I checked this configuration in my druid. Without the Resilience enchant to chest and without the Defense enchant to bracers I'm @ 2.54333333 Crit Immune. I'm estimating that +15 Resilience to Chest would probably give around 0.20%, giving you around 2.74%, maybe you could change those 12 Defense for Stamina?

Edit: Nevermind. Just noticed I was using a [Shadowmoon Insignia] instead of the [Commendation of Kael'thas].

The expertise is nice on deftness but threat really should not be too large of a problem for you on brutallus. That being said, defense to bracer enchant is highly underrated and I would use vindicator's bracers.

Well, expertise effectively increases your "mitigation", in addition to increasing threat. I'm not sure of the math offhand; it gets pretty tricky averaging it out due to swing timers and whatnot of the boss

I have no idea how it compares to defense, though.

(does Rawr take expertise/parries on the mob into account as far as a tanking stat?)

Brutallus doesnt get increased attack speed after a parry, so expertise does not increase your mitigation on that fight.

Well I have a little question to the sunwell raidance: does the raidance reduce the miss chance of a player by 5% or does it increase the hit chance of a mob by 5%?

What would be the difference between:
- Boss hits 5% more often
- you get missed 5% less?

I may have misunterstood you, but... why do you ask?

What would you say about this build for Brutallus. Used Skysec's template but changed the wrists. I lost like 5% dodge unbuffed, probably around 20% dodge with both dodge trinkets (since I took out [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch]) up but I think I have more Health (probably a bit more than 1k than before) and I'm almost at the Armor Cap (probably 3.5k more armor).

[Thunderheart Cover] (+15 STA, +18 Stam/5% Stun Resist) (+18 Stam/+20 Resilience)
[Pendant of Titans]
[Thunderheart Pauldrons] (+15 STA, +5 Hit/+5 AGI) (+15 Dodge/+10 Defense)
[Slikk's Cloak of Placation] (+12 Agility)
[Thunderheart Chestguard] (+5 AGI/+7 STA, +5 Hit/+5 AGI, +10 AGI) (+6 Stats)
[Thunderheart Wristguards] (+5 Agi/+7 Stam gem) (+12 Stamina)
[Thunderheart Gauntlets] (+15 STA) (+12 Agility)
[Belt of Natural Power] (+5 AGI/+7 STA x2)
[Thunderheart Leggings] (+5 AGI/+7 STA) (+40 Stamina/+12 Agility)
[Treads of the Den Mother] (+12 Stamina)
[Violet Signet of the Great Protector] (+4 Stats)
[A'dal's Signet of Defense] (+4 Stats)
[Commendation of Kael'thas]
[Badge of Tenacity]
[Pillar of Ferocity] (+35 Agilty)
[Idol of Terror]

I'm not sure why Armory says I have 20k Health unbuffed, I should be a bit higher than 17k, 35,553 Armor (Cap being 35,880, Devotion Aura should put me over there), 44.57% Dodge (I think it was 41%... not sure what is happening in the Armory?) and over the Crit Immune Cap. I'm also trying to see if this week Illidan drops another [Thunderheart Chestguard] so I can probably put +15 STA gems on it.

Edit:

17,564 Health
35,553 Armor
40.57% Dodge

That's a bug in the armory. If you log in bearform, it doubles the bear and dodge bonuses from bearform.

Honestly, I was severely undergeared for Brutallus when we killed him. I had T6 helm, necklace of the juggernaut, t5 shoulders with 12 stam gems + scryer enchant, slikk's cloak with 12 agil, T4 chest with 3x12stam and 6 stats, swift paw bracers with 5def/7 stam gem and 12 stam enchant, t5 gloves with 15 agil, belt of natural power with 5agil/7stam gems, t6 pants with 15 stam gem, wild encroachment boots with 2x15 stam gems and 12 stam enchant, VE ring, Mag ring both with +4stas, badge of tenacity+moroes pocket watch, pillar of ferocity, and idol of terror. I went with pocket watch over commendation for a trinket to use every stomp.

No it wouldn't. The radiance just cancels out the natural 5% miss that mobs get against anyone with 350 defense. Any extra miss you get from defense (>350 defense) will still work.

You might want to check out my post in the Prot Warrior Thread concerning the maths behind expertise:
http://elitistjerks.com/717512-post1371.html

The formulas are specified there and you just need to replace numbers like attack speed and global cooldown use for ferals.

Why would threat generated on immune mob include Lacerate damage? How does he get 285 -> 295 -> 335???

This calculation is wrong in so many parts that it should require an update. First of all, to calculate average damage weighted for crit, you would do "noncrit damage x [(1-crit%) + (crit% x 2.2)]. dukes used (1+0.3*2.26) which is completely wrong as druids do not tank with relentless (thus 2.2 not 2.26) and the chance of doing a noncrit damage is (1-crit%) not 1.

