The Halaani guards hit like wet noodles (so much so that ILotP protects you from them), but the surrounding area isn't exactly safe for extended testing.

As a warrior, it definitely seems like both, and I assume the changes were the same for bears.

I just did some heroics this morning and I have to say I'm kind of depressed about Heroic Botanica. We killed the first 2 elves and then the robot comes in and starts meleeing me for 7k -ARCANE- damage a hit. We tried it multiple times the healers couldn't keep me up for it. Is there anything I as a bear can do to tank H. Botanica? I have 13k HP buffed as I was (fort/kings) in the five man. Just wondering if I need to build an arcane set or what blizz was thinking when they made those ignore armor...

That aside I am pretty happy with all the extra rage generated through crit lacerates and I feel like my aggro is more firmly established. I hit like a wet noodle in bear now but at least I can hold hate, and I feel like I can hold it better than before on bleed immunes. (I do not know the figures but slapping a couple lacerates on each mob then spamming swipe seems to hold hate a lot better than just swipe spam.)

13k HP buffed is kinda low, that's one thing you could improve on right away. Also, I have always used some Arcane resist for tempest keep heroics. Just 100 AR will make a huge difference on those bots. I use Ring of Arcane Shielding, Pendant of the Null Rune, and Cloak of Arcane Evasion with the greater arcane resist enchant. Pretty easy to obtain with a little farming in Kirin'Var village for the primal mana. This gear will also be really helpful for tanking trash MOBs like Chaotic Sentience in Karazhan, so it's worth the investment. I'd also say this gear is a must for Heroic Arcatraz.

I should probably put this in the heroic thread, but since it's directly a druid question...

Zereketh in Arc and Pandamonius in Mana Tombs. I can't beat them with me tanking, my timing on Pandas Shadow Shield, both Knockbacks and Zerek's Void Zones is as good as can be expected of someone. I've only got 178 SR with the prayer on however, which may very well be the problem. Is there some trick to these guys? I always end up just dying from their ~3k DPS.

Theres one really useful trick to Zereketh, its called skipping him as hes optional and not needed for anything aswell as having the same poor loot table as in normal mode.
The real question is why would you want to kill him aside from the simple sake of saying you did.

Mana-Tombs our tank has 300~SR unbuffed however and still takes quite a beating, especially when shield is up.

That's pretty much the only reason. I'm a completest, I still desire to kill Kel sometime.

I built an arcane set and it works great. A couple good greens, the craftable ring and neck, the cloak off the first boss in Botanica with an enchant, and the Violent Badge from killing Prince all together are more than enough to make tanking them possible.

I was thinking it was time to find a healer with a lot of spare time like me but maybe these guards might work out in a quiet time.
A quiet time may involve waiting for the next test server although during Oz hours Uther is very quiet, I remember being in Negrand and seeing Halaa controlled by Horde and there were 15 guards up for over two hours!

I will update if I get to test, thanks for the suggestion.

I will drop crit immunity to get my arcane gear to 120+. I assume if they melee for arcane damage they can crit for arcane damage too? If so I guess I need to swap around some defence gear for AR gear =/.

I'm pretty pissed off with both pandemonius and zereketh - mainly because although they're shadow damage based, and put out a sick amount of shadow damage, there's no craftable leather stuff, and the old craftable cloth is way too weak. I've finally managed (through watching the AH closely over a week or so) to get a 300+ shadow res set sorted of purely greens "of shadow protection". It's pretty much the only way as I see it to do these bosses regularly. That said, last time we went to arc heroic we just skipped Zereketh (as said, he's a crap boss and if he can be skipped you might as well).

The only problem with this is that now my bank has a ~200 frost resist, ~200 nature resist, ~300 fire resist, and ~300 shadow resist set lurking in it, taking up one hell of a lot of space. Working on getting 1400 or so basilisk eyes to respec scryer for the arcane resist plans as every leatherworker on the server seems to be aldor (which seems like an exercise in futility itself). Combined with the 18+ slots of healer gear in my bank, the 16 slot bag of tanking gear and the other bits and pieces I carry around, it's starting to get pretty silly.

Pandemonius/Zereketh are both melee-shadow, and I'm pretty sure i've never seen a crit off either while wearing 300 shadow res (which means default defence as far as I can remember from my gear).

Has anyone had much luck getting the epic feral staff from Botanica? I was considering trying to "farm" (using the word loosely as theres a one day timer) the staff, but i just can't motivate myself to run botanica heroic every day. I'm just hoping to luck out and get the ridiculous staff off SSC trash, which seems unlikely considering previous guild luck (zero harbingers of doom, zero servo arms, 6 months of doing naxx and we killed thaddius/loatheb a couple of times).