Which cloak for prot?

[Cheekun]

If Im sitting at 25% for a prolonged period of time, long enough for the boss to hit me and kill me, weve got a few other problems. Im usually near 670+ hp. There's no reason I should be sitting that low for a long enough time to be killed(saved by a proc) a few ticks of a hot and 1tick to seal to save me. I think you are overestimating it. A boss hits hard. If my seal + 1 or 2 ticks was enough to mitigate his melee we would be seeing far fewer tank deaths in raids.

I'm going to have to soupport this train of thought as well. Personally I believe the raw stats of the legendary dps cloak will be worth more mitatgation then a proc that will only get used if someone made a critical error. The dps cloak will be damage that you are always mitgating, rather then something that only gets used when you're about to die (minus the one benefical stat on the tanking cloak).

I feel that if you're pooling holy power correctly and antipating boss mechanics (things like talon rake and triple puncture, dire call, whatever) then you should never be put in a situation where the cloak would be the difference between life and death in the long run. If the paladin is doing everything correctly, he'll never be in a situation were he won't be healed or can't call for heals or even wog himself back up to a safe margin. Its the same arguement being used for the tanking cloak, but in practice it works regardless of what's on your back.

If the tanking cloak had a proc that built up some kind of active mitagation then i think we'd be having a very different discussion.

[sleezyg]

People seem to undervalue avoidance anymore and think haste is the end all of stats. It's a is still the best TDR stat it's just lacking in damage smoothing. Currently I do use the haste cloak but I intend to switch to the tank one before I upgrade it again. Using Thecks' Stat Weights at the current upgraded item level the DPS cloak is only 9% better(assuming your are reforging crit/dodge to hit). If you don't think the tank proc is worth 9% weaker stats that your prerogative, my self I'll with what, unless it is changed, is a very powerful proc for a very minor reduction in stats.

[Cheekun]

People seem undervalue avoidance anymore and think haste is the end all of stats. It's a is still the best TDR stat it's just lacking in damage smoothing. Currently I do use the haste cloak but I intend to switch to the tank one before I upgrade it again. at the current upgraded item level the DPS cloak is only 9% better(assuming your are reforging crit/dodge to hit). If you don't think the tank proc is worth 9% weaker stats that your prerogative, my self I'll with what, unless it is changed, is a very powerful proc for a very minor reduction in stats.

I'll bank on 9% more active mitgation which benefits me over the entire fight then a cloak proc that may or may not come into play. Lets not forget the cloak proc of the dps cloak, you'll also be doing more dps. Effectively, if we wanted to get very technical about it you'd also be shortening the length of the fight to some degree, even if its only by 10 secounds, thats 10 secounds of abilities and white hits that you effectively "mitigated".

[celinamuna]

People seem to undervalue avoidance anymore and think haste is the end all of stats. It's a is still the best TDR stat it's just lacking in damage smoothing. Currently I do use the haste cloak but I intend to switch to the tank one before I upgrade it again. Using Thecks' Stat Weights at the current upgraded item level the DPS cloak is only 9% better(assuming your are reforging crit/dodge to hit). If you don't think the tank proc is worth 9% weaker stats that your prerogative, my self I'll with what, unless it is changed, is a very powerful proc for a very minor reduction in stats.

And yet you don't die because "the damage was 100% smooth but we ran out of mana healing you so you died".
You die because of dmg spikes, and trusting rng of "maybe i won't die, maybe i will" is a terrible terrible idea.

[Deleted]

I imagine we'll be able to pick and choose, anyway. Blizzard seemed pretty receptive to allowing us to purchase cloaks for each of our specs. I realize that isn't the case now, but I'll be surprised if it isn't in 5.4.

I think it's been hot fixed so it is the case now. I just got the 600 cloak, went to buy a socket for my weapon and saw the other cloaks on sale at Wrathion's vendor.

[Zantos]

I think it's been hot fixed so it is the case now. I just got the 600 cloak, went to buy a socket for my weapon and saw the other cloaks on sale at Wrathion's vendor.

Depending on the price. most people aren't going to freely change cloaks. 7k+ per change with the addition of gemming, reforging, and enchanting it and it just wouldn't be a nice thing. We would also have to see how the proc is handled. Since each cloak has an associated proc, it may be that you can only change the cloak until the proc is on it. The gems and sockets aren't attached to 1 certain item like the cloak proc is.

