[Prot] Fix my Tanking!

[Burnick]

Hello friends. Terrier here! Ive been tanking for about 4 months now, but I still feel like my performance is mediocre and Im really trying to improve. We are starting SoO heroics next week and I want to be in top form for it.

First of all. This is my armory.
us.battle.net/wow/en/character/kelthuzad/terrieress/simple
Please note that trinket/cloak choices vary depending on the fight, as if more survivability is required I will use a Vial (stam trink from Malk) and the tanking cloak if the situation merits the usage of one or both of them.

After that, here are all the logs
www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/261297> all the logs you can find.
www.worldoflogs.com/reports/xn8cuf9s9lod8fnv/> SoO specific. First 10 bosses.
www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b0aaawpwns3qsiim > SoO specific. Last 4 bosses.

Have replacement for a lot of things (still have my H feather, have 553 helm with no haste). Let me know what I can do better please!

Well because for some odd reason WorldofLogs refuses to load for me right now and is giving me 504 errors, I will bash on a few things here.

Switch the stam haste gems out for pure stam gems, your doing 10 man content correct? their not needed if thats the case(Thou idk how you have less health then me even with those gems considering your 2 ilvls lower only)

Switch your DPS cloak out for the tanking cloak for all fights I've grown to do that I was switching in between at first but it killed my stats exp/haste alot of the time. Trust me it will save you from stupid deaths via RNG which in return saves the battle rez that would be used on you for others. This will also help you drop the expertise gems to pick up more pure haste gems, reforge the parry on the cloak to haste or hit, and drop the reforge to hit on your gloves. And your gunna want this once you get into heroics.

Your ret tier piece, should not have been your pick you should have grabed your prot tier chest for your 2 set bonus on gear and it is our BiS so if you still have the chance change that, or try to get the tier chest again and aim for your 4 set for prot.

Since you are using haromm's axe drop some cash on dancing steel if you can't, its well worth it. When it procs its about 4% parry.

I would keep the two trinkets you have on currently, if you look at my armory I'm actually using the exact same two lol.


Now this is my BIGGEST two gribes about what you've done, after the nerf towards sacred shield I feel it is completely out of the playing field for every fight. I have actually managed to help carry our REALLY bad holy paladin on klaxxi for our kill because our priest died with Eternal flame. I also noticed your using the avenging wrath glyph for the health... Do you switch that out? I never ever see it as viable. I'll either pick up Final Wrath, Focused Shield or hand of sacrfice to help my co-tank out if he needs it and not take the damage myself.
Drop Sacred Shield and pick up Eternal flame. Remember to never use it when below 3 stacks of BoG

Here are some great weakaura 2 strings for tracking Eternal Fllame, I myself use them ( SOmetimes it will predict about 5-20k higher then the tick actually will be since the nerf depending on your vengeance):

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...lame-Weak-Aura

Another great weakaura 2 string for tracking BoG Stack / Cooldowns / Holy Power is:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...din-Aura-Group!

I advise on picking up an addon for vengeance tracking as I find they are far more reliable then weakaura strings for tracking it

Those are all things I suggest for you, If you to grab and get , If you don't got weak aura then thats just the start of your problems xD Lol.
Someone else here can go into your logs and snoop about in there since I'm having problems with it.


ALSO about the malk trinket, I'm in opinion that that flat out haste from spark of zan heroic is far superior to the normal version of the malk trinket, This is because if you drop the spark you loose 4% haste which relates to lower uptime on SOTR, Slower HoT sticks for EF, and slower build up of BoG stacks.

[Zof]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...awn/Zof/simple

I recently resubbed to the game and decided to start trying out the haste build. I'm a little apprehensive, though, because I found that my health ended up a lot lower than I expected it to be. Can I safely do flex raids with my guild with this level of gear? Am I gemming/reforging right?

How much haste does the average prot pally have? I have 12.55% right now, but I'm not sure if that's really significant at all.

[LuisKA]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...awn/Zof/simple

I recently resubbed to the game and decided to start trying out the haste build. I'm a little apprehensive, though, because I found that my health ended up a lot lower than I expected it to be. Can I safely do flex raids with my guild with this level of gear? Am I gemming/reforging right?

