It's interesting to note that with the glyph and imp. disciplines, warrior shield wall is effectively 40% mitigation on a 1 minute timer. Compared to Barkskin and IBF (20%), but have varying levels of utility.

Not sure how I feel about Savage Defense -- introducing a somewhat random mitigation mechanism and trading that off for armor as well as stamina most likely (due to gearing choices) doesn't seem that appealing. We'll have to see.

Primal Gore = Lacerate dot crits = Savage Defense shield?
If it does work out that way, Primal Gore would be even better.

EDIT: Now that I look at it again, would Lacerate dot crit count as a melee crit? O-o

I really don't think there is a strong push towards strength for bear tanks. Really, they are homogenizing the gear between cats and bears even further with all these changes. As of live, I have quite a different set of gear for tanking and dps. With these changes, I'm looking at gearing almost the same, and even gemming the same for both (Agility). There will still be some item swaps, but according to the latest version of Rawr, even Journey's End beats Origin of Nightmare's as a tanking weapon at top gear levels. Granted, that beta doesn't include all the changes in the patch, but the intention still seems to be moving that direction.

No, I'm really not.

However, let's keep this discussion focused on Druid specific changes -- the warrior change is interesting simply as a comparison of where we stand among the tanking classes.

The total score for Journey's End is always the highest for me thanks to it's ridiculous threat component. If you ignore threat and only go by mitigation + survivability I'm sure Origin of Nightmares will come out on top.

WowInsider also pointed out some undocumented changes here

The Druid relevant ones are:

Emphasis mine. The change made to SotF makes me think that we will have to compete even more with rogues for +crit and +AP gear for tanking in order to compensate the lost armor.

Any thoughts?

Nothing new that we didn't know about. And currently tanking jewelry will still win out; crit isn't going to significantly increase the uptime on attacks relative to agility (or really, to the number of mobs), stamina is still going to be valued, and strength will still give as much AP as most DPS items will.

If people are willing, I'd like to figure out some baseline things to test for feral druids in the PTR. We already know that savage roar does increase bleed damage. Here are some more.

Is the glyph for savage roar 6% more overall damage, or 6% more of a bonus to the 30% (in other words, 1.06* .3).
Does predatory instincts improve crit damage from bleeds? Does the relentless meta?
Does savage defense proc from crits on bleeds?
Does savage defense have a 'window' of opportunity (like reflective shield) or does it just absorb one attack?
Where does SD's shield go in the order of absorption? Is it before power word shield? Is it before essence of gossamer? Is is before fel blossom?
Is there any cooldown for SD?
Does Savage Roar's bonus apply when you start the bleed, or when the SR buff is active?
Is SD's shield removed by DoTs?

Those are the ones I'm interested in; more would likely be a useful thing.

Anyone noticed Mangle (Cat) not awarding any combo points on PTR? If I'm not specced into Primal Fury, I get no cp from it at all, whereas whilst specced into Primal Fury I get no cp on a non-crit but 1 cp on a crit (from Primal Fury). I played around with dual specs a bit before I went to test so I don't know if that's what caused it. If anyone's got a "clean slate" character copied onto PTR, some testing would be appreciated.

I've reported it on the PTR forums:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [Bug] Mangle (Cat) CP Generation

I also find Mangle awarding 0 CP on a non-crit and 1 CP on a crit, immediately after speccing on the PTR for the first time. Makes it kind of hard to test my DPS!

Savage Defense doesn't seem to exist yet on the PTR, unfortunately, so I can't test that either.

Well, our tier sets are already covered in these stats, so I think it will not have a significant impact on how much loot we get. We are already wearing what is basically stamina-heavy rogue leather for tanking; this just makes it scale more effectively in the long term.

Accidental double post.

For tanking [Item not found!] over Berserk for me. No changes for tanking glyphs for me.
Why? I don't value Berserk for tanking at all. If I am missing 1 combo point I will not take berserk and invest the combo point in something worth more.

The reason is that berserk indeed does more damage and more threat but it will only do so once every 3 minutes. The relatively small boost you get form 5 seconds more mangle spam is not much.
The best time to use berserk is when you start a fight. Unless you find a lot of rats around you will start that fight with max 30 rage. You can not really mangle spam then. Also a hunters MD will help you. So berserk for tanking has no value.

Growl on the other hand can wipe a raid. When you miss a taunt you will have a healer tanking, an other tank with a too huge debuff getting too hard hits. I will take growl as a must.