DPS or Tank Cloak for a BrM

[Deleted]

I didn't miss the point. He claims that "monks have no emergency buttons and therefore need the tank cloak". That is blatantly false, and i pointed some mechanics that would kill any other tank long before reaching that point. A decently played monk (and i said "decently", and not "best-in-the-world") will not die unless there was already a wipe to begin with (due to boss enrage or healers being dead). The one wipe out of ~200 that could escape that is easily offset by the extra DPS you had on the other 199 pulls.

Out of 110 pulls on siegecrafter HC I think my cloaked procced 5-10 times on decent tries. That is a shit ton of time saved just there.

Sure as hell i could do more, but point is you never have enough DPS.

To take it to absurd levels, imagine peple did 1M DPS. Heroic garrosh? 3 tanks (in case one dies) 5 healers and 2 DPS. He's not enraging.

That's what makes the DPS cloak superior to the tank one. Now if you could use the tank cloak as an extra CD, as in "i should pop a CD for this, but instead i'll use the tank cloak to soak it" THEN it would be worth using.

No? That is the point. Everything in the game like execute on general nazgrim you can prepare for. This cloak is useful for when you do everything according to plan and something goes wrong and you need not to die. This can happen during progession, the main key while progressing is executing mechanics. And wasting tries dying and not giving other people the chance to attune to the fight cause you want a 6% DPS increase is counter productive.

Am I correct to assume this is you: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ngbai/advanced ?
I suspect it is as that character is a BrM monk registered to a "Inthislzon" on woprogress.
Killing the first 3 bosses, 3 very easy bosses that couldn't even one shot a DPS if they tried makes it clear why you think the tank cloak is useless.

[Inthislzon]

Yup, that is me, could have asked and i'd have saved you the trouble. Also have posted my armory here tons of times.

As i said before i was using the tank cloak till i said "hey, i'll use tank cloak to soak this blast" on heroic immerseus and got killed by it. If something doesn't hit me above my max HP then chances are i'm not dying from it.

The idea behind the cloak is nice, but it either needs to absorb EVERYTHING, doesn't matter how hard-hitting, or work like purgatory from DKs/old ardent defender. As it is now is a good concept not worth using.

Yes, there are times where you will die despite doing everything well, but those are rare enough to justify losing the damage from DPS cloak, at least for me, as i raid 10h/week and focus more on having fun than hardcore progressing.

If i were to tank heroic garrosh tomorrow yeah, probably i'd equip it, but apart from the top guilds that push progression while severely undergeared (and THERE that proc could be useful), if you are killing a new heroic boss every week/2 weeks you don't need the proc, and will rarely, if ever, see it proc

[Deleted]

How would you know if they would see the proc or not? Your argument rests on what you THINK someone progressing on hard content will find useful. There is a big fucking difference between outgearing the 3 easiest bosses int he instance and trying to do the harder hitting bosses (Thok, Siegecrafter, Klaxxi etc) with decent gear. I don't get how you can argue against the cloak when you have no idea how it would apply in practice with the exception of one failed Immersus attempt.

Also I raid 9hrs a week and I consider myself progessing "hardcore" if anything. Obviously not in terms of time, but the mindset is still to kill bosses as quickly as possible, you just have less time. If that isn't your mindset then why even begin to discuss which cloak to use, cause honestly if killing the boss is secondary to you all this seems void.

[Inthislzon]

Secondary to what? I do have fun killing bosses, we just don't feel like replacing people to progress faster.

Also lol about "outgearing", guess you don't know what that means. Hint: In order to outgear any boss from SoO heroic i'd have to be at 570+, and even then i could still use some drops. You outgear content when you don't need drops from said content (aside from maybe 1-2 odd pieces in the entire raid that is).

I KNOW, for a FACT, that people currently progressing on paragons/garrosh/thok play better than i do, and if i don't die, then they don't die either. If you don't trust yourself enough to know you won't die to stupid mistakes then congratulations, you got carried. And that's the only legit reason to use tank cloak, as undergeared kills stopped 2-3 weeks ago.

Build up some self esteem instead of trying to call out people that is not even trying to hide stuff, it will be better.

Or just do some research and check if those procs saved you, and why did they, and what could you have done to offset it. You will be amazed. My co-tank thought like you, until i showed him how on a full week the cloak tank saved him ONCE, then he did the only logical think and equipped the DPS one.

[Deleted]

Secondary to what? I do have fun killing bosses, we just don't feel like replacing people to progress faster.

Also lol about "outgearing", guess you don't know what that means. Hint: In order to outgear any boss from SoO heroic i'd have to be at 570+, and even then i could still use some drops. You outgear content when you don't need drops from said content (aside from maybe 1-2 odd pieces in the entire raid that is).