How much haste does the average prot pally have? I have 12.55% right now, but I'm not sure if that's really significant at all.

You will need quite a lot more health to feel comfortable in flex. Like 600k minimum. You have low ilvl for flex raiding, I'd either get some more upgrades (you can geat easy upgrades from timeless island) or trinket/gem for stamina until you reach a safe amount, ditching haste and mastery.

[Deleted]

Well because for some odd reason WorldofLogs refuses to load for me right now and is giving me 504 errors, I will bash on a few things here.

Switch the stam haste gems out for pure stam gems, your doing 10 man content correct? their not needed if thats the case(Thou idk how you have less health then me even with those gems considering your 2 ilvls lower only)

Switch your DPS cloak out for the tanking cloak for all fights I've grown to do that I was switching in between at first but it killed my stats exp/haste alot of the time. Trust me it will save you from stupid deaths via RNG which in return saves the battle rez that would be used on you for others. This will also help you drop the expertise gems to pick up more pure haste gems, reforge the parry on the cloak to haste or hit, and drop the reforge to hit on your gloves. And your gunna want this once you get into heroics.

Your ret tier piece, should not have been your pick you should have grabed your prot tier chest for your 2 set bonus on gear and it is our BiS so if you still have the chance change that, or try to get the tier chest again and aim for your 4 set for prot.

Since you are using haromm's axe drop some cash on dancing steel if you can't, its well worth it. When it procs its about 4% parry.

I would keep the two trinkets you have on currently, if you look at my armory I'm actually using the exact same two lol.


Now this is my BIGGEST two gribes about what you've done, after the nerf towards sacred shield I feel it is completely out of the playing field for every fight. I have actually managed to help carry our REALLY bad holy paladin on klaxxi for our kill because our priest died with Eternal flame. I also noticed your using the avenging wrath glyph for the health... Do you switch that out? I never ever see it as viable. I'll either pick up Final Wrath, Focused Shield or hand of sacrfice to help my co-tank out if he needs it and not take the damage myself.
Drop Sacred Shield and pick up Eternal flame. Remember to never use it when below 3 stacks of BoG

Here are some great weakaura 2 strings for tracking Eternal Fllame, I myself use them ( SOmetimes it will predict about 5-20k higher then the tick actually will be since the nerf depending on your vengeance):

*snipped, as I cannot yet post URLs*

I advise on picking up an addon for vengeance tracking as I find they are far more reliable then weakaura strings for tracking it

Those are all things I suggest for you, If you to grab and get , If you don't got weak aura then thats just the start of your problems xD Lol.
Someone else here can go into your logs and snoop about in there since I'm having problems with it.

ALSO about the malk trinket, I'm in opinion that that flat out haste from spark of zan heroic is far superior to the normal version of the malk trinket, This is because if you drop the spark you loose 4% haste which relates to lower uptime on SOTR, Slower HoT sticks for EF, and slower build up of BoG stacks.

I have bolded the parts I disagree with, for emphasis. I am currently 6/14 Heroic, with Dark Shaman HC probably dying this week, and a top 200 parse on Heroic Fallen Protectors to my name.

1. Only once has the tank cloak felt remotely required for any fight, and that was tanking Garrosh for the first time in sub 550-iLvl. That guys hits for a truck - significantly more than any boss up to Iron Juggernaut Heroic. The better itemization on the DPS cloak wins out in nearly all cases - unless of course for some bizarre reason the tank cloak is somehow a net haste gain for you.

2. With current vengeance levels being what they are, using Dancing Steel makes sense from neither an economic nor a performance-based perspective. The Windsong enchant is significantly cheaper, and all three procs are both useful to some degree and directly amplified by vengeance. In low-vengeance situations, Dancing Steel wins out, but even at ToT-level vengeance, Windsong is better in all ways.

