Again, it depends on what you need for the specific fight you're tanking. If you need, for example, maximum stamina to tank Halfus drakes but want pure avoidance for Conclave of Wind, you don't split the difference and use a mixture of stamina and avoidance gear on both. You optimize your gear for one fight, kill it, then change around your gear to optimize it for the next fight. Tanking is not like dps - there is no single answer for all tanking scenarios that is as effective as tailoring it to each individual fight.

(This of course only applies to progression content. If you're going to 1-shot the fight regardless of your gear there's no reason to spend 2k gold in swapping gems and enchants.)

It mostly comes down to preference and how your raid works with each other unless a boss calls for lots of dodge or hp.

Personally I find stam stacking with a handful of different trinkets for each encounter (as well as changing flasks/food/LW Bracer enchants) has worked well for me in the past and so far into Cata. Dont forget you can swap in some dps pieces that have more dodge when needed.

I thought Mastery was being considered a dud stat since the SD nerfs?

I've been gemming

Red - Shifting (Agi/Stam)
Blue - Solid (Stam)
Yellow - Regal (Dodge/Stam) (only 2 to activate the meta)

Its probably a stam heavy setup, and given it looks like we're now a "You're really an avoidance tank" deal I might need to change, but everything I've read (here and elsewhere) has mastery being reforged to Dodge.

I have written a new Bear Mitigation Spreadsheet, based heavily on Fasc's spreadsheet, fixing a few issues, and more focused on determining Relative Stat Values.

Usage Instructions:
1. Visit the Bear Mitigation Spreadsheet at http://goo.gl/7jIJw
2. The values in the yellow box section show the Relative Stat Value normalized against Agility (aka Agility Equivalent Points) for my current tanking gear.
3. To configure the spreadsheet for your gear, you will need to edit it. To edit it you will need to make a copy of the spreadsheet into your own Google Docs account, so if you haven’t already done so, login to your Google account. (Alternatively you can download the spreadsheet and open it in your preferred Spreadsheet application)
4. Go to File -> Make a Copy, to make a copy of the spreadsheet into your own Google Docs account.
5. Make sure you have no buffs activated.
6. Make sure you are in caster form.
7. When obtaining the armor values, you need to separate armor and bonus armor. Mouse over your armor and you should see something like “Armor 11358 (11108 +250)”, in which case enter 11108 as your armor, and 250 as your bonus armor.
8. The spreadsheet reports two measures. Mitigation RSV should be used by Mitigation-stacking fanbois, Time To Live should be used by Stamina-stacking fanbois.
9. The stuff in the purple section can be modified as you desire. You should generally not touch anything else unless you know what you are doing.

More details about the Spreadsheet on The Inconspicuous Bear blog at Simple Bear Mitigation Spreadsheet | The Inconspicuous Bear

Constructive feedback is welcomed, thanks and enjoy!

Imho, you can make the case for survivability either way, going either the massive stam route or the massive dodge/agi route... however, there's also TPS to consider, where stamina does absolutely nothing.

Now, at the moment, threat on bosses definitely isn't much of an issue, but having higher DPS and as such higher TPS may become more important going forward, and is definitely a big help when AOE tanking.

Personally I aim for 150-160K HP at this stage of the game, and then go full dodge/agi to boost mitigation and DPS.

That's for the heads up, I'll update the user guide.

Tangedyn, you really do me a favor with such a dreaming comparsion spread.

After test with my char info, I found a formula error about armor.
You use the formula armor=((base armor*2.2*1.1*1.33*1.02)+bonus armor) + 4070.
But the armor value in character information has included 1.1 from thick hide and 1.02 from metas.
This resulted in a higher estimated value to armor.
Besides this, this is a really useful tools. Thank you.

Ya, I was just wondering why I was getting more armor than I should be having, thanks for finding that out for me!
Do you know how the character sheet armor information is calculated with armor trinkets/neck/rings?

Hadn't been following this thread until now; would like to comment on a wide variety of things that are being discussed here.

