Changes for past year - did I miss any?

[Sangi]

I've been gone for over a year. The last raid that I completed was Ulduar. I recently reactivated to pass off some gold to the wife for Cataclysm. I liked a lot of the surface changes that I saw. I've been doing my research on the current mechanics. I want to make sure that there isn't some thing that I am missing that would be obvious to most folks who haven't had my break from the game. If you would be able to point out what I am missing I would be much obliged.

Stats

• Defense - Its gone. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. Not sure how the crits against you mechanics now work.
• Expertise - Still need 6.5% for dodge, 14% for parry on +3 mobs.
• Hit - Still need 8% for +3 mobs.
• Parry/Dodge - With diminishing returns raise both equally but give a slight preference to parry due to its synergy with some talents.
• Block - Need help here as seen some writing about critical block but it still seems lack luster
• Attack Power - Seems to be the threat driver as it appears that threat is now 300% of you damage and most abilities have minimal inherent threat.
• Health - Effective health is still king over avoidance for survivability. Is the Attack power bonus from Vengeance capped against our base health or against our equipment health sans buffs.

Abilities

• Rotation - Fairly similar either the ones listed at EJ or the one at the forums here. Its still priority based.
• Rend - Now part of the rotation especially for multi mob tanking with the ability of Thunderclap to spread it to other mobs. (I am still in shock)
• Thunderclap - Now has synergy with Rend and with Shockwave.
• Heroic Strike - Now an instant no longer queued.
• Devastate - no long has inherent threat added. Don't need to queue to 5 sunders with it immediately as there are more interesting things to spend GCDs on.
• Rage - Slow weapon for max generation. Generated not on damage you do but more on the hits you do and a percentage of the damage you take.

[MellvarTank]

Block - Need help here as seen some writing about critical block but it still seems lack luster

You no longer have block value/block rating. Blocks are now percentage based. There is a good discussion in the Cata Beta forum mostly spearheaded by Kojiyama (sorry if I spelled that wrong).

Health - Effective health is still king over avoidance for survivability. Is the Attack power bonus from Vengeance capped against our base health or against our equipment health sans buffs.

This is currently the speculation based on how our threat is scaled by the damage we take. It has neither been confirmed or denied yet though, as raiding hasn't quite started yet.

Rend - Now part of the rotation especially for multi mob tanking with the ability of Thunderclap to spread it to other mobs. (I am still in shock)

Only if you take the talent for it.

Thunderclap - Now has synergy with Rend and with Shockwave.

Again, only if you take the talent.

Heroic Strike - Now an instant no longer queued.

Heroic Strike and Cleave now share a 3 second cooldown together and are instant. I believe they are also off the GCD.

Devastate - no long has inherent threat added. Don't need to queue to 5 sunders with it immediately as there are more interesting things to spend GCDs on.

You only need to sunder 3 times.

Rage - Slow weapon for max generation. Generated not on damage you do but more on the hits you do and a percentage of the damage you take.

Are you talking about DPS or tanking?

You also missed:

Commanding/Battle shout now generate rage instead of cost.

Heroic Leap at 85 - novelty.

The amount of hit you need will change along with tiers of content.

Talent trees are far smaller than in Wrath.

Taunt doesn't miss.

Vigilance has changed, check your tooltip.