Haste breakpoints for CoP? (Shadow)

[Regia]

Supposedly there were going to be no more haste breakpoints for shadow...but I am wondering if anyone knows how much raw haste you need on your gear to be able to fit 3 mind spikes in between each mind blast without losing much if any time on the mind blast CD. I've been digging around these forums and google but haven't been able to find any relevant numbers for current content.

I do know that my gear could use some more haste on it for that reason. I've been valuing mastery>multi>haste>crit>versatility.
My armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Malady/simple

I want to squeeze more haste onto my gear and start taking haste over multistrike, but I'd rather know what approximate numbers I'm going for before I start changing mastery enchants into haste, just in case I can't get there yet.

As an aside, I'm not sure how much crit I should be going for, either...I used to have a lot, but with the recent +int/ilvl upgrades I have very little crit left. Is it worth using my Heroic Bloody Dagger-Heeled Pumps (Crit/versatility) over my mythic gruul boots with mastery/crit? The versatility scares me.

[Atharaxie]

I just use my shadow spec for tannan but I took for granted that MindBlast Cd is 3 GCD when you spec CoP.
So you can fill with 3 mind spikes or any 3 among Devouring, Pain, PWS, PWD ShadowFiend etc.
I could be horribly wrong but to me this spec just scales with haste without break point.

[Echo of Soul]

Above 15% haste you'll get lower than 1 second Mind Spikes during BL/Hero and since GCD can't go lower than 1 second you'll essentially not be able to make full use of all your stats. It's not a big deal but I try to stay between 14% and 15% and focus all my other stats on mastery and crit first and foremost.

[Deleted]

I recommend downloading simulationcraft and run some simulations to get the idea about stat weights, because there are many new factors that affect stat weights in this patch as opposed to Highmaul patch

- Having too much of one stat may cause that others stats give relatively more dps.

- With the new 4set you will have a lot of multistrike, so crit will be better than multistrike.

- 2set makes a big part of your dps to come from pet, which doesn't benefit from mastery, but does benefit from other stats.

- If you are using trinkets that have some damaging procs, these don't benefit from mastery as well, but they still benefit from other stats.

- Any time that you cast a DoT or Mind sear or Shadow Word: Death, mostly to additional targets, your mastery doesn't help in that.


I think that your current stat priority for single target CoP right now should be.
Haste>Mastery>Crit>Multistrike>Versatility.
Once you get more haste, the stat priority might swap again, this is why I recommended Simcraft. Also you shouldn't hestitate to drop mastery for higher ilvl item, even if it has versatility. RoW trinket will probably bring mastery to the very top


The break point where you won't fit 3 spike in MB cooldown is 50% haste. It's 15% with Bloodlust up. Other than that there aren't more break points.
RoW trinket may provide some break points if you want to fit more spells between Mind flay that refreshes the debuff.

[Kilee25]

To clear up some confusion in the OP's post.

You can fit 3 spells inbetween each Mind Blast all the way up until GCD cap. You don't need "more haste" in order to do this by default. The cooldown of Mind Blast shrinks with haste in such a way that 3 GCD worth of spells will always fit between it. Now, there is a caveat here concerning latency where you will always have a bit of overlap, and you won't always be able to fit three spells perfectly neatly between each MB. You can't do anything about this, and it shouldn't change your rotation (except under extreme instances of latency). CoP isn't a good spec to play with poor internet.

There are two critical situations where a haste breakpoint occurs with CoP, and four if you have the tier 17 set bonuses.

1. Reaching GCD cap while under the effects of heroism or haste procs.

This requires a flat 50% haste.

trinket or buff ilevel adj haste need
shards of nothing 655 2336.469388
shards of nothing 670 2136.469388
shards of nothing 661 2069.469388
shards of nothing 676 2046.469388
furyheart talisman 655 1930.469388
shards of nothing 685 1906.469388
furyheart talisman 661 1830.469388
shards of nothing 691 1803.469388
darmac's unstable talisman 670 1669.469388
darmac's unstable talisman 676 1551.469388
darmac's unstable talisman 685 1369.469388
darmac's unstable talisman 691 1234.469388
power infusion 1224.489796
darmac's unstable talisman 700 1021.469388
darmac's unstable talisman 706 869.4693878
heroism 847.7237049

Summary: You can't really avoid hitting GCD cap with heroism or PI, and most versions of darmac's.

2. Reaching a point where you can cast 2 spells between each Mind Blast instead of 2.

As others have stated, there's a 1s cap on the GCD. However the cooldown on Mindblast continues to shrink past the GCD. This means that you won't be able to fit 3 spells between each Mind Blast whenever you hit GCD. Additionally we need to find the "breakpoint" where it's worth it to wait to cast a mindblast earlier, versus casting another spell anyway. The "turning point" is about 2/3 of a GCD - .7 seconds. Once you're waiting less than that to cast the next Mind Blast, it's better to hold off casting a third spell and just wait for Mind Blast. We need the cooldown on Mindblast to be about 3.7 seconds, or a theoretical GCD of 0.925s (remember 1s is the cap). This requires 62.16216% haste, or in other words 4,666.29 points of haste. This is currently unobtainable with raw stats from gear.

