A DoT Mechanics Clarification

Ordinarily I don't make posts to restate well-established rules of mechanics. May as well take the chance for a reminder in fact: the point of this blog is not really as a general source of Druid information. There are many blogs that reliably relay all current information and announcements. This is just a place for me to put original work or analysis that I do whenever I happen to do it--basically EJ-type forum posts that don't really belong on any particular thread.

Anyway, someone on twitter ( Sunfyre's Nest (SunfyresNest) on Twitter ) pointed me to this post on the site wow.joystiq.com:
Shifting Perspectives: Broken things that aren't, page 2

I'll just be direct: the "DoTs, haste and Nature's Grace" section is entirely wrong. I won't dwell on the error in that post, everyone makes mistakes. But as he notes somewhat ironically, there has been a lot of confusion about this point, and I just want to make sure the right information spreads. I have seen people ask the question about haste and DoT's countless times since the beginning of beta, and it's been hard to dispel the misconceptions about how it works. I reconfirmed the following on live immediately before making this post.

A DoT determines its tick rate at the moment it is cast, and this tick rate does not change while the DoT is ticking. It will only change when the DoT is refreshed. This has been true ever since Cataclysm beta introduced the DoT haste mechanic, and there has been no indication that it would ever change. There has been constant misinformation and confusion about this point, but there you have it. There isn't much more I can do. If it were to change on live tomorrow, I'd be the first to tell you.

For what it's worth, I can't think of a reason it would or should change. That's part of why I don't understand why every few days there's a post somewhere bringing this up in one way or another. There have been no new developments on this particular point--pretty much ever.

Anyway, this was a minor rant, but all the important information you need to know is already included in my Moonkin guide (http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-druid_balance_pve/). Most importantly, cast Insect Swarm before Moonkin/Sunfire because you want the latter to be affected by Nature's Grace. Doing this consistently can produce a difference of over 100 DPS.

EDIT: Brief addendum. When I posted this yesterday I forgot to mention something that probably is the cause of much of the confusion. The tooltip on the ticking DoT debuff will actually reflect your current haste as you mouse over it. This does not match the in-game behavior though. The easiest way to test this is to simply cast a single DoT at a target dummy--it will proc NG, and NG will be up for most of the DoT's duration, but it will give a number of ticks corresponding to a non-NG'ed DoT.