protection legendaries.

[Nillo]

I'm pretty sure I had like 20 stacks on Malkorok once and it still didn't hurt /:

[Deleted]

My considerations:

Firstly! You're talking about experience on the first 4 entry level bosses. Typically, you'll be taking more damage later on, and definitely when you start heroic.

Have both cloaks and know the fight. You may know that some fights hit like a wet towel (I understand a wet towel may hurt at high velocity!), while some hit like a truck. Having both cloaks allows you to switch.

Know your healers! In my current guild, I never have any problems, I trust the healers and know that I'm safe in their hands, and they know that I'll be using my active mit and cooldowns sensibly, so for quicker kills (even very slightly) I may choose to use the DPS cloak even on a tough muddah fight.

Use the tank meta. The uptime is not bad at all, and it's no longer only physical damage that is being reduced, but all damage sources - magic damage has been a pain for sometime compared to phsyical.

Is the boss progress or farm? Is the enrage tight or fine? For the most part, on progress fights, I'll want to use my tank cloak. We all know how messy a progress fight can become when you're closing in on the kill and everybody starts to sexwee and make mistakes - when the boss hits 5% you do not want to die, tank cloak (assuming off CD) could be the difference between your kill and another wipe. However, if the enrage is tight and the boss does not hit very hard (you're sure the boss won't kill you - this is a fight that tests your DPS and Healers ability to dodge shit - you could use DPS cloak to help meet the timer).

Does your raid leader mind if you have to pop back to the city for a reforge now and then? (Assuming nobody in the guild has a reforge mount or you're indoors and can't mount). If your raid leader doesn't mind and you really want to max yourself, regularly swapping and then fixing your forges is not a bad idea - but it can use up a lot of your raid time after a while, particularly if you have no warlock to summon you back.

Remember: Most of the wipes will happen because a healer or DPS died (assuming you're playing well) and you will have to die on purpose when a wipe is called. Minimising the damage you take, gives your healers more time to keep the raid up.

----
TLDR;

Tank meta
Have both cloaks
Know how good your healers are to help decide what to wear
Read raid journal - focus on one shot mechanics. High chance of death? Tank cloak. Low chance of death and tight enrage? your choice.
Know your raid leader, and whether or not he/she is going to throw shurukens at you if you need to keep reforging.

On an additional note, and something that is totally not necessary.. I like to have 2 sets of gear. One is my haste gear, one is my avoidance gear with mastery - very slow hitting bosses, where my personal DPS is no issue, I prefer to use the avoidance/mastery gear with well timed SoTR to minimise damage - fast hitting bosses I'll go haste for higher sotr uptime.

Also, 10 man and 25 man are different entities - the external CD available as a tank in 25 man may mean you can stick to your DPS meta and cloak (Case in point: Treckie of method - I've noted he's been using his DPS stuff most of the times I've checked) but in 10 man, where you have to spend more time keeping yourself alive due to lack of externals, you may want to opt for your tanking stuff (case in point: Fraggoji of Paragon - he's been wearing 4 part t15, tank cloak and tank meta for the most part).

[judgementofantonidas]

Let's back that one up a bit. The tanking cloak has double the expertise (you'll likely reforge crit to exp on dps one), half the haste, and you are swapping crit and parry. I don't disagree you are taking an itemization hit but it's far from trading worthless stats. Point for point expertise is a significantly better smoothing stat.

however, wearing no cloak I am easily at expertise hard cap. hence my statement that dodge and parry are mostly useless. sure you can reforge, at a fraction of the original stat, where with the dps cloak you only have one less useful stat to forge away.

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I can calculate with mastery instead:
600 parry (600 * 0.35) + 600 mast (600 * 0.70) = 210 + 420 = 630
600 haste (600 * 1.00) + 600 crit (600 * 0.00) = 600 + 0 = 600

I haven't seen any/many high level prot paladins right now that have enough expertise lying around to not be reforging into expertise. So I think it was still a valid comparison before. This one is much closer but it still brings the point home: the tank cloak isn't at all poorly itemized according to damage smoothing metrics.

however your "math" is all wrong.
you need to do the equation in a way that reflects the stat that will be forged off.

so the question is really

parry mastery with dodge being the reforged and ignored stat

or

haste mastery with crit being the reforged and ignored stat

the difference in weights becomes a lot more clear.

