Profession Benefits

In the interest of helping people choose their professions wisely, this is a list of profession-specific benefits, as considered with the restrictions we're placing ourselves under:

- Epic (purple) gear: NO, except engi self-head
- Epic gems: NO (except JC-self-gems)
- Abyss-enchants: NO
- Epic leg armor: YES
- Exa hodir enchant: NO, Epic PvP enchant: YES (it's resi, so most of its stats are wasted, it's simply to save you from the long questline if you hate it)
- Head enchant (now heirloom): YES

Mining
Toughness (60 Stamina)

Herbalism
Lifeblood (~3600 heal, 3 min cooldown)
Dreaming Glory pick buff (30 HP/5)
Netherbloom pick buff (+50 random stat)
Fel Blossoms (750-1250 shield)

Skinning
Master of Anatomy (40 Critical Strike Rating)

Blacksmithing
Bracer & Glove Sockets (48 Stamina, 32 Strength/Agility/Spirit/Intellect/Defense Rating, 38 Spellpower, etc.)

Enchanting
Dual Ring Enchants (80 Attack Power, 60 Stamina, 48 Spellpower)

Inscription
Master's Inscriptions (benefits over Lesser Inscriptions)
90 Attack Power & 5 Critical Strike Rating
45 Dodge Rating & 5 Defense Rating
52 Spellpower & 3 Mp5
52 Spellpower & 5 Critical Strike Rating

Leatherworking
Fur Linings (benefits over available non-abyss enchants)
90 Stamina
46 Spellpower
80 Attack Power
70 Misc. Resistance

Alchemy
Mixology (improvements to flasks)
47 Spellpower
64 Attack Power
650 Health
Flask of the North (permanent use flask)
Endless Healing/Mana Potion (permanent use potions)
Indestructible Alchemist's Stone (trinket, 75 Stamina & 50 Dodge Rating)
Mighty Alchemist's Stone (trinket, 100 Attack Power & 50 Critical Strike Rating)
Mercurial Alchemist's Stone (trinket, 59 Spellpower & 50 Haste Rating)

Engineering
Epic Engineering Helm (compare to best blue alternative yourself)
Flexweave Underlay (cloak enchant, 23 Agility vs 22 Agility normal enchant)
Glove Enchants:
Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 Haste on use)
Reticulated Armor Webbing (885 Armor)
Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket (1000 Damage on use)
Nitro Boosts (boots enchant, 24 Critical Strike Rating and speed boost vs 12 Critical Strike Rating & 12 Hit Rating normal enchant)
Saronite Bombs (~22 DPS)

Jewelcrafting
Monarch Crab (trinket, 63 Stamina & 2 sockets, 300 Dodge Rating on use)
Emerald Boar (trinket, 84 Attack Power & 2 sockets, pet summon on use)
Ruby Hare (trinket, 62 Stamina & 2 sockets, speed boost on use)
3x Dragon's Eyes (bonus over blue gems)
54 Strength/Agility/Spirit/Intellect
81 Stamina
60 Spellpower
54 Defense Rating

Tailoring
Swordguard Embroidery (400 Attack Power proc)
Lightweave Embroidery (250 Spellpower proc)
Darkglow Embroidery (400 mana restore proc)

Looking at this list thinking about the best way to set up a tank, it's pretty obvious that Leatherworking/Jewelcrafting is the best way to go. Leatherworking offers a massive 90 Stamina bonus (due to the standard 40 Stamina bracer enchant using Abyss crystals) as well as resistance enchants for resistance fights. Jewelcrafting offers two great stamina trinkets with good use effects and the benefits of Dragon's Eyes are much larger when we're restricting ourselves to blue gems.

JC for tanks is a no brainer, get the Monarch Crab and two Solid Dragon's Eye. There's no better trinket. That leaves you one more dragon's eye to slot somewhere else. The other trinket for tanks should be the Essence of Gossamer, +111 stam, good stuff. IF you absolutely can't get the essence of gossamer, the Ruby Hare isn't bad at +62 stam and 2 red sockets + a movement onUse. you could throw in your third Dragon's eye in the Ruby HAre as a Solid Dragon's Eye for lots of stam stacking. This is assuming you can meet your defense minimums without trinkets.