I KNOW, for a FACT, that people currently progressing on paragons/garrosh/thok play better than i do, and if i don't die, then they don't die either. If you don't trust yourself enough to know you won't die to stupid mistakes then congratulations, you got carried. And that's the only legit reason to use tank cloak, as undergeared kills stopped 2-3 weeks ago.

Build up some self esteem instead of trying to call out people that is not even trying to hide stuff, it will be better.

Or just do some research and check if those procs saved you, and why did they, and what could you have done to offset it. You will be amazed. My co-tank thought like you, until i showed him how on a full week the cloak tank saved him ONCE, then he did the only logical think and equipped the DPS one.

Honestly. What would you know about any of this stuff? You are making so many assumption which are just completely baseless. You are a 3/14 heroic monk trying to tell people who are actually progessing bosses that hit hard how useless a cloak that only is useful when progessing said bosses.

The bottom line is you don't have a clue about these things and your argument that the cloak is only useful if you play bad is just plain stupid. The unexpected can happen, that is what progress is all about. If you had everything down then it wouldn't be hard.

Why do you expect to be so enlightened about progessing these bosses when you obviously (3 bosses out of 14) aren't in any position to take a stand.

[Inthislzon]

That sounds like healers saying "i'll stack spirit so when DPS stand on fire i can spam heal them and not run OOM". But by all means go ahead and tell me exactly HOW do you wipe on a boss if everyone executes the strat properly. You can pick any boss from any raid or dungeon on any difficulty you wish. I'll wait.

[Deleted]

This is where you are clueless.

Example:
You take a lot of damage in sucession, same ol' same ol' only difference is this time the healers are occupied by one bomb that ran past them and they can't heal you to full. Even with your expel harm and chi wave you are still struggling to keep up, and then the boss does his major ability (execute). This won't happen if everything is going well, but it isn't cause you are progessing. That is why it is progress.

[Deleted]

for me personally, im using the tank cloak on progress and i find it proccing quite a lot during progress because i might be late on my cds/timers, my healers might be late on their cooldowns/timers and most progress/kills tend to be quite chaotic.
i still use the tank cloak for farm because its farm, and we're gonna kill it with or without the extra dps, it rarely procs on farm but when it does it saves my life i guess.

[Radio]

Just choose your cloak based on your raid groups/boss encounters needs.

I use the DPS cloak because:
- we raid a 7 hour schedule and tend to overgear bosses on progress as a result (I'm ilvl 569 already despite only being 7/14H)
- our raid DPS tends to be our weakest link
- OPINION: I do have a personal distate for cheat death mechanics, though that is probably masochism on my part, I find I personally play better and more consistently when I know that my mistakes are permanent

I have experienced premature deaths on Protectors, Norushen, Galakras, Iron Jugg and Nazgrim, but all of them were glaring mistakes on my part and I was happy to accept the blame for those particular wipes. I still chose to use the DPS cloak for all of those kills, especially since our first Norushen kill was 2 seconds prior to enrage, our Galakras kill we were barely getting adds down in time as it was, Iron Jugg berserked for 4 seconds before he died, and Nazgrim berserked for a couple of seconds before he died. On almost all of our progress kills I am the top DPS in our raid and it is simply my way of helping our raid down bosses.

Not all tanks/guilds are in the same situation, depending on your healers, your personal skill, your gear level relative to the content you're doing, the content you're doing, the gearutput ratio of your DPSers, etc etc, you should be making an educated decision over which cloak you should be using.

[Quotey]

i sure wish i was as good as these mystical players who have no use for the tank cloak because they never waste their raids time by making mistakes and dying

im not saying you should always wear the tank cloak but christ almighty folks

[Tech614]

i sure wish i was as good as these mystical players who have no use for the tank cloak because they never waste their raids time by making mistakes and dying

im not saying you should always wear the tank cloak but christ almighty folks

I used the dps cloak on most fights but this post is spot on. People who claim they have no use AT ALL for the tank cloak are not using all the tools on the table for quite a few encounters which it is excellent for. There are heroic bosses out there where when you are progressing can rng burst you harder then you and healers can keep yourself up, they are rare but they exist, not to mention using it as an extra CD to game a few mechanics.

Anyone who says they never die unless it's a wipe should post their logs from all progression and prove it, they are making blanket statements they can't back up. Every tank dies on progression be it due to gear, bad play, bad rng or healer attention. It happens, the cloak saves wipes on these type of encounters: fact.

