All three of our warlocks who attend are destro, and won't likely go affliction any time soon. None of them use an imp, either (and frankly I wouldn't expect them to on Brut anyway). Commanding shout is a "sometimes" thing so I left that unchecked in my Rawr options.

I tank trash in even more agility / threat focused gear thank your set is, and i dont die. I think that would be more healers' problem.

My experience with brutallus is that it does not matter that much if you go agi or stamina. Our main plus there is armor, and that remains unchanged. With your gear, i'd suggest using +30 stamina food over agility, and make sure you have commanding shout. But you should be fine.

Kalecgos is the only boss in sunwell where stamina gear is really better, due to corrupting strike, but i wouldnt regem just for that one boss. You will need avoidance set later anyway.

Try using Free Action Potions on Kalecgos to counter corrupting strike.

I too am of the agi-centric variety of bear, and hated that my guild wanted me to go all sta for sunwell, Had tons of problems there, couldn't kill Brut. That guild ended up stagnating and going downhill fast, and I joined my current guild, who wanted me in agi gear, and I was ecstatic about that. Everything's been much easier since then.

Specifically, I strongly recommend collecting/enchanting multiple pieces of the same slot of T6, some gemmed for stam, some gemmed for agi. That way you can swap to the stam or agi gemming of he same item, to tweak your stats for each fight/raid, along with swapping between agi and sta food. Depending upon the boss and what group buffs I'm getting, I adjust things to meet a certain level of stam for each boss. Full agi for Kalec, 21k for Brut, 22k for Felmyst, 19k for Twins, full agi (plus some more even higher dodge items) for M'uru, haven't gotten to KJ yet.

EDIT: This also helps prepare for adjusting your gear as you get more of the Sunwell gear. The legs especially are such a huge upgrade in stam, that I'll be able to stop swapping much stam gear at all in for Brut/Felmyst.

Kalecgos is the main reason why bears tended to socket for Stamina early on in Sunwell. The combo of a 10k Corrupting Strike and 2 undodgable swings around 4.5k each puts you dangerously close to death with the dot and the curse flying around. Getting to about 20-21k of health should be sufficient to survive his Corrupting Strike combo. Your 20.4k health should be right on the cusp of surviving the Corrupting Strike reliably, so even the gains of swapping to the [Pillar of Ferocity] over the [Wildfury Greatstaff] may be sufficient without regemming.

This may be somewhat obvious, but when tanking the demon, always make sure that Demo/CoW is on him, as it can mean life or death for that combo since it's guaranteed damage. Speccing for Feral Aggression isn't a horrible idea either as the randomness of the fight often means that you're the only one capable of applying an attack power debuff on the demon while taking.

Brutallus tends to favor agility(assuming you have the 21k health for Kalecgos) as it's instrumental in avoiding damage during stomp(and for helping build threat). And once you start working on the rest the Sunwell gear has gobs of stamina for you to stack agility with gems.

Counting the following buffs; mark of the wild, blessing of kings, 20agi food, elixir of mastery, adamantite weightstone.
Rawr tells me:
43.6% white crit
38.7% yellow crit
3682 attack power
36 hit rating
20 expertise rating
30 haste rating
126 armor pen
12 weapon damage

Don't sign your post

When I started Sunwell, my T6 was all out gemmed with +15 stam, which was perfectly fine until Sunwell. I died a lot on the bosses due to low dodge (34% in caster form) even with 25,000 hp raid buffed. I picked up spare T6 and re-gemmed pretty much all of my gear, and you can see my current tank gear in the armory, which shows me around 44% dodge. I managed to tank every boss from Kalecgos to Kil'Jaden (I tank all 4 reflections) and haven't really died on any boss considering I run high amount of avoidance and only have 21k health raid buffed.

Also, I use [Stanchion of Primal Instinct] for tanking every thing but I do swap to [Wildfury Greatstaff] after taunting Brutallus or when tanking Sacrolash. I consider threat and avoidance far more important than stamina for SWP. Yes, I am not amror capped at all but I do stay over 42,000 armor when being healed by shamans in raids.

In addition to this, I just cannot emphasize the use of [Free Action Potion] enough. You just need to dodge at least one of the two following swings. With about 40% avoidance after radiance this will be the case in 2 of 3 cases, which justifies the use of it, I think. Plus being able to take a healthstone.

