Glyph of Taunt for Tanks

So, I did a tiny bit of investigation today into why a tank would take the glyph of taunt even if he already had over 8% hit rating, and as it turns out, there IS actually a reason.

Since this is something that I had wrong before, and hadn't really had issues with (well, to be fair, I rarely MT anything, and when I do, I've glyphed so much for AoE threat that I only use taunt occasionally, so a 6% miss chance might not show itself easily) I thought I'd go ahead and write a quick post in case anyone was interested for future reference (assuming this won't change for Clysm, which it probably will).

The catch to this that makes it confusing for everyone is that taunt works like a SPELL.  It's pretty much the only thing we have that does, so I can understand why it's confusing.

Since it's a spell, it has a 17% spell miss chance, and not an 8% melee miss chance that you're used to.  For this reason, you have to use spell hit ratings to see how it works instead of melee hit ratings, and you'll find that it requires 446 hit rating to guarantee that taunt will work every time.

Now, there are mitigations, for example, if you have a boomkin or faerie fire etc. in raid, that will reduce that to 14%, or 368, and if you have a draenei (why would you, aren't you horde?) you can reduce that by another 1%, leaving you with needing 342 (barely over 341) in order to guarantee 100% landing of taunt.

That's a lot of hit rating to have to add to your gear, especially when most of the tank gear doesn't include a substantial amount of hit rating to begin with.

Now, on the other hand, if you glyph for taunt, you only need to achieve 9% (respectively 6%, 5% with raid buffs) to guarantee the taunt lands, and that's a more moderate level 237 hit rating (respectively 158, 132).

The 158 hit rating will only get you 4.82% melee hit rating, but that's not nearly as important to you anyway, since pound for pound, expertise is what you "really" want.  I mean, in an ideal world, you'd want to have enough to not have to count on raid composition, so you'd want to shoot for the 237 hit rating mark (which still leaves you with only 7.23% miss chance reduction).  I happen to know a tank with over 8% hit rating and also the taunt glyph, and that's really awesome, but at the same time, his expertise is lower than the recommended 26, so in that case, he's probably seeing as much of a loss of threat from dodges/parries as he would be from miss if he could trade out the hit rating he's over the 237 mark for expertise.  Not that he has any problems in that area, because believe me that's NOT the case, but for all you other warriors who aren't as up on the lore, I think if you're the raid's MT, and you KNOW you have a boomkin, I'd try to adjust your hit rating slightly to about 158 hit rating mark, and funnel whatever else you have options for into expertise (while pretty much gemming/enchanting for pure stamina/mitigation) and TAKE THE GLYPH OF TAUNT.  If you're NOT your raid's MT, your taunts may actually not be as vital.  In fact, you may really want to have more "spread the love" glyphs, so you can keep a pack of mobs on you easily while the MT is taking the big whallops.  On the other hand, you may be the tank assigned to keep adds off the clothies, and if that's the case, you'll want to have this glyph in those fights where one add can one shot a clothie in about the same time it takes your vigilance gcd to wear off so you can try a taunt again.

So, in summary:

Without glyph of taunt, you're looking at:

446 hit rating needed to guarantee a taunt is successful,

With glyph of taunt, you're looking at:

237, 158, 132 hit rating depending on your raid buffs.

And since hit is not easy to come by, you should consider that something to consider.