Not sure if this is common knowledge or not as I haven't seen it discussed anywhere, but Pyroblast's DoT portion does not appear to benefit from our mastery at all. I noticed this while checking my pyro DoT damage on a training dummy, and that Theralion's Mirror proc had no effect on the results. Submitted a bug ticket and was informed that it's a known issue, so maybe we can expect to see it resolved in 4.0.6., though the damage loss is fairly minor.

I'm not sure how you've gotten to these results, I ran basically the same test the difference is that I used my own gear as the starting point. First I dropped the haste rating to 515, the number of LB-s cast became 27 with 108 ticks, bumped the haste to 516 the number of spells cast 21.6 with 108 ticks.

DPS difference was circa 2.8%, however do note that the difference is not due to LB doing more damage but rather due to time and mana gained, in my case the number of fireballs cast increased by 7.5 while the number of scorches decreased by 6.5. Do note that my gear has 4t11 which makes the tradeoff fireball/scorch much more worthy than what would be the case for a mage struggling to reach the cap.

As a side note though, I do agree with the initial statement that the so called 'soft cap' is exaggerated. It all depends on how far you are from it. It's not an issue if you have raiding gear since you'll have it whether you want to or not and it's not viable to get to the next step; however people specifically dropping a generally more valuable stat just to get to the magic number when they have starting gear is a mistake in the majority of cases.

So we generally agree on the fact that haste is far below crit as simcraft values it and not nearly on par as rawr values it?
It's strange though that there is no obvious reason for this big difference and it also kind of makes it hard to choose some equip at the moment, although the rawr mage module seems to have some more problems and isn't really completed.

No obvious reason? Apart from that one of them is a simulation and one of them is a cycle solver. Both of them may suffer from incorrect mechanics; they certainly don't use all of the same math, let alone the same way of playing a mage, so to speak.

Don't whine about it being hard to choose gear, but think rather about what you can do to help SimC and Rawr to become more accurate. Have a look at your combat logs and try to compare with what you are seeing in the models. By making observations and trying to analyse them, we can perhaps help Dedmonwakeen and Kavan make better models and smooth out the discrepancies between the two applications.

Thank you very much for the clarification and I'm sorry that my statement was kind of unfunded. I have to admit that I don't know much about the mechanincs of both tools. Also I didn't want to sound like I was whining about it, I probably should have expressed it more like a question, as I was quite unsure about the value of haste and I couldn't find anything that made it clearer to me in the thread and the starting post.
I'm trying to do a bit more reading on the two tools and how they work.

Thank you for your work there, I didn't really consider running it for my personal settings.

Fire

* Flashburn now increases damage done by all your periodic fire damage effect by 22.4%, up from 20%. Each point of Mastery increases periodic damage done by an additional 2.8%, up from 2.5%.
* Fireball now costs 12% of base mana, down from 16%.
* Living Bomb now costs 17% of base mana, down from 22%.
* Firestarter no longer requires you to use Molten Armor to cast the Scorch spell while moving.

These changes are very much to the point in terms of increasing the value of mastery (it seems there won't be any confusion between comparative values of haste and mastery now), and balancing some of the OOM issues. Since Scorch and Pyroblast are already mana-free, the change in mana cost for Fireball and Living Bomb correspond to roughly a 25% decrease in overall mana usage. This would still require some mana conservation cycles without significantly gimping our dps.

All in all, very logical changes.

Going to make an updates BiS fire set now that most of the new enchants are out / metas are out / people are getting some heroic loot, etc.

Notes: This differs from the "current" one because of enchant changes / meta changes / and the non-existing of heroic trash loot.

BiS Professions: Engineering / Tailoring.

