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Cloaks do not drop in the Dragon Soul raid. There are a whole bunch of cloaks that are Firelands tier or better which we might have. But really only three of them look good. (And I don't mean for transmogrification.) Those three are the following:
1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape. It's old Firelands and item level 378.
2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape. It's pretty pimped at item level 391.
Okay so what's the problem to uncover? They all do look pretty good. They do, but the Batwing Cloak has less agility than not just the heroic FL cloak, but the normal FL cloak drop. If we assume non-heroic gemming, then the stats work out like this:
1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape: 312 agility, 138 hit, 95 mastery
2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape: 341 agility, 158 hit, 113 mastery
3: The Batwing Cloak: 301 agility, 162 crit, 176 haste
Agility aside for a moment; The trick here is that the Rhyolith cloaks are laden with mastery, while the valor cloak has large amounts of good crit and haste. My napkin math says the valor has 338 points of good secondary stats, while the normal Rhyolith cloak has only 138 hit, 57 mastery, and 38 crit ... call it maybe 200 good points. So we have a difference of -11 agility and +140 good secondary stats if we use the valor cloak. The highest item level agility cloak has the least amount of agility. Agility is our primary stat and generally worth 3x "crit/haste stats". Because 33 is less than 140, then it is of some benefit to upgrade to the valor cloak. It certainly isn't something to do any time soon.
The heroic Rhyolith cloak however is something to write home about. The biggest issue here is that heroic Rhyolith is a pain in the ass. The napkin math looks like trading -40 agility to get around +85 secondary. Because 120 is not less than 85, the valor cloak is not even close.
The mediocrity of the Batwing Cloak is shown a bit more if heroic gems are used, but the results are the same. Upgrading to it from a Dreadfire Drape is either a very low priority, or a bad move.
The issue here is you have to have had the Dreadfire drape in the first place. My guild dropped Ryo on normal and Heroic multiple times. But with feral druids, rogues, and hunters all vying for that back piece the competition was fierce to say the least. Numerous players hoarded their DKP specifically for that item, and thats for when it would drop....which was seemingly NEVER! My 10 man raid team saw it twice....one hunter, 1 feral druid got those. My 25 man team saw it drop twice as well...one hunter, one feral druid again.
ReplyDeleteNow couple this with finding groups who even want to go back and run FL>..let alone on Heroic mode....yeah, chances getting increasingly lower.
I would also add that the raw dps from the pieces (Batwing, Dreadfire heroic, and dreadfire normal) equate to 1630, 1573, 1425 respectively. Making the Batwing an upgrade from these raw numbers (see maxdps.com or wowbestinslot.com for the stats/figures on this).
Yeah, the Batwing Cloak is BiS for me since my guild is only raiding Dragon Soul right now.
ReplyDeleteNice info, but as someone who never killed a single FL boss, the important point is that there are no cloaks in DS. Thus the Batwing cloak was my first purchase, and a great upgrade which should last some time.
ReplyDeleteThis is from my perspective as someone who raided FL 'til it was a dead horse.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit annoyed that Heroic Rhyo has the overall BiS cloak for hunters (and ferals and probably rogues). And the heroic fight sucks b/c of RND placement of volcanoes. Perhaps it will be a steam-roll now and 5-manned. Its history will make it a hard sell to get any groups.
The batwing cloak is certainly a great cloak with a lot of longevity -- especially if you'll never set foot in FL [again]. It's an easy option in a space of few options.
BTW, if I reforge stuff around to keep hit at the same values I get the following with femaledwarf.com:
ReplyDelete36,049 Dreadfire Drape
36,203 Heroic Deadfire Drape
36,122 Batwing Cloak
So the Batwing cloak is only two-tenths of 1% worse than the Heroic Rhyo cloak. That said ... one would hope it would be better than it!