Unless bosses have a higher parry and/or dodge change in Wrath, you're probably right. But we have no idea what the expertise cap is going to be at lvl 80, so I wouldn't make any sweeping assumptions just yet.

As for Savage Roar... wow. I can't wait to put that to use.... damn!

[Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] was an awesome level 64 staff. Not the level 70 rare you'd think it would be, given its stats.

Bloodwood Greatstaff seems pretty good though. Since you'll share armor with rogues, you'll have a hard time getting enough armor for any hard-hitting end-boss (though it's obviously worse for any boss using spells). The staff seems to be a replacement the [Pillar of Ferocity], trading stamina for threat.

Most level 75-76 blues seem to be a bit worse than the current raid drops anyway, so don't give it too much thought.

Well for a cycle more similar to a rogue, you would need to be able to maintain 1cp SR and 4/5 rip (to match 1SnD/5rupture), and I'm not sure we'll be able to pull that off without something like combat potency, ruthlessness, imp. SnD(in our case it would be imp. SR), or relentless strikes. At first glance, it seems like we will need atleast a 2cp Savage Roar to keep it up without having to hit everything perfectly and refresh it before it expires. Currently, that doesn't seem too difficult to fit in, but that's counting 2pc t4 procs and a higher crit rate than what I expect we'll see in WotLK. I'm just not sure OoC and Primal Fury will be consistant enough to keep both SR and Rip up for maximum duration.

It will be interesting to see if rake becomes worth it or not - it doesn't look like arms warriors will be taking trauma.

Remember there's a massive energy boost in the form of KoJ and Tiger's Fury usable every 30 seconds. 60 energy every 30 seconds is nearly double the energy value of the 2T4 procs (neglecting haste effects).

Don't forget that Braxxis and Earthwarden had no stam on them in their original incarnations. The stam was added in 2.1 I believe (maybe earlier?) because they'd been improperly itemized. Seeing as how this is still extremely early beta, and we're seeing sweeping changes left and right, I don't see why we can't expect that weapon to get some more tanking stats by the time it goes live.

Rogues don't 1pt SnD 5pt Rupture. Thats only doable with 2pc tier4 bonus. In sunwell gear 5s5r or 4s5r is optimal.

I can imagine Savage Roar still being in its very early stages seeing as we never heard anything about it until the Beta (although, I guess that's fairly obvious seeing this is the beta after all). Also there's the fact that no talents so far seem to affect it unlike Nourish which has 2. I'm guessing there will be a modification to an existing talent to allow for increased duration similar to that of Slice and Dice. Savage Fury seems quite fitting to include it, although my only concern would be that it would mean another "must have" talent to spend points on in an already somewhat bloated tree.

While browsing through the wotlk spells on wowhead, I noticed, that the Rip tooltip had changed in an interesting way:

Thinking outside of the "end-game box" (where +hit/exp. gear actually exists), it's also a Tier 4 talent. It's available at lvl 25/26, or 27/28 if you choose to get Primal Fury first to get those finishers out faster (yay monkey gear). There is no +hit or expertise at these levels (except for [Expert Goldminer's Helmet]), so that -5% target avoidance is pretty good to level up with (especially if you want to take on mobs higher than your level).

It seems the majority have commented on the bloated tree.

However, perhaps this is an intentional move by Blizzard? It serves to allow there to be multiple feasible specs instead of one cookie cutter, and allows for different playstyles and different requirements (ie 10m/25/pvp). IMHO it's a good move - allows for some personality. I'd say on EJ forums within a few months will be mathematically optimised talents / gear stats anyway

Additionally, I remember during the Beta of TBC, Blizzard saying it was trying to redo gear. They were trying to make more options available so that everyone wouldnt look identical like at the end of BWL's era. This is up to each individual's opinion as to whether this was achieved or not - I think it was by adding some stats (Pene/Exp/Haste etc) and with gems allowing further customisation. Perhaps this is Blizzards next step in allowing people to define their own character.

In conclusion it is, of course, very early days and much could change yet.

That would mean that they finally fixed the tooltip after i petitioned it like a thousand times. It also suggests that they fixed the missing AP bonus for the fifth combo point (currently it's 0.04 * AP for both 4 and 5 CP).

With savage roar, mangle and trauma up you will be seeing some sick rip ticks (up to 2k i imagine).

Currently i'm a bit disappointed about rake - with all the good stuff they did to ferals this skill is still pretty lackluster (scales a lot worse than mangle even with mangle and trauma up).

Another thing that has been bothering me is mangle. With imp. mangle, ferocity and 2t6, mangle will only cost you 29 energy. It may even surpass shred in those situations, considering the fast cp-buildup.