Welcome to ODO Virus 😀
And tanking is not as complex as it sounds, to do some of the stuff Kemo was talking about requires good knowledge of the fights, abilities and stats. But otherwise it's just basics balance of damage (aka hate generation) vs defense, interrupt group wiping casts with impairs, provide exposed debuff and afflicted state on the mobs.
For optimal stat distribution in TSW you need to know the basics:
Hit rating vs Evade and Defense of the target
Penetration rating vs Block rating
Crit rating and crit power rating are luxury stats
Community has established that you do not need more than 650 Hit rating in order to avoid almost all evades and glances in PVE, until you have achieved that hit rating there is a head signet from last train to Cairo story ark (issue 6 or 7 don't remember) which can help and glance reducing abilities from Chaos. You can do well with hit rating below 650 on a lot of bosses, but 650 will work on all. For facility dungeon you will need hit rating anima to get it to 750 and for hell raised dungeon you will still need fever pitch passive.
Damage mitigation as tank. As it stands golden standard in TSW is to take enough block to remove penetrating hits from bosses. So you do not actually take enough block to block a lot. To achieve that most aim for 800ish block or take 650 block + bock anima and signet of order. However to actually block a lot you will need something like 1200 block.
Other defensive stats. Defense and Evade need something like 1200 in them to be really effective, same as blocking. However they do not stop penetrating hits, so you will likely need block with them as well or risk wiping due to getting one shot, alternatively running with a lot higher HP. The reason for why almost no one is running with those stats is because healing in TSW is so powerfull it becomes a waste to get that tanky except on a very few bosses. So it's much better for the group if you do more damage to kill bosses faster.
So instead of spending more stats on mitigation tanks use their remaining stat budget after block and hit on penetration rating.
So the actual mitigation comes from not getting penetrated, applying debilite debuff, using defensive CDs at right times, moving out of telegraphs, interrupting big hits, minor and major wards.
As you gear up you want to get block up as fast as possible, then hit and then pen
