623 resilience with 3/3 SotF will make you crit immune to Thorim.

I personally have never died to a lightning gib, and I do this fight in +Stam gear and no resilience. We rotate tanks as our cooldowns are up, so even when he crits, it's only for 35k or so. When sitting at 53k hp, it's not hard to just eat up all the damage. I personally use the FR pieces as well to help mitigate Sif's attacks, but I just eat everything else. Works pretty well for us, YMMV.

macro. 5.6 boss, 8% unbalancing, -6% SotF

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(7.6-((GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL))*.04+GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELE E)),1,0.5,0)

I read this to imply that resilience affects player damage only come 3.2.

If you tank Thorim from the safe zone under the ledge the tanks need only move a VERY little bit to avoid the lightning cones that come out by rotating around Thorim a bit. It still can move him sometimes but its rare. Even still, I only bother if its near the end of the fight and he's hitting like a truck. At the start the extra damage is easily healable.

What is the safe zone? I haven't really studied Thorims room too directly, and since everything is reset, I can't get in there now to look at it.

I thought most guilds tanked him dead center in the room and didn't move him at all?

So then, just so I'm seeing the same thing you are; Thorim would be facing the Platform where he jumped down from, right?

Either he's facing the platform he jumped down from or he's facing the door to the corridor. Usually you face him towards the platform, because it allows people to spread out more and is more natural from the perspective of tanking him immediately after you jump down.

There are a number of diagrams on this behavior; check out stratfu.com or the EJ thread on Ulduar for more details.

The first one seems to rate armour a little too high really, which produces some odd results the deeper down the lists you delve. The second disregards the T8 bonuses which I think is a mistake and arguably ranks stam a little high (rawr weightings maybe). Minus the PvP gear though I'd say the second is the better of the two. Shoulderpads of the Intruder and 4xT8 is my aim, at the moment using the YS helm and 4xT8. The rest of both lists seems okay except for the low ranking of DM:G on the second.

Yeah, trinkets in general get weirdly weighed with wowhead's weighing system. DM:G still should be pretty awesome unless you're stamina stacking. Though...why is disregarding the T8 bonuses bad? Clearcasting is effectively useless, and making your SI last longer tends not to be particularly useful for any specific encounter save perhaps Thorim (where it lasts exactly as long as one Unbalancing).

The new Idol of Mutilation has no ICD on either buff, although the 200 Agi was not proc'd by mangle in bear form.

Clearcasting is minor I agree, but SI isn't. You probably have gloves and maybe legs as BiS anyway, and lose very little going for the other 2 with shoulderpads of the Intruder. For me taking the tiny downgrade from Garona's guise and the chest or legs to the T8.5 is worth the extra 8 seconds on SI.

If the agi proc doesn't work with bear mangle I don't think I'd replace [Idol of the Corruptor] with it. The difference in dodge is less than 0.72% before diminishing returns and you'd also be losing the side benefits of agility like threat and armor.

I wonder if idol swapping for bear with Corruptor/Mutilator would be worth it in order to gain both procs at the same time. You'd lose some maul damage in exchange for (assuming that you could do it) about 4% more dodge than you would have otherwise. That seems like a fairly good tradeoff.

Maul damage? As far as I'm aware, idol swapping will use a GCD which doesn't affect Maul. You would lose a Swipe/Lacerate if you timed it well, but I don't necessarily think it would be worth it with the short duration of the buffs.

Swapping idols resets the swing timer, which means you'll lose an average of about half a maul per swap.

Can someone confirm this?

My guild is looking to have me tank Thorim hardmode for 25man and normally I play resto now so my knowledge of feral tanking is underpar atm.

Is the resil required or is there a defense rating to hit that does the same?

Also is it required for Thorim or would it be better if I just went stam?

Yes, you need to be Crit. Immune with Unbalancing Strikes (-200 Defense) in order to solo tank Thorim Hard Mode. Your Stamina should be high as well.

I Wouldn't be solo tanking but I still want to be able to last as long as possible.

Is that resilience number correct though? I'd prefer not having to buy pvp feral gear to turn around and find I didn't need it.

Also since I don't really need a growl/maul glyph to tank the one boss if I went barkskin glyph with t7 4 piece bonus would you feel that'd be a good choice? Barskins normal reduction with a 25% less chance to crit for 15seconds.

@ Thaeryn: I would say the loss of any Maul time on Steelbreaker is even more of an issue since the buff (and other fight mechanics) skyrocket how high you can get tank DPS (without sacrificing survivability) into very much necessary.

Just because Threat is sometimes not an issue doesn't change the fact your DPS is no longer trivial, and is a factor in "race" fights to be sure.

@ Mnementh: Invariably, you are going to be using some items with Defense Rating on them, this is going to change your "Resilience required", with the setup I have now, I only need 560 Resilience.

That being said, getting that extra crit immunity is worthless when using multiple tanks, as you are taunting thorim in a manner such that the Current Tank doesn't have the debuff (whether this be by having someone eat the UBS, or with constant swaps) In this case, you should maximize your overall survivability (and mitigation, to make sure I'm including both terminology) and even think about things like +Hit so taunts don't resist.

On a fight like Steelbreaker, the loss of maul time might be bad. On a fight like Thorim or Vezax, the loss of maul time might be entirely trivial in terms of threat. Thorim especially given that threat is almost never an issue if you're swapping.

And while you lose maul time, you won't lose GCDs as long as you swap during a GCD, which isn't hard. It'll trigger a GCD on a swap but it doesn't require one.

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(7.6-((GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL))*.04+GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELE E)),1,0.5,0)

Critical Hit immunity [5.6%] for a level 80 player against a raid boss occurs at... 689 +def rating 5.6/689 = -0.008128% crit per rating
925.1 defense for 7.6%

Critical Hit immunity [5.6%] for a level 80 player against a raid boss can also be achieved by a Resilience... rating of 459.2 5.6/459.2 = -0.012195 crit per rating.
623.2 resil for 7.6%.

Might need 624 resiliance for thorim, however I have no doubt a druid tank will be using defense somewhere. I know I needed to use this math a couple times when trying to juggle resil/defense gems/chants to optimize.