Haste or Crit?

[Menestheus]

Ever have to switch targets every 30sec -- to keep threat down? With stacking haste and very little crit -- particularly poor raid make up...dps drops badly.

This makes no sense at all.

[harky]

Ever have to switch targets every 30sec -- to keep threat down? With stacking haste and very little crit -- particularly poor raid make up...dps drops badly.

Okay, so let's say your scenario makes any sense. You want to take crit which will make your threat less predictable and spikier when you're already so threat capped that you need to target switch every 30 seconds? That sounds like an objective point of view. So tell me, why are you seeing a threat drop when switching targets? Slow to acquire them? Not picking opportune moments to switch?

Target switching does not reduce the worth of haste: Lulls in DPS time do. The only encounter with these types of lulls right now is beasts. Worms and Icehowl both have periods where DPS is stopped. However, since all those fights are tank-n-spank outside of those lulls it's not worth re-gearing for a questionable gain. By the way if you have to switch every 30 seconds it's virtually the same as a tank-n-spank encounter. You just have to swap targets every two rotations. The DPS loss comes, most likely, from raid debuffs not being applied. That would apply just as much to crit as it does to haste.

[zuxia]

Okay, so let's say your scenario makes any sense. You want to take crit which will make your threat less predictable and spikier when you're already so threat capped that you need to target switch every 30 seconds? That sounds like an objective point of view. So tell me, why are you seeing a threat drop when switching targets? Slow to acquire them? Not picking opportune moments to switch?

Target switching does not reduce the worth of haste: Lulls in DPS time do. The only encounter with these types of lulls right now is beasts. Worms and Icehowl both have periods where DPS is stopped. However, since all those fights are tank-n-spank outside of those lulls it's not worth re-gearing for a questionable gain. By the way if you have to switch every 30 seconds it's virtually the same as a tank-n-spank encounter. You just have to swap targets every two rotations. The DPS loss comes, most likely, from raid debuffs not being applied. That would apply just as much to crit as it does to haste.

Im saying haste is less valued in a short fight but it is actually more valued...since you need more of it to counter the damage of crits in a very short time frame. That is something many people forget, which is something you overlook. Dps drop did not come off raid debuffs...since I ran hitcapped without hit buff from priest, druid...nor was there another lock to put coe...was a melee heavy raid.

As far as lull's how many seconds do you spend aquiring another target on anub? hence a lull...how much time do you spend running getting or using a cd to get opposite color...there is a lull...so you synopsis of haste vs crit value due to lull's only is very flawed..any time not spent dpsn is a lull whether it be 1 sec, 2 sec or 30 sec.

Edit: Twins if one tank does not pull enough threat switch till you cap that one out..by the time you switch back you have at least can keeping throwing spells that way. 72% crit rate average on all spells isnt very sporatic either.

[harky]

As far as lull's how many seconds do you spend aquiring another target on anub? hence a lull...how much time do you spend running getting or using a cd to get opposite color...there is a lull...so you synopsis of haste vs crit value due to lull's only is very flawed..any time not spent dpsn is a lull whether it be 1 sec, 2 sec or 30 sec.

Less than 1 second on Anub. No movement involved, target swap is done mid-cast. You should be going from Anub, to Burrowers and back smoothly with no interruption. If you're talking about P2, there's no realistic way to say any stat is better than another. Haste can allow you to hit a moving target easier, allow more movement, etc. The part that matters is the burrowers and again if there is any delay in switching you're doing it wrong. There is no 'how many seconds' there is 'how well did you predict latency on your last spell before the swap'.

If you tanks aren't pulling enough threat on twins then they're bad. They get the same buffs you do and at most you may need to Soul Shatter if you get very lucky on orbs, but if you're lucky on orbs and switch targets you're looking at a massive DPS loss. The GCD on SS represents a much smaller DPS loss.

In regards to it not being about raid buffs? You yourself mentioned needing to put up CoE yourself. That's an extra GCD of ramp up time for applying a raid buff, which was exactly the point. Get better tanks if you're having that sort of issue.