Helm: [Crown of the Twilight Queen] Enchant: 60 Int / 35 Crit - Gems: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond / Veiled Demonseye -Reforge: 96 Haste -> 96 Hit
Neck: [Valiona's Medallion] - Reforge: 57 Haste -> 57 Hit
Shoulders:[Firelord's Mantle] Enchant: 50 Int / 25 Haste - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 75 Haste -> 75 Crit
Cloak: [Shroud of Endless Grief] Enchant: Lightweave Embroidery - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 53 Haste -> 53 Hit
Chest: [Firelord's Robes] Enchant: 20 All Stats - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby / Veiled Demonseye - Reforge: 90 Haste -> 90 Hit
Bracers: [Bracers of the Bronze Flight] Enchant: 50 Int - Reforge: 57 Haste -> 57 Hit
Gloves:[Firelord's Gloves] Enchant: 65 Mastery and Synapse Springs - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 75 Mastery -> 75 Hit
Belt: [Belt of Arcane Storms] Enchant: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby / Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 75 Haste -> 75 Hit
Legs: [Firelord's Leggings] Enchant: 95 Int / 80 Stam - Gems: Potent Ember Topaz / Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 102 Haste -> 102 Crit
Boots: [Einhorn's Galoshes] Enchant: 50 Hit - Gems: Brilliant Inferno Ruby - Reforge: 75 Haste -> 75 Hit
Ring 1: [Planetary Band] Hit / Crit version - Reforge: None
Ring 2: [Permafrost Signet] Hit / Crit version - Reforge: None
Trinket 1: [Theralion's Mirror] - Reforge: Not Possible
Trinket 2: [Bell of Enraging Resonance] - Reforge: 143 Crit -> 143 Hit
Weapon: [Blade of the Witching Hour] Enchant: Power Torrent - Reforge: 43 Mastery -> 43 Hit
Off-Hand: [Book of Binding Will] Enchant: 40 Int - Reforge: 59 Haste -> 59 Crit
Wand: [Theresa's Booklight] - Reforge: 28 Mastery -> 28 Crit

Additional Note: Reforging is not exact. It is based of a drop off 39.5% of the stat, because when looking at all of my current reforging that seems to be about what it does - changes ~39.5% of one secondary stat to another. Basic rounding rules apply.

Overall: This will bring you to 1743 Hit rating. It also get's you easily above the Haste Soft cap.

Obviously Draenei's can drop 1% hit somewhere. I would recommend not reforging the trinket and using two +40 hit gems instead of the Veiled.

This is up to date as of 1/11/11 (just got new enchant changes / official meta changes etc).

Someone asked this on my guide on the WoW forums, and after doing some math I was surprised:

Some less hardcore mages who don't wanna throw out 5k+ for the Power Infusion weapon enchant had been using the Hurricane weapon enchant instead, however, I believe the +63 spell power enchant from wrath would be better.

Hurricane has a chance of granting 450 Haste for 12 seconds with a 45 second internal cooldown. Also, please note that this test does NOT count the 15% chance to proc hurricane, which would only add to the amount of time it is NOT up.

450 haste every 12/45 seconds
450*(12/45)=120 haste rating*1.2961=155.532

63 Spell Power * 2.5369= 159.8247

Also, the SP will be a static gain. Hurricane will (likely) not proc the instant the cooldown is up. This would also mean that the +81 spell power staff enchant would be better than hurricane as well.

Note: Please excuse me if I have made mistakes. I'm new around here.

Edit: thanks for that correction Kastor

Hi. Kinda new here so please correct me if I am wrong.

Our LB and Ignite compose up to 35% of our total damage for single target fight (WoL).
So Flashburn is currently buffed 10%. Assuming a Mastery of (base8 + 4).
old Mastery : 20% + 4*2.5% = 30% or 0.3
new Mastery : 22.4% + 4*2.8% = 33.6% or 0.336
LB & Ignite of total damage : 0.35
Dps changes in mastery
'=(1.336/1.3)*0.35
'=0.35969
Dps increase
'=0.35969-0.35
'=0.00969 or 0.969% increase in total fight
This number is rather low.

We all know that unspent mana = loss of dps and the recent changes reduce the casting cost of Living Bomb and Fireball.
If we were to increase haste wouldn't it be more beneficial?

You forget combustion, and some minor dots.Could add up to around 50%.And it is 12% not 10%.It should be a 1.5% to 2% dps increase.

Thanks for correcting that. That doesn't this raise and issue on how are we gonna deal with the additional mana since they lower the cost of FB and LB. The what seems obvious answer now is haste to burn those mana.