Shadow Priest: Advice needed for heroic Majordomo

[HeatM1ser]

If you want to increase your dps, dont change proffesion, tailoring is great. Instead dont gem 40 mastery and haste.

Oh...I changed my gems today specifically for heroic Majordomo to get over 13 mastery. I only get dark intent on that fight, so I assumed losing the haste in favor of 1 more point of mastery would be a DPS increase. I already have the gems to socket back when we kill him, and my haste will be back at 2602 when I resocket. Do you think it was a bad idea to sacrifice the haste in favor of 1 more point of mastery for that fight? I figured with the DPS buff the extra mastery would be a DPS increase, but I have no way of testing this out(that I know of) except when we make our attempts tonight.

So I sacrificed 60 haste because I will have dark intent for this fight in favor of 60 mastery to put me from 12 to 13 mastery. Was this a bad choice? Will the 60 haste be better with the concentration damage buff, or will the extra point in mastery be better? I have no way of testing this out except in a raid. I can always drop to 12 mastery and 2602 haste, or keep 13 mastery with 2542 haste and dark intent.....what would be best?

The matter was settled in HeatM1ser's other tread. Closing this ~ Ultima

[Aby-ori]

your dps (well relative to other people) for this fight is dictated so much by what kind of strat you're going to use. Regardless of which method, dodging cat leaps has the largest impact on your dps. Going to assume that you're an expert lead dodger (bloody annoying as a shadow priest! Wish I had blink). With the proper buffs and dodging, should be ~ 30k+ dps.

That being said, I don't think shifts to or from mastery are going to have a drastic change in your dps, more so at higher gear levels when haste and mastery really aren't that far apart. Personally, I prefer haste.

[SonsofDisaster]

So I sacrificed 60 haste because I will have dark intent for this fight in favor of 60 mastery to put me from 12 to 13 mastery.

I'm worried that you're misunderstanding how Mastery works. Mastery does NOT work solely based upon whole numbers- it also takes into account fractional parts of a whole. That means, that if you're 60 mastery short of hitting 13.0 Mastery, you're NOT receiving the benefits of only 12.0 Mastery... you're actually getting something like 12.9 Mastery. So, switching out that "extra" haste to Mastery does NOT bump you up to a new plateau of mastery, it simply provides you with a fractional bonus to your shadow orbs.

With this in mind, it becomes a question of whether or not a small bit of mastery is more beneficial than an equal amount of haste at your gear level. I'm not sure there is ever a point where Mastery > Haste, but, the only way to know for sure, is to sim it out for your personal situation.

[Lucapa]

Why would you believe that mastery is stronger for this fight than haste?
I don't believe there is any point roughly at your gear level where haste has less value than mastery with dark intent.
Feel free to tell me otherwise though, I'm really curious what you base that on.