D) Shred, then start a normal cycle with either 4 or 5 combo points :P

Yeah, I think Dukes got a bit confused there.

Anyway, pretty happy that I finally gave up on Alchemy after seeing the upgraded Alchemist Stones. I can't justify using either of them even in a resist set they are that bad.

In the cat post, the Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium is listed much higher than I expected, and I'm just wondering if I'm missing something.

Under raid conditions, you can expect to mangle five times a minute if no one else is keeping it up for you. With a 40% proc, that's 16 seconds of +140 strength per minute. Averaged out, it's equivalent to adding 37 strength passively. BOK and SOTF make this roughly 84 ap.

Doing the same math for Hourglass of the Unraveller yields 32 crit rating and 50 ap passive. Bloodlust Brooch comes out to about 118 ap, Darkmoon Card: Crusade comes to 120 ap, and Crystalforged Trinket comes to 134 ap. All of these should be superior under common raid conditions.

I'm thinking this may have been left unchanged since 2.3, as all the other trinkets now benefit from heart of the wild and ATE has lost some of its effectiveness.

That's actually option B, isn't it?

ClosetGnome_BigWigs can track your choices, but you will have to set it up to know what gear to equip for each boss. That would require you to know what the boss armor value is ahead of time (detailed in [RAID] Boss armor values).

I notice a lot of druids pick up the [Band of the Abyssal Lord] despite the fact that you lose a large amount of armor to get it. I imagine this is when you're at the point where you're capped or close to it and can afford that loss, but I'm wondering at what point this is? I just started BT this past week and one dropped on our first night but I passed because I wasn't sure if I could really afford to lose that much armor yet until I got some T6 level drops. General overview of gear is I'm at 4/5 T5 everything but chest, or you can check my armory.

Another question I had was with regards to gemming [Belt of Natural Power] with BT gems which way to go? 10 agi, 5 agi 7 stam, 15 stam?

And finally, [Wildfury Greatstaff] is considered better for tanking than [Pillar of Ferocity], but are there times when you use the pillar? I hopefully will have S3 staff soon for dps if I can get my rating a bit higher so I'm wondering if I should even pick up a pillar?

It'll vary based on what you're currently wearing and what higher armor upgrades you'll be picking up over time as to when exactly you feel comfortable making the armor sacrifice on a ring slot. Another consideration has to be the hit rating on the ring, on trash or in an OT situation you'll find the hit really useful whereas being armor capped may not be as important. It's very subjective, and having more options never hurts. Sure, if you won't be using it 100% of the time, let your other tanks grab it first, but don't reject it outright as an option either.

Gem choices have a lot to do with your raid role. If you are 1st or 2nd in line for maintanking a boss, you want to focus on Stamina, but if you're mainly a first trash mob kill tank, you'll want lots of Agility for the dodge and crit. Figure out what ratio of tanking vs OT/dps you do and gem appropriately. E.g. my old raid guild had no Protection Warriors at all, so I would maintank everything, and generally went Sta in all gem slots except where it was possible to pick up a decent socket bonus. In my new guild, I don't foresee myself maintanking anything significant so I'll be switching to Agi/Sta gems from now on in most if not all sockets.

I believe most Bears use Pillar most of the time since it has a higher "survivability" component than Wildfury and much higher threat, despite not having avoidance. Wildfury will "mitigate" more damage over any given fight, but Pillar also has a decent gob of Stamina. Of course the proper answer to this is: keep both in your bags and use the right one for the job at any given time (e.g. dodge on Gurtogg). Again, don't reject it outright as an option, a Pillar in your bag is far more beneficial than 2 void crystals in the guild bank.

If you really need threat, you could just tank with [Staff of Primal Fury]. If you are MT for anything, you will get inspiration buff almost the entire fight, capping your armor despite not having armor on your weapon. The high dodge on the SoPF is actually higher than that on the [Wildfury Greatstaff] and the stamina is just 5 points less. The threat generation is superior to both of the other two options. If you are not MT, then the extra armor is nearly pointless balanced against the loss in dodge.

So my guild just downed Azgalor for the first time, and I was fortunate enough to receive the t6 gloves. I proceeded to gem them with a Solid Empyrean Sapphire and enchant with 15agi. I won't be able to replace that gem for some time, if ever, since my guild is holding gems for best-in-slot gear only. I actually have the first BT gemmed piece of gear in the guild. I would have gotten the 5agi/7stam, but that pattern hasn't dropped for us yet. Was 15 stam a better gem choice than 10 agi?

Important bits of info: I tank Azgalor, since our best geared tank, who was also the guild MT, just had to quit raiding for RL reasons . So stam is becoming a lot more important to me, since it looks like I'll be MTing more often, which I've never done post ZA. I run at around 21.5k raid buffed HP, a little more with commanding shout. My unbuffed dodge is 36.5; I forget that it reaches with full dodge buffs. In that case, should I forsake agi in my gems and enchants and go straight stam, or am I at a comfortable enough HP lvl that I can start stacking more agi for better dodge?

My current armory profile (as of Feb 28) is my boss tanking set: The World of Warcraft Armory

In the long term, you'll want a huge amount of stam for Sunwell... glass cannon high-dodge bear went splat on both Sathrovarr and Brutallus whereas 25k hp gave a nice big buffer even for the worst case spikes, even if they happened negligibly more frequently.

It's probably practical at this point to start planning ahead. 2.4 isn't -that- far off.

Your post gave me an interesting idea: in my guild most of the healers are swapping Spellsurge/+Heal Weapons depending on proc and cooldown.

it should be likewise possible to have an addon switching between [Wildfury Greatstaff], [Staff of Primal Fury] etc based on inspiration proc.
Of course this should only be happening during 1,5sec GCDs like Lacterate, Swipe, to avoid giming ones Threat.