[britishbubba]

i sure wish i was as good as these mystical players who have no use for the tank cloak because they never waste their raids time by making mistakes and dying

im not saying you should always wear the tank cloak but christ almighty folks

I was against using the tank cloak for awhile... And then iron juggernaut progression happened. Don't care if I can CD that stuff, boss hits so stupidly hard on tanks that having an extra second to hit a heal is worth -.-

EDIT: Here's the last second of my life on the wipe that caused me to swap to the tank cloak

[20:06:43.680] Unknown Engulfed Explosion Kegsmash 297324 (A: 379253)
[20:06:43.738] Iron Juggernaut Seismic Activity Kegsmash 45908
[20:06:43.861] Kegsmash Stagger Kegsmash 49549
[20:06:44.105] Zangy Power Word: Solace Kegsmash +*111561* (O: 0)
[20:06:44.120] Top Cannon Mortar Blast Kegsmash 167978 (O: 107371)

I was in the air when that mortar popped up then damaged me... Not much I could have done about that, so I swapped cloaks. Didn't die to something dumb like that again.

[Deleted]

I was against using the tank cloak for awhile... And then iron juggernaut progression happened. Don't care if I can CD that stuff, boss hits so stupidly hard on tanks that having an extra second to hit a heal is worth -.-

EDIT: Here's the last second of my life on the wipe that caused me to swap to the tank cloak

[20:06:43.680] Unknown Engulfed Explosion Kegsmash 297324 (A: 379253)
[20:06:43.738] Iron Juggernaut Seismic Activity Kegsmash 45908
[20:06:43.861] Kegsmash Stagger Kegsmash 49549
[20:06:44.105] Zangy Power Word: Solace Kegsmash +*111561* (O: 0)
[20:06:44.120] Top Cannon Mortar Blast Kegsmash 167978 (O: 107371)

I was in the air when that mortar popped up then damaged me... Not much I could have done about that, so I swapped cloaks. Didn't die to something dumb like that again.

Almost all of Iron Juggernaughts dmg on tanks is the fire debuff, he doesnt really hit that hard with melee swings, if you use active mitigation when getting stacks of the debuff and use cooldowns when soaking bombs (which is really the only dangerous parts of the fight for a tank) you will be fine.

[DemoBytom]

Just like you, I'm progressing on Garrosh ATM.. And I can't even think about doing this with DPS cloak.
Tank cloak procs nearly on every pull, there's always something that goes wrong when you learn the fight and on Garrosh dead tank almost always means dead raid (At least p1).
I only switch to DPS cloak for (some) farm bosses. Nothing sucks more than a wipe on 10% just because tank brain farted and died...

[Inthislzon]

I was against using the tank cloak for awhile... And then iron juggernaut progression happened. Don't care if I can CD that stuff, boss hits so stupidly hard on tanks that having an extra second to hit a heal is worth -.-

EDIT: Here's the last second of my life on the wipe that caused me to swap to the tank cloak

[20:06:43.680] Unknown Engulfed Explosion Kegsmash 297324 (A: 379253)
[20:06:43.738] Iron Juggernaut Seismic Activity Kegsmash 45908
[20:06:43.861] Kegsmash Stagger Kegsmash 49549
[20:06:44.105] Zangy Power Word: Solace Kegsmash +*111561* (O: 0)
[20:06:44.120] Top Cannon Mortar Blast Kegsmash 167978 (O: 107371)

I was in the air when that mortar popped up then damaged me... Not much I could have done about that, so I swapped cloaks. Didn't die to something dumb like that again.

Why are you, as a raid, not outranging mortar cannons? Also where is your expel harm when you were flying and saw the cannon area? Also why didn't you ask for a lifegrip from the very same priest that healed you via solace?

Those are 3 things out of 5 seconds that could have saved you. Cloak was the 4th on line. And that is assuming you used guard for something else, used fort brew for something else, don't have a warlock in your raid (or HS were on CD too)...

Still waiting for that perfectly executed strat by everyone that somehow makes tank cloak proc.

EDIT: I'll put this in again, just in case someone didn't read the 2895729584 times i said it already. The reason i don't use tank cloak, and noone really should, is that any time where cloak could have saved me, better playing on my part alone would have also, and i don't feel like planning for mediocrity, even if it means a wipe or 2. Now, should tank cloak get a DECENT proc (As in "you get hit by something that would kill you, REGARDLESS OF DAMAGE you are saved") i'd be using it 100%, but capped at max health? No way i'm using that shit.

[Berri]

Our brewmaster needs the tanking one for Heroic Blackfuse, but it's quite situational: for some fights you may be closer to hitting the enrage, and then it'll be worth using the DPS cloak instead.

[Zonex]

Really.. at this point, any of you doing progression on anything past Thok.. don't need the dps cloak OR tank cloak. People doing progression in lesser gear than was intended, went by a very simple philosophy -> Tank cloak to learn mechanics, even after (presumed) death, and after that was all mapped (CD wise), go DPS cloak.

It's THAT simple. Tank cloak is a learning aid. DPS cloak is the default. Obviously this is a bit different for 25mans since even basic melee hits hard but yea.. most of you guys here are 10man so disregard 25man notions.