The 'other' profession for tanks - Blacksmithing. The extra sockets to GLOVES and BRACERS paired with a Dragon's Eye gem gives you the option to throw in a Thick Dragon's Eye (+34 defense) or the Solid Dragon's Eye (+51 stamina) in an unrestricted socket. For Plate tanks this is a great bonus for itemization as it gives some flexibility in your defense cap, Mining is also a good profession for tanks, a flat 60 stam is nothing to scoff at. My 'main' tank is a DK and I have mining + JC. I have the gold now and I'm honestly considering grinding out the blacksmithing to get those extra sockets so I have more flexibility in socket bonuses.

I hope the tanks can stick to defense and stamina. Threat 'shouldn't' be an issue, but it may be something to consider. I don't think professions for tanks will change, but a stam gem might turn into an expertise or hit gem.

Blue crafted gear for tanks has tons of defense on them, much more than epics from Naxx (I know this from my warrior tank). I haven't yet made myself a BiS list because I'm still deciding between tanking/healing, but I would say we'd definitely gear for stamina and then probably for avoidance. If you don't take JC (as I'm not going to) there's also a nice blue defense trinket from dungeons that will help out to reach the cap if that's an issue (HoL normal was it?).

Tankspot.com has an excellent pre-raiding 540 defense list that is mostly blue gear.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/41986-ciders-easy-540-defense-gear-guide.html

The blue crafted gear goes a long way, but it won't get you to 540 defense alone. There is also some revered faction defense gear, still not enough. Unfortunately, plate tanks may find themselves looking for those rare drops or camping the AH for BoE's to round out their 540 defense.. If you think you can make the 540 defense without gemming, I don't think two extra sockets and epic-level crafted gems would hurt you and it gives alot of flexibility at a gear level where your 'BiS' may not have sockets on the gloves and bracers. I'd like to see someone come up with a reason to take a different set of professions for plate tanks at this gear level, but besides the flat 60 stam from Mining and the +5 defense/+45 dodge from inscription I don't see any other options for min/maxing.

If I had to do it again, I would get some mining bags early and stockpile bars while leveling. Work on mining and jewelcrafting while you level, keeping any 'rare' bars you will need later to level up blacksmithing. If you hit 80 and have the time/money (money being the big factor), then burn your mats and work up Blacksmithing, if you don't, then you have a good 'second choice' profession in mining. The key is to hold on to the harder to get bars as you get them while leveling so you don't have to go to the AH or farm nodes after you hit 80.

Newtron wrote:I'd like to see someone come up with a reason to take a different set of professions for plate tanks at this gear level, but besides the flat 60 stam from Mining and the +5 defense/+45 dodge from inscription I don't see any other options for min/maxing.

Did you actually read the posts? Leatherworking offers a 90 Stamina marginal benefit since we don't have access to the 40 Stamina Abyss enchant, and Blacksmithing, at 48 Stamina, is shit if we're restricting ourselves to blue gems.

dhirken is right, the base blacksmithing benefit is lower than other profs because of the blue gem restriction. I almost question whether we should allow blacksmiths to put epic gems in their two extra sockets, that would make it more competitive.

Looking at the uncolored sockets as better than other sockets because of matching is wrongheaded. The reason you can put anything in there is because there is no socket bonus. In other words, other sockets are *better* than the BS sockets, if socketing for the bonus is better than ignoring it. You can put a defense or stam gem in *any* socket. You only put something else in there if the bonus is better than the difference between the best gems and the best gems that match the sockets. If you have a yellow or blue socket (as a tank needing def) or a red socket as dps (or yellow if you need hit), that's *better* than an uncolored socket. Wrong color sockets are at worst *equivalent* to a BS socket. If you need defense and you have no yellow sockets, you put thick gems in blue or red sockets. Often gear has socket bonuses that are not role-relevant anyway and can be safely ignored.

You can put dragon's eyes in any socket (though you may give up socket bonuses), so you can't count the dragon's eye as a benefit of blacksmithing, it's a benefit of JC, you get 3, and if you are a jc you will have at least 3 sockets to use them (trinket and belt buckle) unless the trinket with blue gems would be third best (not true for most specs at blue restriction).