3. The viability of Sacred Shield versus Eternal Flame is certainly an interesting discussion. At my level of play (that is to say, relatively close to the class skill-cap, if I may be so bold), Eternal Flame wins hands-down. Not only is it now a better damage-smoothing tool than Sacred Shield, but the offhealing one can provide with high vengeance is potent enough that it is bound to be nerfed, should Blizzard ever notice it. As a point of reference, stuff like 110k HPS on Heroic Norushen as a tank is child's play when tank damage is manageable and you can raid-blanket with EF. However, if you do not make good use of Eternal Flame (i.e, you are awful at managing refreshes, tend to panic-spam your EF button at low HP, do not ever raid-blanket, etc.), then Sacred Shield will be a more potent choice for you personally. For EF to win out versus Sacred Shield, it is imperative that it be used correctly. Indeed, whether or not you choose Sacred Shield or EF is a matter of being honest with yourself and assessing whether or not you can pull it off like the "top dogs" can, not simply blindly following their lead.

4. Now that most of us no longer have Sacred Shield to increase our effective health pool, there is a far stronger argument to be made for stam trinkets than last tier. In the case where one has Vial of Living Corruption, this case is even stronger. While 4% haste is certainly not a loss to balk it, the benefits from Vial are arguably far greater. With correct proc-tracking, near-100% uptime on either Divine Protection or the tank meta proc is certainly possible (and no serious tank would say no to constant 20% blanket mitigation), and you will find yourself up shit creek without a cooldown paddle far less often. There are a great many fights where Thok's + Spark is perhaps a better combo, but the choice is certainly not one that can be made by simple default.

I have checked out your logs briefly, and they generally look excellent. There are certainly some fights (Spoils, for example) where one might point at your SotR uptime or some other percentage and claim that this ought to be much higher, but it is clear that you are sacrificing some SotR uptime on fights with low tank damage to help heal the raid - something that I have found myself doing often in Heroic content. In general, it looks like you should do very well in Heroics, provided you keep up your level of play.

[LuisKA]

1. Only once has the tank cloak felt remotely required for any fight, and that was tanking Garrosh for the first time in sub 550-iLvl. That guys hits for a truck - significantly more than any boss up to Iron Juggernaut Heroic. The better itemization on the DPS cloak wins out in nearly all cases - unless of course for some bizarre reason the tank cloak is somehow a net haste gain for you.

I strongly disagree with this. Maybe its just me and my guild that like to walk the thin line, but the tank cloak saved my life (and most likely a wipe for that matter) quite so many times. While I consider myself a good paladin, shit always happens when progressing. Maybe you timed that SotR a bit late, or its the healers that didn't top you off for the big hit, or you just need to take that extra execute/juggernaut breath/whatever and you are out of CDs.

I find absolutely zero reason to take the dps cloak over the tank one unless you are already facerolling content and aiming for ranks (and for the majority of us that isn't happening anytime soon). The better itemization argument is not solid enough imo, you are trading ~500 haste (and -400 useful stat, since crit is crap) for an awesome OSHIT button which DOES proc, its not like you are not dying ever and you (and your raid) play a perfect game everytime.

[Deleted]

I like the tanking cloak in principle, but in practice, I can't recall it saving my life. (To be fair, I've not used it much).

The dps cloak is great for trash - if anything, too good: I can get all the adds and die (my co-tank tends to pull too much Dark Shamans trash at times). Of the boss fights, I've only done 8/14 on normal, but the dps cloak is very nice on Galakaras as there are so many adds. I also like it for Norushen and for Nazgrim, as every little bit of dps can sometimes seem to help on those fights.

Otherwise, I am largely indifferent as most of the 8/14 bosses are not that threatening on 10N and so stick with the dps cloak. The exception is Dark Shamans, which is the most challenging boss for me atm. I took the dps cloak to help with the oozes, and also because every bit of dps helps at the end. I tried the tank one on the fight once last night, died prematurely and the cloak did not save me, so put it to one side for the moment. I don't think the damage exceeded my max health, so am not sure why the cloak failed me.

[Deleted]

I strongly disagree with this. Maybe its just me and my guild that like to walk the thin line, but the tank cloak saved my life (and most likely a wipe for that matter) quite so many times. While I consider myself a good paladin, shit always happens when progressing. Maybe you timed that SotR a bit late, or its the healers that didn't top you off for the big hit, or you just need to take that extra execute/juggernaut breath/whatever and you are out of CDs.