[Deleted]

Taking the dps cloak is not even a question to me. Comparing a cloak with 3 useful stats vs a cloak with 1 useful stat. The DPS proc is also useful on every fight, the tank one is not.

That said, it is possible that the tank cloak will work very well on some specific fights, still I find it hard that they would balance fights like that knowing that the tanking cloak is coming out. Maybe it will be worth having tanking cloak in your bag if you can abuse the proc on some fight, however using the dps cloak
on 80% of the fights for sure.

[Nuttypoolog]

I will be getting my dps cloak in 2 weeks tops and don't plan on looking back unless I am proven otherwise.

[Lonerteey]

If you can use your cds correctly you dont need the tank back's proc at all. And the dps back is not only nearly perfectly itemized but i belive it will give us somwhere around 3-5k dps with the proc, so I'd take it any day over the tank one. Considering no1 uses the tank meta gem, we will be just fine without the tank back aswell...

[Amuramie]

"I'm not going to give up my best survival stats for a mechanic that guarantees I survive once every minute." I don't think this is compelling logic.

Besides, Dodge and Parry are not "bad," they give us some non-zero amount of increased survivability (unlike crit). Further, all that haste you think you're losing is only around 600 with a reforge.

I hate this mindset that we've fallen into where our DPS is such a big deal that we it's all we care about. The DPS proc will for sure be a nice DPS increase but if that's what makes or breaks a kill, I'm telling my DPS to step it up.

[Deleted]

If the DPS cloak's proc procs Seal of Insight, then it's a no-brainer.

[Deleted]

"I'm not going to give up my best survival stats for a mechanic that guarantees I survive once every minute." I don't think this is compelling logic.

Besides, Dodge and Parry are not "bad," they give us some non-zero amount of increased survivability (unlike crit). Further, all that haste you think you're losing is only around 600 with a reforge.

I hate this mindset that we've fallen into where our DPS is such a big deal that we it's all we care about. The DPS proc will for sure be a nice DPS increase but if that's what makes or breaks a kill, I'm telling my DPS to step it up.

Because the proc does not guarantee your survival.

Dodge and parry gives a zero amount of survivability increase in most realistic tanking situations, i.e. when not tanking 10+ mobs, crit however always give you a dps increase making it a useful stat on every boss fight, where as dodge/parry is not making it a far more reliable stat than dodge and parry.

I hate this consevative mindset that it is not a tanks job to do damage. Guess what, it is your job regardless of role as a radier to do whatever you can to make sure the boss die and make yourself useful in the best way. If that means dispelling as a dps, dpsing as a healer or tank, than so be it. Just because you dont want to play your class properly and help your raid group does not mean you should complain on your dpsers. It is both your dpsers and your job to push to dps. In case of telling your DPS to step up, maybe both you and your dps should step up. You are a team you know.

[Uselessrouge]

did i miss something what proc? >.<

[Amuramie]

Because the proc does not guarantee your survival.

Dodge and parry gives a zero amount of survivability increase in most realistic tanking situations, i.e. when not tanking 10+ mobs, crit however always give you a dps increase making it a useful stat on every boss fight, where as dodge/parry is not making it a far more reliable stat than dodge and parry.

I hate this consevative mindset that it is not a tanks job to do damage. Guess what, it is your job regardless of role as a radier to do whatever you can to make sure the boss die and make yourself useful in the best way. If that means dispelling as a dps, dpsing as a healer or tank, than so be it. Just because you dont want to play your class properly and help your raid group does not mean you should complain on your dpsers. It is both your dpsers and your job to push to dps. In case of telling your DPS to step up, maybe both you and your dps should step up. You are a team you know.

With all due respect, don't read as far into my words as you did because you do not know the situation I am coming from :P

I'll try to be more specific about a few things. The proc may not "guarantee survival" (if you want to pick words apart that far there really isn't anything that guarantees survival) but it does literally remove one death event every minute. The wording implies it is not a Purgatory effect but rather it fully removes the blow that would have killed you. It may not guarantee anything, but disregarding it because the other cloak has slightly better survival stats is, IMO, illogical.

