Mastery & hot rating opinions wanted

[HeatM1ser]

I'd like to get your feedback to see what you think would produce more DPS....

I currently have 512 mastery (+11.15) and would need 40 mastery points to go to +12%. I am also hit capped at 421 hit rating +1% for being a Draenei. I was toying with the idea of reforging for +40 mastery and sacrificing hit rating. The reason why I was thinking about this is because improved faerie fire will be on my targets, which increases mt hit rating by 3%(I think thats correct). If I reforged for +40 mastery and sacrificed 40 hit points, do you think I would put out more DPS since faerie fire will be on my targets? Also, if you think I could do this and put out more DPS, how much hit rating would you say is the max I could sacrifice if I wanted to go with more than +40 mastery?

[Khazaad]

Feary fire no longer increases chance to hit in a same manner missery no longer does, and personal + hit talents ceased to exist aswell. You need flat 17% hit from gear and gear only (gems and chants naturally included).

That being said getting hit capped is your nr1 prio. And to add on your question, i think you want 12% mastery just to have nice round number. Sure, more is better, but you should not obsess bout round numbers to such extent that you consider sacrificeing hit (which is ironically only combat rating you should aim to round up as precisely as possible)

[HeatM1ser]

So I'll want to stay capped at 421 and keep my mastery at 512( 19.15%)? Do you think I would take much of a DPS hit if I reforged 40 hit into 40 mastery to get to an even 20% mastery( 552 mastery), which I think would increase all spell damage from 28% to 29.5%....correct me if I'm wrong.

[Potato Bus]

The Dranaei +hit racial DOES affect Dranaei toons, but is no longer party-wide. Not enough of a theory-crafter to be able to comment on how much the additional mastery rating would help, but I've heard that as arcane you want to reforge Haste to Mastery and try to keep your crit rating boosted.

[HeatM1ser]

Feary fire no longer increases chance to hit in a same manner missery no longer does, and personal + hit talents ceased to exist aswell. You need flat 17% hit from gear and gear only (gems and chants naturally included).

I have'nt been able to find any patch notes that confirm that imp faerie fire no longer gives other classes in the raid +3% hit...do you know where I can find out more about this?
EDIT: My GM, who is a druid, tells me that your correct

The Dranaei +hit racial DOES affect Dranaei toons, but is no longer party-wide. Not enough of a theory-crafter to be able to comment on how much the additional mastery rating would help, but I've heard that as arcane you want to reforge Haste to Mastery and try to keep your crit rating boosted.

Right, which I've done so I dont go through my mana pool as quickly...I'm just wondering whether I benefit more by being hit capped at 421 with a mastery of 19.15, or going under the hit cap at around 381 to boost my mastery to 20%?

One last thing....is there a DPS simulator that has mastery included yet?

[Potato Bus]

I have'nt been able to find any patch notes that confirm that imp faerie fire no longer gives other classes in the raid +3% hit...do you know where I can find out more about this?

I don't have a link to it, but the hit from Misery and Imp. Faerie Fire was definitely removed (in the same vein that all hit talents were removed from pure dps casters)

Right, which I've done so I dont go through my mana pool as quickly...I'm just wondering whether I benefit more by being hit capped at 421 with a mastery of 19.15, or going under the hit cap at around 381 to boost my mastery to 20%?

You would have to balance your percentile chance to miss the target against the percentage of DPS gained from the additional mastery. Personally, I would consider the worst-case scenario: you have a 4-stack AB up with all CDs in burn phase and you miss a cast, hence losing 40-80k damage overall (haven't messed with arcane that much so not sure if those numbers are appropriate), but still consuming that mana. A better option for you may be to change some gems to match socket bonuses (pants or boots), giving you some extra hit (and spellpower) that could then allow you to reforge more Mastery without going under the hit cap.

[HeatM1ser]

A better option for you may be to change some gems to match socket bonuses (pants or boots), giving you some extra hit (and spellpower) that could then allow you to reforge more Mastery without going under the hit cap.

I did that, and found out that I could only reforge for +23 mastery and still stay hit capped, and if I am not mistaken, 17.99 mastery is no better than an even 17.00 mastery. Is this true about mastery?

