However, I would consider the Tankatronic Goggles a much better piece than any of the Merciless Helms for tanking.

The Lamellar Helm does offer some int and spell power for threat, but it is severely lacking in mitigation. Assuming you have 490 defense (and as a Paladin you should be stacking defense rating anyway to maximize your avoidance), the crit mitigation from the resilience is wasted. That means you’re giving up 1.2% to dodge, and about 0.6% each to dodge, block, parry, and miss – a total of 3% avoidance and 0.6% to block – for ~40 spell power.

I disagree that the engineering helmet is better… unless you get the v3 drop recipe.

The Merc Gladiator helm is easy to get and is still a viable pve tanking helm due to resilience also adding 1% crit mitigation for 39 points… whereas its 60 points of defence rating for the same 1%.

I am glad I took BS to 371 so far.. At the moment I am making rare/epic items to sell on AH just to farm money ready for the further grind to 450. I got a lucky Fel Hardened Maul recipe drop from a trash mob on Quel’Danas and making those for 1500g a pop on AH is great.

Ragesteel Spaulders sell well too providing you don’t overprice them.

You can still level to 375 using Ragesteel Spaulders or Enchanted Adamantite Belt…. they are all orange to 375.

As for the sockets, the bracers and gloves are both self-enchants at the moment (according to beta commenters on Wowhead). You won’t be able to make money off them, but it also gives a nice reason to keep blacksmithing permanently.

BoP epics are nice early on, but they’ll eventually be outdated. Two extra sockets (and three if the weapon is self-only) is well worth it.

275 to 300 BS is also pretty rough, but more easily obtained now, as the bugs in Silithus aren’t elite anymore. In addition, we can farm the Thorium on higher level toons, so that makes it faster as well.

I’m pretty excited to see what Blizzard is doing with BS in the expansion. In addition to the BoE Bracer and Glove sockets and the BoP Weapon socket, I’ve also seen a Belt socket, that I think was BoE. It’ll be nice to have some money making options with BS again.