5.4 Affliction gemming: Haste or Mastery?

[Gihelle]

Sign me up as one of the people who won't miss UVLS at all. I -may- still use it if I coin a HTF version of it (got 1 more week since I cleared ToT this week already! You never know), but as is, I'm promptly DEing my normal one first thing on patch day.

I feel like 9778 Haste + 12-13k Mastery is the setup to go for starters at a 545-550 ilvl - I think lowering Mastery below 10k (which you would have to do if you went for the 13157 Haste cap) would be less benefitial on the long run, rather than a extra tick on the 3 dots. Some simcrafting on this would be nifty.

About what threshold to reach after SoO, I think staying at the 13157 Haste cap would be best - I'd have to calculate full HWF gear, the next reachable threshold would be 18207 (for the extra tick on all dots) and it'd depend mostly on how much Mastery you'd be able to sustain with that.

[Deleted]

dont forget that there is a breakpoint at 13737 as well which gives you an extra corr tick, i would say that in 5.4 this breakpoint is more desirable due to the increased chance on nightfall procs.

and if my math is correct, you can easily reach 18207 haste and around 12k mastery in full warforged normal gear, it will prolly be difficult in pure normal gear tho but if it shows that mastery is just plain better than haste, then its easily changable as well as most of that gear is gemmed for as much haste as possible while going after all setbonuses and there are also plenty of choices to reforge more mastery. Worse case scenario, if mastery turns out to be better, then instead of going after the 18207 breakpoint ill stay at the 13737 one and put the rest into mastery, i think it will be optimal to go after the 13737 BP or 18207 BP and then rest into mastery.

Edit: i did some testing on the ptr on a boss dummy(so take it with a grain of salt), and i seem to be getting better results with a heavy mastery build(13737 haste and 10k mastery) with UVLS, so im begining to lean a bit more to a 13737 haste and then stack mastery into infinity, should be possible in normal warforged gear to get to around 13737 haste and around 16-17k mastery which will prolly be what ill be aiming for instead of the 18207 haste BP, but since there is no simcraft or theorycraft being done since nothing is final yet, its too early to say what will be best.

[Werst]

Just for how many haste buffs you can stack or roll and how often aff engages multiple targets I see going mastery > haste if only slightly. Also keep in mind banging the gcd applying a dot or all those lovely latency lagfests favor mastery. By the time you have a LMG proc, zerking, warp, and even lifeblood that is a bunch of short term haste CD's that would be less potent on a max haste build. Short term haste buffs on a mastery setup give locks the burst which is often needed more than slightly higher sustained damage.

[Deleted]

i gonna forge to around 10k haste and pumping the rest into mastery, with my 547 ilvl i reach around 12.5k mastery and 9900 haste, this should be fine for normal mode, for heroic mode i'm sure there will be simulated numbers.