Yes that is exactly it, I've played around with different spell haste values myself in the spreadsheet and it does at certain points reduce your dps unless you tweak the "wait" value for each spellhaste number. If I did that I always got an increase. So for it to be accurate you would need a macro or something that also finds the wait value (and possibly also mindflay interrupt value) for each haste number that results in the highest dps.

Anyone run some numbers on the Shattered Sun exalted necklaces yet? Apparently, and these are largely unsubstantiated rumors based on data mining, the Aldor one yields a +100ish damage proc for 10 seconds while the Scryer one yields a +crit rating proc (yes there are those of us who picked Scryer without considering everything and/or if we were going to raid). Obviously the former is appealing while the latter is horrible.

I'm curious as to how it would stack up against the Zul'Aman neck or even the new PvP neck, [Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation], given the haste changes.

I agree that without tweaking the 'wait' values the complete picture of the gains from haste will not be realized but because of the nature of the graphs that are being produced by fully stepping out haste from 1-x in single point incriments the tweaking need not be done to attach a meaningful weight to haste as a stat.

All of the graphs that I have produced with the macro so far have all demonstrated the exact same behaviour which is, namely, a step wise linear function. Adjusting the wait values in the sheet would ultimately produce a completely linear graph or at least an aproximation of one given the amount of variance in the sim itself. That is to say the slope of the line is what matters, not the nominal DPS number that is being produced by the sim.

That said adding in logic to the macro that creates the values to adjust the wait times for maximum DPS is completely possible but as long as it is just guessing and checking it would make the function more time consuming.

Wrong. Tweaking wait is *absolutely* required to produce meaningful estimates of haste's value as a stat. A 0.1 second variance in wait can produce a variance of +/-2-3% in DPS, which is quite significant.

The weight of the stat is a function of its relative effect on DPS. You don't need to tweak the wait stat in order to determine that value because the graph is stepwise linear. All stepping out the wait values is going to do is smooth out the graph so it is completely linear instead of piecewise linear. The distinction between the two is completely academic because the slope is the weight of the stat and for the linear pieces of either graph it will be the same.

It does depend on what you're using the sheet for though. I should amend my argument by saying I would only be interested in using the sheet to assign approximate stat weights that can be used to select gear. If you are actually trying to created a DPS number to match with in game then, yes, the estimate of your DPS will require tweaking of the wait stat to remain accurate.

Actually, changing the wait timing is going to convert it from piecewise linear non-monotonic to piecewise linear monotonic, which is a very important difference.

The slope is not the same when you step the data out to 1 haste rating. I've done it. I've even provided code for other people to do it (sorry, not going to try to do simulation in Excel when I have MATLAB available). Haste rating's value is NOT LINEAR ACROSS THE RANGE. It is piecewise linear in small chunks, yes, but that implies slope variation. Adding wait timing simply changes the nature of the piecewise linearity - it doesn't suddenly make it linear across the range.

Adjusting your cast timing will, in fact, change the value of haste at a given point. Since the required value varies, and the graph itself remains piecewise linear whether you adjust or not, the slope change is meaningful given wait time variation.

Then your mathlab numbers are different than the simulation in the excel sheet because that is very much not the behaviour of the simulation in the spread sheet. In the excel sheet if the wait times are adjusted to optimal values given a specific haste rating and the DPS points at each value of haste are graph it does make it linear across the range. This makes sense because piecewise linear implies changing intercepts, not changing slopes.

What you are saying right now is that each marginal point of haste is worth a different amount, given a fixed set of other stats, depending on how much haste you have. The simulation in the sheet indicates that each marginal point of haste is worth the same amount, given a fixed set of other stats, reguardless of how much haste you have as long as you adjust your cast timing optimally.

I think your math is a little bit wrong. Piecewise linear implies that the slope is constant across each piece, not across the range (defining range as from 0 to N haste, N generally being on the order of 250-300 since those are maximum practical haste ratings). In fact, piecewise linear more or less requires different slopes, even if on very short segments - if you have uniform slope across a line, that line is not piecewise, it's simple linear.

And yes, haste has differential value depending on how much of it you have. That's obvious from a moment's thought about it.

edit: At any rate, running a full battery across 0:250 haste at 0,0.1,...,0.9,1.0 wait vals, will post a graphic when it's complete.

