The Spirit Realm

Spellshield is generally ranked highest in neccessity, because nuke procs or dd AEs can make you dead immediately. DoT shielding will generally save you much more damage in the long run, but lacking it can be compensated for by burning ltos more mana on healing. That's not an ideal situation, but it's better than what has to be done to compensate for "dead" from lack of spellshield. Stun Resist is about making your life less aggravating because you'll be able to function more consistently; it's much less crucial for tanks than casters. You're correct about Acc/Cfx/Strk: pick em up when you can, but they don't boost core job performance.

I'm not fully sure what the combat effects mod affects, but could it be argued that maxing it can increase the proc rate of Ward of Tunare, thus being a significant one to max out? Is WoT affected by combat effect mods at all?

I'd love to have someone correct me, but I'm pretty sure that combat effects increases the rate of weapon procs, but not procs from spells.

That being said, I like combat effects. DA procs more often, gate hammer procs sooner, more lifetaps, more group heals from BoFF, quicker snare from Anklesmasher, etc. etc. Not a huge priority, but nice to have.

+cfx only modifies proc rates from weapon-resident procs. Innate procs (for shadowknights) and buff procs and defensive procs and song procs.. and ... any others I may have forgotten are not modified.

avoidance>shielding>stun resist>DD resist>DoT resist
i couldn't rank melee effects because i honestly don't really care about them. combat effects would most likely be my highest melee effect (as more weapon procs = good for so many reasons.)

lol brohg,
there's more to it i know but that's my passing understanding having fought nothing with a dot that could kill me
the rest comes from advice from pals further along

yeah, cfx won't effect wot because wot's getting it's proc rate directly from the frequency of hits you take, aka every chance you get hit has a chance to proc it

The big thing about dot and spell shielding for a paladin is we are usually not the ones who are the reason we need to group heal in raid groups. Due to this, it just isnt as big a deal as it is for people with lower hp, and people without the ability to heal themselves. When it comes to avoidance and shielding, a knight needs to always be prepared to tank something that hits hard, as that could actually save the raid a wipe, and a lot of wasted time. Lack of spell and dot shielding wont do the same thing as avoidance and shielding and that is one reason everybody touts them above ss and dot ss...well, that, and there is more to eq than just raiding, and if you want to tank 2 to 3 mobs in a frostcrypt gropu, you will need both fairly high.

Stun resist is just good stuff. Nothing sucks as bad as your group needing a heal, then a 10 second ae stun hitting the raid and your stuck standing there watching something kill your groupmates.

As for the melee mods, combat effects then accuracy, then strikethrough. CE helps on raids, accuracy helps in group/solo, and strikethrough is just extra damage, damage i wouldnt of went with till they added a filter for the spam from it a few months back.