@Astrylian (and all others with experience in swp encounters): You don't feel like being keen on saving your gearsets for the first five encounters in a rawr file? I would like to see other tanks' gear choices (altough we are just wiping endlessly on Brutallus). I must admit being a bit handicapped because I never was lucky looting shadowmoon insignia or pendant of titans. But on the last few farm runs I took a second and a third set of T6^^.

And I really cannot stop wearing badge + moroe's! I even put them on while tanking Brutallus. With our taunt rotation I have only to tank through one stomp without trinketing or taking a nightmare seed. I am usually in the Warrior tank group, but I don't get commanding that often due to issues with tanking spot distance / slash issues. Are 21k raidbuffed really enough to "safely" (which is a relative value in that fight ) tank Brutallus?

Yeah 21k is fine. I would also recommend you going in a Hunter/Resto Sham group. The Shaman drops GoA which is huge for you and the Hunters. Besides the much repeated tips of clear tank communication, Ironshield always up, Nightmare Seeds via a macro, taunting AFTER stomps etc, that's about it. On our first Brut kill I was 4/8 T6 still wearing a T4 chest and Badge bracers(which I still use for Brut due to AC and stam). Look back through this thread, it's been gone over quite a bit.

Once I get home, I'd be glad to save my gearsets for sharing. You can see my "default" tanking set in my forum sig, though. I do very minor tweaks for the various fights, except for Twins where I have to have my PvP trinket and a crapton of threat (to keep up as the Sacrolash OT), since that effects several other gear choices. And of course M'uru, where I stack agi like a madman.

As for 21k HP being needed for Brut, I totally disagree. I regularly tank him with 19.5k (hunter group, no commanding shout), and this week I'm going to try swapping my commendation out for Shadowmoon for the extra avoidance and clicky, even though that'll drop me to the 18.5k range. I think my healers will throw a fit, but I'm fairly confident that they'll be just fine at keeping me up, since I'll be at very nearly 50% avoidance post-Radiance.

The gear I tank Brutallus in is slightly over the armor cap(34 over) with 20.5k health using only raid buffs. I socket primarily with a mixture of Red/Blue since I prefer agility but want to maintain a minimum health level. I don't get commanding since I'm in the hunter group and I've only been gibbed twice out of ~40 tries before our first kill and both times were during a stomp that went Stomp-MH/OH-MH/OH with maybe one heal in there. That was a healing issue that has been resolved and I haven't had any other problems.

I also use Badge+Moroes and I'm pretty sure I had one of them up every stomp. Like people have said Ironshields on cooldown, barkskin before every taunt. Make sure shaman are chain healing with you as the primary target and you should be fine.

If you are in the warrior group there is no reason you shouldn't be getting commanding. Have the other tank wait until immediately after the first slash then walk over and commanding you. He has plenty of time to get back to his spot before it is his turn to taunt.

Regarding the commonly mentioned 21k health for Brut... Less than that is OK, but gets more and more risky. It's not necessarily 21k that you need, it's whatever the max that Stomp+MH+OH can hit you for, which depends on how far over the armor cap you are (ie, how much armor you have after stomp). Personally, 21k is right for me, but I can see Hiber's 19.5k being enough too, if you're significantly over the armor cap, and are still using ironshields/nightmare seeds (I don't use those anymore, personally, now that he's on farm for us).

Regarding being in the group with the prot warr, but out of range of commanding... For us, the prot warr just runs halfway over to me after each time I taunt off him, and comm's. Might try that.

Regarding saving Rawr files of my gear for each fight, sure, but keep in mind that it changes from week to week, depending on what raid buffs I get (mostly just CommShout or not). And I swap bracers/trinkets/chestenchants around depending on flasks or elixirs, but I can just standardize on elixirs for them to make it easy and more like what you'll be seeing for initial kills.

This assumes that you are always topped off when stomp happens. While in theory you should be, the fact is that is not always the case and its those times were that extra 1-3k helps you survive.

Here's my gear sets for various Sunwell Encounters.

I use the Stam set for Kalecgos, cause I like being able to survive a Corrupting Strike and 2 melees without necessarily having to get a heal (I take the 3rd portal, and the healer transition right then is dicey).

I use the Mix set for Brut and Felmyst. I MT Felmyst and a prot war Intervenes me each time she casts Corrosion, to reduce the burst dmg. It's kinda funny to see the warrior parry that intervened hit... cause it shows in my SCT as me having parried!

I use the Twins set for OTing Sacrolash. I try to let the warrior MT keep her aggro as much as possible, so I need lots of threat stats to keep up.

I use the M'uru Adds set for tanking humanoid adds on M'uru. 82%+ avoidance parses ftw.

