Legendary Cloak Advice

What is the consensus on the choice between the tanking and the DPS cloak? I can see that the stats are better on the DPS cloak and the proc is helpful for DPS but I can also see how the tanking proc can be crazy powerful in progression content (kind of like an extra ardent defender when you need it).

On that basis I have been using the tanking cloak for this first week but the other day while waiting around for an ordos group to assemble I got a lecture (well more like abuse, but you get the idea) about how the tank cloak was garbage and I shouldn't use it and claimed this was the prevailing opinion of the paladin tank community and in fact the wider tanking community. I'm a firm believer in trying to learn for all situations, even ones where people are piling on, so I'm interested to hear all your thoughts.

For the record, MMO-Champ is NOT the prevalent opinion in the tanking community, thank you very much. You'll find that the general idea is that the Tank cloak is really strong, and should only be passed on for completely overgeared content.

One point people tend to forget recently is that many of our recent gearing approaches (haste, early SoT, DPS Lengary metagem) were not due to survival being "garbage", but due to the insane gain of damage versus the very small loss in survival - if we lost any.

And in case that kind of a**hat pulls something like that again, remind him to maybe check the armory of *serious* players. This can be an eye opening experience...

Sagara wrote:For the record, MMO-Champ is NOT the prevalent opinion in the tanking community, thank you very much.

MMO Paladin forums just make me mad most of the time...

Sagara wrote:You'll find that the general idea is that the Tank cloak is really strong, and should only be passed on for completely overgeared content.

One point people tend to forget recently is that many of our recent gearing approaches (haste, early SoT, DPS Lengary metagem) were not due to survival being "garbage", but due to the insane gain of damage versus the very small loss in survival - if we lost any.

And in case that kind of a**hat pulls something like that again, remind him to maybe check the armory of *serious* players. This can be an eye opening experience...

I'd agree with all of that.

I'd say in 25 man there's very little reason to use the dps cloak during prog, there's bound to be 1 or 2 fights that have a low risk of tank death and require high dps and will therefore favour using the dps cloak.

For 10 man I think it's a little more open, the combination of lower tank dmg and tanks been a greater % of the total raid dps in 10's will make the dps cloak an option on more fights.

You definitely want to keep both cloaks in your bags, I'll most likely start off using the tank cloak on all prog bosses and only switch to the dps one if I feel in very little danger of dying or if there's a very tight burn phase/enrage.

As a 10N raider in a slowly progressing guild, I switched from the dps cloak (and meta) to the tank ones with this patch. I wrote a short dissent on MMO Champion. But the drop in my dps was very noticeable - I think the extra dps of the cloak/meta combined sims at about 10% for us. I actually put the dps stuff back on for Norushen, as with 3 healers we were really struggling to meet the 7 minute berserk. (I also labored under the impression I was supposed to kill my add when cleansing and was unable to; I gather you just need to survive.) The switch may have been decisive in our kill; it certainly helped.

I think the best thing is to have both in your bags and switch as you feel appropriate. I think I'll default to dps for Flex and tank for normal, although as SoO progresses, I gather stuff starts to hurt a lot more so may go tank for both towards the end.

EDIT: All that said, Norushen's add did one shot me when I fluffed an interrupt, causing a raid wipe, so maybe the tank cloak is a good bet even there.

Indeed, what econ said. Have both available in your bags. Use the Tanking one for anything remotely challenging (Flex/Normal/Heroic/World Bosses/Shaohao rep farming), and the DPS one elsewhere. If you're on an encounter where you notice not getting the debuff, and berserk timers being an issue, feel free to switch to the DPS Cloak/Meta for that encounter, but you should always use the Tank Cloak/Meta on new encounters, and keep using them for challenging encounters, unless the extra DPS is going to be a serious help.

Thels wrote:Indeed, what econ said. Have both available in your bags. Use the Tanking one for anything remotely challenging (Flex/Normal/Heroic/World Bosses/Shaohao rep farming), and the DPS one elsewhere. If you're on an encounter where you notice not getting the debuff, and berserk timers being an issue, feel free to switch to the DPS Cloak/Meta for that encounter, but you should always use the Tank Cloak/Meta on new encounters, and keep using them for challenging encounters, unless the extra DPS is going to be a serious help.

This basically.

My one small disagreement is to basically use the tank meta for all progression regardless of difficulty, they just sweetened the deal far too much to not use it, and the DPS meta is like 3-4% DPS now tops.

Anecdotal experience.

25N Garrosh with full heroic ToT gear and a couple pieces from SoO. My tank cloak saved me twice on our kill.

