Speaking of simulations, I believe a number of people have been suggesting saving one SS for Lunar.
Cyos suggested that in his blog post, but that was before the shooting stars proc chance was doubled.
I get slightly higher patchwork numbers if the rule is always use SS at three charges, and always use SS unless you already have the Empowerment it would give. Both rules applied after DoT maintenance.
The qualitative reasoning is
- SS (+ empowerment it gives) costs 1 GCD, but is worth a bit more than two Starfires
- With mastery at 60%, a perfect-timed cast of anything is only worth at most 25% more than a cast somewhere on the correct half of the eclipse bar. The empowerment buff is always worth 30% to a cast (unless you lose it, or overwrite it)
- Because of the previous two bullets. Patchwerk DPS is largely determined by DoT maintenance, and the number of "good" SS casts.
- Saving SS casts substantially increases the chance that you'll lose chargers (timer resets if stacks reach three) or have to overwrite empowerment to avoid losing charges.