"My impressions off-road are negative"
I have had quite the opposite impressions with my Patagonia MTs in the rocks. I was a long time BFG guy and have been running 35x12.5R15 earlier KOs and KM2s for at least 10 years on my LJ. 2 years ago I got the itch to move up to 40's. I did a lot of research and narrowed the choices down to ProComp Xtreme M/T2 @$400 or Patagonia MT @$300 (Discount Tire price matched a Walmart special at that time). I ended up going with 40x13.5R17 Patagonias, $400 cost savings and a little bit of weight savings (Patagonia 88 lbs. vs. ProComp 91 lbs.). I agree with Brian on road manners and quite. These are floatation tires and they work great in sand and snow when aired way down (4psi-5psi). I've been twice to Moab and twice to Rubicon and I seem to have a lot more traction than I did with the BFGs (8psi-9psi). Granted this is not an apples to apples comparison as the BFGs were 35's on 15x10 non-beadlocks and the Patagonias are 40's on 17x9 beadlocks. Maybe it's just the extra ground clearance that I'm noticing, but so far they go where I point them. By far the best traction tires I have had were a set of 37x14.00-15 SuperSwamper IROK bias ply on 15x10 steelies, but they only lasted about 1.5 seasons. They wore out faster than pencil erasers.
Funny how you can get so much difference one rig over the other, but not surprising so get whatever works for you.