Siegecrafter in ~558 gear, isn't something "hard", everything hard in that boss fight, WILL kill you if you dont prepare for it (our strat is to have me take 8 stacks, and i have CD's planned for every single one, no externals, those are for O SHIT's). What you CANT prepare for is his Frenzy, because due to the nature of our class, we are very RNG prone.. So what happens? I have EB up for its duration (obviously), and ask my MW to keep EvM on me, whils't the priest (or sometimes paladin) just spams me with a mana efficient DA/IH builder spell. Simple isnt it. This way, Expel Harm is our failsafe, a very strong one at that, and GotOrbs a further failsafe, and FINALLY externals the last failsafe. After we got to the last point of the fight (progress wise), i started spreading out the externals to ease out spikes, but before that, its better to save them for progress phases and have your tank cloak proc so you know which points are dangerous.

Thats a prime example of tank cloak being used to LEARN the O SHIT moments. You guys seem to think tanks get a boatload of healing in 10mans.. we dont. Most of it comes from properly managing spikes.


The last thing is gear, when you have a certain amount of gear, tank cloak is quite unneeded, but still has its uses for learning purposes. If you are using a tank cloak after ~200 attempts on Siegecrafter or thok or paragons or garrosh or w/e, and you've seen the end of the fight a safe amount of times, a few wipes can be accounted to you for lowering the raid's DPS.

Garrosh would be the best example i can think of. P3 is a huge DPS check, and it gives a LOT of vengeance, that means the tank dps actually means a lot, and boosting that by 7% means a lot as well, especially when it means that you can potentially skip the last Whirlwind or MC or D-Weapon. Then comes p4, deaths here are largely due to player error, be it your healers or yourself, the longer this phase lasts the more prone you are to wiping to manifestations.

Anyway.. the point is, tank dps absolutely matters, its not just about enrage timers, its also about cutting phases shorter, or skipping potentially deadly situations, it all adds up. The Tank cloak is for learning where you need those externals to come in, and the DPS cloak is for when you feel you are confident enough in your ability to not screw up that external CD calling rotation.

[Tanthalas]

I have a tanking cloak proc on our latest heroic killed - Thok, so that pretty much sums it up for me.
Only used DPS cloak for Spoils heroic kill because they can hardly instagib you. Still, we had like 20-30 seconds left in both rooms, so that didn't matter much.

[Vanden]

I can't imagine anyone saying "never use tank cloak" has ever been working on a boss that consistently hits hard. There's a time and a place for the tank cloak and almost all of the time it's during first kills/progression. If you've just started on a new heroic boss and you obviously are going to be wiping, why would you want to add to the wipe count? Personally I use the DPS cloak on the first 10 heroics because they're easily on farm, meaning everyone is comfortable with the fight and if we derp and wipe it probably has nothing to do with me padding my meters a bit harder. During progression though I used the tanking cloak on Iron Juggernaut, Dark Shamans, Malkorok, and Thok (working on siegecrafter now), because those bosses have a very good chance to kill you if someone misses a beat.

People keep saying that if you play properly you don't need the tank cloak and that's only true to an extent. What if you need an external and it's just a tad late, or if your co-tank dies and you need to pick up an extra stack or two that you weren't planning on? It's pretty easy to say that better play solves the problem more efficiently than the tanking cloak and I'm sure that's true if you and your raid are at such a top level that mistakes never happen. But then of course you've already cleared this tier and it doesn't matter which cloak you wear, right? :P

Facts are facts, the tank cloak has the potential to save your group from a potential wipe and the DPS cloak doesn't. When you progress on a new boss every pull counts and the longer pulls are usually the most informative so there is simply no reason to risk it barring the potential DPS checks that more tank dps might help solve.

[SurrealNight]

I use the DPS cloak because:
- we raid a 7 hour schedule and tend to overgear bosses on progress as a result (I'm ilvl 569 already despite only being 7/14H)
- our raid DPS tends to be our weakest link
- OPINION: I do have a personal distate for cheat death mechanics, though that is probably masochism on my part, I find I personally play better and more consistently when I know that my mistakes are permanent

Hah sounds like my raid group. I have put on the tank cloak for fights where I felt a lot of single target damage would be coming my way which so far the first fight seems to be IJ. I know the tank damage is mostly from the dot but if your raid is derping into a lot of damage it makes it easier for healers to forget about you.

Didn't use it for Shamans and probably wont for Nazgrim but plan to for Malkorok (at least for 1st kill), Thok, Siege, and Klaxxi. Don't want to ruin 24 other peoples attempt cause I"m to vain to use it at least for our original kills.

In general I use the DPS cloak most of the time though with my gear + solid bank of healers the tank cloak doesn't get much use outside of progression fights. As others have said you really should be assessing which cloak to use on your own there isn't a general right/wrong answer to which.