Note that JC trinket gives you two sockets that you don't normally have at blue gear level.
+22def chest enchant is superior to +8 stats if you need defense.

Note also that every character has at least one uncolored gem slot from the eternal belt buckle - in which you can put 16 def without jc and 34 with, without messing up any other socket bonuses.

It looks to me as though blacksmithing is particularly lackluster. I won't be taking it as a prot pally, and don't expect to have any problem reaching the def cap in blues.

I was planning to go jc/ench or jc/inscr, but dhirken's list was helpful in pointing out the benefits of leatherworking for tanks. I think I'll go jc/lw if it looks like I'll be tanking (plan to dual spec dps so have to make sure lw makes sense for ret also).

[quote="Dhirken"]

Newtron wrote:
Did you actually read the posts? Leatherworking offers a 90 Stamina marginal benefit since we don't have access to the 40 Stamina Abyss enchant, and Blacksmithing, at 48 Stamina, is shit if we're restricting ourselves to blue gems.

Plate tanks will be gemming for defense at the gear levels we're dealing with, BS+JC is better in this case. BS alone isn't better, but taking a JC gem from your monarch crab and/or from another piece of gear and moving it to the BS sockets can open up socket bonuses where previously you were ignoring them because you needed a specific stat (defense?). At a minimum those sockets are a place to put the 3rd Dragon's Eye and a rare gem.

JC+LW is great for bear tanks and plate tanks that don't have to gem for defense. If you use the gem 'conversion rate', +90 stamina should be worth +60 defense, but LW doesn't give that option to mix and match. With two BS sockets and JC you have a gain of +50 defense or +75 stamina. Using 1 JC only gem and 1 rare gem in the BS sockets, assuming you stacked JC only gems in your trinket. Its not +90 stamina, but its the best option for defense and it isn't bad for stamina. The blacksmithing sockets aren't a marginal gain.

If I were to squeeze the most out of your socket bonuses I would go with 2 Thick Dragon's Eye in the BS sockets for +68 defense and the Monarch Crab (+63 stam) with a 3rd Thick Dragon's Eye (+34 defense) and a Solid sky sapphire (+24 stam, +9 more for socket bonus). That would give you a grand total of +102 defense and +96 stamina using only 3 JC only gems, a JC only trinket and 2 free sockets from blacksmithing. Gemming for straight defense would get you +120 defense and +63 stam. Using a JC only trinket and the 2 free slots from blacksmithing.

If you take JC+BS to stam stack flip the thick gems to Solid and you get +240 stamina. Using a JC only trinket and 2 free sockets from blacksmithing.

If you take JC+LW for defense you get +96 defense (34, 34, 18 over 16 defense base) and +153 stam. Using a JC trinket and an 'upgrade' to an existing gem on another piece of gear.

If you take JC+LW to stam stack you get +90 from fur lining (over the standard 12 stam bracer enchant), +129 from 3 solid dragon's eye (51, 51, 27 over base 24 rare gem), +63 from the monarch crab. +282 Stamina. For one trinket and a gem 'upgrade' to an existing socket on another piece of gear

You cannot count the JC gem bonus and add it to Blacksmithing's socket. Although it's true that you could possibly put in thick dragon's eyes there and fill out a socket bonus that you'd otherwise miss, then you can only count that socket bonus which you otherwise wouldn't have to the JC+BS combo. Leatherworking still provides a massive benefit to stamina, and enduring forest emeralds instead of solids where you need to fill out a blue socket does not cost any stats.

Newtron wrote:
If you take JC+BS to stam stack flip the thick gems to Solid and you get +240 stamina. Using a JC only trinket and 2 free sockets from blacksmithing.

If you take JC+LW for defense you get +96 defense (34, 34, 18 over 16 defense base) and +153 stam. Using a JC trinket and an 'upgrade' to an existing gem on another piece of gear.