A curve can be piecewise linear with a constant slope and a changing intercept. This is what I observed building a curve out of the data produced by varying the haste value and running the sim for DPS. Piecewise linear doesn't require different slopes because a piecewise linear equation where the disjointed segments that all have the same slopes but different intercepts will have a constant derivative across the entire range. The slope from 0 to 250-300 is a completely different value than the instantaneous slope at any given point.

Haste adding different amounts of DPS depending on how much you already is true on live, now that I've thought about it, because of the GCD lock. Assuming 2.4 goes live as is this will no longer be the case. My mistake. The sheet is built with the GCD lock built in so I maintain, based on the graphs that the sheet is producing for me with its simulation, that in the sheet changing the wait values still only changes the intercepts on the various pieces in the graph and not the instantaneous slope at any given point. Again, this is merely what I'm observing from the output of the sheet and if it's incorrect the sheet should be fixed.

I'm not going to fix the sheet. Excel for programmatic simulation is just a bad tool.

Attached: simulation using 2.4 GCD, in increments of 1 haste, timestep of 0.01 seconds, 15 minute fights, across 250 haste at 10 different values of wait. While the shapes are, overall, *similar*, they are not identical. Essentially, as wait increases, peaks/troughs are flattened out.

Note that further smoothing of the graph can be seen as wait is boosted. However, waiting longer isn't always optimal - sometimes it does lower your DPS, while making the graph across haste closer to monotonically increasing. Hence my stipulation that wait is not something you can simply set and have be valid across the range of hastes.

Night elf brings the most damage to the table, since star shards is amazing. Humans are the best at PvE healing while night elves are the best at PvE damage. Draenei are in the middle. Dwarves are probably the best PvP race though.

By the way, when the content of your post takes less screen space than the image in your post signature, you might want to shrink down the size of the image.

They really did buff star shards? I haven't played alliance since pre-bc, and I remember that being a trash racial. I am probably going to end up going human anyways, just because its easier once we hit hyjal/bt and all the other rep things. I'm steering clear of a healer, and I want a decent dmg class, and you can never have enough shadow priests, I figure that will be my ending decision.

Sorry about the sig, but I am too lazy today to go in and fix it.

The SotS ring and AD trinket are both underwhelming. Plus, if you're interested in min/maxing your character for a raid environment, "time it takes to get rep" isn't really relevant. Make a Night Elf.

AD trinket is fine, for what it's worth. I'm not sure why people are so down on it - it isn't best in slot (or even close to), it's beaten out by Icon/Head/Skull, but is competitive with Blessings (before I got a head, I swapped between Blessings and AD Exalted depending on fight - if Blessings resets a couple times, or if you multidot, AD Exalted beats it). SotS ring isn't exactly bad either - it's a solid ring, certainly. Neither is worth going human for (especially not the trinket - AD rep comes FAST).

Re: racials - NE have highest personal damage, draenei have highest group benefit (higher mana return as well as a 1% spellhit aura). Dwarf shadow is inferior in all respects for PvE. Human shadow is okay - small damage boost and personal regen boost from human spirit, repgrind reduction, but inferior output in the two main categories to night elf and draenei (damage/regen).

Heya everyone,

I've been trying to get hands on the [Hood of Hexing] or [Cowl of the Grand Engineer] and couple it with the [Trousers of the Astromancer] I already have to have an alternative for my Spellstrike Set. Right now I'm mostly wondering if it's a better choice than Spellstrike in general, or whether it's use is limited to fights where a larger than normal health pool is needed.

I'm fairly sure either hat coupled with the new 2.4 BoJ [Legwraps of Sweltering Flame] will be better than Spellstrike, but should I be looking to replace the set already?

Much appreciated.

Yes, either head coupled with the Trousers will be superior to the Spellstrike set, although not by a tremendous amount. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to change head/legs with a simple upgrade to one as opposed to having to consider teh set bonus. There are threads on shadowpriest.com evaluating the different types of gear both pre 2.4 and post 2.4, and I urge you to check them out.

Ceran, at first glance it looks like that WWS is collected over several hours of raid time. That would explain why the DPS time is less than 100%, since it includes downtime between trash and bosses. Probably the easiest mob to track your DPS for in that WWS is going to be Rage Winterchill, even though its a short fight. You could also contrast that with Illidari Council, as thats a longer fight with a little more movement. If you can, try to get ahold of WWS for teron, as that seems to be the benchmark most people go off of when analyzing DPS cycles.

To analyze the WWS, use the "split" tab to focus on the fight you are interested in, and use the "browse" tab to highlight your contribution.

