matticus, you basically have 4 options as a tank.

1) Threat/dmg. Widely accepted as ridiculous for now, other than Alysrazor adds.
2) Stam. I know a few tanks that go for it, but most choose not to. It's a perfectly acceptable option though. I'd ask the healers what they think before going stam personally.
3) CTC. The major benefit here is the leveling off of potential damage. It doesn't matter if you take more damage (though Theck's math says that at decent gear levels, mastery > dodge/parry for mitigation), the idea is that bumping regular hits off completely will remove spike damage, force less CDs, and give healers some breathing room.
4) Avoidance. The main issue with this is that while you will get streaks of avoidance, you will have streaks of hits too, and the threat of high damage streaks can easily mean death. It's not a hard hitting ability you can plan around, it's just the combat table doing its job. The benefit is allowing debuffs to fall, such as Shannox, or avoiding Baleroc's abilities completely.

It's never really *mastery* vs dodge/parry. It's whether you're striving for #3 or #4 that is the question. Personally, I never liked calculating CTC and blindly going with whichever item had a higher value. If you're close to the CTC cap, then the value of knocking regular hits completely off the table dramatically increases, and that is a fine strategy. If you're not though, I personally think you'd be incredibly foolish to take, say, 1.2% block over 1% dodge. Yes, it's more CTC, but it's half the mitigation.

One thing to keep in mind is that tank gearing is something you do in every slot, not just one. You should pick a strategy, and then gear towards it as best you can as a whole.

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