Saying that Dodge and Parry give 0 survivability whereas crit is always a DPS increase is contradictory because they are both random outcomes.

When I say that I hate the mindset we've found ourselves in, I consider it a design flaw that we even care about our DPS in the first place. It started out as a little bit fun, but performing every single role in the raid at once while tanking has become annoying.

Edit: And I never said it wasn't my job to care about my DPS, I said I hate that it's all "we" care about.

[Deleted]

Saying that Dodge and Parry give 0 survivability whereas crit is always a DPS increase is contradictory because they are both random outcomes.

It is not contradictory since we are not talking about the same thing. We are comparing random avoidance with random dps increase.

During a fight, you will always use about the same amount of offensive abilities, give or take, making crit, while random, still a bit reliable. The difference is also that a crit is rarely wasted. Sure, there are maybe some parts of a fight where you want a crit more than another, and maybe you waste crit on adds that are not really needed, but all in all, every crit is useful. The same can not be said for a dodge or parry where in my opinion, less than 10% of dodges/parries are actually useful. And by saying 10% I am being generous. Mostly they just cause overhealing for no actual gain.

With dodge and parry, the % of the damage a boss does that is dodge/parriable will vary between fight to fight, aswell as the amount of dodgable/parriable attacks you take per second. On a fight like Ji-Kun, you take about 1 hit per 6 seconds on average. Dodge and parry is not really useful unless you are taking 5+ attacks per second, that do not really happen unless you are add tanking Horridon or something, which really no paladin do as we are often on boss duty. The harder and less often the mobs hit, the worse dodge and parry gets.

Just being completely realistic dodge and parry is useless unless you can get them in the amounts of a druid/monk with having 75%+ chance to avoid.


I do not really find the design flawed that we care about DPS. It puts another level of skill to tanking and make tanking far more interesting. It makes gearing up more fun, you have something to do on farm bosses and you feel like a bigger part of the team.

[Nairobi]

It is not contradictory since we are not talking about the same thing. We are comparing random avoidance with random dps increase.

During a fight, you will always use about the same amount of offensive abilities, give or take, making crit, while random, still a bit reliable. The difference is also that a crit is rarely wasted. Sure, there are maybe some parts of a fight where you want a crit more than another, and maybe you waste crit on adds that are not really needed, but all in all, every crit is useful. The same can not be said for a dodge or parry where in my opinion, less than 10% of dodges/parries are actually useful. And by saying 10% I am being generous. Mostly they just cause overhealing for no actual gain.

With dodge and parry, the % of the damage a boss does that is dodge/parriable will vary between fight to fight, aswell as the amount of dodgable/parriable attacks you take per second. On a fight like Ji-Kun, you take about 1 hit per 6 seconds on average. Dodge and parry is not really useful unless you are taking 5+ attacks per second, that do not really happen unless you are add tanking Horridon or something, which really no paladin do as we are often on boss duty. The harder and less often the mobs hit, the worse dodge and parry gets.

Just being completely realistic dodge and parry is useless unless you can get them in the amounts of a druid/monk with having 75%+ chance to avoid.


I do not really find the design flawed that we care about DPS. It puts another level of skill to tanking and make tanking far more interesting. It makes gearing up more fun, you have something to do on farm bosses and you feel like a bigger part of the team.

I was going to post this, but then you wrote it.

The amount of people coming out of the woodwork recently, mostly waving the SacredDuty banner around, and spouting off bad information is quite staggering. It almost makes me think that they are blue posters, trying to make us return to wanting D/P as stats. From front page:

any response to my previous tweet? Does blizzard acknowledge the fact that haste is a priority stat for pala tanks...
Yes, we know paladins like haste. This has been discussed much before. (Source)

would you say we like haste just because, or because it is the best stat for us? I love mist prot palla dont get me wrong
Too long a discussion for twitter. In brief, we disagree we the logic that says avoidance is garbage because it's unreliable. (Source)
But we get that haste is more fun, so it's a moot point anyway. It plays into active mitigation, which is ultimately our goal. (Source)

Basically, despite all math, and 99% of every top player saying/showing/proving that they do, in fact, avoid avoidance because of it's worthless and detrimental nature, Blizz still holds to the "it's not bad, guzy!" mantra. It's baffling.