I find absolutely zero reason to take the dps cloak over the tank one unless you are already facerolling content and aiming for ranks (and for the majority of us that isn't happening anytime soon). The better itemization argument is not solid enough imo, you are trading ~500 haste (and -400 useful stat, since crit is crap) for an awesome OSHIT button which DOES proc, its not like you are not dying ever and you (and your raid) play a perfect game everytime.

You forget a crucial point: You raid 25-man, while the poster we are advising and myself both raid 10-man. Were I a 25-man raider, I too would most likely favour the tank cloak far more often than I have so far, but in 10-man my experience so far is that tank damage has ranged from entirely non-threatening to manageable with decent CD planning.

Also, with EF being the go-to talent now, I disagree vehemently with your valuation of crit as "crap". Perhaps in 25-man the damage on tanks will always be threatening enough that going full mastery after the haste softcap is a necessity, but as a 10-man raider I can already tell you with some confidence that dumping everything into mastery after softcap as a 10-man raider would be the definition of overkill. Might as well go for crit instead - it may only contribute to damage smoothing at about 1/5th of the rate mastery does, but tank DPS is far from an afterthought for us, and here crit outperforms, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, mastery completely.

[Pickwickman]

You forget a crucial point: You raid 25-man, while the poster we are advising and myself both raid 10-man. Were I a 25-man raider, I too would most likely favour the tank cloak far more often than I have so far, but in 10-man my experience so far is that tank damage has ranged from entirely non-threatening to manageable with decent CD planning.

Also, with EF being the go-to talent now, I disagree vehemently with your valuation of crit as "crap". Perhaps in 25-man the damage on tanks will always be threatening enough that going full mastery after the haste softcap is a necessity, but as a 10-man raider I can already tell you with some confidence that dumping everything into mastery after softcap as a 10-man raider would be the definition of overkill. Might as well go for crit instead - it may only contribute to damage smoothing at about 1/5th of the rate mastery does, but tank DPS is far from an afterthought for us, and here crit outperforms, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, mastery completely.

It's been discussed in the last 10 pages or so why the tanking cloak is vastly superior to the DPS cloak; the reasoning being really simple. Even one wipe will lead to a 5-10minute downtime till you're back to the point where you were, which means the measely 10-20 seconds you would shave off of a progression kill just costed you all that downtime.

Ofcourse, your second or third kill where it, for most fights, becomes oneshots going whatever cloak you want is viable.

Hell, on our first Garrosh night my co-tank procced his cloak six times over the course of the raidnight, thats almost an HOUR of attempts saved to go back to that point (even worse if it happens at the last phase).

Agreed on the crit > mastery after haste cap; it's a decent alternative to mastery because of the increased damage albeit not as strong for survivability.

[Deleted]

It's been discussed in the last 10 pages or so why the tanking cloak is vastly superior to the DPS cloak; the reasoning being really simple. Even one wipe will lead to a 5-10minute downtime till you're back to the point where you were, which means the measely 10-20 seconds you would shave off of a progression kill just costed you all that downtime.

Ofcourse, your second or third kill where it, for most fights, becomes oneshots going whatever cloak you want is viable.

Hell, on our first Garrosh night my co-tank procced his cloak six times over the course of the raidnight, thats almost an HOUR of attempts saved to go back to that point (even worse if it happens at the last phase).

Agreed on the crit > mastery after haste cap; it's a decent alternative to mastery because of the increased damage albeit not as strong for survivability.

The argument for the tank cloak relies on the hilariously flawed assumption that tank death is somehow the leading cause of wipes for 10-man groups. I can tell you with complete confidence that so far, even during Heroic progression, our only tank deaths have come far beyond the point of no return for attempt success. Unless tanks are doing something horribly wrong (i.e, vengeance-whoring needlessly by taking 5-6 stacks of Juggernaut breath, randomly popping CDs on Garrosh instead of saving them for healer MCs), the tank cloak simply procs so rarely in practice, and procs even more rarely in attempt-saving fashion, that the DPS cloak is in fact a greater boost to attempt success ratio. I simply cannot think of a single fight where either myself or my warrior co-tank were anywhere near dying before half the raid was already face-down in the dirt, while I can mention more than one kill where we would have rammed our heads against berserk without the 4-5 million extra damage done by my cloak proc.