If you take JC+LW to stam stack you get +90 from fur lining (over the standard 12 stam bracer enchant), +129 from 3 solid dragon's eye (51, 51, 27 over base 24 rare gem), +63 from the monarch crab. +282 Stamina. For one trinket and a gem 'upgrade' to an existing socket on another piece of gear

You're double-counting the Dragon's Eye bonuses as a benefit to both JC and BS, as well as miscounting how much a Dragon's Eye is worth. A Thick Dragon's Eye does not get you 34 defense rating, it gets you 18 defense rating over the Thick Autumn's Glow you would have had in that slot anyway. Similarly, Solid Dragon's Eyes are not worth 51 Stamina. They are worth 27 Stamina, because you would have had a Solid Sky Sapphire in that slot.

JC+BS gets you: two empty sockets (worth 48 stamina or 32 defense rating), three dragon's eyes (worth 81 stamina or 54 defense rating), and the marginal benefit of the Monarch Crab over the next best trinket. Total bonus: 129 stamina or 86 defense rating plus the Crab.

JC+LW gets you: the benefit of the LW only enchant over the next best alternative (90 stamina), three dragon's eyes (worth 81 stamina or 54 defense rating), and the marginal benefit of the Monarch Crab over the next best trinket. Total bonus: 171 stamina or 90 stamina and 54 defense rating plus the Crab.

There is no synergy between JC and BS that favors picking up blacksmithing if you are also a jewelcrafter. The only possible reason to pick BS over an alternative profession as a tank is if you need the defense so badly to hit the 540 defense minimum that it's worth sacrificing a lot (90) of stamina to pick up a marginal amount (32) of defense rating. (If you just prefer to gear towards avoidance, inscription is better than blacksmithing.) If you're really that hard up for defense (and you won't be, if you're in BiS blues), then you're better off swapping your Stoneblood flask (1300 health) for Mighty Defense and Guru's Elixirs (20 to all stats, 45 Defense Rating).

At a minimum you gain +32 defense or +48 stamina from throwing in 2 rare gems. Not that great, but it gives you room to move gems around to get socket boni. It also gives you room to swap equipment around, such as trinkets: two stam trinkets vs one stam trinket and a defense trinket is a considerable difference in health. Walking that fine line at 540 defense is a constant juggling game, having two more sockets makes it much easier. You may find you're in a situation where you have to use a Seal of the Panteon (+68 defense) instead of the Essence of Gossamer (+111 stam). Just fiddling around with RAWR for last few hours I came up with a JC/BS setup that still had one defense gem. And it didn't use the Seal of the Pantheon.

Check RAWR if you wanna see how difficult it can be balancing the 540 defense around maxing out health and avoidance. The optimizations RAWR will spit out with the restrictions provided are interesting. Its suggesting PvP items in the shield and weapon slots in some cases because +resilience and +stam is the best combination of stats with the items available to get uncrittable and the most health.

Newtron wrote: Just fiddling around with RAWR for last few hours I came up with a JC/BS setup that still had one defense gem. And it didn't use the Seal of the Pantheon.

And there is no 'BiS' at this level, if you pick up every piece of gear with defense, you'll go way over 540. Its a big juggling act, a +defense socket bonus on one piece of gear might allow you to swap another piece of gear that has lower defense for other stats you want (socket, stam, etc). There's also the assumption that you'll get every piece of gear on your wishlist. First you need a wishlist, then a second option incase you can't get one of those rare drops on your wishlist within a reasonable amount of time. We don't have 'forever' to farm the gear for this project.

Newtron wrote:
And there is no 'BiS' at this level, if you pick up every piece of gear with defense, you'll go way over 540. Its a big juggling act, a +defense socket bonus on one piece of gear might allow you to swap another piece of gear that has lower defense for other stats you want (socket, stam, etc).

It might, but the value of that swap is never going to be more than getting vs. not getting that socket bonus. The best socket bonus you will find on blue gear is going to be around +6 defense. It's highly unlikely that BS wil allow you to get two bonuses of that value, but if it did, the value would max out at +44 defense|+66stam, only slightly better than enchanting, not nearly as good as leatherworking unless you were unable to reach the cap without the extra defense.

And that assumes that the extra two slots allow you to get two really good socket bonuses, more likely they enable *one*, or they enable you to get one cleanly where you'd take a smaller loss to get it anyway without BS. Or they enable one, which is worth less than +6 def. One good socket bonus isn't even enough to make up for the fact that BS benefit is balanced against the other crafting profs assuming epic gems.

gnomeofzurich wrote:
It might, but the value of that swap is never going to be more than getting vs. not getting that socket bonus. The best socket bonus you will find on blue gear is going to be around +6 defense. It's highly unlikely that BS wil allow you to get two bonuses of that value, but if it did, the value would max out at +44 defense|+66stam, only slightly better than enchanting, not nearly as good as leatherworking unless you were unable to reach the cap without the extra defense.

