Cons resists are not currently appropriately appearing in the log, but trivial tests with no hit show that +3 only take a much smaller amount of cons ticks than the amount shown. Likely a combatlog bug, you can demonstrate it pretty easily by avoiding hit gear, taking a healer and doing anything that's 'boss' level. This was mentioned in passing in the other prot thread but bears repeating- it feels to me, personally, like it's being resisted and for some reason not counting for us.
Yes, precisely.
I entirely agree with de-emphisising expertise- as a primary TPS stat, it's horrible. That said, autoattacks -do- enjoy (as said above) a fairly significant bump on TPS, and seal refreshes on boss-level mobs are no joke even with the current mechanics. In addition, cons is a very relatively low TPS- and more importantly, burst TPS- spell when you deal with the massive new toys available to everyone, and it is our primary tool. HotR simply cannot be overlooked as a primary multimob threat worker for quick pickup, and the 'bounce' seems to be dodge/parryable from the back on mobs which means expertise is a no-joke stat for quick aoe threat pickup on smaller (3-6) group pickups. Of course it's well behind hit (till 9%) but still no joke.

Then again the SoV glyph, and assuming they actually bother to itemize a single epic tanking mace, I personally will be escewing it all on my gear in preference to hit, str, stam and maybe some crit. Expertise is not a primary tanking stat and should be excluded heavily, I fully agree. Using simply the basic tools, we already lose 4% off parry/dodge (10 + 6, at .25% each to each), which sets up a pretty bad valuation in terms of relative TPS/mitigation stats.

You might also be slightly underestimating our melee damage, or in fact damage overall, both in terms of threat and in terms of..well...damage. On sunday I pulled just a hair under 2k on our patchwerk, which while not impressive (I just barely beat the feral OT) is in no way a joke dps amount and significantly helps with DPS timers for any encounters. Clocking 2.3k, with straight up melee damage being perhaps 3rd (don't have the breakdown handy, sorry!) on sister of grief is geniunely no joke. While we might not need the TPS just now, we might seriously need the DPS shortly- and tanks are no longer given a free pass when it comes to damage checks. As hard as ShoR hits (and good lord it hits high, anyone broken 11k yet? 10.3k is my highest selfbuffed on random world mobs, I'm sure someone can beat that), the fact is strong autoattacks are pretty hefty.

Of course, I autoattack for 420, HotR for huge numbers, ShoR for MONSTER numbers, some dots are ticking, a HS proc, I'm feeling good, and SoV ticks for -6- damage. Seriously if you're going to insult with the 'damage proc' just take the damn thing out. 6 damage is not helpful, even when it crits for 9.




By the bye, and it's not been talked about much, but is anyone else finding themselves effectively throwing out anything that doesn't have SBV/SBR over those that favor parry/dodge (and are equivilant ilvl, of course). Please don't armory me just now as I logged off in some comical gear, but on Sappherion last night I had absolutely tons of issues right up until I stopped trying to use dodge/parry/AC and just went straight SBV, blocking fairly hefty amounts pretty much every time. I'm sure my overall damage was higher, but my healer was happily crowing over a simply level incoming damage curve (since we really block nearly everything all the time), my TPS was through the roof (not that that's an accomplishment just now) and my DPS really took off (and I was missing high dps abilities because I was so paranoid about helping others). With the DRs on dodge/parry I'm very seriously considering just building up incredible SBV and tons of stamina/AC and avoiding sheer avoidance. It was a 'reasonable' strategy till BT/SWP in TBC, and while not the best I think it might be a good jumping off point as we head into the 25s. With our threat, mitigation, and damage all tied to SBV/Str I think it might actually come up to join stam as a primary stat- which will make gearing interesting, socketing str into things because I don't mitigate quite enough.

Any other people stepping into instances who have thoughts on how to set up gear? I realize we're not far in and quite a few are simply attempting to throw together gear in a frantic attempt to get uncrittable (on that- non heroic HoL has the upgraded hydross trinket, heroic and non heroic have different loot tables, chain run it if you need to get uncrit), but eventually we have to set up our gear in the various ways that make us do our job best, and I've got my eye turned to that.

How would you rank the glyphs?

I find 10 expertise from glyph of seal of vengeance by far better than anything else, but I'm not sure about others. Spiritual attunement, improved judgement and improved righteous defense are all rather nice but on the other hand not amazing, since our TPS is more than enough, mana shouldn't be a problem on mobs that are actually hard, and on fights where taunt is actually critical the mobs/bosses seem to have reduced chance to resist it anyway. So which 2 of these 3 would you suggest? Or are there others I've missed? Seems since TPS is the smallest issue, glyph of judgement will probably be the one I won't use.

To expand upon this, it's worth noting that:

a) Our average TPS is already so high that sustained threat generation isn't a concern, so it's in our best interest to minimize the chance of losing a mob early due to a miss/dodge/parry and the expertise helps here, and...

b) Uh yeah, our glyphs kinda suck, so what were you going to choose anyway?

From what I've seen it looks to be smartest to glyph SoV and RD, then choose your 3rd (and minors, for that matter) based on personal preference.

I'm leaning pretty heavily in that direction myself.

My thinking right now is that keeping up sustained threat on something you're tanking is a fairly trivial exercise. From a threat standpoint, I think the biggest thing to worry about is your ability to pick up aggro on a fresh mob, or to retake it on a mob you've just lost. From that perspective, the best thing you can do is reach the melee hit cap, because that guarantees hits from ShR, AS, and RF, which between them cover 95% of your snap-threat needs (melee single-target, ranged multi-target, and taunting).

Aside from what Prinsea said above, I actually ran a little macro in the beta that displayed raw threat numbers, and found that activating RF increased white-damage threat by 43% and Holy-damage threat by 273% (or whatever the number is). So that's empirical verification, at least as of one particular beta build. I haven't tried it since then, but certainly from my experiences trying to tank without RF, it feels a lot more like RF triples threat rather than doubles threat.

Other tanking classes have the same hidden 43% bonus built in to defensive stance, bear form, and frost presence (assuming I'm remembering DK stuff correctly). So you can think of it as either every tank getting a 43% threat buff while in their tanking mode, OR you can think of it as everyone having a 30% threat reduction except tanks in their tanking modes. The end effect is the same.

It's based on my half-assed observation of SoB vs SoV damage at some point when I was dps'ing or something. In other words, I'm not really confident of it at all. One thing worth noting is that SoB's dps is going to vary quite a bit with weapon speed, since that affects judgement damage. I didn't look closely at the SoB numbers from HotR strikes, so I don't know if they were based on weapon damage or the HotR damage.

A lot of what I'm throwing up in this guide is based on my casual observation from less than two weeks of WotLK. So, nothing here should be taken as certified truth, and please point out anything where you think I might be wrong, including on matters of opinion. (I'm envisioning quoting multiple people with different opinions in the guide.)