Crit vs Haste.....when to use which?

[shono99]

Now obviously, the spellstone is geared towards Affliction, and the Spellstone is used for Demonology and Destruction(Demo can use haste as well, but you can get well over 30% crit easily as demo.

Say you have 20% haste, 23% crit
Would that be better than 7% haste, 32% crit?

I gem spellpower, except to get 21 crit/3% critical damage, ignoring set bonuses in most cases.

Obviously all serious PVE builds have Ruin, and most will have Improved Shadow Bolt, unless you're Destruction, with critting dots, even Affliction needs crit.

Not to mention my pet gets 30% of my critical strike rating as demo, which is roughly 10% before BOK/MOTW, Rampage or Leader of the Pack.

I'm just trying to figure out if it's a good idea to ignore haste, or try to get a little of both....obviously some gear has both haste and crit on it.

[Screwtape]

Haste is better than crit for all warlock specs.

If you are deep destro (i.e. you have backdraft) and have a decent amount of haste, you might consider using the firestone because too much haste can cause clipping of GCDs (especially during bloodlust). Essentially you finish casting the spell before the GCD has refreshed. The GCD cannot be reduced past a certain point so at some point the extra haste is wasted. There are some decent threads on the subject if you want more detailed info.

But if you are not deep destro, spellstone by a mile.

[Bakis]

Never use the crit firestone regardless off spec. Haste is just much move valuable in any spec. Don't forget that all party/raidbuffs increase your crit the most of the two.

Enough crit is gained through gear and talents. All enchants and yellowsockets should be haste related (if hitcapped).

[Bakis]

how about no? thing is destro/demo got high enough crit already. Your damage done benefit you more from stacking haste (getting away more nukes)

more haste -> more nukes -> more damage done.

and all sockets should be spell damage gems.

what do u mean, u put 19sp gems in all sockets?
sockest regardless of spec are:
red =sp
yellow = sp/haste
blue = sp/spirit

[nocturnus]

Bakis if you have most pre ulduar BiS items, you should have quite some haste on you already. This means that the benefit you gain from a non improved spellstone is marginal. 1% increased damage from all your nukes: Conflag, incinerate, CB and maybe even shadowburn with the new fix will result in more damage output than 60 haste. This according to the theoricrafting I read.

With low haste rating (sub 500) the spellstone will give slightly more dps.

On gems:
As destruction you won't have any hit from talents (assuming you'll spec replenishment as it gives most dps). Therefore sp/hit gems will propably be more valuable than sp/haste gems. If you're capped sp/haste is the way to go.

If you care about maxing out your dps, you'll roll JC and fill those crappy blue sockets with prismatic gems, rather than sp/spirit gems.

[Bakis]

Have the temp luxaury of not having to care about hit with frozen loop and 60% of the gear still being preUlda.
As soon as ppl get more and more Uldagear they will notice that the haste in T8 took a dive compared to t7 tier.
On the other hand crit increased which make the use of any gem with crit even more useless than it already is.

[Screwtape]

If I could get away from the spell/firestone debate for a second and address the main question in your post which Nocturnus answered to some extent...

With regards to gems you should definitely gem for hit until you have a reasonable amount (http://wowmb.net/forums/f104/30669-w...t_cap_mr_wolf/ ). After that, no other stat will yield greater results than spell power. You might need a weird color to activate the meta so feel free to use a sp and hit/haste/spirit gem for that. Otherwise, stock up on those runed scarlet rubies.

The soft cap for haste is ~20% and the crit cap is some ungodly amount over 35%. You won't get anywhere close if you aren't using an improved spellstone. So until you get there (you won't) haste and crit use their normal coeffiecients- and haste has a larger one. It doesn't matter if your crit is low and your haste high, more haste is better.

[Bakis]

His spec demand the use of a Chaotic Skyflare = 2 blue sockets.

[Screwtape]

His spec demand the use of a Chaotic Skyflare = 2 blue sockets.

Mmkay, I use the spell power and spirit ones. Don't forget about the belt buckles!

[Bakis]

belt buckle rules for getting meta socketbonus!

[Darkrobinson]

This is a debatable topic, but the general idea behind Haste vs. Crit is that haste will be better than crit, untill about 20%, when you'll end up clipping GCD when Heroism/Bloodlust or certain haste trinkets.

However, when hitcapped (14% horde/13% alliance - Suppression), spell power will yield highest dps increase, in any spec, far greater than crit/haste.


