How do the haste breakpoints get affected by dark intent or is this accounted for in the numbers that Althor posted?

Alright, that makes sense, then. I believe Magmaw might be a good example (assuming one was lucky enough to not have to worry about AoEing) due to the DoTs being forced off when the Head appears and needing to reapply back and forth upon transitions. That would be my hypothesis, because even on a fight like ODS, it's still very possible (and if Toxitron is up, some one argue mandatory) to keep DoTs rolling on both targets as much as possible (obviously not during shields that can cause wipes). But before I derail my post into raid strategies, I'll say that it's probably modeled best by Magmaw - parasites if that's a bit of a good standpoint.

Furthermore, I saw something in the SimC base rotation that said it was casting Mind Blast without orbs (the line just above Mind Flay). Last time I checked, casting Mind Blast without orbs is a DPS loss and should be avoided when possible, and when I took out that line, I saw a slight gain in DPS and a higher average DPET on Mind Blast. Perhaps this is just on my character, and I'll throw some sims up with the BiS gearlist to see if this holds true in both instances, but I'm curious about others' results and if they mirror my own.

I recently looked over the Priest_Shadow_T11_372 Profile and made some adjustments by changing how the Items are reforged. The profile i came up with is saved here: chardev 8 - Cataclysm Beta

I tested my profile with Simcraft 406-4 against the default Priest_Shadow_T11_372 using the following comandline:
Priest_Shadow_T11_372 : 26922dps
Priest_Shadow_T11_372_Reforged : 26952dps
The Results can be seen here: Simulationcraft Results

Difference is not that much, but well proven by 300k iterations. Perhaps with the new Haste scaling breakpoints Althor mentioned the profile could be improved further. Haven't looked that up yet. I would also consider changing few Items: first thing in mind is Twilight's Hammer vs. Incineratus, since both profiles valueing crit slightly higher than mastery.

I was using SimC to see the dps impact of refreshing dots early (see shadowpriest.com • View topic - When to refresh dots for my results).

However while doing this I noticed a flaw in the way SimC refreshes dots, particularly VT.

VT is set to be cast if the time left before it drops off is less than (cast time + 0.5) seconds. If the time left is greater than this then SimC goes off and does some other action. But since that other action is at least 1GCD long, then quite often VT will have dropped off (or will drop off before it can be recast) by the time SimC next gets around to deciding what to cast.

So I tried playing around with the setting and found that (cast time + 2.5) seconds actually produces the best dps result. It's almost 1% dps higher than the default setting so I would suggest changing the default setting to this.

DP doesn't have the issue to quite the same extent because by default it is recast if the time left is (GCD + 0.5) seconds. When you think about it, this is rather inconsistent with the VT logic because DP is cast instantly (not at the end of the GCD). So, assuming a GCD of 1.3 seconds, this actually results in SimC attempting to recast DP if there is 1.8 seconds left on the dot.

For DP I found that the ideal setting is GCD + 1.0 seconds, so again I would suggest changing the default settings to this.

Note also that I was only testing DP and VT cast timers at 0.5 second intervals so its possible a bit more dps could be squeezed out by using finer different settings. However I was too lazy to do this, but others may want to play around with it!

Perhaps one final thing to note is that because DP does marginally more damage than MF, casting DP even more often (even up to (GCD + 8 seconds) early) does result in very marginal dps increases. However this probably isn't a sensible cast rotation to simulate, particularly because it starts to cause mana issues (although for quite a while the damage increase offsets the cast time lost due to needing to use dispersion).

I dont know if this has been asked , but what race is better for a shadow priest, choosing between troll and goblin. From what i can tell, the goblin racial comes better in longer fights?

Goblin is more maneuverability and troll is slightly higher DPS. Goblin is just better because all hard fights require maneuverability. This is similar to the alliance situation, where Worgen are just better despite Draenei being slightly higher DPS.

This is some truly excellent work, thanks for the contribution. I would still like to know how a rotation which assumes perfect 2nd mf tick clipping would hold up, and the viability of clipping mf in general. Has any work been done on which spells you should/should not clip mf for? I've been operating under the old wrath rules of only clipping for dot refreshes, but I don't even know that this technique is viable any longer especially with this new data in mind.

As for your data, it's a relief to know that shadowpriests don't have to strive to refresh dots at the last possible instant, as this caused plenty of headaches and removes the necessity to clip mf to reapply (provided there isn't a greater dps gain associated with clipping). Also to note is that since refreshing dp early can even lead to a dps increase, it seems as if refreshing dp as soon as buffs (i.e. heroism/bloodlust, power torrent, dmc, lightweave embroidery) apply/right before they run out would further increase dps. Not sure whether this rule carries over to vt or not though. Any math concerning the maximum amount of time left on vt before it is viable to refresh for buffs would be greatly appreciated; I haven't seen anyone attempt to tackle the issue thus far.

All in all, thanks for the research and I hope you continue to provide more info on dot refreshing mechanics in the future.

That's correct, however when you are less than GCD+casttime from VT to fall off then you have 3 options
- do nothing waiting for the exact time to refresh it (nobody simulated that but I suspect dps loss)
- do some other spell and let vt drop since you'll be gcd locked
- refresh early

He just found early refreshing to be dps gain, and that sounds absolutely correct

Actually you can always refresh VT exactly when it's optimal. VT ticks every 3/(1+haste) seconds (so with 30% haste for example, you get a tick every 2.3s). The optimal time for VT to be refreshed is between 3/(1+haste) and 0 seconds before the last tick. Since the cast time of VT is 1.5/(1+haste), you have to begin your cast between 4.5/(1+haste) and 1.5/(1+haste) seconds before the DoT expires. For any level of haste, you cannot be GCD locked for 3/(1+haste) seconds so you can always refresh VT exactly between the last 2 ticks.

This doesn't work when movement is required, although that wouldn't show in SimC, either.

SFiend does not benefit from Twisted Faith.