Anti-Haste after 9% SHDW PRIEST - after testing

[Cactrot]

Lets make it simple. Say a dot lasts 5 seconds and normally ticks once at 4.50 seconds. You cast itand refresh at 5 seconds (say you get it in JUST in time to refresh, and not recast). You get 2 ticks. You got 1 tick for one cast.
Now you haste it to 3 seconds.
You cast it once. OMG one tick! HASTE IS USELESS! sky is falling! etc.
But wait, if you refresh at 5 seconds you get a tick at 3, 6, and 9 seconds. Oh my god, magic new tick.

That's what you seem to be missing. That, faster GCDs, faster casting, faster orbs, etc. You're saying "omg no new ticks." There are new ticks, you just have to realize that you don't cast a DoT only once throughout a fight.

[zsun]

Each point of haste (even after 9%) will shorten the duration between each dot tick, even if it is by 0.005 seconds. Each point of haste also reduces Mind Flay channeling time as well as the cast times of Mind Blast and Vampiric Touch as well as other situational spells, not to mention shortened GCD and faster shadow orb procs as well (crit does not affect shadow orb procs whatsoever). As zenkai said, it also takes less points to get 1% haste than it is to get 1% crit. To top everything off, haste is a stable and more reliable stat than crit. And just for fun I'll explain how dot ticks actually work in terms of haste. Using an example from the OP of this thread http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=30171

These so called plateaus are points where the duration of the DoT increases from its minimum duration (such as the 13.64s VT at 9.99% haste) to its maximum duration (such as the 16.36s VT at 10% haste). Although the tooltip will always say 15s, the actual duration of the DoT will differ from this value.

To clarify this, take VT for example, its default (0 haste) duration is 15 seconds. It ticks for 5 times with 3 seconds between each tick. However when a certain amount of haste is added, the 3 second duration between each tick will decrease (hence lowering the total duration of the DoT), until the amount of time between each tick is down to 2.728s (requires 9.99% haste). Thus the total duration of the DoT is 5 x 2.728 = 13.64s (local minimum). At this point, if you add just 0.01% more haste rating, the amount of time between each tick will decrease from 2.728s down to 2.727s. However since the local minimum threshold for the total DoT duration has been reached, ie, total DoT duration cannot go any lower, it must add an additional tick at the end, making it a total of 6 ticks. This will increase the total DoT duration to 6 x 2.727 = 16.36s (local maximum). Further haste ratings beyond this point will reduce this local maximum until a new local minimum is reached again..and the cycle repeats.


On a somewhat unrelated note, I would like to point out that an increase in the total amount of ticks per dot is still important despite the fact that dot clipping no longer matters. Here's an explanation (although this still used WoTLK figures)

In a hypothetical situation where you have 1458 haste, you cast DP, it will tick 12 times. You normally refresh it right before they run out right? OK. Say you refresh it after the 11th tick, and that means your DP would have done 11 ticks worth of damage (excluding the initial instant damage part).
Now when you have 1459 haste, you cast DP, it will tick 13 times. You refresh it after the 12th tick, and that means your DP would have done 12 ticks with of damage (again, excluding the instant damage part).

To reinforce the above quote, just to point out that.. at the point where a dot gains an extra tick, its total duration would be at its local maximum, and hence fewer casts are required for the duration of a fight in order to maximize uptime. Although you don't save that many GCDs from the fewer casts (2 or 3 at best).

TLDR:
Crit and haste both increases throughput but there are things that haste can affect whereas crit cannot, such as shadow orb procs rates, cast times of spells and GCD durations. In addition it also takes less points to get 1% haste than it is to get 1% crit. So to sum up haste > crit.




PS. I actually dislike theorycrafting tbh, so heres a practical example. Remember Blood Queen Lana'thel? Ever wondered why despite you were bitten first, and you do double damage, your DPS didn't actually double? But more like increased by 70-80%? It is because that certain things I mentioned above were not affected by the double damage, or in this context....crits. Now hypothetically if your damage wasn't doubled, but instead your casting time halved, your channeling time halved, your GCD time halved and the duration between each dot tick halved, then I'm quite sure the DPS will double.