However, you can reach that mark with haste trinkets. Here's a break down of the amount of haste you need with each haste trinket that's in the game.

trinket or buff ilevel adj haste need
shards of nothing 655 2566.432475
shards of nothing 670 2366.432475
shards of nothing 661 2299.432475
shards of nothing 676 2276.432475
furyheart talisman 655 2160.432475
shards of nothing 685 2136.432475
furyheart talisman 661 2060.432475
shards of nothing 691 2033.432475
darmac's unstable talisman 670 1899.432475
power infusion 1866.85901
darmac's unstable talisman 676 1781.432475
darmac's unstable talisman 685 1599.432475
darmac's unstable talisman 691 1464.432475
darmac's unstable talisman 700 1251.432475
darmac's unstable talisman 706 1099.432475

Summary: Most versions of darmac's will allow you to cast 2 GCDs between each MB, during heroism.

3. Execution phase with tier 17 4p set bonus.

This isn't my work: http://www.howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=7537

Summary: If you have over about 19% haste, you will have difficulty maintaining 100% uptime on Mental Instinct during the execute phase, because of misalignment of spells and MB CD.

4. Casting nothing but DP inbetween MBs with tier 17 2p set bonus. ie. MB (3 orbs) -> DP -> wait -> MB again

The cooldown on MB needs to be 4*gcd-1.5=2.7. Or in other words you need a GCD of 1.05 - this requires 42.85% haste.

trinket or buff ilevel adj haste need
shards of nothing 655 1753.379009
shards of nothing 670 1553.379009
shards of nothing 661 1486.379009
shards of nothing 676 1463.379009
furyheart talisman 655 1347.379009
shards of nothing 685 1323.379009
furyheart talisman 661 1247.379009
shards of nothing 691 1220.379009
darmac's unstable talisman 670 1086.379009
power infusion 758.0174927
darmac's unstable talisman 676 968.3790087
darmac's unstable talisman 685 786.3790087
darmac's unstable talisman 691 651.3790087
darmac's unstable talisman 700 438.3790087
darmac's unstable talisman 706 286.3790087
heroism 399.1926441

Summary: Heroism, PI, and pretty much any Darmac's will allow you to do this.

............

That's all the breakpoints I've found so far. Maybe there are more, I wouldn't know. I'm sure there might be some mistakes in my calculations, so feel free to correct them.

All of this is very trivial and inconsequential. The DPS gains to utilize these are so small to the point that you can almost ignore them.

I don't know where the 15% haste thing is coming from that people are coming up with. Maybe something to do with heroism, but Heroism is such a small portion of fights that this is a bad metric to build your gearset around. Haste is good for CoP all the way up until GCD cap, and if you're trying to define an ultimate value of haste that we should all stop at, it would be at cap, which is 3673.47 points of haste. We can't reach that with gear; the current tier doesn't have haste trinkets; heroism doesn't make up a large enough percentage of a fight to gear around it; and no one uses PI.

Summary: All this BS about breakpoints and haste caps is pretty meaningless to the average player.

[Dierdre]

That's all the breakpoints I've found so far.

RoW would introduce another haste breakpoint, so that you can fit 2 Mind blasts and 5 Mind spikes between Mind Flays without dropping Mental Fatigue.

[Regia]

I'm trying to use SimCraft, but I'm at my wit's end. It seems very buggy.

For example right now I'm using an upgraded 695 Tanaan haste/multistrike shoulder:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Malady/simple

I tried swapping the haste/multistrike shoulder out for the normal mode Pious Mantle, which has the same stats, same ilvl, and adds my 4pc bonus. SimCraft told me that gaining my 4pc is a DPS loss (on a singletarget fight with light movement), which makes 0 sense. It did that when I imported from the armory and manually replaced the name & ID number of the Tanaan shoulder with the tier. I also took guildies' suggestion to rearrange my gear on AskMrRobot and then import to SimC from AMR. It's still showing me a DPS loss when I add my 4pc. What gives?! Is SimC bugged?

[Kilee25]

You generally need to cross check a lot of results you get in simc with in-game results, to make sure it's behaving properly. I've discovered similar bugs numerous times over the past 4 expansions. If you find a bug, you can report it, and sometimes it will get fixed, if it's important.

The tier 18 set behaving properly seems like a big deal, so if it's not working well, they would fix it very quickly, if it is indeed a bug and the right people are made aware of it.

[Deleted]

Slightly off topic but i wish they would just make a glyph so that mind spike didnt cancel DP.

I know that would dumb things down and kill dot weaving, so hence it being a glyph, talking from my own selfish pvp perspective.

[Deleted]

The whole 15%-20% haste stuff was generally more used as a metric when people didn't have T17/18 set bonuses and no strong trinkets as well as when halo was the only realistic option out of the 90 talent. The only negative of high haste levels is the 1gcd MS during lust but a lot of fights this tier require hero at 20-30% which means haste isn't that big of a hindrance anymore. Even if I try to limit my haste as much as possible, I'm still way over 15%, you can't avoid it at high gear levels.

As you get more haste, dotweaving is still effective but you need to substitute an extra GCD or two on a filler ability to let the dots completely finish. Luckily, the 2set frequently gives you an extra ability to use during dotweave as well as cascade on fights like Kormrok and Iron Reaver mythic. Reflective shield can also help here but not always.

In general, I'd take any item that has a higher ilevel despite the stats. If the item is the same ilevel, haste mastery is my preferred gearing stats. There's only a few fights where CoP is used and they are primarily ST encounters, mastery is still very valuable if you can manage movement properly.