It's called a soft cap.

Those people who call it a soft cap are less wrong than those who just call it a cap, but they're still wrong.

Describing 540 as any sort of "cap" may be good enough for those of us who already know how things work, but when a newbie tank hears it called a cap in trade then they're going to have a mistaken idea how it works. On every server I play on I've found people who think that Defense has zero benefit beyond 540, and they think this because they hear "Defense cap".

There's no reason to call it a cap and I can't understand why people still do. What's so hard about saying "at least 535 for Heroics, and at least 540 for raids"?

Yeah, going over 540 defense isn't a waste, but it just isn't ever gemming or enchanting for because any other stat per point is more valuable. It is purely stamina, stamina, stamina after you reach the defense cap because that is always more valuable after you are crit-capped. Even agility is a better stat once you get crit-capped, considering it increases armor, dodge chance, and crit chance, which more avoidance, mitigation and threat for tanking.

On an unrelated note, it is important to remember that you need to generate really good threat to beat out some of the people in random dungeons who are in ICC gear who will ALWAYS pull aggro when you have lesser epics.

Gemming for Protection Paladins tanking ICC, in a nutshell:

Stamina, unless:

Red socket that brings a bonus of +9 or higher Stamina - Agi/Stam
Yellow socket that brings a bonus of +12 Stamina - Def/Stam

If you're doing content that requires you to do more than just follow guidelines, you need to know how to figure these things out for yourself.

If you're new and tanking Heroics with over-geared DPS giving you a hard time:

Do your best and ignore the jerks.

Honestly, the best advice to anyone reading these comments is to ignore every comment and even the article itself, and instead go to Maintankadin and learn what it's all about.

On topic - http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=3&t=27782&rb_v=viewtopic

Oh, and Randomize? Kudos on "crit-capped" but you messed up with "defense cap", in addition to nerfing yourself by gemming Stamina in a yellow slot when the bonus is +9 or (especially!) +12 Stamina. I'm sure you're not one of those "rng is bad!" knuckleheads, but 1000 Defense is better than 1 Stamina, and likewise 10 Def 27 Stam is better than 30 Stam, especially with the buffs we're getting in ICC.