There are always ways around stuff like this. As ideas are explored, new things can come into play. What if you had a mob that slapped down a "you can not regenerate or regain mana" debuff on you if you spend too much mana, too fast? Or just in general? Or a mob that burns you every time you cast a spell, AoE burns, triggers item cooldown, shuts down mana per five, debuffs your spirit, so on.

The options are endless - But they do need to actually stand up and write those tools to make those encounters. It's true you can't just make a Golemagg who mashes down on the tank to drain people dry, but you can step up the cost to the whole raid and so on. I'd love to see an epic version of the Mar'li encounter, or so on, for example.


Anyway, as to the main topic, Moz is the best tank I know and will ever know, so I would personally listen to what he says. I also really agree on Imp HS over Imp Sunder. I still use sunder if it's in line for the global cooldown past the five stack point, but it's a lot rarer after the first 12ish seconds of the fight.

I stick with styleen's/onyxia for almost everything but Nefarian. :-/

When I didn't have styleens though, lifegiving gem saved my life on chromaggus many times (especially if i was backup tanking and 19%/frenzy hit with acid on and it switched to me with no shield on). It also has helped on flamegor with the thrash. However it is as hard to predict when the burst is coming as it is to heal it, so I generally stick to "If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, just make it a little harder for that to happen" with my gear selection.