Now, mind you, if a tank is foolhardy, a windowlicker, or both, the tank cloak is an excellent way to cover up moments of derp and fail, but any tank that isn't either being carried through heroics in gear/skill or pushing progression much harder than I am needs the tank cloak about as much as a 7-year old needs a blankie to fall asleep. If you're playing in such a fashion that the tank cloak saves your attempts with any sort of regularity on fights that aren't Siegecrafter or Garrosh, you simply (no offense meant to your co-tank, especially since Garrosh is the ONE fight where I initially would take, and have taken the tank cloak) have no business doing 10-man heroics.

For 25-man, take the tank cloak. I definitely agree with that sentiment. For 10-man? Put down your blankie and use the DPS cloak unless the boss is melee'ing you for 25-30'ish% of your max HP on a short timer - which no boss I've encountered so far, bar Garrosh Normal and Siegecrafter during that horrible frenzy thing, does.

[Deleted]

It's been discussed in the last 10 pages or so why the tanking cloak is vastly superior to the DPS cloak; the reasoning being really simple. Even one wipe will lead to a 5-10minute downtime till you're back to the point where you were, which means the measely 10-20 seconds you would shave off of a progression kill just costed you all that downtime.

Ofcourse, your second or third kill where it, for most fights, becomes oneshots going whatever cloak you want is viable.

Hell, on our first Garrosh night my co-tank procced his cloak six times over the course of the raidnight, thats almost an HOUR of attempts saved to go back to that point (even worse if it happens at the last phase).

Agreed on the crit > mastery after haste cap; it's a decent alternative to mastery because of the increased damage albeit not as strong for survivability.

Well, but on the other side, my guild wiped on Protectors HC and Norushen HC multiple times (3-4x) because of the enrage. On both of them the tank-proc is useless, so for us specifically the extra DPS is more important than a extra safety net. Guaranteed we are only 5/14 HC, but for the first 6 bosses the tank-proc is completely unneeded, so there is no loss at all.

Obviously, this might change for other bosses (heck, I still use the tank cloak for Garrosh-Normal) but the equation is more complex than "use the tank-one for every single boss, or u are a bad tank!". Especially with the amount adds this tier. >_<

[Pickwickman]

Boom Boom Boom Boom, I want you in my room.

No offense taken on my co-tank; I have been vehemently trying to oust him to no real success anyway, the guy is bad.

But, outside of that, I see the point of using the DPS-cloak when there is no way that the tank might die, that's what I tried to portray with the "once you're in tune with the fight" bit at the end of my post.

Especially on either a tight enrage fight as Wanko points out or a fight like Galakras where the DPS-cloak can be a 20%+ increase in DPS; those are exceptions ofcourse.

Hell, I have been using my tankcloak on everything in this patch so far, and the only single time that it procced and I could make use of it till now was ... on niuzao on the Celestial Challenge. His charge ability killed me and my cloak saved me. All other times that it procced it was already a called wipe.

[LuisKA]

I can see where you guys are heading, I admit that tank dps is much more important in 10 man, and that bosses don't hit as hard.

But you are making it out to be like the dps cloak is a significant piece on the enrage timer. You need sub par raid dps and a 0.5% wipe for it to matter (took hc kills on prot paladin records 10 man as example) on an enrage timer. How does that happen more often than a tank death?

We already forgot about the dps metagem, but even with the nerf its more damage than the dps cloak for tanks with high haste and we are not wearing it anymore.

Agree that it may be part of an offensive set, but highly doubt the extra 2.5~3.5% personal dps it gives will save you a wipe to enrage.

It only takes one wipe due to tank death for the tank cloak to outperform dps cloak progression wise (and lets face it, tanks die, I just don't believe you and your healers are gods of raiding mechanics and rng, be it 10 or 25 man).

[Kalmah]

Tank cloak > dps cloak on progression, even on 10 man, even on normal.