[zuxia]

Less than 1 second on Anub. No movement involved, target swap is done mid-cast. You should be going from Anub, to Burrowers and back smoothly with no interruption. If you're talking about P2, there's no realistic way to say any stat is better than another. Haste can allow you to hit a moving target easier, allow more movement, etc. The part that matters is the burrowers and again if there is any delay in switching you're doing it wrong. There is no 'how many seconds' there is 'how well did you predict latency on your last spell before the swap'.

If you tanks aren't pulling enough threat on twins then they're bad. They get the same buffs you do and at most you may need to Soul Shatter if you get very lucky on orbs, but if you're lucky on orbs and switch targets you're looking at a massive DPS loss. The GCD on SS represents a much smaller DPS loss.

In regards to it not being about raid buffs? You yourself mentioned needing to put up CoE yourself. That's an extra GCD of ramp up time for applying a raid buff, which was exactly the point. Get better tanks if you're having that sort of issue.

Its called pugs...which most people do now versus having a normal raiding guild..So the information being supplied needs to reflect both the normal "guild raids" versus "pugs, which the vast majority of people do" and can greatly effect what stats, things you need to do, if you are only worried about the optimal raid -- you are better helping out over on elitistjerks.com

[Merckx]

Its called pugs...which most people do now versus having a normal raiding guild..So the information being supplied needs to reflect both the normal "guild raids" versus "pugs, which the vast majority of people do" and can greatly effect what stats, things you need to do, if you are only worried about the optimal raid -- you are better helping out over on elitistjerks.com

That just isn't true. And even if it were true, the fact that you are in a pug means you aren't doing hard content and don't need to squeeze every last ounce of dps out of your gear. If you are worried about how you are performing when you are doing easymode content that you already outgear, then you are better helping out over on hello kitty island adventure.

[Merckx]

Less than 1 second on Anub. No movement involved, target swap is done mid-cast. You should be going from Anub, to Burrowers and back smoothly with no interruption.

You are saying that there is no (or very little) difference between being on the same target from start to finish and switching targets (assuming you do it well). For some reason that just doesn't seem right. I can't figure out how to put it into words but I can't help but feel like the difference arises not so much because of the target switch itself, but more because the new target has a finite amount of hp. If someone is able to seemlessly switch back and forth between two targets with infinite hp, then haste is far better than crit. But, I can't shake the feeling that the balance changes when there is a finite and relatively low amount of hp. Being able to run the numbers based on a specific amount of hp versus a specific period of time is where the difference arises and that is where I think you see crit closing the gap (but not actually catching up) with haste. I don't know if I am describing it particularly well and I don't have any math at all to back it up and I don't know how to get simcraft to come up with numbers for such a thing. I may be totally wrong, but it feels like there is something to it.

[harky]

Any time you kill a low health mob with a crit you'll find that crit is typically better. Thus with high crit rates this will occur more often. Given variable time-to-kill values crit is once again devalued because you can not accurately assume that any given level of haste is optimal. Any time a mob dies mid-cast you either had too much, or too little haste. The example quoted was for Anub'arak. Any DPS drop from target switching is caused by raid buff ramp-up time not target swapping an acquisition. Any DoTs etc will still be on Anub when the adds drop, thus any of that damage is not wasted. While crit may make your DPS for the adds higher, haste will provide higher overall DPS. It's sketchy territory because unless the adds live based on precise intervals crit will either be better, or worse than haste. Also, because of how they're killed you can switch off of them early. Any time they would die before your cast is finished you switch targets either to the other add, or to Anub himself.

Again, haste only loses to crit when there are a lot of lulls. There are no lulls in P1/3 on Anub. The only lulls are caused by the high movement during P2 combined with mobs focusing on you, being AOEd, moving out of range, etc. In P1/3 there are no lulls of any kind. Your switches from Anub, to adds, between adds and back to Anub should be smooth transitions with no interruption. There's no reason to ever have lulls unless patches were brought down in a horrible spot, your tanks suck, or you're not standing in the right spot. In all those cases it's a matter of user error. Running with bad pugs is user error as well. You should be guild shopping so that you don't need to play with bad players, not re-gearing because your DPS goes up in poorly organized and unskilled pugs.