To see your Rage breakdown : Ceran - WWS
To see your Council breakdown: Ceran - WWS

With regard to dot clipping, there isn't any immediate way to read how often you are clipping your dots per se. The easiest way is to read the amount of time the fight took (look in the summary tab), and (I believe, might be wrong its late) divide by 3. Since both your dots tick every 3 seconds, the ideal fight (assuming no multi target dotting) would be (dps time)/3. The closer you are getting to that, the more confident you can be you aren't clipping your dots.

Kalman, your graph is very interesting. It looks like there are 2 different curves. The higher curve is the result of proper wait times, and the lower one is the result of not waiting long enough. Which one do you think is closer to a real world approximation? I would expect human reactions adjusting wait times on the fly to be closer to the optimal curve. What spell damage did you assume for this simulation?

There also seem to be quite sharp diminishing returns on haste, with a plateau between 150 and 200 spell haste. That would put the sweet spot between 100 and 150.

Evanwill's numbers also show a plateau, but around 100-150. That's one of the places where small amounts of waiting make a big difference, though.

How much +damage does it take to add 1 dps? I'd like to try to calculate the relative usefulness of haste vs damage. I've seen reports of 0.5 haste = 1 damage for live, all the way up to 1 haste = 1 damage for PTR. It should be easy to calculate from the graphs if I can convert from DPS to +damage.

The graph was run at 1400 +dmg. I suspect that human reaction will wind up somewhere in the top-middle of the bounds, as people don't tend to play perfectly; that said, the penalty for being 'close' tends to be fairly low (though not always).

I don't know if Evan is running under 2.4 GCD assumptions; I was. I expect that would make a difference in where the 'plateau' lands. Roughly speaking, 2 +dmg = 1 +dps; on PTR, the haste:damage conversion does appear to be close to 1:1 at the 250 range, Even at the 'plateau', it still appears to be on the order of 0.8:1. There's also some indication that the plateau may end and past 250 it may boost back up, I need to run some more simulations.

For 2.4, I basically expect +haste to be roughly 1:1 with +dmg, between the combination of it appearing very close to that value in simulations and the unsimulated benefits (motion fights have higher cast allowances.)

I'm very pleased to have found this forum... finally, people that speak my language. Shadow Priest.

As a guild leader having to lead Kara runs with my newly-70's and my weekly-casuals (not very elitist... I know...), every week I've been picking up extra badges that, until news of the 2.4 badge rewards, were just burning holes in my bags. I started messing around with spell haste gear and I can confirm that you guys are right on the money with the +3 spell haste = +1 DPS that you've been kicking around in this thread -- Kudos to the math-crunching Shadows! I've found that depending on the piece of gear that I'm swapping out, it's more a matter of what am I losing to gain the haste :: and in many cases, I've come out ahead after the math-splosion (for example... the Runed Spell-cuffs vs Bands of Nefarious Deeds).

Additionally, I picked up the Essence of the Martyr for my healing set (*gasp* A healing set!? not very elitist at ALL... I know...), and I found out that the Essence is on a separate CD from the Icon of the Silver Crescent. So, am I right to assume the following:

In general...

Icon = (155/6) + 43 = +68.83 effective
Essence = (99/6) + 28 = +44.5 effective
TRINKET TOTAL = +113.33

... but for fights that last for 20secs or less (i.e. most trash fights)...

Icon = 155 + 43 = +198
Essence = 99 + 28 = +127
TRINKET TOTAL = +325

Since there is generally downtime between trash pulls (drinking, rezing, moving to the next pull, rebuffing, joking around on Vent, etc...), I've found that this trinket combo has dramatically increased my combat effective DPS, especially since I have both trinkets linked to every damage casting spell in my arsenal using macros (so the trinkets are being popped at every possible chance).

Thoughts?

After a round of number crunching this morning, I think the Runed Spell-cuffs will be my next badge purchase. They work out to 0.8 more +damage equivalents per badge over my current gear, which blows away everything else available per badge. Glad to hear that the real world results are satisfactory, Anderung!

On my warlock I used a mod called TwinTrinkets to rotate trinkets based on cooldown. I only macroed trinkets to DOT spells though, because it's sort of a waste to pop a trinket during the last 5s of a fight. Usually I would wind up with a trinket cooling in my bags, a trinket freshly equipped with the 30s cooldown, and a trinket ready to go for most trash pulls.