4.3 tanking cloaks analysis

So I was comparing tanking cloaks to see how to maximize CTC and start gearing more towards Hit and Expertise and realized that Indefatigable is really a great cloak for both CTC and helping to increase Expertise.

Here is what the real in game numbers look like on my 390ilvl tank UNBUFFED.
Indefatigable Greatcloak (Strength Tanking Cloak with 1 gem socket)

• Baseline 127 Expertise + 261 Parry + 1 Gem Socket (using Rare Mastery Gem)
  Increase CTC of 1.72 total = 1.22 Avoidance + 0.50 Block
• Gemmed and Reforged to 77 Expertise + 271 Parry + 90 Mastery (using Rare Mastery Gem)
  Increase CTC of 2.34 total = 1.22 Avoidance + 1.12 Block
• Gemmed and Reforged to 127 Expertise + 167 Parry + 144 Mastery (using Rare Mastery Gem)
  Increase CTC of 2.64 total = 0.83 Avoidance + 1.81 Block

Heroic Dreadfire Drape (Agility Cloak with tons of Mastery and 2 gem sockets)

• Baseline 158 Hit + 113 Mastery + 2 Gem Sockets
• Gemmed and Reforged to 95 Hit + 63 Dodge + 213 Mastery (using Rare Mastery gems)
  Increase CTC of 2.67 total = 0.25 Avoidance + 2.42 Block

This has been discussed already a few times, if you look around the threads you should find something about it. EDIT: Yes, there is indeed one and Digren has closed it, so ignore this bit

Just some quick notes:
You forgot to include the parry provided by strenght, while is not much, the Agi cloak provides none, while the the tank cloak has it. No exact math, off to the top of my head I think should be around .11/.13% extra.

The tank cloak, due to higher ilvl, also offers a bit more stamina.


In short, anything you have, change it to the VP tanking cloak.

degre wrote:In short, anything you have, change it to the VP tanking cloak.

/agree

lol

degre wrote:This has been discussed already a few times, if you look around the threads you should find something about it. EDIT: Yes, there is indeed one and Digren has closed it, so ignore this bit

Just some quick notes:
You forgot to include the parry provided by strenght, while is not much, the Agi cloak provides none, while the the tank cloak has it. No exact math, off to the top of my head I think should be around .11/.13% extra.

The tank cloak, due to higher ilvl, also offers a bit more stamina.


In short, anything you have, change it to the VP tanking cloak.

Ironically, since we had a disagreement going the other way a while back, I'm using the heroic Rhyolith over the VP cloak. Double epic gems give it 534 stamina vs the vp cloak's 481. And given stamina stacking is the way to go for the end of this tier, it seems a better option to me.

My opinion then was that tank survival in t12 was fairly trivial with good cd management, as was maintaining block cap with a few heroic pieces, so may as well maximise dps contribution, hence going with the str cloak. Right now paladain survival on the last couple of heroic encounters of t13 is certainly not trivial.

Rhiannon wrote:

degre wrote:This has been discussed already a few times, if you look around the threads you should find something about it. EDIT: Yes, there is indeed one and Digren has closed it, so ignore this bit

Just some quick notes:
You forgot to include the parry provided by strenght, while is not much, the Agi cloak provides none, while the the tank cloak has it. No exact math, off to the top of my head I think should be around .11/.13% extra.

The tank cloak, due to higher ilvl, also offers a bit more stamina.


In short, anything you have, change it to the VP tanking cloak.

Ironically, since we had a disagreement going the other way a while back, I'm using the heroic Rhyolith over the VP cloak. Double epic gems give it 534 stamina vs the vp cloak's 481. And given stamina stacking is the way to go for the end of this tier, it seems a better option to me.

My opinion then was that tank survival in t12 was fairly trivial with good cd management, as was maintaining block cap with a few heroic pieces, so may as well maximise dps contribution, hence going with the str cloak. Right now paladain survival on the last couple of heroic encounters of t13 is certainly not trivial.

If you prefer 50 stamina over a cape better itemised with avoidance and DPS is your call, I was simply expressing my view, and in my opinion 50 stamina are not worth the loss of the rest.

A lot of us are trading avoidance for stamina wherever we can, so in that sense, the heroic Ryolith cape might not be a bad trade. I haven't run the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the stam gained through the cape is a more efficient avoidance->stam conversion than swapping gems around. Remember that since you're converting dodge/(exp->mastery) or (dodge->mastery)/exp to mastery/(haste->dodge), you actually get more than a 50 stamina gain, because you may be able to convert some mastery gems to stamina gems elsewhere.

What I'd really be curious to see is a side-by-side comparison of the two capes in terms of stamina, avoidance, and CTC, and then a conversion of the CTC differential into stamina itemization (i.e. if you net ~100 mastery rating worth of CTC using the other cloak, then that's another 150 stamina you might be able to gain elsewhere).

Yes, I could obviously do that myself, but I don't have time right now, unfortunately.

degre wrote:If you prefer 50 stamina over a cape better itemised with avoidance and DPS is your call, I was simply expressing my view, and in my opinion 50 stamina are not worth the loss of the rest.

Well, you said the VP cloak had more stam, was correcting that.

Rhiannon wrote:

degre wrote:If you prefer 50 stamina over a cape better itemised with avoidance and DPS is your call, I was simply expressing my view, and in my opinion 50 stamina are not worth the loss of the rest.

Well, you said the VP cloak had more stam, was correcting that.

True that, my bad.