Weird/Obtuse Question

So, the crafted ring is obviously the best second ring until you get Shire/Savage ring. It's completely worth the investment, more than any other piece really.

However, I'm just curious: Say you didn't get the crafted ring, you'd be stuck with either the Midan or the Augmented Lore ring. There is, however, a 3rd option and that's the Prototype Slaying ring. This ring is equivalent in main stat, but you lose 1,045 health (assuming VIT 5 meld). There is something else to consider, though, and that's secondaries. VS Augmented you lose 13 SkS and gain 54 Crit, whereas VS Midan you lose 34 DET and gain 38 SkS + 54 Crit.

So, the question is: Would losing 1,045 health be worth the gain in secondaries? Do you think you'd end up in a situation where that 1,045 extra health would gain your healers a GCD?

Obviously it's better to just get the crafted as I mentioned, but just curious about thoughts on this.

I was originally planning on crafting the ring and might still do so but I really don't think it's that worth it. A9S is just way too easy and both the fending and slaying rings are BiS.

Edit: So I should add a bit more reasoning --

Back in 3.2, you weren't going to be buying the lore ring until late in your tomestone purchasing order. Also, the eikon fending ring was pretty much just as good as the i240 rings. Also, because A6S was hard, it meant a lot of people weren't going to be able to upgrade the i230 lore ring so it was just worse than the eikon fending ring.

With this raid tier being a lot easier and the tomestone gear being complete garbage, it's much more likely that your tomestone right side purchases will be earlier. If you can clear A10S, you can skip a lot of the lore purchases or just use the crafted items until you do clear. In 3.2, enough of the tomestone gear was BiS when upgraded to push the ring back.

I don't think using a Slaying ring is worth it at all. This isn't pre-3.2 where it was a big HP loss for a big DPS gain, right now you gain almost nothing. Going by the stat weights on Ariyala (even if they're a bit out of date, they'll be close enough), the Slaying ring is only 8 effective STR/VIT above the i270 tome ring, or 14 above a pentamelded crafter ring. You'll have over 5400 effective STR/VIT at i270. That's a 0.15% increase and I really doubt you'll get more than a few points of DPS from it. An extra 1000 HP isn't going to be a huge help to your healers either, but I'd still rather have that over a DPS gain that's smaller than what I could get with a good run of crits.

A12S was cleared at ~i250.

You think that at i270, you're still going to care about 1k HP?

The logic has not changed. 1k HP does absolutely nothing for you. At least the extra DPS does something even if it's not much. I'm not advocating you wear full slaying right sides, I'm saying that @i270 you will already have way more HP than needed to survive all damage.

At i270 for full fending, you will be sitting at 35k+ hp. You want to translate this to how much tank busters in A12S is doing to you, especially in DPS stance. Currently i250 nets you 31k hp. I'd say if you can afford to drop tank stance most of the times even when tanking big hits, all the more reason to still stick to full Fending. Tradeoffs on small gain on secondaries VS 0% dmg penalty, personally I would advocate having more HP first before going further, more important for overall MT as a whole.

For the comparison, scrip vit ring: str15/vit88/crit42 VS alex str ring: str 78/vit15/crit59/det40. 10 main stats VS 57 secondaries worth of stats. Off Dervy's, you get about 9 main stats more for 1k hp sacrifice. IMO only worth if you design strats for you to tunnel dps instead of tanking.

The majority of tanks are also better off sticking with full fending. Just because A12S was done in i250, doesn't mean that everyone will be able to do it. Heck, even with full ilvl, it will still be tough to clear for most raiders.