Also, he needs to update it for the new 2.4 Lacerate.

Threat generated on a bleed immune mob includes Lacerate because in patch 2.1 Lacerate was made to work on unbleedable mobs (with a static threat component of 285), though they don't get affected by the DoT portion.

285 is the base static Lacerate threat (empirically measured), 295 is Lacerate threat accounting its damage portion, not sure where the 335 comes from though.

Also, you can't just make a broad sweeping statement like "druids do not tank with relentless". Many Druids do tank using it exclusively (personally I don't in my survivability sets, but in alternate threat oriented sets, I do).

You're right about the non crit damage calculation, but since the contribution of threat from damage is so minuscule, it probably wouldn't change the conclusion much. It's worth fixing for the purpose of accuracy though. And of course, the AP scaling needs to be added in.

335 is the total arrived at when you add the bleed damage over time for 1 application to the initial lacerate attack threat.

I'd be interested to see complete, updated-for-2.4 calculations for lacerate as well. The estimate posted by dukes is a good first order approximation, but there are additional factors to consider if one wants a precise point where swipe threat overtakes lacerate. Honestly, though, there is probably some intermediate range where keeping up a five stack of lacerate and swiping in between is actually best for maximizing threat.

Besides the question of RED/PED in meta socket, lacerate has additional value when it misses/is dodged/is parried because the dot will continue to tick for some threat as well as while using other abilities such as Mangle/FF/Demo Roar if applicalbe (yes, it's not huge, but since it now ticks for 400ish that's 40 threat from damage per GCD assuming 20% modifier). Lacerate also applies nearly full threat if blocked, though swipe now also does considerable threat when blocked because of 2.4 block changes.

Lacerate further benefits in situations where rage is not effectively unlimited. Besides enjoying a base cost of two rage less, lacerate's rage cost is reduced when it is avoided while swipe will still cost the full 15 rage. I sometimes find a few seconds tanking Azgalor or Kalecgos where I end up rage-starved because of a string of avoided attacks, not to mention the need to be as efficient as possible on a boss like Bloodboil.

Threat considerations aside, I don't think the value of a 130+ dps dot should be discounted. Even if swipe generates slightly more threat, keeping lacerate up between swipes in order to maximize DPS contribution to the raid seems valuable. I frequently "roll" a lacerate while using swipe as my primary non-mangle GCD move, usually refreshing lacerate at around 6s in case of bad miss string or needing to mangle.

Since I'm bored now, here's a first-order approximation similar to dukes' old one based on my normal lacerate stats in tanking gear (2t6, 2s3, heroic legs, no RED). I assume that lacerate changes much more slowly with gear than swipe. I ignore misses/dodges/parries/blocks and dots ticking while not casting lacerate. I'll assume the same 30% crit that dukes used.

Lacerate threat = (DoT threat during one GCD + Average application damage) * (Lacerate damage modifier) + Lacerate inherent threat
Lacerate threat = ((405*.5) + 50*(.7+2.2*.3)) * .2 + 285
Lacerate threat = 335.5

So to compete, swipe damage would need to be solve 335.5 = (dmg*(.7+2.2*.3))
so dmg = 246.7

Having actually done this calculation, I'm not certain how dukes arrived at 335 with the old lacerate. It seems he was factoring in the entire threat value of a single lacerate stack over its lifetime into a each lacerate; I can't think of any situation in which this is actually the value of a lacerate except when applying a single lacerate and not stacking it. If you modify lacerate to be applied exactly every 15 seconds (also not really realistic but easy to approximate and an upper bound on the value of rolling lacerates), adding in the entire lacerate dot rather than the half tick you get during a GCD gives lacerate's threat value to be (405*5 + 50*(.7+2.2*.3))*.2+285 = 703.6 (someone might want to double check me on that). Unless someone can show me a tanking gear set and boss for which swipe does over 700 damage on average (468 non-crit with 40% crit and RED, though with that kind of AP I bet lacerate ticks for a lot more), it seems like rolling lacerates is probably a pretty good idea. So according to my approximation, from a threat perspective one should spam lacerate until swipe does around 250 damage, at which point one should roll lacerate between swipe spam. That system shouldn't be replaced with pure swipe spam until swipes hit for almost 500 (and as noted if I had anywhere near that much AP I'd be re-doing the calculation).

I apologize if anything I said here is repeated, worthless, or otherwise idiotic; I'm pretty new to these boards so go easy on me.

Thanks for the gear advice on Brutallus guys! I just have one more question, Brutallus and Rawr related.

