Unlike melee, spells always have at least 1% chance to miss, which cannot be overcome by gear or talents. It looks like that might be the issue at hand, unfortunately.

[The Decapitator] could work as a backup, like mentioned above, but bear in mind it has a 30-second cooldown when equipped so you can't just weapon swap on an Exorcism resist and expect it to work. How many of these mobs are up at a time? Would it be possible to use Avenger's Shield as a backup when Exorcism sees a resist? I'm not familiar with this fight either, but if the pushback and loss of avoidance for the spellcast is tolerable, that might be an option.

using the decap is silly unfortunatly, warlocks are usually already threat capped on sentinels with normal tanking gear on... there is very little wiggle room in this fight. You can't use AS every cooldown because of tanking spawns; you can use it once a minute when every other sentinel spawns (aka you have no mobs on you).

if you get an unlucky resist and there are no md's up then yeah, its probably a wipe. Not much you can do but blame rng...

The sentinels on M'uru are level 70 mobs; so with [Hammer of Judgement] and 3/3 Precision, it's a fairly rare thing. Using AS would be nice, but like Arikah said you generally have spawns from the previous sentinel on you that would prevent its use. We actually had a mage be a hero this past week and fireblast pull it then iceblock to me after a resist--very clutch. It just sucks that a 1% resist chance turns a very controlled, long fight into a coin flip.

I'll be honest; we don't even bother with grounding totem. I have a paladin and a shaman healing me full-time and as long as the stars don't align for a 24k burst in-between heals, we do alright. I also wear 254 shadow resist to help mitigate the spawn volleys and the void blast is resistable ([Flask of Chromatic Wonder] is great for the fight). Our way might not be the best, but it allows for a very controlled fight and removes the need for a fourth tank.

how do you prot pallies value the exalted sso neck piece? I am aldor and I am not famiailar with what the proc does. I currently use the neck piece off maiden(kara). I suppose my main question is, is the proc and the added expertise(threat) outweight the defense(mitigation) from the maiden neck piece? I am iirc at 501 defense, so replacing the neck piece should'nt make me critable.

it is a threat neck (aldor version proc is 100 dodge for 10 seconds) because of the expertise and hit. I stuck with maiden's neck until the one off RoS, it is pretty well itemized.

Actually on the topic of non armor upgrades, what is the general opinion on the new badge ring? I will be picking up enchanting soon so i am comparing rings for all specs... i use the supremus ring and the exalted hyjal rep ring currently, and the m'uru ring will be a while coming. Also there is the question of 12 spelldamage vs 4 stats, or maybe a mix of the 2?

Well... isn't the answer the same as usual? Take the one you lack?

Got to few stats (mainly sta and a bit of agi)? Take stats.
Got not enough spell dmg? Take the spell dmg enchant.

I like the new badge ring, and use that + the Hyjal one. I've always been a fan of armor though.

I believe someone did the math awhile back (either in this thread or the old thread) and showed that against purely physical damage, one point of armor is approximately equivalent to one point of health. That would make the badge ring superior to the Supremus ring if you don't need the +hit.

EDIT: Here's the math. DR is damage reduction, AF is the armor factor (11960 against a level 73), A is armor, H is health, and E is effective health.

DR = A/(A+AF) ---> (1-DR) = AF/(A+AF)

E = H/(1-DR) = H*(A+AF)/AF = H + H*A/AF

dE/dA = H/AF

dE/dH = 1 + A/AF

EDITED AGAIN DUE TO FAILURE AT MATH: If you're at 16k armor and 16khp buffed (somewhere in the T4-T5 range), then one point of health gives 2.34 points of effective health, and one point of armor gives 1.34 points of effective health, so at that point an extra point of armor is worth approximately 60% as much as an extra point of health. This ignores blocking, which will tend to tilt the balance in favor of armor a bit. As a rule of thumb it looks like one point of armor is probably worth about 2/3 as much as a point of health, for plate-wearing tanks with normal numbers of both.

I have been looking for an update to this spreadsheet, or any others that have been put out lately. Anyone know if it has been updated, or if there is another useful spreadsheet for threat / avoidance calculations?

Tried searching for a few, but unfortunately have not been able to find anything too useful.
PM's or just posts here with updated info would be great! Thanks!

On the topic of armor, has anyone found any great use for [Ancient Aqir Artifact] from Zul'jin? Our warrior tank and I have been eyeing it for awhile now, and it finally dropped last night. Then we both found ourselves scratching our heads trying to figure out where we would actually use it. In terms of passive avoidance, [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] is actually better, and it's rare that a +armor click effect is going to be better than an avoidance one. I could maybe see using it in AoE pulls to make block value more useful, but most of the time those pulls are trivial anymore and I'm better off with clickable avoidance anyway when I get in trouble (go go 72% avoidance with commendation + pocketwatch effects up). Sure, armor is better for the duration of an abomination stun in Hyjal, but free action pots make that pretty much a non-issue, and you can't click trinkets while stunned anyway.