Could we have prevented the deaths? Definitely, with more diligent play and practise. But it has saved us lots of extra time on the fight.

It's worth using the cloak because it will save you from mistakes and turn a wipe into a kill.

ps: issue I have with the cloaks are tank one has exp and dps one doesn't. End up reforging out of exp on my tank cloak and gem/forge exp on my dps one so I don't have to worry about being too far below cap when using the dps cloak.

Thanks for the advice guys, I just want to make sure I'm not letting my raid down by choosing poorly. That's some good advice about using both, I'll try to get the DPS one to have around about the same amount of expertise so I can switch easily.

And in case that kind of a**hat pulls something like that again, remind him to maybe check the armory of *serious* players. This can be an eye opening experience...

Unfortunately it can be very difficult to convince a guy in 550 gear that the guy in 530 gear might know something. While I am casual (10N 2/14 this week so definitely very casual ) I do try to make sure I am up to date on the latest information.

overkill max absorb is capped at Max HP. Which makes the tank cloak really shitty. it made me so mad yesterday on Immerseus HM

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Immerseus Corrosive Blast Schroom 315336 (O: 1843090, A: 915258)

I just switched to DPS cloak for more add DPS.

funny thing is AD works fine. why not make the cloak work like AD?

Bah that explains it >.< was wondering why it wasn't proccing most of the time.

If I'm not remembering it wrong AD is the only cheat death effect left with an uncapped cheat on it.
I think everything else like priest guardian spirit, mage cauterize, rogue cheat death, dk purgatory, all have a cap on how much dmg they'll let you live through, I seem to remember those been double your hp though.

mh the rogue cheat death I think remembering that we tested this and a rogue friend was able to survive the Garalon enrage with it. I guess it hits more than 2 x Hp of a rogue.

nonetheless it is kind of a disappointment.

I expected more from a Legendary.

Schroom wrote:overkill max absorb is capped at Max HP. Which makes the tank cloak really shitty.

I think this is a bit hyperbolic. No, it won't save you from gross errors on mechanics that deal >100% of your max health. It will still save you from a wipe in a great number of situations.

My own anecdote: on 10N Garrosh this week, both of us ended up using the tanking cloak, because losing a tank was generally an unrecoverable wipe in the phase that matters (phase 3). That phase also has some incredible tank damage. I was gemmed full haste, with ~950k HP (stam trinkets), and Garrosh was hitting me for 450k without SotR up. Note that this was 10N, which traditionally means the boss hits even weaker than it does in LFR. And yet:

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[21:28:29.376] Garrosh Hellscream hits Theck 442245
[21:28:39.622] Garrosh Hellscream hits Theck 441202
[21:29:25.452] Garrosh Hellscream hits Theck 458111
[21:29:29.966] Garrosh Hellscream hits Theck 437315

I guarantee that using the tank cloaks got us the kill this week, allowing us to start on heroics this week. It procced once for each tank during the kill (look for Endurance of Niuzao under debuffs):
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/wxmf ... 713&e=4324

That's a pretty strong rebuttal to the conventional wisdom that "10-man doesn't test survivability." Sure, guilds attempting normal-mode Garrosh two months from now may not need it, because they'll have farmed lots of SoO gear and have well over a million hit points. But guilds doing it the first few weeks will be under-gearing the fight, and any tank not using the obscenely powerful tanking cloak is shooting their raid team in the foot.

nutshell:the tank cloak is worth using until it isn't worth using anymore

Schroom wrote:overkill max absorb is capped at Max HP. Which makes the tank cloak really shitty.

This explains why my cotank got one shot last night by Corrosive blast then. Fortunately it didn't cause us any real problems as it was well into the fight and I could easily handle it until he got ressed but it does put paid to the "one tank Immersius with a legendary" plan.

theckhd wrote:That's a pretty strong rebuttal to the conventional wisdom that "10-man doesn't test survivability." Sure, guilds attempting normal-mode Garrosh two months from now may not need it, because they'll have farmed lots of SoO gear and have well over a million hit points. But guilds doing it the first few weeks will be under-gearing the fight, and any tank not using the obscenely powerful tanking cloak is shooting their raid team in the foot.

As someone in a guild that will likely only be attempting Garrosh in a month or two when (hopefully) much better geared than currently if he's putting 450k hits AFTER SotR, I think I'm going to be pretty grateful for my legendary get out of jail free card even if I DO have 1 million health.

fuzzygeek wrote:nutshell:the tank cloak is worth using until it isn't worth using anymore

Easy test you can do.

