shadow haste over crit

[billynomates]

hi all :

at what point do you look at haste over crit (or don't you ) im asking as i was playing with my gear i have the other night and noticed i can either go with crit=580/ 19.48% and haste =432 or by changing some gear i can go with around 22% crit and 289 haste

so was just wondering if you lot would raid with more crit or more haste ?
and would the fram rate come into it as the comp i run on is old and so my frame rate isn't as good as it should be (sometimes i run at only 8 in raids with some dK in the raid for some reason :'()

[jinxx]

I like a healthy balance, but in general I look at any given item and if it's a better item I'll go for it no matter if it's mostly crit or haste unless I'm getting obscene amounts of either.

If two items are equally good in terms of DPS and with me having the same amount of haste and crit I'd go for crit over haste.

Oh and my FPS is quite horrible on some bosses too. I don't really consider that when gearing my toon though.

[Abandon]

I remember reading that around 11% haste is the magic number for Shadow, because it lets you get off 2 full Mind Flays between Mind Blast cooldowns.

[Jjagang]

go to shadowpriest.com

that will answer any sp questions.

As a quick reference though, crit is slightly higher priority than haste. Also, haste has "sweet spots" that is good to reach, such as mb, 2 flay, mb. There's also a sweet spot higher that accomodates the 4 pc t8 if it becomes declared useable over off tier pieces.

I won't go into specifics of it, as it seems you are a new priest. I can say your best bet is to go to mentioned site, read for hours (yes, hours) and learn your class to the best of your ability.

Read stickies, read all relevant posts, and don't ask questions, unless in the noob forum. There is nothing you cannot find either through reading, or using the search function.

The site is amazing, and you will never have need of any other site for the rest of your WoW career.

[jinxx]

I wouldn't bother with so-called sweet spots. If 200 haste is a sweet spot then 300 haste is still better, that's just how it is. Besides no matter how sweet your haste is you will never get a nice "rotation". Also there's the fact that latency changes all the time and so-called sweet spots assume a constant latency which will never happen. As such I would still stick to looking at the specific items and picking the one that yields the highest theoretical dps increase. Besides it's living hell trying to stick to any sweet spots since it changes depending on raid buffs and as soon as heroism is used that sweet spot goes right out the window. I'm not the best at explaining this, but I'd suggest you read at least the first page here:
http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=19402

Althor is one of the best theorycrafting Shadowpriests posting there and in his posts he explains things much better than I'm capable of.

Also on a sidenote I'd be very careful about taking most posts on shadowpriest.com for truth unless they come from one of the really good shadowpriests. Elitistjerks.com is by far a better place for information even though some of it isn't exactly easy reading.

[Worshaka]

I wouldn't bother with so-called sweet spots. If 200 haste is a sweet spot then 300 haste is still better.

This is very true and was proved way back in TBC when haste was first introduced. There are several sweet spots but the analysis pointed to forgetting they exist and stack what you can.

Of course the environment has changed in LK and I think it's worth pointing out that your balance of stats or your priority of stats is likely to change once you hit a sweet spot.

For example once you reach 11.11% you may favour an item that gains 40 crit over an item that yeilds 42 haste, even though pure PP values tells you the haste is slightly better. TBH micro analysing gear to this degree is probably counter productive so what you are best to do is work out possible best in slot items for every slot and mix and match and try to come up with a nice balance of stats.

[Nezoia]

Yes, from a pure mathematical point of view, sweet spots don't exist.

But if I got 11% haste, and then get the option of getting another 1% haste or 1% crit, I would pick the 1% crit (up to 30% unbuffed.)

Why? Because there *is* a sweet spot in your casting rotation, so I *personally* gain more of it on a regulare day with regulare movement, interupts and all the other stuff that exists in a PVE encounter.

And with haste and crit being very equal in the simulationcraft outputs, we could get back to focusing on special haste and crit values.
Just like the warlocks aimed for 25% crit (unbuffed) before stacking haste in Sunwell Plateau.

Sometimes the practical execution is different from that of the theorycrafted mathematics.

[jinxx]

Whether or not theory and practice is different doesn't change the fact that it's not beneficial to you to worry too much about sweet spots, especially not if you're choosing worse gear to reach sweet spots.

And as I said above sweet spots, both in theory and practice, work because you assume a constant latency. Most people assume 0 latency. This is obviously false and you can never fully adjust for your latency since it is not a constant factor. That's without considering the fact that you having the same raidbuffs all the time is highly unlikely.

As such I can agree to taking an item that puts you closer to a so-called sweet spot if it's very close to equal in dps gain to another item, other than that I wouldn't spend any time on it.