Mages get a crit rating bonus from spirit while Molten Armor is active. :)

given that mages still get a bonus from spirit, they may prefer the other cloak, but I'd still be happy with that one on my mage.

The spirit -> crit conversion is not 100%, even accounting for running with Molten Armor and having the Molten Armor glyph, I'd say we're definitely better off with the version that just gives it to us as a straight 45 crit rather than the 45 spirit version.

BTW: Two of those cloak links go the the attack power cloak, the spirit cloak is here: http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=54805

@ Scooter: I know, but that doesn't mean you'd RATHER have the spirit one while the other one gives you flat crit rating.

@ bob: That's exactly what I mean :)

I think everyone likes the crit/haste/sp distribution over the spirit ones. None of our casters or healers want the spirit loot, while everyone bid on the sp/crit/haste stuff. The spirit (and hit actually) loot always go to offspec.

Spirit is currenly better than Crit for 2 lock specs.

One thing that I don't think has changed about Cata is that caster gear going forward is going to be clearly delineated between DPS gear and healing gear. If a mage plans on having one of these cloaks the day Deathwing hits and changes everone's stats, I would think they would definitely prefer the one without spirit.

All that said, isn't it a bit late to be minmaxing level 232 gear?

Actually taking a closer look at the stats don't they seem a bit off? Usually we see spirit/crit together on the same item not spirit/Haste.

At the end of the day it doesnt matter.

232 cloak "with spirit rather than crit" is still better than nothing. If you have 178 quest/dungeon cloak or some stuff you will take spirit cloak even if its not minmax-wise better of two.

@ Scooter: Arcane mages don't give a crap about crit. We'd much rather have haste. Fire mages do, but the tiny percentage of those out there don't give a crap about ilvl 232 cloaks because they're all rocking ilvl9000 stuff.

And my Resto Shammy geared in ilvl219/232 gear from emblems and 5man rejoices!!

That staff and cloak are pretty hot upgrades.