Haste and elemental, what's too much?

[Ascendant]

My armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...+Hand&n=Goatee

Basically, when do you have too much haste? Can you have too much haste? At the moment I have 682 unbuffed and when I pop my trinket and BL with WoA totem up, both CL and LvB are at 0.8 sec cast. That's under the GCD and my LB is almost exactly 1 sec cast (1.05 or such) and that sounds like a waste of stats to me. Should I replace some haste gems with SP instead or go for haste until LB is under the GCD as well? Also I'm way past the softcap for hit, perhaps I should trade in my Shard of the Crystal Heart for badges and buy something else for my badges? Also I could replace my titanforged ring with a Seized Beauty (I feel like resi is as much of a wasted stat as mp5 for elemental, thus I use titan-forged since it has more SP and it has haste instead of crit, yes I'm a haste whore if you haven't noticed yet). I just came back a week ago after taking a 3 month break so I pretty much only know what rotation to use and that hit>SP>haste>crit.

TL;DR: can you have too much haste? And does SP start scaling better than haste at some point?

[Nixia]

Reducing anything under 1 sec is just a waste.
My suggestion is, don't pop your trinket during bloodlust.

[Zinzu]

SP always scales better than haste, you could squeeze out more dps if you replaced your haste gems with SP ones. Pretty much the only time you gem anything other than straight SP is to activate your meta, and if gemming for the bonus would yield higher dps such as a yellow socket with a bonus of 7 sp, gemming for sp/haste would be slightly better than straight SP in that case.

Until you get 4p T10 you want around 500-550 haste to get 5 LBs between your LvB cooldowns, any more and you are waiting for the cooldown or casting when it comes up. This can lower your dps if you can't work around your haste with CL and such. Although I can imagine with certain levels of latency that haste may work out differently for some people. That being said, more haste isn't really a bad thing, just don't go out of your way to get it over spell power.

Looking at your gear I would say try to drop some hit if possible, and also replace the pvp and MP5 stuff as soon as you can. The elemental sticky at the top of the page is a good reference for how you should go about doing what we do, and I would advise you to look it over if you haven't already. Also, check out some of the stuff over at elitist jerks, bink definitely knows what he's doing, and has a lot of information about elemental shamans available.

[Ascendant]

stuff

Why thank you, and yes I have checked out the topic on the top but it was kinda bland and not very specific. Checking out EJ soon, it's either me or you have to register to view topics there now.

[Gaftog]

To answer your question here. Gear always for SP>HASTE>>>CRIT
Sp will give you the biggest benefit. Gem for SP in red sockets and SP+Haste in yellow sockets that give a DPS boost (More SP/Haste/Crit) and a red SP gem in any others.
To answer your initial question. Haste is ALWAYS better than crit until your LIGHTNING BOLT goes below 1sec cast which will never happen at current gear levels. In fact, haste gets BETTER as your gear gets better to the point of it almost being equal to spell power at the best high end gear levels. Continuing to gear with the SP>HASTE>>>CRIT mindset will continue even when your CL and LvB have dropped below 1 second because they are a smaller percentage of your overall DPS.

So, TL;DR. Haste is never too good at this gear level. But NEVER prioritize it over Spell power.

[fakestreet]

20 Haste does not outscale 23 SP until your SP is really really high (*much* higher than what you have right now).

Regemming for Reckless on that slot would give you a better return.

Also, you're not even close to GCD locked on LB so I wouldn't worry about reaching the "Haste cap" yet. During Lust, your LvB would go below GCD but since that's every 8s, Haste is still beneficial for the rest of the LB spam (skip CL during Lust).

[Raptorg]

My armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...+Hand&n=Goatee

when I pop my trinket

Get a trinket with spellpower on use or proc.
Stack more passive haste.
???
Win.

