this is true, we don't even bother CCing in heroics anymore, once you get some epics or even just heroic gear it all becomes much easier
the first few heroics we did our healers were drinking after like each pull, now its just chain pull till the boss
was in a pug the other day with a paly tank who was gemming all stam and the healer was giving him shit for it cause he was nearly impossible to heal
I certainly don't gem full stamina, but anyone would be a fool to think you don't need a decent health pool. I wanted to get around 150k or so HP with buffs before I stopped worrying as much about HP. I also want to use one stamina trinket and one avoidance trinket for that nice mixture (although, I wouldn't mind having two of each at my disposal so I can switch if I want).
I know this is common sense for some of you guys, but perhaps some of the newer players could find some value...
The old/proven rule for Tanks is to look at
<Big Nasty Boss's Big Nasty Attack>, then work on achieving enough HP/Mitigation to survive being hit by it
twice with a little cushion of life left that a good healer could still save your bacon. That allows a GDC here and there for your healers to make up for movement, Fkuc Ups, short lapses in attention, and/or the need/ability to toss a heal on a raid member without worrying about you dropping. Once there, Stam is no longer as high a priority and you could/should work on avoidance so you're less of a mana sponge, and threat
(if necessary).
Stam and armor is great because it's always there (like a good steady salary). As long as you manage the encounters to work within that boundary
(through CC, intelligent use of game mechanics, etc), then in theory you're always GTG. Sh*t does happen though.... So you want to stretch your Hit Point Salary. which brings us to:
I've always thought of avoidance like a bonus: It can really save your ass when you get it at the right time. You hardly notice it when times are good. More is generally better, since you have more frequent opportunity to cash in a freebie when that's all you have left. But it has a nasty habit of NOT being there when you really need it. And depending on it makes for very erratic "income". So, from a healer's perspective, it looks like your fine... fine.. fine.. then OMGWTF HE DROPPED IN 5 SECONDS. All because the RNG gods decided you were going to be flat footed for a little while.
*****
What I've done with the above:
At the moment, we seem to have decent HP
(I'm a little under 150K, unbuffed, as a Warrior. Up to 171 raid buffed/flasked, depending on trinkets), but avoidance is really low compared to WoTLK. Therefore, Avoidance is a bit more valuable than HP. So I'm gemming for socket bonuses with mixed Stam/Avoidance gems. I'm not reforging Mastery into Avoidance, but I do favor avoidance over mastery if the choice presents itself. My understanding is that by the time we are T11 geared, Mastery will be relatively more valuable. Just that in Blues we aren't quite to that point yet.
My $0.02, anyways...