[hlx]

just to add to the information, I had a Thursday's run with dps cloak on the whole time.
the proc was 8.9% of my total damage done (bosses+trash) and 6.4% on only boss fights.

[judgementofantonidas]

Expertise and mastery are not useless by any stretch of the imagination.

refresh my memory on which cloak inherently comes wit expertise?

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Oh my God I was off by 100 haste, that 0.2% REALLY makes all the difference. I'll be swapping to the DPS cloak immediately!

Actually, no I won't. Because I know for a fact that we wouldn't have got to kill Nazgrim on Thursday if the cloak hadn't saved us a few wipes at Dark Shaman. And if we had needed to kill Nazgrim on Sunday we wouldn't have killed Thok that evening (because we killed that boss 5 minutes before the end of the raid, and Nazgrim + trash takes about 15 minutes.

We got at least one progression kill extra because that cloak prevented a wipe. And that, personally, is worth more than any amount of extra damage on a different cloak.

You'd think that 10m tanks would want the tank cloak even more, because they don't have the safety net of 2 extra combat resses. But there you go, they obviously prefer to see themselves doing 3k dps more than get more progression time on later bosses. Being in a raid means working for the progression of the raid. And that means taking the tanking cloak, because just one avoided wipe means you save more time than you'd save if you had more than ten times the damage of the dps cloak. Probably closer to 100x.

Anybody that considers themselves anything other than a "fun raider" and takes the DPS cloak for tanking is doing it wrong.

you obviously have many months of comprehending why haste is our primary stat to catch up on if you feel it is a dps choice.

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Actually you might find yourself losing a lot of expertise if you wanna upgrade your throne items with t16 ones since there's not that many haste/exp ones.

I personally don't have the durumu leggs and dropping 1 expertise item could cost me haste.

WUT??

http://www.wowhead.com/item=99369 EXP/MAS
http://www.wowhead.com/item=99369 HAS/EXP
http://www.wowhead.com/item=99370 PAR/HAS
http://www.wowhead.com/item=99371 DOD/MAS
http://www.wowhead.com/item=99364 EXP/MAS

so the ONLY piece without either expertise OR haste on it is the legs in your tier set.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

refresh my memory on which cloak inherently comes wit expertise?

The tanking one. Has 991 Expertise, 991 Mastery and 991 Parry (which reforges to 396 haste). So the decision comes down to 595 haste rating and a dps proc that is about a 2% damage increase or 595 expertise rating (you'll be reforging the crit rating on the dps cloak into 396 expertise) and or not dying once every 2 minutes.

you obviously have many months of comprehending why haste is our primary stat to catch up on if you feel it is a dps choice.

It is our primary stat. But so is expertise, and getting damn near a fifth of our expertise on a single item is nothing short of awesome, because we can equip more haste/mastery pieces. Not to mention that parry is not completely useless, and that crit pretty much is.

Most of the arguments people bring about taking the DPS cloak are ones about not dying anyway because they tank 10 man normal mode (they should go tank 10N Garrosh in that case - he hits for 450k) or they don't want to be the cause of a 1% wipe (to which I would reply that most 1% wipes are due to a healer dying in the later stages of the fight, in which case surely an additional cheat death mechanic would be more likely to kill the boss as that would mean 1-2 seconds more of the DPS not getting squished).

And for the record, I was one of the first people to consider taking haste rating, way back in MoP beta.

[Nillo]

Most of the arguments people bring about taking the DPS cloak are ones about not dying anyway because they tank 10 man normal mode (they should go tank 10N Garrosh in that case - he hits for 450k) or they don't want to be the cause of a 1% wipe (to which I would reply that most 1% wipes are due to a healer dying in the later stages of the fight, in which case surely an additional cheat death mechanic would be more likely to kill the boss as that would mean 1-2 seconds more of the DPS not getting squished).

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-njcvsxzu4ejcxqtk/
That kill was at 10:01 (with the enrage starting at 10ish) - I started the first attempts with the tank cloak but after realizing that there was absolutely no danger of dying I figured I'd go with the dps cloak, which definitely saved us from having to adjust our strategy or well another wipe for a start.
And that's already our second boss kill with both tanks on dps cloak and being within seconds of the enrage timer.

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It is our primary stat. But so is expertise, and getting damn near a fifth of our expertise on a single item is nothing short of awesome, because we can equip more haste/mastery pieces.