[zuxia]

That just isn't true. And even if it were true, the fact that you are in a pug means you aren't doing hard content and don't need to squeeze every last ounce of dps out of your gear. If you are worried about how you are performing when you are doing easymode content that you already outgear, then you are better helping out over on hello kitty island adventure.

Really...then why can I pug TOGC with a group made up of individuals from various guilds. Your arguement lacks substance when countered with the fact that TOGC is very easily puggable with skilled players, which does happen.

[zuxia]

You should be guild shopping so that you don't need to play with bad players, not re-gearing because your DPS goes up in poorly organized and unskilled pugs.

Is actually very incorrect. Horde side hyjal -- all the higher end raiding guilds top 10 raid at times that some cannot, myself included. To furthur my gear/dps guess where I need to be in the top 10 raiding guilds for server...so re-gearing is needed -- it is adapting to the raid make up and as you pointed out, thankfully you made the mistake-- HASTE IS ONLY AS GOOD AS SIMCRAFT MAKES IT WITH OPTIMAL RAID MAKEUP AND THE BOSS LIVING 5MIN. Harky you are speaking from an elitistjerks point of view, which this forum is not. Your information is good but flawed when applying it to these forums, because most of the individuals here are not in the end raid guilds, have perfect raid make-up ect... to play a class proficiently you "must" know what happens when you are missing an ele shammy, spriest and either gear accordingly or keep several pieces of gear to swap out, thus maximizing your dps for the situation -- which is what helps make a good player -- it is called adaptability.

[Merckx]

Really...then why can I pug TOGC with a group made up of individuals from various guilds. Your arguement lacks substance when countered with the fact that TOGC is very easily puggable with skilled players, which does happen.

Your anecdotal evidence is far from convincing. The fact that YOU can find a decent pug does not mean that "most people do now versus having a normal raiding guild". And if you are somehow finding the pugs that do heroic ToC10 - pugs that don't exist on any server except Hyjal horde - you are still doing content that you outgear and content that is not the most challenging available. Therefore it is wholly unnecessary for you to squeeze every last ounce of dps out of your current setup. You are running relatively easy content, nobody cares about min/maxing for easy content. You aren't going to beat easy content with a pug by having your gear setup up perfectly, you are going to beat it by teaching the mouthbreathers not to stand in fire.

[harky]

I'd just like to mention that I run my own tests and modify the fight length quite often trying to find any way to improve. I run 2-3-5-8-10 minute tests with various settings because honestly, simcraft is easy to use and has enough options available to tweak the test any which way I decide. When we were putting together 10 mans I actually ran quite a few tests with the assumption of not getting a good number of raid buffs. That included no Ele Shaman, Boomkin, or Unholy DK. So I ran a bunch of tests with CoE being used. Checking to see if Demo was optimal in that comp, etc. It's why I ran an ISL Destro build for about a month in fact. That's the thing though, I knew what raid comp I was going to be with and knew what I needed to do. You can't do that with a pug.

If you've found a successful way to pug TOGC, more power to you. Most servers are able to pug ToC10/25, but not TOGC, 10 or 25. Those might be possible as 'pugs' that are really amalgamations of top guilds, but not true pugs. So if you're able to consistently pug TOGC, 10 or 25, more power to you. I've personally never seen heard of a straight pug making it past Jaraxxus before giving up. Pugs on most servers still have persistent wipes on Onyxia and Koralon. Also, if you're running pugs then how do you even know how to gear up? Each group, day-to-day and week-to-week is going to be different. Do you carry around a couple sets of gear and a bunch of gems just in case?

Most high end guilds these days understand that if players put forth the effort to optimize that they'll typically do fine. Professions high enough for the associated buffs? Proper head and shoulder enchants? Proper gemming? When guilds see people making that effort as long as they need your class you can get in. You just have to make some effort. That said you don't even need a 'top guild' anymore, just an organized one. Non-heroic ToC is simple. ICC looks to be simple on normal as well. So either make a real effort, or keep trying to gear around the unpredictability of pugs. Really, what happens if you get into a pug that has a proper raid comp? You just shrug and slide by in suboptimal gear by telling them that you're not used to being in a good group so you geared oddly?