[Jothrazz]

i have no clue where your getting your info, 17.99 mastery is much better than 17.00 mastery, its like crit or haste, you need so much of that rating to get it up another % but that .99% is still counted on. if you just read your tooltip over the mastery, it will say % increase dmg for 17%, and a higher % increase dmg for 17.99%

so essentially lets say mastery increases your dmg by 2.5% for every % of mastery, so if you had .99%, that would be a 2.5% x .99 increase.

[Khazaad]

And i would just like to add that while reforging haste to mastery IS the right thing to do, i find a flaw in a logic alot of arcane mages imbraced post-patch that "haste is bad cuz you burn through mana faster".

It makes virtually no sense at all as far as i can see. AB cost is fixed, so your mana per cast is alwais the same, making dmage per mana alwais the same. Since you burn through your mana ONLY in your burn phase (duh), haste only makes burn phases shorter, while damage you do during it is same (actually even greater i'd argue because time percentage of your burn phase covered with mana gem/ap is higher, while keeping same number of casts). During conservation phase you maintain same ammount of mana thanks to mage armor and slightly faster casts won't influence it.

TLDR: Haste is not Bad for arcane as ppl seam to think it to be, it's just lower in priority list than mastery and crit.

[Jonisawsom]

And i would just like to add that while reforging haste to mastery IS the right thing to do, i find a flaw in a logic alot of arcane mages imbraced post-patch that "haste is bad cuz you burn through mana faster".

It makes virtually no sense at all as far as i can see. AB cost is fixed, so your mana per cast is alwais the same, making dmage per mana alwais the same. Since you burn through your mana ONLY in your burn phase (duh), haste only makes burn phases shorter, while damage you do during it is same (actually even greater i'd argue because time percentage of your burn phase covered with mana gem/ap is higher, while keeping same number of casts). During conservation phase you maintain same ammount of mana thanks to mage armor and slightly faster casts won't influence it.

TLDR: Haste is not Bad for arcane as ppl seam to think it to be, it's just lower in priority list than mastery and crit.

More haste means more casts obviously, and more casts means using more mana. Let's just forget the stacking cost of the spell and using missile barrage for a moment. For an example let's say you have 0 haste and cast 100 spells over the course of a 5 min fight. Then on another fight you have 1000 haste and cast 150 spells. You will have used 50% more mana in the second fight (all numbers are made up obviously).

As far as the question in the OP, the best advice I can offer was already given. Reforge your haste/hit to mastery. You need 2 blue gems to activate your meta anyway so try to get the best socket bonus you can with hit or int/hit gems. Stay hit capped. Mastery does not need to be a round number.

[Khazaad]

More haste means more casts obviously, and more casts means using more mana. Let's just forget the stacking cost of the spell and using missile barrage for a moment. For an example let's say you have 0 haste and cast 100 spells over the course of a 5 min fight. Then on another fight you have 1000 haste and cast 150 spells. You will have used 50% more mana in the second fight (all numbers are made up obviously).

sigh....

If the mana is crucial factor, DPM (Damage-per-mana) remains same regardless of haste. If you had mana for 100 casts (made up number) and you chaincasted theam during the course of 5 min fight without haste, or you had some haste and did same 100 casts over 4 minutes and did fuckall for last minute you would have done exact same damage.

Please, read more than 1st line of post before arguing with it. I'm not saying my logic aint flawed too, but i'm sure if it is than the reason is far more complicated than the arguments u provided.

[Deleted]

I'm not a mage but just wanted to say your racial is calculated in your hitrating so you will still need to get 17%. I tested this and was missing even as a Draenei when I had 16.80% hit.

No class offer hitrating for others since patch 4.0.1 as far I know. This is a pretty big chance.

[takolin]

sigh....

If the mana is crucial factor, DPM (Damage-per-mana) remains same regardless of haste. If you had mana for 100 casts (made up number) and you chaincasted theam during the course of 5 min fight without haste, or you had some haste and did same 100 casts over 4 minutes and did fuckall for last minute you would have done exact same damage.

Please, read more than 1st line of post before arguing with it. I'm not saying my logic aint flawed too, but i'm sure if it is than the reason is far more complicated than the arguments u provided.

That would be true if you ignored in combat mana regen.

To build on your model:

During the 4 minutes, you gain enough mana to cast lets say another 20 spells. If you'd have 5 minutes, you'd be able to cast 25 spells so in with lower haste, you'd do more damage when factoring mana regen assuming mana is a finite resource.


