SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin

So, I was having problems last night on the double manticore fight in expert King's Breach due to the fact that I have no dots or ranged attacks to keep the caster (Mondrach) from killing my healers. I even tried a macro that targeted him, taunted, then targeted back to Autoch.... to no avail. Needless to say, I spoke with Xerathe (one of our seasoned warrior tanks) and he suggested a new spec to me (albeit I will tweak it a little bit for this discussion):

Spec

Okay, I'll try to break it down on why I took what I did and how it might be useful to you. This spec, ironically, is amazing for both physical AND magical mitigation. I never quite realized its potential until it was pointed out to me last night, but just from some simple tests I can assure you that this spec is pretty beast as far as mitigation goes.

Paladin
I've gone over most of these talents before in my Warlord tank thread, but for those that haven't read it, I'll do a quick recap:
Stalwart Shield: Block +10% **
Defender: Armor +10% **
Aggressive Guardian: Threat +20%
Hardened Will: 9% less spell damage taken **
Martial Shield: chance on block to gain AP
Unyielding Defense: -20% damage taken when blocked **
Reverent Protection: group Absorb Shield finisher, 3min CD
Shield of the Chosen: +5% block and +armor **

Yes, I left out quite a few talents from my "basic" tank spec, but here's why: with the proposed changes for 1.1, we lose a lot of healing back from Balance of Power and Tip the Balance. While you can argue that any healing is less that the healer has to do, I can also argue that the healing from that and Karmic Resolution are so minute as to not save you in a dungeon or raid setting. If you are making a tank spec to solo content then this might not be the spec for you.

Void Knight
- Note that you gain a new resource with this spec called pacts. They are EXTREMELY important and you should strive to keep them maxxed at all times (we will get into that in a moment)
Insatiable Hunger + Blood from a Stone: ensures that no matter what you are hitting you have a chance to gain a pact
Rift Tap: Essentially a spell reflect, lasts 30 seconds on an 8 second CD
Ravenous Strength: +5% strength per pact **
Ravenous Defense: +5% armor per pact **
Spell Sunder: offensive purge
Spellbreaker: defensive cleanse
Quality Care: 30% chance when healed to gain a pact
Devourer: Increases the damage reduction of our Void buff by an additional 15% **

Warlord
Powerful Countenance: +10% armor **
Defensive Experience: +5% block **

Okay, so now you are probably giving me the wonky eye and asking me how the hell does this spec mitigate what I say it does. I'd like to draw your attention back to the above synopsis, specifically to the talents that have the double asterisk (**) next to them. Before factoring in pacts, the spec gains +20% armor, +20% block, and +29% magic mitigation (note that I am unsure if these are additive or multiplicative, so let's just use these numbers roughly).

Now, here comes the bread and butter of the spec. We can gain up to 10 pacts at any given time. Take a look at ravenous strength and defense! That's +50% to both armor and strength when we are at full pacts. Let me remind you that strength gives us block, parry and attack power. This is where you say: holy shit! That was about my reaction last night. By using Warlord's Empowering Strike (increases my armor by 505) and gaining 10 pacts I was able to get my armor above 12k and my block was upwards of 55% when I had Aggressive Block up. Also note, that these gains are percentile based so they will scale with gear - the better the gear, the better these talents become.

Factor all of that in with the added perks that were chosen from each spec and you get a really well-rounded tanking spec. You get a group bubble, offensive purge, defensive cleanse, and a spell reflect all just from talents.

I haven't had a chance to actually apply this build since it was midnight last night when Xerathe and I talked about it, but I plan on doing some monkeying around with it this week. If anyone has any suggestions or comments regarding the build please post them!