Rawr.Bear: Rawr.Bear is fully functional and ready for use (that's not to say that it's perfect or bugless, though, but there are no major bugs). However, it does seem like many people are using it improperly in at least some regard. Make sure that you are fully filling out your character before using it; that includes all of the options on the options screen. Really. They make a huge difference. It's clear from the gear list in the OP, for example, that the creator wasn't properly filling things out. Read the tooltips if things are unclear to you. Better default values are definitely something we're working on, and should have in v4.0.13 which will be out soon. (Current live version at time of writing this is v4.0.12)

Stat Weights: Do not use them. Let me repeat that, for clarity: Do Not Use Them. Stat weights are bad, when they aren't required for what you're trying to do. The value of various stats change dramatically as your gear changes, even within a single item. Let me clarify that though: Stat weights are bad for users. ie, this isn't to put down other theorycraft, which outputs stat weights, which is great for certain things. There is no good reason for users to use stat weights, when you have a tool like Rawr that can accurately make the calculations. Other theorycraft is great for double-checking and improving Rawr's results, but as long as Rawr is trustworthy, stat weights will always be a disservice to users to use. For the purposes of gear selection and optimization, an accurate model will always be better than using stat weights. Users: Please do yourself a favor and do not use stat weights. Other theorycrafters: Please do the community a favor and do not push stat weights on them, but rather use those stat weights to further improve the theorycrafting space for Bears (or any class, for that matter).

Personal Settings: Nef25 hits for 150k unmitigated, on a 2sec timer. That's what I'm gearing around, and what I suggest most people working on normal raids or early heroics gear around. As such, a Survival Soft Cap of 450k is what I use. The current live version of Rawr has a bug where the Threat Value you specify is multiplied by 0.1 an extra time, so that to get what you used to get out of Threat Value: 10, you have to use Threat Value: 100. Personally, I typically go with a threat value around 50-70 (aka 5-7 after the fix that'll be out soon). No bosses that I know of parry haste.

Item Level: The most dominant factor in how useful an item is, is Item Level, since Agi/Sta are entirely based on ilvl now. Secondary stats are so much weaker than primary stats, that a terribly itemized 359 is better than a perfectly itemized 346, in almost all cases.

Stamina: There is relatively tons of stamina on gear. Way more than is needed to achieve a reasonable survival soft cap for most fights. Gemming stamina at this point is almost surely a mistake, as well as most stamina enchants. The only exception to this seems to be in heroic raids, where it's frequently worth it, but for anything short of that, agility is much more valuable than stamina. It's important to note that Stamina is only of threat/mitigation value if you're hitting the cap on vengeance. If you're hitting the cap on vengeance pre-heroic-raids for anything more than very brief, occasional spikes, you're doing something wrong. Even still, its threat/mitigation value is minimal. Note that that's one bug in Rawr right now: It almost always assumes you're always vengeance capped. The raid-dropped stamina trinkets are great for using in fights where you need a higher survival softcap, as they're about 9k hp each.

Agility: Agility is awesome, and what we should almost all be gemming right now. Use Rawr to find out for sure. That includes things where there's a comparable agi-based enchant instead of stamina enchant as well, like shoulder enchants, profession perks, and flasks (especially flasks, since the sta flask is underpowered). Another minor bug in Rawr is relevant here: Agility from special effects (ie trinket procs) is still granting Armor, slightly increasing its value.

Hit/Exp: Taunts do not miss. Interrupts do not miss. Even with 0/0 Hit/Exp, you should be able to generate more than enough sustained threat to hold aggro. Hit/Exp's value is in reliable burst threat (ie, first 6sec of a fight) right now, which is honestly of very very minimal value in raids, and in slightly increased SD bubble proc rate (which is outclassed by Agility). Thus, Hit/Exp are of small (but at least some) value on gear.