Step 1. Attempt boss a few times. Pay attention to your health.
Step 2. Why are you dying?
Step 3. Answer to 2 is tank death - Equip Tank cloak
Step 4. Answer to 2 is Enrage timer and tank health never got dangerously low - feel free to equip the DPS cloak.

I'll still be using the tank cloak for most progress fights just annoyed with myself for not realizing why it wasn't proccing last night.

Schroom wrote:mh the rogue cheat death I think remembering that we tested this and a rogue friend was able to survive the Garalon enrage with it. I guess it hits more than 2 x Hp of a rogue.

Not that it really matters in anyway but this got me curious so I had a look at our logs from last night and unless I'm reading them wrong our rogues cheat death appears to cap at his max hp the same as the legendary cloak.

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[20:58:59.143] Immerseus Corrosive Blast Snickerz 81944 (O: 55281, A: 777603)
[20:58:59.491] Snickerz dies

Edit: guess that's slightly more than his raid buffed hp but not far off.

Ironshield wrote:

fuzzygeek wrote:nutshell:the tank cloak is worth using until it isn't worth using anymore

Easy test you can do.

Step 1. Attempt boss a few times. Pay attention to your health.
Step 2. Why are you dying?
Step 3. Answer to 2 is tank death - Equip Tank cloak
Step 4. Answer to 2 is Enrage timer and tank health never got dangerously low - feel free to equip the DPS cloak.

I'd do it the other way around, though. Equip the tank cloak first. Check if you ever get the cloak debuff.

Does the debuff ever proc, OR are berserk timers not an issue: Keep using Tank cloak.

Does the debuff never proc, AND are berserk timers a serious issue: Use the DPS cloak.

I was skeptical on the whole overkill/hp sources, as on Wednesday it felt as though the cloak saved me through an enraged melee hit a few times on Fallen Protectors. Finally got around to checking, and my skepticism was curbed. In case anyone needed even more proof:

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[18:49:55.696] Rook Stonetoe hits Xfighter 626827 (O: 561619, B: 509334)
[18:49:55.993] Xfighter afflicted by Endurance of Niuzao from Xfighter
[18:49:56.297] Rook Stonetoe hits Xfighter 436236 (O: 1278314)
[18:49:56.429] Xfighter's Endurance of Niuzao fades from Xfighter
[18:49:56.800] Xfighter dies


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[19:36:18.334] Rook Stonetoe hits Xfighter 624727 (O: 2035436)
[19:36:18.367] Xfighter afflicted by Endurance of Niuzao from Xfighter
[19:36:18.399] Xfighter's Endurance of Niuzao fades from Xfighter
[19:36:18.407] Xfighter dies


Even though it doesn't help for massive overkill mechanics, I still believe the proc is insanely powerful, to the point that my co-tank not having his completed yet has resulted in a large chunk of wipes, that otherwise would have been prevented. The reality is that during progression, and hell even "farm", shit happens that people don't plan on that results in tank deaths. Missed taunts, healers healing the raid, missing an interupt or cooldown, etc. Nobody plans on dying, but in the grand scheme of progression, I'm thankful whenever I hear a warning siren (my weakaura) letting me know its proc'd. It's gotten me to buckle down and pay more attention, or play more carefully, and knowing that by having it, it just extended our progression attempt that much longer. Unless DPS ends up being a serious issue later on in progression, I'll be sticking to the tank meta+cloak. (The meta proc's pretty reliably on pulls, which tends to be the most dangerous as healers get into position, etc.) - having both really really provides a comfortable cushion to sit on for most fights, provided you're able to track and utilize them properly.

fuzzygeek wrote:nutshell:the tank cloak is worth using until it isn't worth using anymore

This is the most sensible, smartest, and simplest statement I've seen on these tank vs. dps legendary comments. While a ton of people have been agreeing with this in principle, I love the simplicity.

Since we're stacking anecdotes, we finally got Garrosh down on 25N this week (it really doesn't sound like many of you run 25 anymore... sad face) and I was incredibly happy to have the tank cloak on. Tank damage was off the charts for a normal mode; far and away the highest I've seen this xpack. Meanwhile the bigger point is that at no point were were even close to an enrage timer. With a couple of exceptions the enrage timers are really generous on normal this tier. As for the legendary proc itself, I basically feel like it gives me the margin for error that I want to allow me to gem pure haste even on 25. I needed stam for a ton of heroic progression last tier, but we'll see whether the legendary proc, which gives me that extra buffer the stam was serving, is enough. I think it's going to be.