After looking at gear setups, I've found the socket bonuses are almost non-existant. The 'BiS' in alot of cases has 0 sockets. That just enhances the value of 2 extra sockets. When your best option for stam/avoidance in most slots is gear without sockets, having two extra sockets that can be used to pad your defense rating is worthwhile. i've been running around and around in RAWR with a prot warrior and its coming up with some interesting setups. I'm looking at one setup in RAWR for LW/JC with a balance of threat, mitigation and survivial that has 3 sockets, 2 on the Monarch crab and 1 on the BS belt enhancement, that's it, not socket bonuses to be had. The difference between 3 sockets (monarch crab + bs belt) vs 5 sockets is much more noticeable than the difference between 8 sockets and 10. Always having those 2 sockets (no matter what gear you choose) for defense gems can make a big difference at these gear levels. You can't assume there will always be a socket somewhere else you could put that defense gem, without 'downgrading' gear to get the socket.

One final note. There is alot of 'unsocketed' gear at this level that can be considered BiS, look at the 'itemization'. Stamina 'itemization' is about 2 to 1 defense on gear, but its only 1.5 to 1 on gems. So, a defense gem is worth 'more' than a stam gem. Get as much stam from gear as you can and use gems to top off your defense budget. Only if you have an abundance of sockets, or when you want to ignore other stats (block/dodge/parry) would you take inferior gear with sockets to stack the stam gems. So stam stacking to the exclusion of other stats favors LW slightly. For a better balance of stam and mitigation/avoidance LW and BS come closer to even, because you're leaning toward unsocketed gear, where the few extra sockets from BS can be used for defense gems (only). IMO BS gives better flexibility. Of course, plate tanks will have a couple of setups, depending on whether the fight needs more EH or avoidance.

BTW, BoE world drops are not coming out at the top of the Plate gear in my fiddling, but PvP gear IS coming up to the top in extreme stam stacking. The most extreme uncrittable setup I have so far is 2349 stamina (32k health, with flask and food), 324 RESILIENCE, 456 defense skill. LW vs BS is almost identical in this case.

I'm going to say this exactly once more, because I want to make sure nobody else is confused. Choosing Blacksmithing over Leatherworking as a tank means - at best - sacrificing 90 Stamina for 32 Defense Rating. If you honestly need defense rating that badly, I will guarantee you there are better ways to sacrifice Stamina for Defense (unless you are stacking every socket with defense, choosing the most defense-heavy items, and enchanting fully for defense, in which case why do you need more defense so badly?) That trade means each defense rating would cost you 2.8 stamina. Wiser trades would include: Swapping from Essence of Gossamer to Seal of the Pantheon (111 Stamina for 65 Defense, or 1.7 stamina per defense rating), swapping from Flask of the Stoneblood to Mighty Defense and Guru's Elixirs (1300 health for 20 Stamina, 20 Strength, 20 Agility, and 45 Defense Rating, or ~2.2 stamina per defense rating), swapping from Super Health chest enchant to Greater Defense (275 health for 22 defense rating, or ~1.1 stamina per defense rating), or just regemming for defense over stamina (1.6 stamina per defense rating).

There are a lot of misconceptions in here. You need to go back and think about this stuff from first principles *carefully*, read what's available from places like EJ who are hard core about numbers. What dhirken writes below is *exactly* the way we should be thinking about these tradeoffs.

Newtron wrote:After looking at gear setups, I've found the socket bonuses are almost non-existant. The 'BiS' in alot of cases has 0 sockets. That just enhances the value of 2 extra sockets. When your best option for stam/avoidance in most slots is gear without sockets, having two extra sockets that can be used to pad your defense rating is worthwhile.

If there are no socket bonuses to be had on your gear, that doesn't enhance the value of your 2 sockets. The only way those two sockets could be more valuable than 2 blue gems is if they allow to take a socket bonus that you would naturally take except for having defcap issues requiring you to socket full def in a blue/red slot.

