort of optimization.