Haste: Haste, on the other hand, is near-useless. In almost all cases, if you have an item with haste on it, you'll want to find an item without haste on it. Haste's value currently is only in increasing white/FS damage, and increasing rage gen. Increased rage gen translates only to increased Maul usage. Those increased number of hits translate to slightly more SD procs, but the rate at which that translates is very small. Another important note here: There are several haste soft caps, where you get an extra auto attack within the 6sec ICD of Fury Swipes. Passing these soft caps are actually a DPS/TPS/SDProcRate loss, and you need up to 200 haste rating to get back to the DPS/TPS/SDProcRate level where you were before. Use Rawr.

Crit/Mastery: The play between Crit and Mastery is very interesting from a theorycrafting point of view, and effectively translates to Block Chance and Block Value respectively. Mastery usually shows up better, but not always. Use Rawr.

Dodge: Dodge is likely what you want to be reforging to, as it provides the most mitigation for hard hitting bosses. It may not be obviously apparent, but dodge indirectly increases your SD 'block chance' as well, since the more you dodge, the more time between hits that land on you there is, and thus the more time you have to generate a SD proc. So Dodge not only increases the % of attack that you avoid, but also the % that you block.

Ability Usage: Depending upon how much focus I can give to my rotation at the time, there are effectively 3 levels of rotation for me. First, just mangling as much as possible, keeping Lacerate x3 rolling, and Demo Roar up. Second, maintaining Pulverize as well. And third, including Thrash as well, without negatively impacting the Lacerate/Pulverize uptime. None of those would be especially difficult, if you were hit/exp capped. But with 20+% chance to be avoided, your rotation can get screwed up very easily, and correcting it requires extra focus. It's still doable, but managing that at the same time as boss mechanics (and raid lead at the same time, in my case) is sometimes too much, and I drop down a level; the tradeoff is almost entirely a DPS loss.

Bear DPS: Currently, Bears do a ton of damage. Assuming we're actively tanking a boss (ie, have Vengeance), you should be doing damage on par with DPS characters. On some fights, you should be beating the DPS on damage done. On most, you should be around the middle or bottom of the pack of DPS characters. Do not make the mistake of thinking that your damage is inconsequential, or that damage is "the DPSers' job". DPS is definitely lower on your priorities than staying alive, but it's still a priority.

Berserk: Berserk is huge. Enormously huge. It will typically double your DPS for 20sec on a single target, or quintuple your DPS for 20sec on 3+ targets. Try to use it as often as possible, but make sure that it's up for any point in a fight where there will be 3+ mobs available to hit. Seriously. In any fight where there are a couple adds that need to be burned down quickly, you should be doing 3x the damage of anyone else on them, when Berserk is up. For any fight where there are more than one mob, try to tank them together if possible, so that Maul cleaves and Berserk Mangles can hit them (ie, Al'Akir, Halfus, Ascendant Council, Cho'gal, Tron Council).

T11 Bonuses: 2T11 is terrible for Bears, pretty much ignorable. 4T11 is situational, and will probably be more valuable in heroic raids. I expect my normal set of gear to contain 1-2 T11 (depending upon if I can find a Tsanga's before I can get a helm token), and to have a 4T11 set that I use for certain heroic raid fights.

This assumes we are hitting the Vengeance cap at all, and it's not even happening in heroic mode raids.
Stamina is irrelevant to Savage Defense as long as we are not hitting that Vengeance cap.

You get a 4% increase to your SD bubble size per point of mastery, with the first 8 points being 'free'. Stamina is entirely irrelevant unless you're hitting the cap. I have no clue what your math was trying to show, but it doesn't. Vengeance is capped at 10% of your max health. If you're not hitting that cap, Stamina has no threat/mitigation value.

EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, Stamina actually has a *negative* impact on threat/mitigation. There will occasionally be spikes of damage that bump you up to the cap for brief periods of time (ie, strings of no dodges, or Nef's lightning strike, or that sort of thing). In those cases, stamina increases the max size of your vengeance stack, but not the sustained size, and since the vengeance decay is based on the max size that that vengeance stack has ever been, meaning that the decay will hit harder the more stam you've got. Ugh, that's gunna be fun to model.