Survivability is raw damage that you can take without getting healed. How much raw damage do you want to be able to survive? As someone posted just a few posts up, Stomps are ~20k damage, MHs are ~20k, OHs are ~10k. So if you want to be able to survive Stomp+MH+OH with no heals, you want 20k+2*(20k+10k) = 80k. There's some variance in the damage, and I want to have a bit of buffer in case I'm not totally topped off before a stomp, so I do 82k (now, anyway, after we've been farming him a while. I did 84k for a long time too).

Reduction for 73s = Armor / (Armor + 11960)

20810 Armor = ~63.5% reduction, 36.5% taken
10504 Armor = ~46.5% reduction, 53.5% taken

Pre-mitigation, Stomp = 20k, MH = 20k, OH = 10k.
Post-mitigation, Stomp = 7.3k, MH = 10.7k, OH = 5.35k
Total, post-mitigation: 23.35k. No, you won't be instantly dead.

EDIT: Also don't forget, Stomp is the major danger point in tanking Brut, and you can turn the Stomp debuff on in Rawr, to see how you'll be hit with it up.

Ever since I got my [Stanchion of Primal Instinct] several weeks ago, I've been itching to use it on more than just trash and M'uru adds. My guild DPSers are getting ever better gear, and they're really starting to ride my threat. The lack of armor, as well as the low stam, really makes me shy away from using it on sunwell bosses, though.

I've recently started experimenting with stanchion on Felmyst. I still end up with 74% mitigation due to a pally with imp devo in my group (I'm usually in the 3x hunter + Restosham group), and it immensely helps my threat compared to [Wildfury Greatstaff]. I am almost always in that 3xhunter + restosham group, though, so imp devo is a luxury born only of the grouping requirements for felmyst.

So, I wanted to ask you guys who are experienced with tanking Brut and Twins (both are on farm status for my guild, and I definitely won't be using Stanchion for Kalecgos due to the stun)... do you think it's safe to use Stanchion on those fights? If so, how do you make up for the loss of armor? I'm still using ironshields for brut, in addition to Wildfury, and while I've very rarely ever seen myself get low on HP, I'm sure my healers really appreciate the ease of keeping me up through stomp with 20k+ armor (I love being able to finally benefit from Inspiration!).

As for twins, we kill Sacrolash first with me holding the offtank roll (the prot warrior holds aggro about 60-70% of the time with our strat). When I'm holding aggro, she crushes me HARD, and confounding blow hits like a ton of bricks. However, I often have threat troubles, especially near the beginning of the fight if I don't get an early flame sear for rage. I've been using Pillar for Twins, but I'd love to use Stanchion instead.

I guess I'm just asking for confirmation that I can finally dump my damn Wildfury. It pisses me off so much that there isn't a strictly "better" tanking weapon anywhere in TBC, and I'm sitting there wearing a piece of SSC gear to tank bosses two tiers above it.

The rest of my gear is linked in my signature. I have every piece of feral gear from pre-muru bosses except the twins shoulders, all gemmed for agi.

The armor on Wildfury combined with it's other stats mean for me that it's not replaceable on Brutallus. Stomp is the only dangerous part of the fight and 500 armor in Wildfury is a huge amount of mitigation under Stomp.

Twins is less clear cut I suppose. We never have threat issues on the fight therefore I use Wildfury simply to make the healer's job easier.

I use Stanchion of Primal Instinct for everything in sunwell. I switch to wildfury during stomps but thats about it.
It happens that i die on felmyst but thats not coz of low armor.
All our tanks are using as much tpsgear as possible without getting gibbed, its pretty much up to our healers, and if they say "ive got no problem keeping you up" i switch in some more tpsgear. Weve got awesome healers tho.

I never really got this "you must cap armor" thing. The only time ive got capped armor is during stomp on brutallus.
If the boss hits for 20k and ive got 75% mititagion, thats 5k hits, for every % less mitigation it hits for ~200 more right? wont get our healers oom since alot of the healing is overhealing anyway

I've often swapped out Wildfury for even [Staff of the Forest Lord] since i don't have Stanchion yet (and guild stopped raiding). With ironshields I was still armor capped pre-stomp on Brut. I'd probably never remove Stanchion.

I'd love to be able to do that, but I'm not sure that I could trust myself to remember to do the switch back and forth. Thanx for the suggestion, though. I'll experiment with it for next week's kill to see if I can remember.

With defensive buffs like Commanding Shout, Tree of Life, and Devotion Aura going raid wide, I don't see us needing to stack stam. We'll be getting all the benefits of both a dps group and a tank group now. In addition it looks like our bonus armor items will be converted to more agility in most cases, but more stamina in a few as well.

Btw, I love trading 70 armor and 78 ArP for 1 strength on T6 bracers.

Some interesting results from playing around using Rawr as a simulator for 3.0, for bear form. I couldn't obviously simulate what the new items were going to end up being across the board, so take this with a grain of salt, but this assumes that all leather gear has had every bit of extra armor removed from it. Including the pvp gear.

- More often than not, pvp gear is better than T6 gear. In the case of the head, for example, the Vengeful Gladiator is better than T6. Same for the shoulders - and these turn out to be better than anything in sunwell as well. (this very much depends on whether agility is extra nerfed or not and what the avoidance rate is. Demontooth may still remain the best) The T6 chest wins out against vengeful but not brutal. The T6 gloves win against vengeful but not brutal. Tameless breeches handily beat T6 and Vengeful and Brutal.
- because of the higher stamina and strength, the feral versions of Sunwell gear tend to be better than the rogue versions. This is true for the leggings of the immortal beast, mask of the fury hunter, harness of carnal instinct, gloves of the forest drifter.
- some rogue gear is best in slot (depending on buffs, of course). Don Alejandro's Money Belt is better than Thunderheart Waistguard simply because of the two sockets.
- Thunderheart wristguards and treads remain the best.
- Mark of Tyranny becomes far better
- As does Pillar of Ferocity

This changes a bit if we get better than expected avoidance from agility. If that's the case, more rogue gear is best in slot. Quad Deathblow goggles become far better than any other option, for example. Belt of 100 deaths is stellar. However, given the nerfs to agility's coefficient at 70, I believe that this gear will largely be suboptimal.

So, similar to what we're seeing with the same iLvl items compared between pvp and pve, the PvP gear is winning out - largely because of how good stamina is.

The new bracers have Armor Penetration RATING on them not just armor penetration. I'd imagine it would remain unchanged at 70 when converted.

I suppose WoltK/the partial live patch changes are certainly more useful than yet another rehash of armor vs agi on brutallus.

I would be very interested to know (lacking any interest in beta myself) what changes I'll have to be dealing with before I quit at the expansion.