No matter how "bad" these D+D holdouts think that crit is, the fact remains that any offensive crit that occurs while something is alive is not wasted. Damage done is always useful, and more of it is never a bad thing (outside of crazy situations like reflect shields and other herpderp examples). Crit truly has a nonzero benefit to us, and it is far higher than dodge or parry could ever hope to be in terms of benefit to both ourselves and our raid groups. Whether or not you like the fact that tank DPS matters now is irrelevant; it just DOES. A good tank will survive, but a great one will survive AND provide a great asset to the raid via throughput.

D/P, on the other hand, do not assist in the survival role of any skilled tank, simply because you cannot depend on them. Unless you're a bear/BrM, you CANNOT push a button and say "I'm going to dodge this next big ability!" (and frankly, even those 2 still can't say that with 100% certainty). You can cross your fingers and hope REAL hard that you dodge the next attack, but I'm not a fan of that tanking style personally. So, what do we do instead? We gear to be able to survive the worst-case scenario (one that provides NO D/P mitigation) so that we are prepared for it if/when it happens. And, once we do that, what exactly is the point of adding in more dodge/parry if, by pure definition, we no longer need it? All you gain from it is overheal, at the cost of stat points that could have/should have been allocated somewhere else.

This is why the tank meta is crap. It's not dependable enough to gear your character or tank-style around, so you have to prepare for times when it isn't present. Therefore, when it IS present, you're already in the "safe zone", and the proc is pointless.

This is why the tank cape proc is (very likely going to be) crap also. We all have a bolus of cooldowns to survive damn near anything, and with the advent of those CDR trinkets (OMG!) things get even more silly. We're already the last to die in raids (or should be), so what good does an auto-save do unless you're just trying to cheese a specific mechanic? All the cape proc does is save you from being lazy or caught off guard/with your pants down.

For any tank worth their salt, we have tons of ways to prevent/avoid death anyway, so we have:
a cape with a proc that likely will never get used at a meaningful time WITH shit stats
versus
a cape with a damage throughput proc that is never wasted as long as you're hitting something alive WITH amazing stats.

Hmm....tough one.

[Amuramie]

All the cape proc does is save you from being lazy or caught off guard/with your pants down.

See, here's what I'm thinking though. In a perfect playing environment, you'd be right. Maybe you play under those circumstances, and I'm pretty jelly if you do. That said, here are some experiences, only the first two of them game-related, that have happened to my group in this raiding tier, where having a free "cheat death" could have prevented me from dying and wiping my raid:
- Burn phase where half the raid is alive, I'm out of CDs, and my healer(s) already used theirs.
- Me or my OT flubs a taunt swap and eats a point-blank Decap (and fails to realize it because we are in the habit of such things going smoothly).
- Internet decides to poo itself because someone else in the house is downloading and I can't communicate or hit buttons for 15 seconds.
- Healer AFK's during the fight because she sliced her foot open on a desk that in hindsight was not safe to sell to a consumer.
- Cat has wandered across the monitor, onto the keyboard, and/or is clawing the heck out of your arm.
- Allergies set off a sneezing fit and there's no way I'm keeping ShoR up through it unless I want my monitor and keyboard covered in disgusting.
- Fingers slip from their pre-assigned positions.
- It's been a long day, running on very little sleep, and frankly, I'm just not playing well.

Not trying to troll you or be dramatic, but these things happen. We can already plan for the things we know are going to happen. We gear around those events, construct our rotation around them, plan CDs, maybe keep one in the cards as an emergency. It's all the random bull that we can't predict happening that can kill us, or when we literally can't play as well as we need to.

Granted, yes, the cloak still won't guarantee that you survive those situations (depends on what point during the fight the cat is mauling your arm; is it at 80% or 20%, eh? lolol). But every sixty seconds, it gives you some measure of protection against everything you can't plan for. It might just be the extra few seconds you need to slap the spider off your face and stomp on it, realize your healer is missing, or for someone's download to finish.

[Deleted]

In most of your examples that cloak enchant will probabably save you for another 0.5-1 second, not gonna be a game breaker. For the others you pretty much assume that you play badly, which is something you should never assume. If you play badly you have bigger issues than what cloak enchant you use. Also, there is no real way to measure how many deaths that shitty itemized tank cloak will cause you.