I use the Trash set for tanking trash. It sacrifices some defensive stats for a whole lot more threat against the somewhat over-zealous DPSers in my guild. I've managed to accidentally pull aggro off another tank in this set many times; it's kinda funny.

Not gunna bother posting my gearsets, cause they're almost identical to Hibernicus' (above), except I got a Stanchion, but only one T6 helm, and I still have my helm and pants gemmed for Stam, until I get the Immortal Beast pants.

The other side of the coin is that with higher avoidance you make it that much more probable and easier for your healers to keep you topped up before stomp. The danger period is always the first few hits after stomp and if you are able to dodge 1 or 2 of those consistently that will boost your survivability far more than having 1-3k more stam.

I was stacking stam early in SWP also.

That worked well for our first couple of Brut kills also, however, recently the big issue is starting to be threat. Particularly the warlocks, as they have gotten more and more SWP gear are starting to pump out huge numbers.

I find - as long as you are chugging Free Action Pots - a dodge set for Kalecgos is fine. Stam just makes life easier if you get stunned.

As for brut and beyond, i think threat is really starting to shape my gear choices as much as mitigation and avoidance. My personal experience is that survivability can be accomplished with either set-up, however, gemming for dodge will also help with threat. Threat was never an issue before for me.

Regarding AC and brut, i go for an over cap set and ironshields and its amazing how much easier i am to keep up during stomp.

I have a question.I just got 4 peice tier 6. I understand that the swipe bonus is really nice. So my question is, After 4 peice tier 6 Do people still use the lacerate spam, mangle when up and keep maul queued? I looked at the post that has some math on the swipe tanking. But i'm wondering if people generally do switch to swipe rotations? If so, how much threat do you build, and what do you do in terms of rotation?

There's a great new feature in Rawr that will tell you the threat value of lacerate spam vs lacerate + swipe vs. swipe spam. Check out the top of the "Complex Stats" section on the stats tab.

You'll probably need more SWP gear before all-out swipe spam beats lacerate, since you need the obscene crit that comes with gemming purely for agi. For max threat at your gear level, keeping a lacerate stack rolling and sneaking swipes into your cycle will probably work best.

You can't trust the 1m,3s cycle yet on Rawr due to it over valuing both dps/tps through an incorrect addition of lacerate dot dps/tps. The lacerate and mixed cycles look to be pretty accurate though. In general, the better your gear gets, the more swipes you put into your rotation.

For example, the starting druid with poor threat stats will use a 1m,3l rotation, and then with a bit more gear, move on to a 1m,2l,1s cycle and with even more threat gear, a 1m,1l,2s cycle. From here, depending on how well you can avoid letting lacerate stacks drop from not landing refresh hits, you could move to a 3m,2l,7s cycle and maybe even to a 2m,1l,5s cycle with high enough hit/expertise.

Ironically, if you do get very good gear (and I'm not even sure if the stats are reachable yet since I haven't done the calculations), you may encounter decision making between whether you'd want to go for max TPS with 1m,3s or max DPS with 2m,1l,5s. At ultimate (unobtainable) gear with maxed crit, hit, expertise, armor pen, mangle will give 2m,1l,5s a higher ap coefficient than 1m,3s but because of the 20% threat from lacerate dps, 1m,3s will be higher tps. If this point were to be reached, you'd have to start thinking about whether the higher tps even affects your raid dps at all and comparing the dps loss to the dps differentials in your cycles. There's also the issue of sometimes having to let lacerate stacks drop (Kalecgos porting/Felmyst flying off) and whether or not the debuff slot is worth taking.

I'm pretty sure that the Rawr function is borked because it doesn't jive with stuff on the front of this thread at all. Zeln, who is mostly in T6 but with an Earthwarden, had Rawr tell him that pure Swipe spam is better than any Lacerating. I didn't realize this function existed so I (with the ZA staff/M'uru trinket/better chest/shoulders than Zeln) just stuck with stacking Lacerate to 5 and then Swiping in between maintaining the stack and my TPS was about 300-400 higher than his on Brutallus.

I'm lost. What is a 3m,2l,7s cycle?

There's only one known issue with Rawr's threat calculations right now: In the specific 1Mangle+3Swipe rotation (aka swipe spam), it's calculating like the lacerate dot is ticking the whole time, which gives you a bit more TPS than it should, and significantly more DPS than it should.

EDIT:
Mangle Lacerate Swipe Swipe Mangle Swipe Swipe Lacerate Mangle Swipe Swipe Swipe