Another issue with haste is when it comes to bad RNG, though more an issue at 85 than 80.
Assuming you need an AB2AM or AB2Abar rotation to stay mana neutral, there will be a point in haste where you need more than 2 ABs to make sure Abarr is off cd when rng is being mean to you.

So instead of AB-AB-Abar-AB-AB-Abar (if rng hates you), you'll be looking at AB-AB-Abar-AB-AB-X-Abar.
Where X is either doing nothing => a damage loss, or X is another AB => mana loss which may hurt in the long run if you get a a few RNG streaks.

[Rugz]

assuming mana is a finite resource

Which as of now, it isn't. At 85 your assumptions on haste are correct, for now they are false.

[Jonisawsom]

sigh....

If the mana is crucial factor, DPM (Damage-per-mana) remains same regardless of haste. If you had mana for 100 casts (made up number) and you chaincasted theam during the course of 5 min fight without haste, or you had some haste and did same 100 casts over 4 minutes and did fuckall for last minute you would have done exact same damage.

Please, read more than 1st line of post before arguing with it. I'm not saying my logic aint flawed too, but i'm sure if it is than the reason is far more complicated than the arguments u provided.

You can take your poor attitude and shove it for all I care ok? Don't sigh at me and assume I didn't read the whole post. Maybe YOU need to read more since you are the one that is wrong. The "flawed" thinking that having more haste means burning mana faster is not a flaw at all. The "argument I provided" is just common sense. I'm sorry but if you can't understand that casting faster (more casts over X amount of time) means using more mana, then I don't know what else to tell you. Haste makes us cast faster thus burning mana faster which actually works against our mastery.

Now with this post you are wrong again. With less haste you will be spending more time at a higher % of mana which means more damage from our mastery. You are also wrong that DPM is the same regardless of haste, since the faster you cast, the faster you lose mana and thus do less and less damage per cast. If you were to also exchange all that haste for crit, you are now doing more DPM since you will be critting more often as well as get more mana back from the extra crits which again means more damage from our mastery.

Edit/disclaimer:
This is how it stands right now, though things could change. Haste seems to be our worst stat atm, and I can only see haste being better if our mastery didn't improve our damage much. I don't see that happening. I'm also not saying haste is bad, as it's obviously still a dps improvement over nothing, but just not the preferred stat atm.

[Blueskies]

Now with this post you are wrong again. With less haste you will be spending more time at a higher % of mana which means more damage from our mastery. You are also wrong that DPM is the same regardless of haste, since the faster you cast, the faster you lose mana and thus do less and less damage per cast. If you were to also exchange all that haste for crit, you are now doing more DPM since you will be critting more often as well as get more mana back from the extra crits which again means more damage from our mastery.

Edit/disclaimer:
This is how it stands right now, though things could change. Haste seems to be our worst stat atm, and I can only see haste being better if our mastery didn't improve our damage much. I don't see that happening. I'm also not saying haste is bad, as it's obviously still a dps improvement over nothing, but just not the preferred stat atm.

How much time you spend with high % of mana doesn't matter, what matters is how many casts you get off with the high % of mana.

[Skarrd]

How much time you spend with high % of mana doesn't matter, what matters is how many casts you get off with the high % of mana.

That doesn't actually make sense. Both of those are the same thing. The -ONLY- ways to control how long OR how many casts you get off while at high mana is to A) get more mana or B) lower your rotation and as such, your dps.

Regardless of how much of any stat you have except for intellect (and mana, duh), you will ALWAYS get the same number of casts off and be at the SAME percentage of mana. Spell cost doesn't change regardless of any stat. Haste makes you cast faster, which just brings you to lower mana faster. You don't get more casts off at a higher mana percentage from haste or any other stat except for intellect/mana.

My own personal thoughts on why haste is a worse stat than crit is simply this: Crit assists the benefit of mastery while haste and mastery do not grow off of eachother. If you crit more with 20 mastery, your 20 mastery gives you -more- damage than it would have if you had less crit. It works that way for all stats but haste. Now, haste comes out ahead in cooldowns and procs. You get more casts off with your DFO, phylactery, mana gem, AP, or any other proc out there and you gained a little extra dps from haste. The simple fact of the matter is crit -also- gains from that. If you crit more with a proc or AP up, you gain extra benefit from your crit.

