Originally Posted by
AnjaJD
Some decent information in this guide - I have a home-brewed one myself that I usually dish out to friends and guildmates who need help and former guilds that need help with their priests.
But I can't help but wonder why you list your dot "plateaus" (as you will) so incorrectly. A fellow shadowpriest and I were clocking them again today on server, because he didn't quite believe what a few other sources were saying. So we were doing some on-server testing versus simulation.
At 85, base - no haste, nothing - we get 5 VT ticks, 6 SW:P ticks, 8 DP ticks.
You say:
(quote)
What I was running with tests... has been showing something completely different. As we scale into higher content, I wonder when to scale back on haste for mastery (especially thanks to the huge dot nerf we just received, but more on that in a moment.)
I was taking off haste, and dropped my haste to 17.37 in form - 6 VT ticks / 7 SW:P ticks / 9 DP ticks. From here on the format will be haste - #/#/# (their ticks in same order respectively to what I just listed, then +#/+#/+# from base, VT/SW:P/DP respectively.)
I raised everything incrementally, I saved all my blues for this reason, I periodically check things in an ocd fashion. By incrementally I raised it as close to .25 as possible. Some of the time I was at .23, then I would recheck at .26 - I will post only what I found relevant to a dot tick added for space-saving.
17.37% = 6/7/9 - +1/+1/+1 (I was nearly naked, wearing my tier shoulders, a haste hat, and some reforged rings, one of them a blue, lol)
18.56% = 6/7/9 - +1/+1/+1
18.76% = 6/7/10 - +1/+1/+2
... The next jump didn't happen until I switched up some old gear and broke my 4pc for giggles (I've been on a quasi hiatus for medical reasons).
27.27% = 6/8/10 - +1/+2/+2 Shadow word pain, finally gets its day (again). (this was using a sub-optimal dps trinket that had latent haste on it)
25.16% = 6/8/10 - +1/+2/+2 (Without that trinket - with my normal sustained dps trinkets for raid. This equates to "2014 rating +15.73% haste" in the character panel. This is when I'm standing in form, no other buffs that affect haste. Without form, in this gear, my haste percentage reads 19.20%)
...
28.33 6/8/10 - +1/+2/+2
30.23 7/8/10 - +2/+2/+2 (The level is probably 30%)
30.95 7/8/10 - +2/+2/+2
...
34.88 7/8/11 - +2/+2/+3 (Dark Intent, we had to whore a lock to get it outside of a raid setting, we were doing the test at an odd time on server, we couldn't however, figure down were the actual +3 mark is, the warlock abandoned us and we lost the buff. Ugh. So we'll have to pay some loving to my RL friend who is a warlock on-server.)
34.57 7/8/11 - +2/+2/+3 (Dark Intent on my partymate, who has slightly less haste than me, but higher iLevel... more crit, essentially.)
Mind you my ilevel at the time of posting is 359, no firelands opening cloak, no avengers rep belt like my testing partymate.
I'm mostly concerned with this because the sources he's firing against me. He is the interested-in-theroycrafting-but-not-quite-familiar-with-his-new-main kind of priest to know what sources are blowing smoke and what sources are actually ON to something... he also doesn't know where to find reliable equations, not savvy with spreadsheets (building his own or using *good* spreadsheet and editing it). There's a difference in using good theorycrafters with slightly conflicting data, and just bad data from players trying to be the big elitistjerk. :P (Not saying yours falls into any of those categories, I just wanted to post these haste numbers and share them... possibly for clarification for yourself and others that visit this guide.)
I haven't, do this day, found a *reliable* datasheet, equation, simulator, that can project accurate haste levels for next dot ticks. What I would like to know... when is the next dot tick beyond what I can already obtain? Clearly... we can probably can another 1000 rating if we're utter snobs about reforging and going after only high-haste items. The difference in +1/+2/+2 barely happening (2015 rating) and my current gear (2337 rating) and eeking out extra haste to test if I can get extra dot ticks on the dummy (2580 haste rating) - that's a big difference in rating. As we progress through content (there may be 2 additional tiers this expansion)... I love to plan ahead, just as I did last xpac.
Now here's the thing... with all this haste, my test subject saw great gains in the dummy. He's been at a loss and ignoring my trusted sources (and my own guide) for what to reforge, what to gem for, what to enchant. So, it finally took doing all this to get him to realize he didn't need to nuke all of his haste down to 17%, all his mastery to 277 and change it to all to crit (while crit isn't bad... changing what he did to get there...), and put himself .5% over hit cap. Oi.
So now that he's seen the light he's on the same page as I am, and I've been wondering this since they announced the nerf to our dots...
Do we need all these extra dot ticks to an extent now that our dot damage isn't going to be as prominent of a damage dealer? Should we hit the first +1/+2/+2 and stop (18.75) and balance mastery/crit so we get "double" damage from crits and increased damage overall from mastery stacking on dots and insane Mind Blast increases from 3x orbs? (I had a spreadsheet that calculated the total increases per orb when you filled out all your gear, very handy.) Or should we just go until we get +2/+2/+2 (possibly 30% haste, achievable in pre-firelands with some handy reforging, but probably easily achievable with some basic rep gear, or early firelands gear... I haven't even started with the gearlists yet because I want to get to the bottom of this, I'll gladly accrue EPGP as mages and warlocks spend theirs on wrong pieces/suboptimal sidegrades or something... we're a 25man guild, it's bound to drop again.) I've never been a huge stacker of crit as you will, but I'll pick up a crit/haste combo piece if my hit can support it and there's really no other viable options in that tier (and there's no better PP options in other gear slots). Huzzah puzzle solving, I love a good puzzle.
Either way around it. I mostly wanted to post about the haste numbers. You have what I benched on the server today, 6/30/2011 through 12:00-4:00pm EST. Yes I was talented when I did all of this, so there as the 3% haste from talents, but I believe blizzard has that fixed into the character panel now, and I know they fixed the shadow form. Enjoy the delicious numbers.