Wat?
Haven't we established it already that exp = mastery, which is okayish but not all that awesome.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

So it worked for you, that's great. Still doesn't mean taking the dps cloak is universally the best choice (just like taking the tank cloak isn't universally the best choice).

Haven't we established it already that exp = mastery, which is okayish but not all that awesome.

Do you mean for DPS or for Holy Power generation? I ask, because I take hit and expertise to their respective caps, which gives them a very high value for me before the cap, and absolutely zero value thereafter. This is one of the reasons I like the tanking cloak, because it means I can equip more of the haste/mastery items.

[Deleted]

The tanking one. Has 991 Expertise, 991 Mastery and 991 Parry (which reforges to 396 haste). So the decision comes down to 595 haste rating and a dps proc that is about a 2% damage increase or 595 expertise rating (you'll be reforging the crit rating on the dps cloak into 396 expertise) and or not dying once every 2 minutes.

Expertise is still kinda irrelevant as that is being reforged out of anyway. If I gain 900 expertise on the cloak but reforge 900 expertise to mastery on other items to avoid overcapping, I did not really gain 900 expertise, more 900 mastery.

It is our primary stat. But so is expertise, and getting damn near a fifth of our expertise on a single item is nothing short of awesome, because we can equip more haste/mastery pieces. Not to mention that parry is not completely useless, and that crit pretty much is.

Parry and dodge is imo still kinda bad for fights where you cant abuse it with mutliple mobs. Crit is actually fairly decent now with EF.

Most of the arguments people bring about taking the DPS cloak are ones about not dying anyway because they tank 10 man normal mode (they should go tank 10N Garrosh in that case - he hits for 450k) or they don't want to be the cause of a 1% wipe (to which I would reply that most 1% wipes are due to a healer dying in the later stages of the fight, in which case surely an additional cheat death mechanic would be more likely to kill the boss as that would mean 1-2 seconds more of the DPS not getting squished).

I do not see so many people implying that you should use DPS cloak on every fight, most people that advocate dps cloak do so with the presumption that you make an active decision on a fight to fight basis on when to use which cloak.

From the 10 man normals from my experience, the tank is the last man standing on a majority of the fights, on those fights having the tank cloak does not really let your dps live longer, as you are alive the longest anyway. All your healers and dps are often dead by raid damage before you die from boss damage, these are the kind of fights that the dps cloak are good on. On our first weeks raids, there were multiple bosses when I would be the last man standing and solo bring down the bosses 5-20% health.

Now it may sound like I am one of those guys that use the dps cloak on every fight, that is not true at all. I found myself using the tank cloak on most fights, but the reasons were none of those that you mentioned. One of the biggest reasons I used it was to intentionally ignore mechanics and not waste cooldowns on big hitting spells. As I have mentioned before in other threads, I often play conservative with my cooldowns, having instead of popping a GoAK to soak some stack, I rather have the cloak proc and keep m GoAK. Still all these situations the cloak was never needed or in any danger, simply a tool to sit on more CDs ready for oh shit situatios. The second and biggest reason was that my co-tank this patch has been terrible, no really, it is has been horrible. He drops like a fly on almost every fight. So when I am doing a fight, I do it with the mindset that my co-tank will die, it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. So when I figure out how to a tackle a fight, I ask myself "How do I best solo tank this fight after my co-tank dies", the answer to this has often been using tank cloak to cheese stacks. If I had a co-tank that I could rely on I would have used the dps cloak on a lot of fights that I did not, but right now I have been using the tank cloak a lot to just deal with my other tanks lack of ability to play his role. He can die on 2 stacks on siegemaster while I take 8 or 9.
Another reason again related to my tank, is that fights like shamans, I would never use the tank cloak if I could rely on my tank. But on this fight, other than that my co-tank dropped dead on the most random occasions leading me to having to tank both shamans, I could never rely on a good tank swaps. Normally you could swap at 5-6 stacks, sometimes 7 if you are really slow, but sometimes when my off-tank gets all confused and what not, I have gotten as much as 12 or 13 stacks when he is still alive. Having to deal with those sitautions that tank cloak is really good. But that has nothing to do with the actual bosses, just that the proc from tank cloak is great with dealing with an unreliable co-tank.