He ended up taking it because parry-hasted swings are a tiny amount better for warriors than paladins. Either way, it's going to collect dust in the bank.

While I personally use [Scarab of Displacement], that trinket's simply amazing for demon tanking on Kalecgos if nothing else. The knockdown effect is extremely vicious (leading to 3-4 swings where being missed + ac + stamina are your only ways of surviving, and the cooldowns nicely coincide since you don't usually taunt right when you go up, and it's a two minute cycle. I like Scarab of Displacement because I have found going extremely (and I do mean extremely- 550+) defense heavy with a lot of AC helps more, but the cooldown offsyncs which is a pain. Still probably the best use I've personally found for it, or possibly a clickie on Brut for Stomp.

One note to the Mt. Hyjal Exalted Ring:

I personally prefer [Band of the Eternal Sage] over [Band of the Eternal Defender]. The armor proc is really nice but there's a problem with [Scroll of Protection V]. Whenever it procs it overwrites the armor scroll. On the other hand is the spelldam ring so wonderful for threat-sensitive fights.

When I got attuned to Hyjal, I chose the healing ring too. I sort of planned to switch over to Eternal Defender at exalted to replace [Violet Signet of the Great Protector] but I'm having a hard time convincing myself 392 AC and an excellent healing ring is worth giving up for +6 stamina, +11 defense, +44 block value and the proc (what does that average out to anyway?) for my role in the guild. I tank trash and heal on bosses. The only exception to this being the chosen tank for Essence of Anger.

I'd focus on your primary role first, which sounds like healer. I'm not sure where you are progression wise, but if you're going to be asked to Flame tank on Illi, I might suggest switch to the tanking ring, as the defense rating there is pretty clutch.

On another note, what are yall doing about the new Deathfrost enchant? It's obviously pretty tempting to have a T-clap substitute for those times when I'm trying to live and don't have a pocket warrior (Kalecgos demon phase comes to mind), but my gut feeling is that Mongoose is still a better overall survival enchant. Too bad too, T-clap is one of those reasons I'm not allowed to tank on Brutallus.

That's asinine, we prefer a paladin+druid tank combo on brut because then a rogue can use imp EA - have your silly dps warrior tclap. I've always wanted a thunderfury because of it's debuff (also it is sweet looking) but deathfrost may actually be an acceptable substitution. I'll get around to testing deathfrost some time this week (i somehow got a ToC, so ill put it on the ol hyjal mace and cats edge for ret) and let ya know.. although initial testing in the deathfrost thread says it is a 22s ICD, 15s dur; 70ish % uptime?

I'm going to put it on my mitigation weapon (the tanking mace off of Lurker) for the poor-man's-Tclap effect. There might be a level of spelldamage where it's worth using Deathfrost over +40 spelldamage on your main threat weapon, but if there is I don't think I'm there yet.

All of the above assuming it affects raid bosses, of course. (I haven't kept up on the research.)

What Arikah said; you presumably have a warrior of some kind in the raid, don't you? With the 20% anti-dodge and dual-wielding, Brutallus is one of those "Holy Shield heaven" bosses, on top of also being a demon. Forcing an arms warrior to stay in battle stance instead of zerk will hurt his dps a bit, but not enough to be worth using a lesser-geared tank if you have a well-geared prot paladin.

I was personally contemplating putting Deathfrost on my old [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel], but I'd also forgotten entirely I still had one of those Cleavers from Zul'jin collecting dust in my bank. I guess it's cheap enough for me to just put it on both though, so I have more choice depending on the situation.

Unfortunately I can't weigh in on results on how often it procs as I've yet to hear of anyone in the Horde on my server getting the enchant. There's probably some people with it, I just have yet to find out who. I'm definitely curious on how it'll interact with the somewhat unique mechanics Paladins are cursed/blessed with.

Sorry to nitpick, but the warrior doesn't need to sit in battle stance for the duration of the fight to pull this off. Thunder Clap is a 30 second duration, so he only needs to be in Battle Stance long enough to refresh the debuff. However, most DPS warrior builds don't include Improved Thunder Clap, so this isn't necessarily the best solution. Do you guys have a prot warrior that is in DPS gear for the fight? That's who we typically turn to when I tank something that needs an attack speed debuff since he's specced for Imp. TC and has no problems keeping that up for the duration.

To your last point, I totally agree. A given class' advantage needs to be pretty substantial (i.e. RoS phase 2 for warriors, alliance pallies for Leo's elf phase, etc.) to overcome large gear discrepancies. More often than not, the choice of who should tank something is going to come down to who has the best gear for the job, assuming player skill isn't an issue.

