Say you have an item that gives .X or X.X increase of Protection, while losing Vitality. What's a good rule of thumb on how much Vit loss is worth the increase in protection?

If you are referring to Armor and/or All Resist, I believe we can compare the EHP gains/ losses from sacrificing vitality. The EHP gains/ losses for a character will vary across different gear sets.

For me, I just refer to D3up.com and look at the "EHP gains by stats" for my consideration. D3up.com

Just looking for a more quick and dirty comparison by the tool-tip in game. I haveD3Bit and use D3up and i love them, but sometimes i don't have it up or if I'm crafting a bunch of stuff it nice to weed out the bad or good quickly

I don't think there is a rule of thumb, unfortunately, but one thing I would recommend is ignoring the displayed protection number on items with high Dex. The display protection number includes Dodge chance as 100% damage reduction. This makes sense if your build is a tank that can take 8-10 hits so you can expect a few dodges, but those builds don't exist. Since no one can take enough hits for the Law of Large Numbers to kick in, it was a very poor decision made by Blizzard.

The other thing is knowing a minimum amount of life you need to survive. In my experience, dying is the cause of 1 or 2 big hits rather than 4 or 5 smaller hits. I can recover life between small hits quickly enough to pretty much ignore them. It's the big hit that drops a 30k damage hammer on me in one blow that I can't recover from fast enough. As long as I have enough life to survive long enough after a big hit to recover the lost life, any life above that level is overkill.

The biggest problem with in-game displays and hence how the community interprets gear judgment calls is the idea of using long-term averages. I would venture to say the majority of gameplay in D3 isn't dependent on long-term averages, but that's how everything is displayed in-game and as a professional statistician it drives me bonkers.

Yeah, i do take into account the Dexterity/Dodge part. I'm at a point where i can Manage MP8 runs but i'm always kiting into White packs to recover and dying somewhat regularly. Not as bad as i expected though. I have a nice Dagger with 28x Vit and that would help a ton, but not at the expense of LS and 15kdps i lose with it. Looking for a LS EF at the moment, but i know i need more protection as well. I have yet to secure even one hellfire ring and damnit, i want one, lmao.

I don't think I have you in my friends list. When do you usually play? Your gear is plenty good enough to be a solid melee contribution for MP10 Ubers, though you might want a little more life in exchange for some dps before you jump in. If you have 2 WW/CM Wiz even that's not a big deal, though.

Looking at your Barb gear, you have a lot of Rubies which you could easily swap out for Amethysts for a quick life boost without buying new gear. If you're worried about survivability, I think you'll love a good pair of Blackthorne's Pants. It's tough, at first, giving up the MS on the Inna Pants, but the LoH and life % bonuses make them the premiere survivability gear in the game, in my opinion.

I have quite a few options in my stash already to choose from that i can swap out for uber runs. I have 2 Blackthornes as well as some Vit shoulders and my dagger. I could easily get into 60k i think and be around 150-160k-ish dps unbuffed. i'm just now getting to where i have to learn to juggle a bit more while trying to keep my unbuffed dps in the 190k range.

Speaking of, i just crafted some nice Shoulders and Gloves this morning and got me up to 198k unbuffed with no vit changes. I had only gotten that high while using my 1259/198+100CHD 5%LS skorn!! :)

Oh, i play around 7-12cst when i can get on. During the day, i'm pretty much AH only. I'll add ya!

I have a WW/CM Wiz I need to try out. I'm not sure how much time I'll be on this week, but I'm usually available around 8-10 pm cst weeknights, so we might be able to work something out. Otherwise, go through the Ubers thread on the forums and add a few people that have expressed interest, or just post there saying you're looking for a group.