Under the buffs panel, you can check a box for "Dual-wielding mob". Brutallus dual-wields, but I'm guessing that Blizzard didn't make it so he was penalized for dual wielding? I'm getting wildly different dodge ratings when I check the box, so I'm just making sure.

When i was messing around in Rawwr for Brutallus, I didn't check the dual wield option because I'm pretty sure he doesn't suffer from the DW penalty. When tanking him, I don't notice as many misses as when tanking something like prince.

And on a different note. What do you guys think will be your full tanking set including the new "set" pieces from Sunwell? I searched around in like the previous 15 or so pages but I didn't find anything. But would you guys consider having a set of full mitigation where you only wear bracers/boots and just use all the new pieces of gear from Sunwell + Belt of Natural Power?

I assume most if not all druid tanks will want to keep 4pc T6 for tanking, so which piece is the best to keep with the B/B/B combo? I know for dps its the shoulders seeing as how the dps shoulders are really bad (lol no sockets), but what about for tanking?

Sorry if questions about the new gear has already been answered, but I didn't really see any posts about it while reading through the previous few pages.

Blizzard introduced the Sunwell Radiance Aura for the sole purpose to eliminate 100% avoidance tanks. Making Brutallus have a DW-Penalty would counteract Sunwell Radiance and once again make melee immune tanks possible.

So no, neither Brutallus nor Lady Sacrolash suffer a DW Penalty, despite being DW.

Hey fellow Druids, got a question cat-trinket wise.

Atm I'm using [Hourglass of the Unraveller] and [Crystalforged Trinket]. I'm trying to get [Shard of Contempt] to replace either of these two. I'm not sure which to replace with it because I'm getting the following trinket aswell: [Figurine - Shadowsong Panther].

What do you reckon, is the figurine better than the crystalforged trinket and what should I replace Shard of Contempt with? (Considering the figurine)

Cheers in advance

Rawr will give you a perfect answer on that.

a) Approximation. Take that word for what you will, but for me it means "Approximately". The entire idea of doing the calculation in the first place to to get a first guess estimate towards when the break point between lacerate and swipe occurs. Maybe I should add a disclaimer that states that it's not specifically accurate. The post you're taking this from is nearly 10 months old, and (taken in context) is just an answer to general wonderings about where the breakpoint might be.
b) I don't see where it says it's a comparison on an immune mob (and even then, the initial damage still counts, so just use 295 as the threat value).
c) I always tanked with Relentless Earthstorm whilst I was tanking. As it now happens, Sunwell pretty much requires a Powerful Earthstorm, so sure, adjust the calculation as you might want.
d) Technically, yes you're correct about the average crit damage (it should've been 1+0.3*1.13, or what you did). It would explain why it only comes out as 175 damage when originally I approximated 225 (it should be 220 damage from the adjustment to 1.13 from 2.26).
e) 2.4 Lacerate does pretty much nothing to threat, being as it is that the damage portion of Lacerate only gives 1/5th towards threat (i.e. damage*0.2 = threat). YMMV dependant on just what group you're in and how much emphasis you put on offensive stats when gearing, but by getting more offensive stats you increase the damage done by swipe too, so I doubt it has much of a material effect when actually playing, even though it affects the direct calculation.

In light of teiglin's (Lothyr's? I hate it when peoples character names are different from their forum name, I never know which is the preferred) calc, I've replaced the link in the first post and adjusted the text to make sure it's as up to date as possible.

The [Demontooth Shoulderpads] are the Sunwell dps shoulders for us (and not bad for several other classes for dps, too), with the [Shoulderpads of Vehemence], as you note, not being worthwhile. For the ultimate dps set, however, that will not be a slot filled with the 4th piece of t6, since I'll (eventually) be using t4 head + shoulders. Without having access to Rawr now, I recall it was extremely close between using t6 chest and, I think, legs (which surprised me) for the 4th piece.

That leaves several t6 pieces that I intend to leave gemmed for max burst tanking (i.e., +15 sta) along with the [Belt of Natural Power], while going back to my standard avoidance bias in new pieces if it's clear that I have indeed established a new level of "enough" stamina for the rest of the fights (balanced where reasonable, e.g. sacrificing 1 agi for 7 sta by using a [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst] in [Leggings of the Immortal Beast]'s blue socket).

Again, without having Rawr available now, I believe (and it appears) that t6 shoulders are the best piece to keep for 4t6 for tanking. But then I'm not convinced 4t6 will be needed for tanking anyway. One problem with just using Rawr for determining max mitigation/survival is that threat does matter, too, as we acknowledge when deciding to override it for this set bonus. The Sunwell pieces carry additional stats that provide added threat, and one should take those into account with an accurate model. The benefit to retaining 4t6 may not be so large then, and I expect to do fine tanking with all 5 Sunwell pieces.