[Deleted]

Get the Totem for Emblems. It's by far the best one.
And yes, as others have said, you can't really have too much Haste... at least if you're doing it right.
More Haste = more DPS, but only in combination with Spellpower. (Since Spellpower really is (nearly) always better than Haste... at least with the current system, where both stats grow together)

So yeah, drop those Resil/mp5 Items, grab the new Totem and only use Haste-gems in combination with Spellpower. (Reckless Ametrine)

[Etherrift]

Ideally, the haste "cap" is when you make your Lightning Bolt exactly GCD... LvB and CL will be clipping, yes but if you have the appropriate amount of haste, CL will drop completely from your rotation. (functionally speaking, CL is used only as a way to tighten your rotation to prevent having that small dps downtime from that last Lightning bolt before you use Lava Burst again... thats about it).

Here's my armory right now
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...re&n=Etherrift

The ideal absolute cap on haste is about 1200ish where your Lightning Bolt will hit GCD... after which any haste is completely wasted. With my totem effect up (100% uptime while DPSing), I'm about 1008 haste rating. I do have the Talisman of Volatile power, bad choice for me as it takes my haste rating to almost 1500 when activated... but I have bad luck with trinkets so I just grabbed it for the crit. I'm still debating on it...

For the amount of haste versus spell power gems provide, I would only gem for spell power (assuming you satisfy your meta as I've done on my armory), the amount of dps increase sp gives as opposed to the amount of haste those gems will provide, sp>haste for gems, always. Rule of Thumb for raiding: never, ever gem for hit or anything other than your primary DPS state... unless you absolutely positively cannot get it anywhere else.

My "normal" rotation (yes, I screw up too sometimes... oh well; i screw up by sometimes not pressing the button at the exact time for the server to receive the input just as my cast is done... oh well :-\) is FS, 6xLB, LvB, 6xLB, LvB, 6xLB, LvB, 6xLB, FS.... having raided in TBC, sometimes I find it hard to NOT use CL in my rotation but... old habits die hard I guess.

Here's an example of my type of dps... this is the Flame watcher dude in VoA, pretty normal standard fight...
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/8556812#damageout

[boneschaman]

its very easy: don't gem haste

the t9 helmet is the only item where an orange sp+haste gem is okay

I do have the Talisman of Volatile power, bad choice for me as it takes my haste rating to almost 1500 when activated... but I have bad luck with trinkets so I just grabbed it for the crit. I'm still debating on it...

get the Sundial of the Exiled. its much better

[Thunderspike]

I fully disagree, there are points to aim for in which haste is helpful, 500-550, 950-100, 1400-1450....those are IT...any haste in between those areas is completely wasted, all it does is make your rotation have a slight to moderate gap in it. btw Etherrift please do the calculations for yourself before you tell people numbers you dont know, To get a lb to a 1sec cast you need this ((base cast time/desired cast time)-1)*32.79*100 which comes out to 3279 haste rating....gj. If you get the totem for 200 haste you can take 200 off each of those haste zones which makes the first 2 much more manageable. Personally i keep a high crit rating for the benefit that seems to have escaped all elemental shamans that the more we crit the more dmg we do and unless you have the haste to get to the next zone, just wait. i cant drop or gain any haste on my gear so im sitting just shy of the 2nd zone and its a waste. Please i beg of anyone that reads this, don't forget that crit isnt useless, it has huge impacts on your dmg, even more so as your haste progresses! the more casts in between your lvbs the more chances you have to not crit and have 10% spell damage on your lvb...the better the up time the more dmg you do, diminishing returns are inevitable for all stats except sp

[Deleted]

Wow.. a post of Thunderspike about Elementals and Haste where he's not writing total bullshit...
Don't look for any Haste-"caps", just take Haste over Crit and you're done.
He is right in which you can't get LB to GCD, 1270 is the cap where your LB is a 1.33sec Cast and your other casts are at GCD. (GCD = 1 sec)

And as I've written in another thread, even IF crit has huge impacts on our dmg, that depends on luck (at least in a real fight) AND it loses against haste til ~565 (Crit) to 1970 (Haste)... so in reality, Crit will never be better than Haste. (at least not at points one can reach)
So you are right, Crit is important and whatnot, but it still loses against Haste at ALL situations.