Regardless of whether my reasoning is right or not, haste is simply less damage per point than crit and that's why we reforge it. It doesn't make haste bad, it just means it's worse than crit.

[Jonisawsom]

How much time you spend with high % of mana doesn't matter, what matters is how many casts you get off with the high % of mana.

Stacking haste means we quickly deplete our mana. If we stack crit instead, over the course of time your average mana level will be higher which is a damage boost from our mastery. That's what I mean by spending more time at a higher % of mana. Obviously we should also be getting more crits which also means more powerful crits since we should be at a higher mana level.

I don't know if haste or crit comes out ahead while we have our CDs up, and I assume it's quite complicated and RNG dependent to figure out. What I can say is that gearing for that small % of a fight is not usually a good idea. That's not to mention that even IF it is actually better with our CDs up, it's not as good the rest of the time. I know that with CDs up you crit very hard too. My gear is not that great and I'm getting crits for just over 102k in ICC with all my CDs up.

[guest32384]

That doesn't actually make sense. Both of those are the same thing. The -ONLY- ways to control how long OR how many casts you get off while at high mana is to A) get more mana or B) lower your rotation and as such, your dps.

Regardless of how much of any stat you have except for intellect (and mana, duh), you will ALWAYS get the same number of casts off and be at the SAME percentage of mana. Spell cost doesn't change regardless of any stat. Haste makes you cast faster, which just brings you to lower mana faster. You don't get more casts off at a higher mana percentage from haste or any other stat except for intellect/mana.

My own personal thoughts on why haste is a worse stat than crit is simply this: Crit assists the benefit of mastery while haste and mastery do not grow off of eachother. If you crit more with 20 mastery, your 20 mastery gives you -more- damage than it would have if you had less crit. It works that way for all stats but haste. Now, haste comes out ahead in cooldowns and procs. You get more casts off with your DFO, phylactery, mana gem, AP, or any other proc out there and you gained a little extra dps from haste. The simple fact of the matter is crit -also- gains from that. If you crit more with a proc or AP up, you gain extra benefit from your crit.

Regardless of whether my reasoning is right or not, haste is simply less damage per point than crit and that's why we reforge it. It doesn't make haste bad, it just means it's worse than crit.

It's been show with math that haste is SIGNIFICANTLY better than mastery and crit over at the EJ forums. Read the arcane thread; I haven't really had the chance to sit there and crunch all their numbers but from a glance it definitely looks like they're right.

The following is taken directly from EJ:

1% haste = 1% extra damage
1% crit = ~1.06% extra damage (using CSD)
1% mastery = 1.5% extra damage (if at 100% mana)

Now look at ratings:

1% haste = 32.79 haste rating
1% crit = 45.906 crit rating
1% mastery = 45.906 mastery rating

It takes 1.4 times as much of crit or mastery to achieve the same % haste. Therefore, at 100% mana:

1 mastery rating = ~1.07 haste rating = ~1.42 crit rating

At 93.33% mana, mastery and haste rating are equal.

Diregarding MPS, 1 haste rating is worth more than 1 mastery rating because we spend a fair deal of time below 93.33% mana.

Hence, the stat priority should be int>haste>mastery>crit if their math is correct.

[Skarrd]

It's been show with math that haste is SIGNIFICANTLY better than mastery and crit over at the EJ forums. Read the arcane thread; I haven't really had the chance to sit there and crunch all their numbers but from a glance it definitely looks like they're right.

The following is taken directly from EJ:

1% haste = 1% extra damage
1% crit = ~1.06% extra damage (using CSD)
1% mastery = 1.5% extra damage (if at 100% mana)

Now look at ratings:

1% haste = 32.79 haste rating
1% crit = 45.906 crit rating
1% mastery = 45.906 mastery rating

It takes 1.4 times as much of crit or mastery to achieve the same % haste. Therefore, at 100% mana:

1 mastery rating = ~1.07 haste rating = ~1.42 crit rating

At 93.33% mana, mastery and haste rating are equal.

Diregarding MPS, 1 haste rating is worth more than 1 mastery rating because we spend a fair deal of time below 93.33% mana.

Hence, the stat priority should be int>haste>mastery>crit if their math is correct.

Good looks, I suppose that'll give us a /thread on the arcane mastery discussion.