There's lots of non-threatening bosses, but there's also hardly any close dps checks on normal, so not sure what you'd gain from going dps cloak.

[Deleted]

I can see where you guys are heading, I admit that tank dps is much more important in 10 man, and that bosses don't hit as hard.

But you are making it out to be like the dps cloak is a significant piece on the enrage timer. You need sub par raid dps and a 0.5% wipe for it to matter (took hc kills on prot paladin records 10 man as example) on an enrage timer. How does that happen more often than a tank death?

We already forgot about the dps metagem, but even with the nerf its more damage than the dps cloak for tanks with high haste and we are not wearing it anymore.

Agree that it may be part of an offensive set, but highly doubt the extra 2.5~3.5% personal dps it gives will save you a wipe to enrage.

It only takes one wipe due to tank death for the tank cloak to outperform dps cloak progression wise (and lets face it, tanks die, I just don't believe you and your healers are gods of raiding mechanics and rng, be it 10 or 25 man).

We wiped on Norushen at 288k, and tank death was never a issue on that fight at all. You might technically die to the add, when you go down, and fail at interrupting or using a cd, but... that shouldn't happen. The same is true for Protectors, the only time I took high damage, when I was taking Rooks special, while Tenderheart's Desperate + few of the adds on me. But for that I had GoaK. Thus it isn't a issue. But we had so many DPSs die because of a failed interrupt...

This week, on Protectors, Flurry of Xuen was 12% of my DPS for 17.8M damage*. While I could tell the DPSs to man up, and do better, but... right now, doing maximal damage for me is priority, as we are having problems with enrages too often. Most likely this is different for every guild/comp, but my guilds problem is:
1) failing at mechanics -> dead DPS, healer, raid
2) reaching the enrage timer

Wipes to tank-death are to rare right now.
____
* http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/c...2#tab-dmgspell

[Deleted]

I can see where you guys are heading, I admit that tank dps is much more important in 10 man, and that bosses don't hit as hard.

But you are making it out to be like the dps cloak is a significant piece on the enrage timer. You need sub par raid dps and a 0.5% wipe for it to matter (took hc kills on prot paladin records 10 man as example) on an enrage timer. How does that happen more often than a tank death?

We already forgot about the dps metagem, but even with the nerf its more damage than the dps cloak for tanks with high haste and we are not wearing it anymore.

Agree that it may be part of an offensive set, but highly doubt the extra 2.5~3.5% personal dps it gives will save you a wipe to enrage.

It only takes one wipe due to tank death for the tank cloak to outperform dps cloak progression wise (and lets face it, tanks die, I just don't believe you and your healers are gods of raiding mechanics and rng, be it 10 or 25 man).

I'll be thoroughly blunt: I've had significantly more wipes at 0.5% and below during progression (and thus within a range where with a few more lucky crits throughout the fight, the extra 3-4 mil damage on the boss is a deciding factor in whether or not we get the kill) than I've had tank deaths causing wipes in 10-man - even on Heroic. Tank damage is so much lower in 10-man that there simply is no "tank dying to bad RNG", and tanks have a far greater margin of error to begin with when it comes to standing in shit than DPS do. Unless you're pitching tent in Annihilate or Falling Ash, there's no AoE that by itself poses a serious risk to tanks unless they actively AFK in it. The reason we're taking the tank meta is because it's powerful to the point of being OP, just as the DPS meta was last tier - in fact, the tank meta is far more powerful than the cloak will ever be. There are perhaps fights this tier that I could do with the DPS meta instead, but the tank meta is a gigantic free boost to spike mitigation, while the tank cloak is in fact a net loss to this, on top of having a proc that's "ehhhhhh..." at best in 10-man.

You are, of course, entitled to continue your refusal to believe me - but in that case you would be wrong, and wrong on the internet ( ), at that.

[Pickwickman]

You are, of course, entitled to continue your refusal to believe me - but in that case you would be wrong, and wrong on the internet ( ), at that.

Even though I agree with you, this is one of the best ways to destroy any meaningful discussion.

[Deleted]

Even though I agree with you, this is one of the best ways to destroy any meaningful discussion.