I guess my take on it is that most of the situations where I'm using my non-threat tanking weapon are cases where I'm tanking on an island and don't get any debuffs beyond what I can provide myself, so Deathfrost is a better choice there. Individual mileage may vary, obviously.

Regarding your response to my response to you, basically what Tilted said above. I was just commenting that Tclap shouldn't be a showstopper if there is a noticeable difference in tank gearing.

Yeah, I was sort of trying to do a worst-case comparison. A good dps warrior can stance dance with minimal rage loss so Tclap would hurt dps even less.

That's the issue. Usually DPS wars don't have imp TC because they aren't called upon to use it -- they do have points in Imp DS and can apply that. Making an Arms warrior do it just makes it more difficult if they spec for it.

I'm in an interesting position to where I more or less "raid lead" our alt/non-main raiding force team into Sunwell. I've already planned out the tanking assignments and I won't be tanking on Brutallus at all, respeccing Ret instead. I just feel more comfortable on every level with a warrior+druid doing it. It's not that a paladin can't do it, they certainly can and I know I can, but I'd much rather have the warrior do it. It'll be better. I've tanked RoS (including p2) the last few weeks but it still would be better on all fronts if a warrior was doing it. Warriors to me are still the king of MT'ing so if one is available I want them doing it. Having said that if your best tank (and player) is a pally tank and your warrior is just mediocre then of course it makes just as much sense to be having the paladin tank instead.

Right but there's a difference between first kills and farming. Also a difference between "optimizing" and going with what you got. I'm not saying that I couldn't tank Brut, and most likely even do it successfully. But try telling my guild (after 3 1% wipes this last week), that they should bring me and have the dps warrior keep up t-clap at the expense of some personal dps. It's just not going to happen.

I can't see Brut ending up being as bad as Archimonde, and I have no doubt I'll be tanking him once we have a coupla kills under our belts. I'm not even annoyed at my guild having me sit, I'd rather they kill him quicker so I get to play with Felmyst than me making a stink about getting in.

I am annoyed at Blizzard constantly changing the number of required tanks and required types from one boss to the next. I mean tanking is one of the more challenging things to do in a raid (imho), and requires consistent and aware players. But these are the players most often having to sit? Look at Black Temple. When first starting, you need 3 tanks for the trash to Najentus, and then only 1 for the boss. Nothing more uplifting than clearing trash so other people get to fight the boss( and get your tanking boots the only time they ever drop...). Then it's back to two tanks for Supremus, and a required 3 for Akama and Bloodboil. Drop that back down to 1 tank for Gorefiend, and then only 2 tanks for RoS (a warrior and pally - plus about 10 rogues...). Mother is back to 3 tanks of any sort, and council requires 3 tanks, with at least one, and preferably two, being warriors. Finally you round out Illidan with 3 tanks, at least one of which should be a warrior or an overgeared paladin.

I mean part of it is obviously the importance of the tanks in any role. A well-geared and played tank makes the encounter go smoother for everyone, and no other player in the raid has that ability to single-handedly make an encounter easier (plenty can make it more difficult by dying..).

Personally, I think that paladins need to get some bonuses to their off-healing, and/or remove _all_ the differences between warriors and paladins tanking, for WotLK. Druids do well because they're so versatile. They throw on some dps gear, are put in the melee group, and are valued contributers even when their primary focus is tanking. I.e. the marginal difference between a dps-focused feral and a tank-focused feral is small enough where you keep the player versus the gear/spec. With prot paladins, it's _far_ better to switch the prot pally out with a holy pally for any boss where the prot paladin isn't needed to tank.

I don't know, maybe these are just my own observations, I am the only pally tank I know on my server at least (there are others, I just don't talk to them). I'm certainly getting frustrated with being the niche tank that's really helpful for very specific encounters, no worse for others and frankly just sub-optimal for most. I mean my guild has 4 prot warriors( 3 well geared, with 2 of those showing up consistently) and 1 prot paladin, because having 2 prot warriors(or ferals, but we have trouble recruiting them) is often beneficial to a fight, whereas having 2 prot paladins basically never is. Anyway, sorry for the rant, just something that has been bothering me lately while riding pine for Brutallus.

I have a few questions about Felmyst. I've tanked the skele adds before while our warrior usually tanks the boss and helps me pick up one of the trails.

Our warrior tank might possibly (but hopefully not) be on hiatus for a little while. In which case I'd like to be prepared to tank both trails + the boss. The boss tanking i understand, however if there's any advice you guys could give me on picking up both trails and positioning for the raid (aka where to run with the trails, etc), I would appreciate it immensely.

thanks