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I like them for 4 reasons:
1- Rain protection -Water from your whoopie slings drips down off the ring and not into your hammock.
2 - Closer attachment points - sometimes you have suspend your hammock between two points that are just barely longer the length of your hammock. Having the rings lets me clip in 3 or 4 inches away from my hammock end, with whoopie slings you have a 8 inch bury or so plus a buffer of 2 inches most likely. So you end up with about 10 inches (per each side) before you can clip in = Total of 20 inches wider than your hammock vs 6-8 inches with the rings.
3- Modularity of suspension - If I damage my whoopie slings, want to change the color, change borrow them for a different hammock, or whatever - i can just take them off (I attach them with a simple larks head, so it is a piece of cake to take them off). If I did not have the ring, I would have to back them out of the suspension entirely, and that is just a pain.
4 - Handy Carabiner attachment point - I can clip on stuff sacks, gloves, a ridge line, Tarp line...ect. it is just super nice to have one more point of quick access for a biner. (Yes I could do a quick prussik with a loop too)
With scouts, I figure there is a good chance the whoopie slings will get messed up at some point, so having the rings makes it easy to just throw on an spare.