There is no difficulty reaching defcap without BS, Dhirken goes through some of the tradeoffs you can make if necessary that are better than trading 90 stam for 32 (or even 38 if there were a big socket bonus where those 2 sockets made the difference) defense.

You can't assume there will always be a socket somewhere else you could put that defense gem, without 'downgrading' gear to get the socket.

No, you can't, but LW-->BS looks like such a bad trade, that many such downgrades would be preferable. You would only consider this, if getting uncrittable forced a lot of extremely painful choices otherwise.

Stamina 'itemization' is about 2 to 1 defense on gear, but its only 1.5 to 1 on gems. So, a defense gem is worth 'more' than a stam gem.

This is wrong, the itemisation is exactly the same on gear as on gems except for a few incorrectly itemized items, or items with special bonuses. 1.5 to 1 no matter how you slice it. Sometimes you have a different ratio on gear, because you can't always trade it off and keep everything else equal. The gear with defense (or stam) may have more of stats you don't care about as much, or be lower ilvl. every piece swap is different, and you have to calculate the ratio for it, but in terms of how much item cost stam takes up vs. defense, it is the same on every piece of gear except for a few developer mistakes.

BTW, BoE world drops are not coming out at the top of the Plate gear in my fiddling, but PvP gear IS coming up to the top in extreme stam stacking. The most extreme uncrittable setup I have so far is 2349 stamina (32k health, with flask and food), 324 RESILIENCE, 456 defense skill. LW vs BS is almost identical in this case.

wasted stats are the most critical problem. Resilience is mostly wasted in PvE, it does not give anywhere near as much total avoidance as defense, yet has the same item cost. Unless the PvP gear is itemized incorrectly (more stats than it should have for ilvl), or the other options are poorly itemized, it is *very* unlikely to be the best option.

The balance between stam and avoidance for this project will be tilted towards stam relative to normal PvE, so it's possible that some of the high stam pvp gear (where it has little resilience, or whether other options are not great) will be a good choice. But I can't imagine that all PvP gear is the way to go.

Extreme stam stacking (i.e. max out stam almost no matter what the cost) is only what you want on fights where it's the only way we can keep from being one-shot. We may need to keep a gearset like that, but it's definitely not what we want to run all the time, unless we can find a stam stet that makes far better/fewer tradeoffs than a set with 324 resilience.

gnomeofzurich wrote:wasted stats are the most critical problem. Resilience is mostly wasted in PvE, it does not give anywhere near as much total avoidance as defense, yet has the same item cost. Unless the PvP gear is itemized incorrectly (more stats than it should have for ilvl), or the other options are poorly itemized, it is *very* unlikely to be the best option.

I've been planning to use the PvP two-piece to reach uncrittable. I did rough up a few profiles though to get a feel for what sort of stats I'd be looking at. The profiler doesn't account for buffs, frost presence, etc.

Profile #1: 100% PvE gear, zero resilience.
Link: www.wowhead.com/?profile=20619215

27691 Health
14157 Armor (48.17% DR)
19.11% Dodge
15.93% Parry
5.64% Chance to be missed

Profile #2: 2-piece PvP, PvP shoulder enchant.
Link: www.wowhead.com/?profile=20620598

29376 Health
14197 Armor (48.24% DR)
16.94% Dodge
13.61% Parry
3.24% Chance to be missed

Going from 2-piece to 4-piece PvP gear and replacing all of my defense items with ones that simply have the highest stamina potential gets me up to 29816 HP (again, before buffs/Frost Presence), but loses me ~14% avoidance from the full PvE-geared set. About 8% of that is dodge, so stacking stamina so aggressively might pay off when we have to deal with icecrown Radiance.

I'd like to remind everyone that this is not a life or death issue. You can change profession if the other turns out to be bad.

LW has other benefit for tanks besides the 90 stam: 70 resist something, great for resistance tanking.

BS has one unmentioned benefit: if someone is struggling with the meta gem requirements, BS socket can help, however JC trinket has 2 extra sockets too.

Otherwise JC seems to be a good choice for every classes, both for the bigger benefit over blue gems and also because it provides a free BiS trinket for everyone.

