So how does one do this?
Every site I see has some byline of “tanks and healers sim as dps”. Is there no way to accurately just sim tanking. How am I supposed to know what shoulders to wear?
Incoming damage is too variable to have any kind of accurate “survivability” sims.
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the answer is almost always the ones that do the most damage 
but, check out prot pally resources. idk how good the pally discord is, but they’ll probably have info/guides on which azerite traits you should be running.
Generally you’ll want to gear for damage as a tank in most situations (there are times where you need to tank up but most people won’t need to worry about that.)
If you want to know which are defensively best, ask in the paladin discord. You’ll get the best advice there.
Crit is a must have stats for Dk…Pally…Warrior…not sure bout Monk,Druid,Dh as they’re dodge involve instead of Parry
then weither Haste,Mastery is your optimal option along Crit i’am not too sure for pally as I haven’t play mine since Draenor…Versatility is also nice as a third stat if you got the right amount of Haste//Mastery(take priority over Vers if most of your stuff get a major boost from those)…like lining up your skills in haste case if that’s something or maybe mastery for a powered effect…other than that…for the Azerite Trait…try to get 3X Swirling Sand…its so broke XD…here the pieces for that…Dunecrawler Faceguard(Emissary from Voldun)…C’thraxxi Binders Pauldron(Temple of Sethraliss)…Dunecrawler Chestguard(Emissary)
Edit: 3X Swirling sand will boost your crit by like 46% and parry rate by 23% for 18 sec…if you Synch that to Anima of Life and Death that’s almost a guaranteed crit mega hit :P…well Crit like 50% with the ilvl 475-485 version of the shoulders…helm and chest cap out to 450 for swirling sands
There’s no way to sim for survivalability, as the others say. You can sim for tank damage, but there’s things like main stat and damages, etc.
Generally the general rule of thumb is that while dps may like to wear the item with their best secondaries (within 5-10 item levels, maybe 15 in edge cases, +10-20 with socket), tanks generally seem to like the armor best and wear the highest armor, thus it tends to be a hard 5-10 perfect ilvls for tank, with a greater preference for highest armor and stamina ilvl. Trinkets and rings are normal.
I just used Noxxic, and added my own stuff in.
Then there’s leech, which imo, a lot of people don’t count on dps (since it doesn’t do damage and on tanks, you do less damage generally, but on aoe pulls), but while it’s values is left as 0 in a lot of sims i like to give it a tiny weight too. Like for instance, i have a ring with 92 leech on it, which is 2-4% extra leech but -100 dps on my dps spec. That singular ring made a significant difference, as while i always could keep myself topped up during meta, outside of it i quickly got shredded and eaten alive. That 4% basically is like +40% more effective leech to me during soloing giving me healing where i need it over the 10% i’d have and singlehandedly let me start taking on more with my dps spec, yet it’d never show up on a damage sim.
On the other hand, on a tank it’s probably gonna do half as much, but whatever. Generally i think for raid tanking and like 20+ keys you focus on high migration builds, on most standard keys 10-15 i think you focus on a healthy balance of good migration, and respectable/filler damage. (10-20% more total group damage from the tank can be the edge to make or break a extra key level or two or so. )
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