How do you know that you are not causing more deaths than you are saving with that proc?

I would much rather have a proc that I know will be useful on every single fight in the game, that has the best possible itemiziation. Simple as that, I may keep the tank cloak in bags if I need to cheese an encounter, but it is just that, cheesing encounters. That is the only thing it is useful for. If there is some encounter where I can make a part of the fight trivial by using the cloak, then fine, I have it in my bags. But it is going to be an exception more than a rule.

Taking on a sub-par item with the mindset "In case my house catches on fire or I play like shit it could maybe possibly help me survive a few more milliseconds" seems like a very flawed mindset. You have a vast toolbox of defensive CDs. Use them, tank deaths should not be an issue.

[Amuramie]

In most of your examples that cloak enchant will probabably save you for another 0.5-1 second, not gonna be a game breaker.

What bosses are you fighting that have a .5-1 second swing timer? o_O

For the others you pretty much assume that you play badly, which is something you should never assume.

That's not really the assumption that's being made. However, if I do happen to have an off night, the cloak might be useful. Edit: I'm assuming that everything that we -know- is going to happen during a fight are the things we're already safe from because we know how to gear, how to keep ShoRs and CDs up, watch our feet, move the boss, etc. The things we cannot plan for are the things we aren't safe from.

How do you know that you are not causing more deaths than you are saving with that proc?

You're going to have to explain to me how picking that cloak is causing deaths, because I don't think we are on the same page at all.

I would much rather have a proc that I know will be useful on every single fight in the game

Is it really useful, though? I could argue it's only being useful if those extra DPS you gain from using the DPS cloak are the extra seconds you need to push a boss over before he enrages, or pushing adds down before some critical point where they need to be down. If you have plenty of time to spare because you and your DPS are already on point, what did you gain?

Taking on a sub-par item with the mindset "In case my house catches on fire or I play like shit it could maybe possibly help me survive a few more milliseconds." seems like a very flawed mindset. You have a vast toolbox of defensive CDs. Use them, tank deaths should not be an issue.

Well, yeah, because ShoR won't save me if my house catches fire, and CDs won't either.

[Deleted]

What bosses are you fighting that have a .5-1 second swing timer? o_O

On most boss scenarios you often have a secondary source of damage, adds, a dot, second boss etc. So while that one attack didnt kill you are highly likely to die within the next few seconds.

That's not really the assumption that's being made. However, if I do happen to have an off night, the cloak might be useful.

- Fingers slip from their pre-assigned positions.
- It's been a long day, running on very little sleep, and frankly, I'm just not playing well.
- Me or my OT flubs a taunt swap and eats a point-blank Decap (and fails to realize it because we are in the habit of such things going smoothly).

How or those not straight presuming bad play? Others of your situations like Internet going away, healer being forced to afk etc, well those situations are supposed to cause wipes, your cloak is not going to save you. I dont know what kind of superman cloak you think the tank cloak is, but if you lose internet you are not gonna survive with or without it.

You're going to have to explain to me how picking that cloak is causing deaths, because I don't think we are on the same page at all.

The tank cloak got completely worthless stats. It is beyond bad, it is the trash of trash. While you can see "Oh , the proc saved me there!", it is harder to tell how many times you died because of the bad stats on the cloak, how many times did the superior stats on the dps cloak save your life because you got that SotR cast or SS tick 0.02 seconds faster because you had more haste, you do not know that. You are talking like there is only benefits to the tank cloak, while in fact it is a huge survivability decrease if you ignore the proc.

Is it really useful, though? I could argue it's only being useful if those extra DPS you gain from using the DPS cloak are the extra seconds you need to push a boss over before he enrages, or pushing adds down before some critical point where they need to be down. If you have plenty of time to spare because you and your DPS are already on point, what did you gain?

DPS is always useful, unless as Nairobi said, sometimes pushing something to fast is not good. Like Megaera heads or if something has damage reflection. Just because you are not hitting an enrage does not mean more dps is bad.

Well, yeah, because ShoR won't save me if my house catches fire, and CDs won't either.

Neither will the cloak.