@PrayforDeath
The talent clearly says "Increases your Healing Spells" - the bonus spellpower only effects spells that are heals - Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Healing Touch.

*edit*
Rhaegal says it better

You beat me to it - I read that and instinctively didn't believe what he's saying. It felt obvious that armor is ridiculously good for Feral boss tanking wherever it's itemized but I didn't realize just how so.

His notion is "silly" only if you read more into it than what he said. First, he was answering a question about armor trinkets, so it's wrong to say that he thinks armor isn't valuable on "other jewelry" because that wasn't part of the issue he was addressing. Second, the context was in terms of itemization and upgrades, with the OP suggesting that once a feral druid gets an armor trinket, they won't ever upgrade to a non-armor trinket, and the relative rarity of armor trinkets thus keeps bears from ever upgrading them once they get them (unless they are capped). It was the "all-or-nothing" idea that if a trinket doesn't have armor on it then it can't possibly be worth equipping on a bear that GC was addressing, and he only suggested that things weren't that extreme.

It's especially premature to reach this conclusion without having any real sense of itemization beyond Naxx, or of the nature of boss abilities. While shear-style mechanics and crushing blows may be a thing of the past, that doesn't mean that bosses are simply going to pump out nothing but physical damage melee attacks and spell damage that is simply resistable. There could be more mechanics similar the arcane strike proc from the scryer SSO trinket (does arcane damage, but can be dodged, parried, etc.) which heavily would favor avoidance trinkets/stats over armor, for example. It actually is not unreasonable to expect design to go this way -- armor is indeed fantastic for feral tanking, which means that encounters will have to de-emphasize it somewhat so that the less armored tanks will be able to handle the content. In other words, without crushing blows and shears, and with armor being so good, other tanks would be at a disadvantage to feral tanks. Mechanics that favor avoidance give bears a reason to care about stats other than armor, and make the other tanks not feel so bad about not being able to match feral druid armor levels.

Finally, as with all things involving itemization, it's your overall stats that matter, not necessarily what you have in each slot. If you have rings with lots of armor and not much else then you can afford (or even desire) trinkets with not much armor and more of the other stats so that overall you reach a balance.

Well posted Trev, are you GC in disguise? :P

You're quite right, the value of armor (and every stat for that matter) is more of a function of what's incoming. If 20,000 Physical damage is incoming with each swing, armour is probably your best stat. If 20,000 Shadow damage is incoming, however, I'd much rather be wearing a stamina trinket.

Beyond Naxx, Sartharian, Malygos there are still 2 unknown things:
1) What style encounters there'll be - what type of damage they'll deal, and how they'll deal it.
2) What gear itemisation will be available.

Both of those things need to be known before any attribute can be correctly weighed, in my opinion.

It seems like to me it would take an awful lot of spell power to make Hurricane hit as hard as just switching to bear and Swiping. In cat gear, your Swipes should do very respectable aoe damage. There have been numerous anecdotal accounts of people using it for aoe leveling. Glyph'd Maul is also nice if you watch threat carefully. If it's up, Berserk is also very nice (3 target, no cooldown Mangles). Ferals aren't in nearly as bad a shape for aoe damage as we used to be.

Bonus: you're in bear form already if you get aggro!

On the flip side of that coin depending on exactly how the DR is calculated this type of design could put us at a severe disadvantage as tanks. If a fight requires the tank to gear for max avoidance vs max mitigation we can only compete of the DR and avoidance formula's are tweaked so we can achieve a similar dodge value compared to the dodge/parry/miss of other tanks from a similar number of item points spent on avoidance. Considering the other tanks can capitalize on the fact that item budget favors spread stats vs 1 or 2 high stats on an item they can get much more avoidance from a single item. At this point I'm not entirely convinced the formula's are balanced to put us on a similar avoidance level with the other tanks after DR and stat allocation differences are taken into account.

edit: Good news from GC about savage roar stacking with UR and other 10% ap buffs.

Q u o t e:
While we're talking about savage roar, could we get the official word on why its not stacking with Unleashed Rage, Aboms Might, or TSA? Many of us have been reporting it as a bug forever in the beta, and without blue clarification its kind of hard to know.


GC:
Yes it should stack. I believe this is fixed, though I don't recall in which build.

That's not what I was saying. Saying that armor is worth more than other stats per itemization point is not the same as saying that it's the only stat you need to worry about or that anything without armor isn't an upgrade. To use an extreme example, you don't necessarily want to load up on items with armor and no other stats even if you aren't capped. Being armor capped and having 10k health and no avoidance would make you a sucky tank. I'm not saying that's likely or even possible, but I bring it up only to illustrate the concept.

So, in light of that, what I was getting at is that if you have five "armor slots" -- 2 rings, neck, and trinkets -- then the operative factor is the *total* value in those slots, in terms of upgrading. If you have a total of 1000 armor 100 stamina and 50 agi in those slots, then going to 1500 armor, 110 stamina and 55 agi would be an "upgrade." It's possible to upgrade your total stats even if you downgrade one or more slots in one area, provided that it allows you to reallocate. In short, just because the armor isn't on the trinkets doesn't necessarily mean it's not available. You could possibly get a ring with more armor and less stamina and avoidance and then change trinkets to one with more stamina and avoidance, and end up with more total stats than you had before. Thus, it isn't true that it won't ever be beneficial to upgrade from a trinket with armor on it to one with less or no armor. It depends on what other upgrades you can get to go along with it.

Trevvy, what you're not considering is item budget. With diminishing returns on dodge, it is literally impossible within the constraints of their itemization system for a dodge trinket to beat an armor trinket that's remotely near it in item level, at 70 we saw an increase of 64 ilevel from vendor epics to KJ, PreBC was an increase of 32. Raising the ilevel of the Valor Medal by 96 gives a 4.6% trinket, going up by 128 gives a 5% trinket.

I'm incapable of figuring out how they got a 200 ilevel on the darkmoon card, but going with the same ratios, a 328 ilevel version would provide a ~7.2% dodge trinket.

While I am certain there will be fights where a high Stam trinket, or a trinket that combines various defensive stats will be preferable due to the need for magic mitigation, I remain just as certain that physical mitigation will remain the primary requirement for boss fights which is why we see a significant homogenization of tank armor. Armor trinkets are irreplaceable as part of our average tanking set.

I can't see how a better armor neck is going to make me use an inferior armor trinket before I cap armor without Inspiration. So far the only interesting argument for DPS stats on tank gear is GC's suggestion that DPS checks in Wrath will be balanced around the tank contributing a significant portion of a DPS class's damage.

And I'm saying that as long as you're not armor capped (pre or post inspiration) armor is still going to be more valuable. Kazanity on the forums explained this well with an example, but unless you're giving up more in itemization to get the armor in a very large way armor beats anything. In your example, it's better to stay with the trinket that provides armor and go with an upgrade at neck than it is to juggle around the trinket, because you'll have more armor. Even if you lose stamina and avoidance. It's just that good.

The armor trinket beats the dodge trinket (if it existed) and the stam trinket. I'm saying that you wouldn't want to juggle anything; you'd want to just keep piling on armor. That's how good it is.

Yes, you can make up dumb examples where a tank has armor cap and no stamina, but let's not go there, okay? (I already made that argument and pointed out its flaw) There's no practical way for this to occur.

It's not a problem if you pull trash in cat gear either.