Mijae, could you please post the stats you are basing your calculations on ?

Well, yes and no. With the changes to T6 and dodge diminishing returns, I need the new talents (Mother Bear, Natural Reaction) in order to get back to near the same level of time-to-live. Assuming 12% damage reduction from Mother Bear, I estimated that I'll be taking about 7% more physical damage and of course 12% less magic damage; and the 6% dodge from Natural Reaction more or less makes up for the lost dodge due to DR. Are these good changes in the long run? Probably. However, it still is pretty much required to take those points at 70 if I want to continue tanking in Sunwell.

Edit: Of course, Blizzard really did need to nerf T6 in order to add Mother Bear; we'd have been ridiculously strong tanks otherwise.

The side effect I don't like is that I have to give up my points in Resto to get that tank spec and cripple somewhat my cat DPS, which is disappointing. I liked seeing that orange bar in the top 3 or so.

Well--I already had the ability to use healthstones and potions, albeit only when the GCD was up. And doesn't the new "potion sickness" sort of declaw whatever benefit we might get from easier consumable use in forms? Edit: I do agree that having a use for Inspiration is nice; it always annoyed me a bit that one part of my healer's heals was wasted on me but not the prot tanks (even if being armor capped made me the preferred tank for a lot of encounters).

I was looking at this Glyph last night on Beta and I think this would be a way to save a few talent points by not using Improved Mangle(if anyone is). In Cat form with the Glyph it appears to be an obvious DPS bonus via an 18 second duration. I was thinking that it also might be a way to save points in Bear form too. I guess it would be a comparison of Mangle more often vs Maul/Swipe/Lacerate more often, but possibly buffed with other "Cat" form talents picked up with the saved points.

Does that make sense? I am having an extremely hard time putting this thought in to words today.

Mijae: They "baked in" the threat from talents into Warriors and Paladins. They DID NOT do this for Bears. Supposedly, they adjusted bear dps upwards, to increase our threat to comparable levels [i.e. talent increases swipe damage and base damage values were supposedly increased]. Color me skeptical, but I'm certainly open to seeing figures. Maybe I can get our Warrior MT to do some threat tests with me.

If I understand you right you're saying that we would be able to leave Improved Mangle at 0/3 and spend those points on other threat improving talents since we could extend Mangle's duration with the glyph. The problem with that way of thinking is that we don't use mangle for the debuff (at least not while tanking), we use it because it's our highest threat per rage attack. Lowering its cooldown allows us to use it more often, leading to improved threat generation. The duration of its debuff is irrelevant.

Salvation is also included in the threat of tank classes now, probably by applying this:
Tank Class Passive Threat - Spell - World of Warcraft

Why they did not include it in the existing passive tanking buffs I can only guess that it is because Righteous Fury currently only increases holy threat while the new buff increases all threat even for paladins.

I don't believe this is implemented currently; it probably was a datamined spell that doesn't actually get applied. Salvation was baked in basically to tank's abilities by increasing the threat they output, usually by increasing the damage they do.

If we just compare those two talents and figures I have from live servers...
I do around 1100 TPS (700 DPS). A 4% DPS increase is around 40 TPS (a bit lower than a 4% threat increase due to static values on skills).

Each mangle is around 1380 threat. A Swipe is 470 threat (T6 bonus, similar to 2.3 talents). If you go from 3 * (1 Mangle 3 Swipe) to 4*(1 Mangle 2 Swipe), you will generate 8370 vs. 9280 threat (over 12*1.5 = 18 seconds). That's a 50 TPS increase (on single targets).

So Improved Mangle should be better for threat, and will cost you fewer talent points than master shapeshifter. Not to mention, you can skip OoC if you want to be a pure bear.

Are those rotations with or without Maul? I should also add what prompted me to think about all this was trying to have a single PvE spec and try to give up as little as possible on both sides. I am still clinging to simply swapping gear instead of specs when we change roles.

Maul doesn't matter one way or another in this. A 6 second or 4.5 second mangle will keep the mangle debuff up, and Maul doesn't take any GCD.

In addition to this, the damage that mangle is doing is going to be buffed with talents in WotLK, so the effect of more mangles should be even more greatly pronounced.

That all being said, when looking at the analysis of my own threat parses, I notice that mangle is about 20% of my total threat, and lacerate & swipe is also about 20% of my total threat. Increasing the number of mangles by 33% is going to reduce the number of swipes/lacerates by a similar 33%. This may not end up being that great a talent unless mangle is significantly buffed.

The mangle glyph is pretty much entirely a cat glyph as I see it. It would certainly be useful--managing the "out of synch" Rips and Mangles is a bit of a headache for me on the PTR. It'd definitely be a good choice for cat because it:

• Increases DPS by allowing us to "convert" Mangles to Shreds
• Eliminates the worry of Mangle dropping mid-cycle (risk of non-mangled Rip ticks, snarled-up timing of TF and FB, etc.)
• Makes cat more playable and reduces tunnel vision

My only concern is that I am pretty sure I want to get both the Frenzied Regeneration and Swipe glyphs, leaving only one DPS glyph (as I mentioned earlier). If they keep the system and mats as they currently are, I might be carrying around stacks of Swipe and Mangle glyphs in my raid bag. (I don't particularly want to make my raiding main a scribe just for an extra inscription slot, if indeed that becomes an option.)

See Mijae's post with TPS values per point for each talent (back a few pages). The spreadsheet in Mijae's signature also has TPS calculations based on the stats/gear you input, with a couple "default" level 80 setups.

Personally, based on the preliminary TPS numbers, I decided to move those 5 points (Natural + Master Shapeshifter) into Feral talents that have about-equal Cat utility and better TPS (Predatory Instincts or Rend and Tear, depending on your preference).