Could you explain why? Cause I haven't seen anything as of yet that would suggest something like this... (Well, I haven't read guides/been there myself yet, so...)

Did you by any chance get to test Sunwell? Let's just say I got destroyed due to the amount of damage I took within seconds.

I don't see how being hit capped would help you not get destroyed, since the fact that you miss or not won't affect your incoming damage at all...

I can see how dropping under the armor cap would, though...

If there's something that makes the taunt mechanic necessary then something like the Leather Helm from Zul Jin in ZA might help you get some extra +hit, but if its because of parry haste gibs then having enough expertise to not be parried, not hit will help.

Speaking of +hit how does it relate to taunt now that hit affects taunt?

Found this in the Prot Warrior thread: "Increasing your hit rating increases your chance for taunt and challenging shout to land on a target. It is currently believed that 1% hit (15.8 hit rating) raises your success rate with taunt by 1%."

Is this still the accepted theory?

That could mean that Taunt/Growl now has a base miss chance of 5%. Didn't notice more or less resists after the patch though*, so it can't have changed much.

* 39 hit rating in tank equip, I know, not much, but at T5 niveau I prefer a high agi setup

Ah that's what I was looking for, thanks.

Let me rephrase my reply; I have not with 9% hit rating experienced any taunt resist on any boss, whereof taunting has any importance. This is with Bear in ZA and Sunwell bosses in mind.

That should be pretty easy to test. Anyone know of a heroic boss or something that you could just go fight for like 30 minutes testing taunt? The rock guy in mana tombs is pretty easy if he's tauntable in the first place, a healer could probably heal a tank for 30 minutes on that guy. Sure, its not proof, but you could tell the difference between 17% resists if its a spell or 9% if its a melee ability pretty easily.

I'm pretty sure post-2.3 tests came up with the conclusion that Taunt still behaved like a spell, except that it looked at hit rating instead of spell hit for resist reduction.

Edit: So yes, 17% is the figure currently thrown around. Not 9%

This has some tests from January showing a ~17% miss rate and there being some chance to miss which cannot be overcome, but that was on old world mobs.
I think it would be silly to balance fights around a 17% resist rate and the ZA Bear really doesn't seem to have anything like a 17% resist rate and I hope any tauntable bosses in SP behave in a similar manner. Even balancing around a 9% resist rate makes no sense to me with the current itemisation and I'd be quite worried about having to get 9% hit, stay armour capped, crit immune and maintain a high hp pool too.

I am going to lose some hit rating: from about 5.33% to 3% and hoped to offset that and help spike threat generation by adding some expertise ([Shard of Contempt] and t6 boots will give -4% chance to be dodged and parried) but if landing a taunt instantly is absolutely vital then I guess I'll have to switch some stuff around.

This is due to the bear having a very low resist rate towards taunt due to the mechanics of the fight. I have experienced only 1 taunt resist ever on the bear boss and until recently have been doing runs every reset with less than 20 hit rating.

I have had the exact opposite experience in sunwell, the first two bosses require taunting and at least 2 of the remaining 4 encounters involve taunting by off tanks on add's in some degree. Even with a +hit capped set I have had plenty of raid wiping results due to taunt resist. In my opinion any druid who wishes to tank and enters sunwell without at least a hit-capped +hit set is making a dire mistake.

I don't see how as a druid we're going to hit cap without sacrificing a ton of other survival/mitigation stats. And the only values of hit capping are threat, which is usually a nonissue for druids, and for taunt resists, but you're only going to remove a little over 50% of taunt resists. We're still going to see 8% resist rate on taunts even hit capped.

Then we must have been incredible lucky, since when we got to the hit cap on tanks, we ever had any taunt resists.

Alright, I found the post. It is also linked in the working theories sticky.
http://elitistjerks.com/585775-post66.html

This is a little off current topic but I was wondering what a majority of the end game druids chose as their professions? I chose Enchanting/Jewel Crafting to maximize myself since we are in T6 content. However, I'm in love with the new [Carapace of Sun and Shadow] which obviously is BoP. Im tempted (but not convinced) to drop Enchanting for Leatherworking so that i can make it and the [Drums of Battle] The only thing holding me back is the fact i can enchant my rings which comes in very handy especially with 3 very different specs at my disposal. That, and i keep hoping we will soon be able to do the same to amulets.

Yes i know that the final boss will drop the token for [Bladed Chaos Tunic] but that is quite a ways down the road for my guild. In addition, our 3 raid rogues constantly get the shaft as far as gear drops except for weapons. The four of us are in the top 5 DKP of our guild and its not because we are trying to save it. And now that we share the same token drop, I have tank priority so I'm guaranteed gear whereas they are not. Tempers would flare if i tried to take this chest when they might not even have their T6 yet.

I guess Im just wondering what everyone else has found to be very beneficial even though its almost completely personal preference. Just from approximate guessing, im pretty sure the DPS numbers from [Carapace of Sun and Shadow] with the drums outweighs +4 stats/ +2 weapon dmg currently available for rings. But you never know what the next patch/expansion will bring and i would hate to relearn Enchanting all over.

MORE ON TOPIC: The only time i have ever had a problem with taunting is A'lar but now that im in T6 content i have been able to change my gear around a bit to favor more +hit and expertise. Normally i only run with about 39 hit rating and no expertise for bosses. Trash pulls aren't as demanding so i switch it up to favor around 59 hit rating and an expertise rating of 6.

Gear question:
This is my armory profile:
The World of Warcraft Armory

I used Rawr to look at the badge rewards that I might use for tanking upgrades and to compare them, simple took the given overall mitigation/survival rating shown by Rawr(I don't really know how the number is generated) and divided that by the badge cost of each item I looked at. Is this a reasonable way of going about it? It seemed to me that my best values are the ring of the stalwart of the band of the swift paw, the band being slightly more cost-efficient, and also a dps upgrade over my shard-bound bracers.

Does this sound about right? I'm thinking about either buying those now or maybe waiting and getting the staff of the forest lord because while I'd rather focus on tanking gear, that staff is such a massive increase over my wildfury greatstaff as a dps weapon.

Sounds right. Just make sure you stay uncrittable.

This is hilarious. I just came on the forum to post that I just dropped Enchanting for Leatherworking (I'm also a Jewel Crafter) and to see what people think about the 2 professions. I figure that my melee group usually consists of me, Enhance Shaman, Rogue, Warrior and either another rogue or a BM hunter. The Enhance Shaman, Rogue and Hunter are all Leatherworkers. From what I calculated, adding another set of drums added more RDPS which outweighed my personal gain of 8 stats. The only thing I really miss is the + Healing enchants for PvP

I never see it mentioned much, but I've always held on to [Romulo's Poison Vial] whenever my dps set was changed around and was low on hit. If we need +hit for taunting in Sunwell, here's a simple switch for 2% hit or so. I figured I was an outcast since it doesn't even show up on top 6 best dps trinkets, but I've always liked it.

Edit: as far as professions go, I've been very glad I went Leatherworking/Enchanting. Is JC really that useful? The unique gems are nice, but fairly small overall. I'd keep enchanting, personally.

I'm LW/JC right now and I hardly ever use the JC. Any gems can either be cut by other JCs in the guild or bought on the AH. The only reason to have it now is the BoP gems and they're barely better than normal gems. Ring enchants are a bigger upgrade, so I'll probably be switching next patch. However, the new neck is a great upgrade so I'll probably wait to make that and the new trinkets but never use them. It's so hard to drop after putting so much money into it though.