[Ragnarokex]

haste soft cap is about 500 or so.. so get near that before you worry about crit.. and ALWAYS USE FIRESTONE!

[Cubcake]

I personally gem for 12sp/10crit instead of the 12sp/10haste. I am only at about 350 haste and just under 30% crit with the firestone. I haven't met a lock on my server that I can't keep up with or beat outright in dps unless they severely outgear me. The unfortunate thing about my dps is that it isn't constant from fight to fight if it's a fast one, however, for longer raid boss fights I don't have any issue with ending up in the top 2-3 for dps. I have been trying to stack a little more haste tho to be more constant for the long and short fights. Imo they are just about equal tho... it just comes down to the situation.

Here is my armory btw in case anyone was wondering.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...n=Unicornsushi

[harky]

You have a great deal of gemming mistakes in general. If you're out DPSing all the locks you run into it's quite likely that either you outgear them, or they simply do not know how to play Destro properly. Considering you're in almost all 226-245 gear I'd lean more towards your outgearing them. I highly doubt it has anything to do with your gemming of SP/Crit, especially considering your meta gem choice, haste level and fascination with activating sub-par socket bonuses.

[Merckx]

haste soft cap is about 500 or so.. so get near that before you worry about crit.. and ALWAYS USE FIRESTONE!

That is three pieces of bad advice in a single statement, pretty impressive. The 'soft cap' for haste is when you hit 1s incinerates with heroism and I honestly don't know what the number is for that but I think its higher than 500. BUT heroism has a relatively low uptime for any ToC boss so if you are basing your gear around those 30 seconds, you are doing something wrong. Further, you never need to worry about crit. Crit just comes with gear. I have argued throughout this thread that crit is more valuable than most people would lead you to believe, but it is still not valuable enough for you to ever go out of your way to get more of it. And finally, you don't always use a firestone. If you are destro you use a firestone, if you are any other spec, you use a spellstone.

[zuxia]

I'd just like to mention that I run my own tests and modify the fight length quite often trying to find any way to improve. I run 2-3-5-8-10 minute tests with various settings because honestly, simcraft is easy to use and has enough options available to tweak the test any which way I decide. When we were putting together 10 mans I actually ran quite a few tests with the assumption of not getting a good number of raid buffs. That included no Ele Shaman, Boomkin, or Unholy DK. So I ran a bunch of tests with CoE being used. Checking to see if Demo was optimal in that comp, etc. It's why I ran an ISL Destro build for about a month in fact. That's the thing though, I knew what raid comp I was going to be with and knew what I needed to do. You can't do that with a pug.

If you've found a successful way to pug TOGC, more power to you. Most servers are able to pug ToC10/25, but not TOGC, 10 or 25. Those might be possible as 'pugs' that are really amalgamations of top guilds, but not true pugs. So if you're able to consistently pug TOGC, 10 or 25, more power to you. I've personally never seen heard of a straight pug making it past Jaraxxus before giving up. Pugs on most servers still have persistent wipes on Onyxia and Koralon. Also, if you're running pugs then how do you even know how to gear up? Each group, day-to-day and week-to-week is going to be different. Do you carry around a couple sets of gear and a bunch of gems just in case?

Most high end guilds these days understand that if players put forth the effort to optimize that they'll typically do fine. Professions high enough for the associated buffs? Proper head and shoulder enchants? Proper gemming? When guilds see people making that effort as long as they need your class you can get in. You just have to make some effort. That said you don't even need a 'top guild' anymore, just an organized one. Non-heroic ToC is simple. ICC looks to be simple on normal as well. So either make a real effort, or keep trying to gear around the unpredictability of pugs. Really, what happens if you get into a pug that has a proper raid comp? You just shrug and slide by in suboptimal gear by telling them that you're not used to being in a good group so you geared oddly?

