Just going to throw in my personal experiences with Ascension yesterday in the full guild/friends LFR group I do every Wednesday.
So as soon as I got home from work, I immediately respecced into Ascension. Seeing my energy regen jump from 13.34 to almost 16 energy per second was rather entertaining, to say the least! Next step then would be to sort all that extra haste out. I regemmed for more crit and stamina (see my signature for how I've gemmed) and was even reforging out of haste to get back to 13.33 energy (or as close as I could get it). Figured I'd give that a go, see what happens.
This gave me, unbuffed, just about 30% crit. Tasty.
So in we go to LFR! Hooray. ...And then I struggle to keep Shuffle up. I just don't have the Chi I need, it just isn't working out at all. I'm taking a lot more damage than I should do, dying a few times because I just can't keep Shuffle up. Not good!
It sounds obvious now, but at the time I overlooked the fact that I'm missing out on Chi without Power Strikes. PS makes a pretty significant difference at the end of the day, and missing out on that 1 extra Chi every so often really hurt.
That said, my EB uptime was fabulous. So that was nice. I regularly had times where I'd build up a 15 stack, use it, then by the time the buff dropped off I'd have another 9-10 stacks available. But then I do have the Terrace trinket, which probably contributed to that amount of uptime. :P
So now I'm sitting at (I think) about 14 energy regen per second with Ascension. Feels much better than before. I've got no math to support this number, it's just what I'm using. (NOTE: while writing this post I went ahead and did the math, see below) EB uptime is MUCH better than before as well, very happy there.
I also like having a max of 5 Chi: it means that there's less times I accidentally waste a Chi with Keg Smash because I only needed 1 Chi to cap, or more often than not I have 1 extra Chi available to use Purifying Brew. Sure, theoretically it doesn't do anything, but in practice it really helps out when you've got 500 other things to keep track of.
So in short... With Ascension, I'm now gemming for crit/stamina, seeing a much higher EB uptime, have a more smooth resource income, and have just about enough Chi to keep Shuffle up.
That said, as I noted above, I've now done the math on how much Energy regen is required. Quick summary:
I worked this out over a 2 minute period, because I didn't like having half a keg smash. Seemed awkward.
So over a 2 minute period, you need the following:
20 Blackout Kicks (6 second duration, 120 seconds to cover, 120/6 = 20) at 2 Chi each, 40 Chi required
4 Guards (30 second duration, 120 seconds to cover, 120/30 = 4) at 2 Chi each, 8 Chi required
48 Chi required over a 2 minute period.
Keg Smash is on an 8 second cooldown: 120/8 = 15 keg smashes in 2 minutes, giving you 30 chi. These 15 keg smashes will cost 15 x 40 = 600 energy.
You need another 18 Chi from Jab/Expel Harm. 18 x 40 = 720 energy required.
720 + 600 = 1320 energy required.
120 seconds to generate this energy, 1320/120 = 11 energy regen per second required, as an absolute minimum.
Of course, this is ignoring Purifying Brew. So you need to find out how much Chi you use on average for Purifying Brew, and add that on to the total Chi required above. I'm going to use 30 chi/min (or 60 per 2 mins) total, as suggested by Paraalso earlier in the thread. This gives you 12 chi per 2 mins to use on Purifying Brew (or the healing talents, or gives you leeway on delayed Keg Smashes, etc.).
15 keg smashes = 30 chi provided = 600 energy required
30 chi needed from jab = 1200 energy required
1800 total energy required over 120 seconds = 15 energy regen per second required.
That seems like a pretty comfortable amount to me and a pretty simple goal to aim for. Unless I got something wrong?
---------- Post added 2012-11-29 at 09:27 AM ----------
I wonder if a calculator to work out how much Chi you 'personally' need exists, or would be something that could be created? Everyone would need, at baseline, 48 chi per 2 mins (for Guard/BoK). Beyond that it would be personal preference: how much do 'you' want/need to cast Purifying Brew/the healing talents?
Seems like a program could be created where you punch in a number of extra Chi you want for PB/healing talents, and the program outputs the amount of energy regen you'd need to achieve that. Could even go deeper and give the amount of haste rating required with/without Ascension as well. And maybe take Power Strikes into account.
Seems like it could be a useful tool for us. If someone would be so inclined to create it, if it doesn't exist already. >>;