It is worth it every other rend refresh. Rend duration is 15 seconds; the Thunderclap attack speed debuff lasts 30 seconds. So if you rend=>thunderclap=>rend=>thunderclap you will keep both up.

Edit: only true if you don't have thunderclap glyphed. See below.

You're right. I was thinking of the rage cost difference between the two, and using it for extra heroic strikes, but at a 5 rage difference, it would take 6 uses to get an extra heroic strike into your rotation. It isn't worth it.

Edit: After reading Thebitterfig's comment, I hit up a training dummy and did some napkin math taking into account the extra tick of rend. With my gear, I found that refreshing with thunderclap every other rend duration was netting me roughly a 670 damage loss over the 3 minutes it took for the difference in rage cost to pick up an extra heroic strike. However, this is only true if you are using the Resonating Power glyph to drop the cost of Thunderclap. If you are not using the glyph, you gain 2 heroic strikes over the same duration. This would net me a roughly 2110 damage gain. Again, this was with my gear. Your numbers would probably be different.

Spreadsheet V0.11 up and running, added some indroduction (maybe this will reduce the number of private messages/emails requesting to share it), a nice overview tab and the value of buffs.

Spreadsheet V0.11

While ultimately correct, you aren't exactly stating the mechanics of Rend properly. When applying a fresh Rend on a target without one, it will tick once immediately, so when you refresh with TC, you don't get that bonus tick. However, this isn't a problem for Prot warriors, since a TC deals significantly more damage than one Rend tick (about three times as much, judging from WoL parses). I just don't want people to get the wrong idea about the mechanics, since the situation is currently reversed for Arms warriors.

Why is Heavy Savage Armor kit not recommended for Gloves and Bracers? I mean 44 Stamina doesnt sound so bad for me.

Because in most situations, mastery and dodge are better than stamina.

From what I've read, the only situation where a tank will stack stamina is if you're pushing certain heroic raid bosses, especially if you undergear the encounter (i.e. if you're trying something like heroic Nef without much heroic raid gear). But since most guilds progress through heroic modes fairly slowly and therefore gear up at an appropriate rate, this shouldn't be an issue unless you're either bringing in a new tank or you have absolutely terrible luck with drops.

Some of the top-end tanks still seem to be stacking stamina, and I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure which encounters this is recommended for. Some of them also just stick with more standard stat stacking, though, with maybe a few tweaks.

As always, your choice of gems/enchants/trinkets/spec/whatever else should be based on the content that you're doing. But for normal modes, at least, stacking mastery (and other avoidance stats to a much lesser extent) will offer you the most bang for your buck, since there aren't any mechanics I've encountered in normal raids that require or even favor stamina stacking.

It can't be applied to bracers. And, while I personally do use the wrath enchant of 40 stam (as opposed to the Cata option of 50 dodge), its a fair decision either way. I do however go mastery on gloves - mastery is worth more than dodge to begin with, and the gloves have a 65 mastery option as well.

When I do some research on BiS Items for Protection Warriors, the List for our Ranged Slot contains only 1 Item: The [Crossfire Carbine].. But why? I mean, its a neat weapon for that slot, but aren't there better alternatives?
I got [Themios the Darkbringer] from Atramedes Hero and by my Opinion, Research and Comparison it seems to be better for (Migitation) Tanking.

When comparing with [Crossfire Carbine] I am loosing some threat Stats (Expertise and Attack Power) but gain Dodge Rating (by Agility), Parry Rating (by Reforging), Mastery Rating and Stamina.
The Gain of Parry Rating by the Strength Attribute of [Crossfire Carbine] is so minimal, that it is easily cleared by Reforging Crit to Parry.
Or am I missing something?

I compared with the Wowhead Comparison Tool and with RatingBuster ingame, but I do not get why I shouldn't use this Bow..
Even askmrrobot, which seems to have fairly good researched facts in their back, suggest this Bow as BiS for us.. but it is the only source claiming [Themios the Darkbringer] as BiS.
Can you help me (and for others ofc) clear things up?

Yeah I'm also using the normal bow over crossfire carbine, the agility give me ~.3 dodge over ~.1 parry from the STR, both have mastery, crit and exp are both more or less undesirable so I've reforged to dodge. I keep the carbine for DPS and tank with the bow. Going heroic with the bow just increases the gap.

Obviously exp is a far more desirable threat stat than crit so if you're having problems with threat both that and the str make the carbine the superior choice. Obviously this doesn't invalidate any of your other arguments but I figured it might be worth mentioning before everyone goes haring off after agi rings, necks, weapons and cloaks.

After you listed the priority, I actually got quite confused with the explanations afterwards.
Let's say I wanted pure threat for a boss pull. Let's say I cared about pure threat for the first 10-15 seconds.

Would Rend still be a priority over Devastate? Devastate is immediate damage, and it applies Sunder Armor.
Is it ever optimal to reuse Heroic Throw even if I'm in melee range? You didn't mention this.

It is listed having 3 stacks of Sunder Armor is important, but is it more important than starting with Shield Slam?
Would Rend be used after the 3 stacks or before? Also, is using Taunt mid-charge considered a TPS increase?

Also, should I activate Shield Block before the pull right after I activate Shout / BRage?
I feel that I lose a lot of rage at the beginning form using Shield Block.

To conclude for OPTIMAL / MAXIMUM threat priority, I'm assuming this is what you mean:

Shield Slam (proc) > Revenge > Shield Slam (without proc) > Devastate (3 stacks) > Rend > Devastate

For me, it's:

SS (proc) > SS > Revenge > Devastate (3) > Rend > Devastate

Maybe both of what I just stated are wrong?
I mainly want optimal threat the beginning as I prioritize that by far over any type of damage mitigation.


For the pull, would it be better to Thunder Clap and use Rend only when you're comfortable with threat?
I feel that a GCD can be problematic because you don't achieve full aggro within that small time frame.


Exactly, how important is Exp / Hit vs Mastery / Parry / Dodge?

I kinda want to make this my priority:

Mastery > Expertise > Hit > Parry > Dodge