Trying to figure this out..

[Akumaryuujin]

So at this point in time, I've been reading a lot about haste>mastery and vice versa.. I've always been one for haste>mastery personally. But got to think and thought maybe mastery>haste is actually better.. So I went on test dummy as both and as haste>mastery, I was pulling about 20k on test dummy. Afterwards, I went mastery>haste and it dropped to only like 16k.. I've been hearing stuff about a "magic" haste threshold and I'm just not sure what to think right now. Please look up my character, as I am not allowed to post a url for some reason, with my mastery>haste at this point. Before I switched, I was about 2200-2300 haste unbuffed.

Akumaryuujin
Area-52 US
Orc Warlock

Just trying to get the best possible numbers out of my gear.

[Belloc]

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/
That forum contains threads that will provide you with every single piece of information you could possibly need to know. Pick whichever thread is relevant to your spec. If you cannot understand what is being presented, you should probably stop worrying about your DPS.

---------- Post added 2011-09-15 at 09:57 PM ----------



As a demonology warlock, these are the thresholds listed in the EJ thread. If you can reach these thresholds through reforging, you might see a DPS increase. Going much above or at all below them, however, will lower your DPS.

Mastery is your #1 rating for Demonology.

Therefore, the haste thresholds are (raid buffed):

Extra Ticks  	           %  	Rating  	Goblin 
1 	               7.2% 	0 	0
2 	               21.4% 	1573 	1431
3 	               35.7% 	3264 	3105
4 	               49.9% 	4951 	4776

Corruption gains additional ticks at the following levels:

Corruption

Extra Ticks  	       %  	Rating  	Goblin 
1 	                 8.3% 	21 	0
2 	                  25% 	1993 	1846
3 	                 41.7% 	3970 	3804
4 	                58.4% 	5945 	5745

You are not a goblin, so you can ignore that column.

In other words, 1993 (or slightly over) is the most haste you should try to achieve. Being under by a single rating makes it pointless. Being over by a little bit is fine. The rest of your gear should be focused on mastery.

And, as stated in the quote, this is assuming full haste raid buffs.

[Penguin FTW]

So I went on test dummy as both and as haste>mastery, I was pulling about 20k on test dummy. Afterwards, I went mastery>haste and it dropped to only like 16k.. I've been hearing stuff about a "magic" haste threshold and I'm just not sure what to think right now. Please look up my character, as I am not allowed to post a url for some reason, with my mastery>haste at this point. Before I switched, I was about 2200-2300 haste unbuffed.

Your dummy dps is incredibly irrelevant when trying to figure this out (or ever, really), especially because the haste thresholds assume full raid buffs which you wouldn't have.

[clavarnway]

In addition to what Penguin said, the haste thresholds are completely overblown in how important they are, at least to Demonology.

[Akumaryuujin]

So what you're saying is that unbuffed, I should try to get around 1993 or 1573 unbuffed?

[Penguin FTW]

I personally go the 1573 route (although I admittedly can't actually get any lower), but I know there are some proponents of going as low as you absolutely can on haste and stacking mastery all the way.

If you do go that route don't go under 1k haste though, that's just too far (the number for an extra shadowflame tick is 1007, make that your absolute floor on haste)

[avengingbt]

Honestly the best thing to do is to test your gear with each reforging profile on simcraft. I personally tested my own gear set with a full mastery profile, a 1573 haste profile, and a 1993 haste profile at different fight lengths. In reality they're all fairly close (within 200 dps of eachother) my results were as follows:

The 1573 haste profile came out ahead for all fight lengths tested.
The full mastery profile performed better for shorter fights.
The 1993 haste profile performed better on longer fights.

It's fairly obvious why. Haste is always a great stat for casters, and for demo there is no difference. I found dropping lower than 1500-1600 haste was a dps loss at basically every realistic fight length. Mastery gives a huge boost to your doomguard, so the higher your doomguard uptime, the more your mastery is worth, hence why the mastery profile performs better on shorter fights.

Other considerations:

If you are not popping your doomguard at the start of the fight, you will be less likely to stack all available buffs/procs, meaning your doomguard (and therefore mastery) will be less effective.
If you need controlled burst for a specific part of a fight (for example rag hc p3) then mastery will be more important.
If you are on a fight like staghelm heroic, which is a long fight where the doomguard will not be very effective, the haste profile will be way more effective.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's not just as simple as haste > mastery or mastery > haste. There is going to be an optimal balance. There are also fight specifics to consider.

If you want a safe profile that will do well on every fight, take 1573 haste.
If you want a crazy burst profile, take full mastery.
If you want a profile that doesn't rely too heavily on the doomguard, take 1993 haste.

I personally use 1573 haste.

[Harsesis]

I personally have way more haste then I should since I'm in a 10 man and need to go affliction at times and don't want to hold up the raid inbetween fights. I think some haste is needed but it's not an exactly number. Due to the randomness of Impending Doom some procs are good, 4 procs is perfect, and more than that are wastes. So too little haste increases the odds of not having enough procs, then there is a range (again not sure on the numbers) where you get the right amount of SBs off to average out to that perfect 4.