When spamming Mind Flay, the time to the next orb is an exponential random variable. For each three MF ticks, you have 1 SW:P tick. With a proc chance per tick of p, the probability that the orb procs at the Nth MF tick is : (1-p)^(N*4/3 - 1) * p (the 4/3 represents the additional ticks from SW:P. Depending on the "phasing, it could be the floor or the ceil of that value).

The main point is that this distribution is not heavy tailed. The probability to wait a long time decreases quickly.

I understand the theoretical argument for the low value of hit in a simulated tank and spank environment. That makes sense to me, in theory. I was simply pointing out that, for all practical purposes (0.8% if far less than the RNG in real raid environments), you don't lose any DPS, even in a perfect world, by getting hit capped with the gear currently available.

That is why I (and others) are proposing that it is safe and correct to say:
Shadow Priests: hit is better than haste until you are near the cap (say 15%). And, really, you are not going to see a DPS loss even if you get to the cap.

I concur. I mentioned on another thread that my personal dummy tests resulted in a very small dps loss when I used my regular, 8.5% hit set vs an "inferior" hitcapped set, and I think that gap would only broaden in an actual raid environment, where movement and overtaxed reaction times come into play.

Not being capped drives me insane, anyway. Missing two flays in a row during a Rohash Storm Shield and watching the raid wipe because of it = murderous rage.

Edit: Does anyone have any hard numbers on the dps loss of glyphing Dispersion instead of Death? I've had the former since xpac release due to mana and survival issues and have only recently (having reached full-ish 359 gear) considered returning to GoSWD; I've always thought that an occasional pre-25% SWD and the glyphed Dispersion (available, though not used for its duration on CD, as a rule) were better dps gains overall than glyphing Death and having to use full Dispersions, save Fiend for mana, etc. Additionally, my limited experience with Cata's hardmodes has shown me that 100% of wipes are "Hey idiots, keep yourselves alive" wipes instead of "We all lived but hit the enrage timer due to a lack of 1% dps" wipes. Do those reasons seem sufficient to consider Dispersion as a sometimes glyph choice?

I am getting a bit skeptical of simulation craft results, mostly because our rotation now is incredibly difficult to pull off perfectly, and the weights given by simulation craft assume an impossible level of play.

In practice:

- Most fights require movement at times you don't choose, making recasting vampiric touch or mindblast after a resist a pain in the ass.
- Recasting DoT so they land right before they expire is very difficult and requires you to plan spell-cast sequences up to 3 or so GCD in advance.
- To benefit properly from haste, you need to have perfect DoT landing times. If you don't refresh DoT at perfect times, haste has pretty significant softcaps (since you'll either miss a tick from refreshing it before the last tick, or miss ticks in the gap between wearing off and re-application).
- Haste makes the rotation much harder and increases mana expenditure (flay crits reducing shadowfiend obviously isn't enough). Crit has no effect on rotation efficiency but mildly increases mana returns.
- Hit makes the rotation much smoother. Spirit is also very useful for people who dual spec to holy often.
- In game, situational awareness is incredibly precious - if you have to increase your focus on the rotation it means you might miss things like life-saving lifegrips.

I am seriously considering reforging a lot of things to spirit, then testing things out empirically to see how they work out for me in a real life raid scenario. Multi-dotting two mobs with hasted dots, uncapped hit, while watching shadow orbs, on top of the usual avoiding AoE and raid leading probably leads to a DPS loss for me.