Most of the time I do not have to worry about hit..im not capped but I don't worry about 2% either. I do carry a couple of other items around..such as nemesis skull cap, belt of eternal..toc 232 staff, kirin tor ring, leggings of the deeping void..and a few others. Normal I won't switch out gear unless there is more than one hit buffer in group --I depend on myself for such things instead of others (I know my skill, but not others). You can armory or wow-heroes me..zuxia of hyjal Last I checked I was 50th geared lock on my server -- the ones above me are all in raid guilds.

[zuxia]

Your anecdotal evidence is far from convincing. The fact that YOU can find a decent pug does not mean that "most people do now versus having a normal raiding guild". And if you are somehow finding the pugs that do heroic ToC10 - pugs that don't exist on any server except Hyjal horde - you are still doing content that you outgear and content that is not the most challenging available. Therefore it is wholly unnecessary for you to squeeze every last ounce of dps out of your current setup. You are running relatively easy content, nobody cares about min/maxing for easy content. You aren't going to beat easy content with a pug by having your gear setup up perfectly, you are going to beat it by teaching the mouthbreathers not to stand in fire.

1st. Regardless of decent pugs fact still remains that a vast majority do pug.
2nd. I'm sorry you feel jaded because you can't find a togc pug...but here are some names you can go ask also, dragoneyez, noobcake, defiantcow, lemmonpeppery.
3rd. Not everyone is as geared so min/max applies
4th. Before you post, throughly think about your arguments so you don't waste people's time.

Edit: I do not make the assumption that other realms or alliance do not pug togc..since the horde on hyjal can chances are alliance and other realms do also. I seriously doubt you have a toon on every realm on both sides that are geared enough to do togc, so you cannot say only hyjal and only horde. Stop failing Merckx in your arguments.

[purebalance]

1) None of those people you named have downed a single boss in 25 man ToGC. So please specify 10 man.

2) None of those people you named have completed 10 man ToGC. Which is what you were told in a previous post.

3) A PuG is a PuG not a regular group of people running an instance every week regardless of being guilded or not. Once you run the instance with relatively the same core group of 5 people even in a 10 man more than 2 weeks over, you're not a pug.

4) ToGC 10 man is lol anyway(and no this is not from an elitist point of veiw). The group I run it with has taken a random person from trade on occasion with alt tanks and healers who are in Ulduar gear or less.

If any of the people you named even completed the instance I might be mildly impressed, but they didn't and I'm not so please stop misrepresenting yourself. If they were running ToGC in 10 man ulduar gear then I would be impressed also because as it was stated, anyone who runs 25 man Ulduar outgears 10 man ToGC(considering that people had the instance cleared week 1[or week 5 if you look at it that way]).

[zuxia]

1) None of those people you named have downed a single boss in 25 man ToGC. So please specify 10 man.

2) None of those people you named have completed 10 man ToGC. Which is what you were told in a previous post.

3) A PuG is a PuG not a regular group of people running an instance every week regardless of being guilded or not. Once you run the instance with relatively the same core group of 5 people even in a 10 man more than 2 weeks over, you're not a pug.

4) ToGC 10 man is lol anyway(and no this is not from an elitist point of veiw). The group I run it with has taken a random person from trade on occasion with alt tanks and healers who are in Ulduar gear or less.

If any of the people you named even completed the instance I might be mildly impressed, but they didn't and I'm not so please stop misrepresenting yourself. If they were running ToGC in 10 man ulduar gear then I would be impressed also because as it was stated, anyone who runs 25 man Ulduar outgears 10 man ToGC(considering that people had the instance cleared week 1[or week 5 if you look at it that way]).

1st..I did not mis-represent anything..if you read.
2nd.. To say TOGC10 is laughable..then why are there so few? Hence elitist point of view.
3rd..And I should care to impress you why? Are you important no..so go away.
4th..wow..if 25 ulduar out gears togc 10 -- then why pick up 232 tier 9 or why are there off pieces much better than ulduar 25?
5th.. Never said I ran with same group every week did I..sure didn't so guess what it is a pug.
6th.. Regardless of whether or not the pug downed anub, which can be done, is irrelevant.
7th.. It's odd that I just named the individuals today, but yet I was told in a previous post --hmm either your mistake or your stupidity (more than likely) in your quest to discredit what I have said.