If I had a tank that I could rely on I would have used the dps cloak a lot more than I do now. And it is really true what most people say about the 10N bosses, I have just opted for tank cloak on a lot of those fights due to the other tank, not due to the bosses.

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So it worked for you, that's great. Still doesn't mean taking the dps cloak is universally the best choice (just like taking the tank cloak isn't universally the best choice).

I do not feel like Nillo or anyone else is trying to advocate that the dps cloak is a universally better choice. It clearly is situational on which bosses you use them on. On some bosses both cloaks can be viable and which you choose is depending on your tactic and raid setup.

[Deleted]

... my co-tank this patch has been terrible, no really, it is has been horrible. He drops like a fly on almost every fight.

Does your co-tank wear the tank legendary cloak? Sounds like it might benefit him if he doesn't.

[Deleted]

Does your co-tank wear the tank legendary cloak? Sounds like it might benefit him if he doesn't.

No he doesnt and refuse to do so I do not think it would help him either way. He can tank a boss for 10 seconds and die, a 2 minute cooldown would not help him. The tank cloak would not do anything benefitial for him really, he is just to bad to get any use from it, would maybe keep him alive for 10 seconds more max.

But honestly, he is the worst and most stubborn player I have ever seen and the guild is actively recruiting to replace him at the moment, he is holding the entire raid back and has no will to improve himself.

Edit: And yes, I am a bit mad and provoked when I wrote this so excuse me if my love and joy for the guy sips through.

[Nillo]

So it worked for you, that's great. Still doesn't mean taking the dps cloak is universally the best choice (just like taking the tank cloak isn't universally the best choice).

Norushen heroic just died the moment the enrage hit.

Do you mean for DPS or for Holy Power generation? I ask, because I take hit and expertise to their respective caps, which gives them a very high value for me before the cap, and absolutely zero value thereafter. This is one of the reasons I like the tanking cloak, because it means I can equip more of the haste/mastery items.

...............................................well firefly just explained it.... again....

[gerus]

however your "math" is all wrong.
you need to do the equation in a way that reflects the stat that will be forged off.

so the question is really

parry mastery with dodge being the reforged and ignored stat

or

haste mastery with crit being the reforged and ignored stat

We actually established earlier in the thread that the expertise essentially reforges down into the second most valuable stat so in most cases the exp goes into mastery. I'm not sure how the math is incorrect given that statement. As of 5.4 the tank cloak no longer parry/mastery/dodge. It's parry/exp/mastery. Unless you value mastery really low on the damage smoothing scale, the itemization for survivability is really close if not better. It all varies based on the weights you provide but most sane scales will put them in a stone throw of each other.

I slot in the DPS cloak on content I'm not concerned about my survival on but it's not because the DPS cloak is better itemized for survivability. It's better itemized for DPS. I still think anything that analyzes the stats for the tank cloak as mostly worthless is pretty far off.

[celinamuna]

The tanking one. Has 991 Expertise, 991 Mastery and 991 Parry (which reforges to 396 haste). So the decision comes down to 595 haste rating and a dps proc that is about a 2% damage increase or 595 expertise rating (you'll be reforging the crit rating on the dps cloak into 396 expertise) and or not dying once every 2 minutes.



It is our primary stat. But so is expertise, and getting damn near a fifth of our expertise on a single item is nothing short of awesome, because we can equip more haste/mastery pieces. Not to mention that parry is not completely useless, and that crit pretty much is.

Most of the arguments people bring about taking the DPS cloak are ones about not dying anyway because they tank 10 man normal mode (they should go tank 10N Garrosh in that case - he hits for 450k) or they don't want to be the cause of a 1% wipe (to which I would reply that most 1% wipes are due to a healer dying in the later stages of the fight, in which case surely an additional cheat death mechanic would be more likely to kill the boss as that would mean 1-2 seconds more of the DPS not getting squished).

And for the record, I was one of the first people to consider taking haste rating, way back in MoP beta.

DPS cloak for me been about 9% dmg, not 2%.

To be fair I have to agree that this tier tank cloak actually has a number of uses.
For normals i'd use
1-6 dps cloak
7 - tank one (rng happens)
8-10 dps one
Thok - no idea
Siegecrafter - tank one
paragons - both have uses
garrosh - tank one

Based on the damage i've seen on heroic tank one might become very viable (dat 2nd blast on immerseus)