Given that LuisKA has already expressed a refusal to take our statements at face value, there is no more meaningful discussion to be had. Unless he expresses a reversal of that stance, trying to change his mind would be the height of futility. I might as well put that in blunt terms rather than pussyfoot around it for a page or 3.

If he wishes to presume that his experiences from 25-man are valid and unchanging facts that apply to 10-man as well, let him do so. If you wish to continue to try to convince him otherwise, by all means, go on. I, however, have no interest in any further discussion with him until he expresses any willingness to listen to our experiences.

[LuisKA]

I'm just saying that I don't believe tanks do not die in 10 man, not that I refuse to believe your statements. Not trying to change your mind, just sharing my point of view on it. I'm not trying to turn this a 25v10 fight, actually I didn't mention it once. Neither I said my opinion was unchanging, its just my opinion, just like yours.

I happened to check the first 20 ten man guilds on wowprogress, just in case I was being blatant ignorant about the 10 man situation. 19 out of 20 Prot paladins I saw were sporting tank cloak. I checked 10 more at 8/16hc just in case it was more hardcore oriented, 4 of them had paladin tanks, all of them wearing tank cloak.
This should mean that tanks value death risk in 10 man as well, and its not only happening on a "afk taking extra damage" status.

[Deleted]

I'm just saying that I don't believe tanks do not die in 10 man, not that I refuse to believe your statements. Not trying to change your mind, just sharing my point of view on it. I'm not trying to turn this a 25v10 fight, actually I didn't mention it once. Neither I said my opinion was unchanging, its just my opinion, just like yours.

I happened to check the first 20 ten man guilds on wowprogress, just in case I was being blatant ignorant about the 10 man situation. 19 out of 20 Prot paladins I saw were sporting tank cloak. I checked 10 more at 8/16hc just in case it was more hardcore oriented, 4 of them had paladin tanks, all of them wearing tank cloak.
This should mean that tanks value death risk in 10 man as well, and its not only happening on a "afk taking extra damage" status.

Ok - this is a start, at least. I'd like to make it clear that I wasn't accusing you of making this a 25v10 fight, merely that I found your seeming unwillingness to listen to us about 10-man tanking being very different to 25-man tanking tiring.

Now, while I appreciate you looking into what the top guilds are doing, there is a pitfall when it comes to that approach - the top 20 guilds (and even a bunch of guilds at 8/14 HC now) are doing the fights with far less gear on average than you would be in 25-man, and in far less gear than the majority of guilds who will end the tier at say, 7/14 HC, will have when they make it there. They are, in essence, gear-wise, the people who have no business being in heroics at this point, and this is why they choose the tank cloak. I condone this choice, because to them, as outliers, tank death IS an issue.

For the average 10-man tank, however, tank death will not be an issue when they enter heroics. I'm currently sitting at 561 iLvl, working on Dark Shaman HC, and I am nowhere near a serious risk of death on any fight barring a situation where healers are dead. Many guilds will have tanks with 565 and upwards thereof when they reach this boss, and these tanks should not choose the tank cloak, either.

That is what my entire point boils down to. Unless you're pushing progression "undergeared", the tank cloak is a suboptimal choice for 10-man protection paladins.

[MerinPally]

It's not a simple case of "for 10man use the dps cloak and for 25man use the tank one" you have to tailor it to each raid. Ask yourself if you're wiping because others die or because you die? If it's the first, go for the dps cloak and if not then go for the second. It's that simple. Is that not blindingly obvious? You can't apply a general rule because no 2 players are identical - now multiply that 9 or 24 times. You can recommend and argue that one should be the go to over the other but your arguments are only going to be applicable to a tiny group of people because there are so many factors.

It's a stupid argument that keeps getting repeated. Check your own raid group and then decide. If you had to default to one then there is always going to be a great deal of disagreement. It's honestly to the point where I wish it were a bannable offense to have as a reply "no u rong" when it comes to this decision rather than recommend both >.<

P.s if someone can't ask themselves that question then they couldn't ask the forums either. It'd just be asking someone else to do their homework. It's not an option to say "I can't tell" it instead means "I didn't look" at which point it's just a headdesk moment.