Our bear tank in Blue Ulduar had several PvP items, since bears have no use of the parry+block of defense. It's possible that the best anticrit stuff of a bear is PvP. Also, avoidance tanking with low HP can be nasty on heal. I mean an unlucky row of 2-3 hits can kill a tank if the healers are not on their top (they should be, after all Steelbraker hit for 90% of the 226 BiS tank HP and still went down).

I wonder, why there's so much disagreement over bs, while noone takes a serious look at engineering.
I tried to compare 2 similar geared pala tanks in rawr (jc as second prof for both) and it comes very close to lw - even outshining it in some areas and scoring 214 more survival points, 1% more hit, but loosing 54 stamina at that expense. Not too bad, taken, that we have ardent defender to save us from unexpected damage spike and eliminating all incoming damage, when our hp drops lower than 30%.
will try to play with some profilers later, if you're interested in exact gear choices.
As for bs - honestly, I can't see, why someone needs 2 extra sockets just to fill them with dragon eye gems, when there are enough sockets for that purpouse and you can hit both - adding missing defense and socket bonuss at the same time (with socketing dragon's eye defense gem in both - ley guardian's leggings (best bis) and jc trinket).

Bear tanks shouldn't need any resil to become crit immune, it happens through talents for them. But the pvp gear is great for +stam which is basically what bear tanks are gonna need a ton of.

Now that's I'm looking seriously at my protadin gear, I'm tending to agree with you Liviann. Engineering looks competitive with leatherworking -- the armor patch to gloves is really huge for effective health, and the head is about 30stam equivalent better than the blue BiS.

That even seems to make it competitive with JC as well. It looks like two of these three profs are pretty much the way to go for tanks of any class. JC probably gets the nod because it is strong for all specs.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned the helm enchant/tinker from Engineering either; It gives a 50 stamina buff and a chance to mind-control the target on use (the second is a flavour use-effect). If a tank isn't having any problems reaching the Def-cap without the need for use of the stam/def helm enchant, would this not put engineering as essentially a BiS tank profession if you're including the helm and the glove enchant?

Engineering is competitive, but the helm enchant cannot ever be better than the argent one unless you are over the soft cap without any defense gems or enchants. That's just not going to happen with blue gear. Even over the soft cap (i.e. uncrittable), defense is still pretty good. I'd say 20 def while already over the uncrit threshold is worth quite a bit more than 8 stam (mind amplification dish only provides 45 stam, not 50). Even facing icecrown radiance with under 20% dodge, making the dodge part worthless, *and* uncrittable, I'd still take the miss, parry and block from 20 def over 8 stam.

Also, I was unable to enchant my engineering headgear with the mind amp, I got the error "already has an on use effect".

So even if it was better you'd have to choose between the engineering helm and the dish vs. regular arcanum, and the helm is worth more than 8 stam over the BiS blue.

Engineering is a solid profession for tanks though, it looks to be competitive with jc and lw, mostly because of the helm and the glove tinker. Inscription is a decent contender for ICC if we can't find gear sets with significantly less than 20% dodge, but it's awful (for ICC, other raids it's ok) if we can successfully gear dodge under the radiance threshold.

One nice advantage of JC and engineering is that they are quite good for almost any spec, while LW is very good for tanks (probably the best option but only by a little over jc or eng), but average for other roles. So on my paladin I chose eng/jc because I figure I may be healing rather than tanking once we get going (don't see too many healing classes online to hit 80 soon on the US side).

BTW, for tanks on the US side who are not taking LW, I have the +12def enchant to bracers on my enchanter now (Bregalad, he's not in the project because he's done some raiding), I farmed the recipe a week or two ago when Luncy hit 80 and couldn't find anybody with the recipe.

From a caster's point of view I think Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting are the best professions to choose.

Jewelcrafting - gives you the biggest spellpower boost 48 instead of 46 like the rest of the professions
Blacksmithing - the 2 extra sockets gives you extra space to configure your gear with the gems especially since it's very hard to meet the hit cap with blues the extra 32 hit might come handy; there is a drawback though if you equip the Runed Scarlet Ruby x 2 (19 x 2) you loose 8 spellpower comparing to the epic gems (23 x 2)