But when you're discussing differences between Firestone/Spellstone, it goes by a few parameters:
- Affliction = Spellstone (always)
- Builds with Master Conjuror = Spellstone (untill a max of 25% haste)
- Deep destro w/o Master Conjuror = Firestone

[Bakis]

WTB old affliction rotation. fu BLZ for ruining our most fun spec

[dome]

WTB old affliction rotation. fu BLZ for ruining our most fun spec

/sign, thx to all the naps crying "aff is too hard, giev my old 1 button sb spam spec"

[shono99]

Bakis if you have most pre ulduar BiS items, you should have quite some haste on you already. This means that the benefit you gain from a non improved spellstone is marginal. 1% increased damage from all your nukes: Conflag, incinerate, CB and maybe even shadowburn with the new fix will result in more damage output than 60 haste. This according to the theoricrafting I read.

With low haste rating (sub 500) the spellstone will give slightly more dps.

On gems:
As destruction you won't have any hit from talents (assuming you'll spec replenishment as it gives most dps). Therefore sp/hit gems will propably be more valuable than sp/haste gems. If you're capped sp/haste is the way to go.

If you care about maxing out your dps, you'll roll JC and fill those crappy blue sockets with prismatic gems, rather than sp/spirit gems.

When I stack haste, as Demo, I get to around 20% haste(685ish). If I stack crit, I can get to around 31% with the Firestone, but Haste is only around 7-8%. I haven't messed around enough in Ulduar 25 stacking either way, but I do know that most of my gems are spellpower, a couple gems(yellow slots) are spellpower/hit because I'm around 12.8% hit right now.

Both my Affliction and Demo PVE builds use Improved Shadowbolt as my primary nuke. I do have Devastation and Molten Core for SB/SF spam under 35% and that's when I usuallly pop my second meta.

As Affliction, spellstone hands down, increasing your DOT damage by an extra 1%(10% Shadow Embrace, 23% Haunt, 13% from a DK or Moonkin, 12% from Death's Embrace, Drain Soul spam under 25%, Shadow Bolt spam over 25%)

As Demonology, isn't most of your damage through the Firestone, and Shadowbolting over 35%, a combination of Shadowbolt and Soul Fire under 35%, and your pet gains about 1.5% crit as well?

I definatly don't have BIS though.

7.5 Helm(With Violet Hold Enchant)
Thunderheart Amulet(Drops off most bosses in naxx 25)
7.5 Shoulders(With Exalted Sons of Hodir Enchant)
Deadly Gladiator's Cloak with Lightweave(I also have the cloak from Sapphiron, but it had 23 haste and Lightweave owns it)
7.5 Robe(+10 stats)
Preceptor's Bindings(30 spellpower)
Season 6 Gloves(Better than the heroic nexus gloves, which they replaced, 28 spellpower)
Badge Belt, gemmed with 19 spellpower, 9 spellpower/8hit
7 Legs(50 spellpower/20 spirit)
Crafted PVP boots(Icewalker)
Emblem of Valor ring with haste(19 spellpower)
Lost Jewel(19 spellpower)(Or the Heroic Strat ring with 53 haste on it)
Dying Curse
Emblem of Heroism Trinket
Grieving Spellblade(63 spellpower)
Emblem of Heroism Offhand
Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians

That's the standard gear I use, I do have some alternate pieces if I am stacking crit, unfortunatly I lose quite a bit of hit since I don't have BIS. That should give you guys a better idea how to change out my gear. I do use 4 piece Tier 7 so I get about 300 spellpower from Lifetap, more with raid buffs.

[zuxia]

Personally..and seems to work for me...balance your stats...it comes out to more dps than just stacking haste or stacking crit.

[CrimsonRipper]

/sign, thx to all the naps crying "aff is too hard, giev my old 1 button sb spam spec"

qq

all they did was turn a 7 button (if you don't use macros of course) rotation, into a 5 button rotation.


As for the topic, EJ states that deep destro should use the Firestone, because of backdraft giving such a large haste boost on its own, the haste from your gear if you have it on top of that should be more than enough, go for crit with firestones in deep destro.

As for all other specs its Spellstones for the haste and dot increase, because at the very least corruption, curse of agony, and immolate are going to be part of it.

[gherkin]

The basic math is this:

The global cooldown can be reduced from 1.5s to 1.0s with 50% haste. This is the soft cap (you can reach higher). You don't ever want to go over this number unless you can manage to cast 1.0s shadow bolts or incinerates uninterrupted (no lifetap, immolate, etc) for the entire duration of the haste buff. This is because when you do gain a temporary buff of haste, it devalues the haste you get from your gear. You aren't actually using all of it because you're standing around waiting for the GCD to come back.

Without going into the details, Haste starts losing its value after 600 rating. This doesn't mean it's worse than Crit, it just means that if Simulationcraft values it at 1.10 DPS per point, after 600 rating this number starts to decline. Once you hit 1000 rating, it effectively drops out due to trinkets, backdraft, and heroism procs.

Basically, go for 600 haste rating, then increase your other stats while maintaining this level or increasing it. I bet its harder than it sounds.