Haste is good in that it becomes more valuable as you stack it. If between Bloodlust and Berserking your Lightning Bolts are under 1.0 seconds, you're haste capped and you should probably space those cooldowns out. In all likelihood they're still over 1.0 and you're getting the full benefit, which means you should continue to stack everything at the start where you know you won't have to move.

I was actually pretty happy with my Algalon DPS this week, though as usual it's near the bottom of the meters. The Vezax and Mimiron kills were pretty good as well:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I have a few things I'd like to ask about, and I'm not sure if this is the right place to be asking all of these questions.

I have been looking at the stat weightings used in both spreadsheets and noticed that in Binkenstein's SEIC spreadsheet, haste is weighted heavier than spellpower by about 0.07, whereas the ESSE spreadsheet has haste weighted quite a bit below spellpower. I'm not really sure of the reasoning of either of these and was wondering if anyone could clarify on it.

Next, I'm proud to say that I have acquired my first trophy and am just about ready to pick up my first Tier 9 piece, and am trying to figure out which piece would be the better first buy:

The World of Warcraft Armory

I have all 5 pieces of T8.5, but dont have much flexibility yet in terms of rings to drop some hit for the pieces with hit(I am aware of the glove enchant, I'm waiting to do it myself).

Thanks in advance for your advice

I have the same question as snoopy - I'm looking at tier 9.5 and want to know which piece to get first - I'm thinking helm or chest but am not sure. I'll probably have to temporarily give up the shoulders i have and go back to the 4 piece t8 when i get the piece.

The World of Warcraft Armory

I would go for the helm, as it has no hit and it takes the place of your only non-set slot right now.

There's no particular piece of T9 that's hands-down better than another. Just look at your available gear and use the piece that allows you to most optimally keep the T8 4-piece bonus.

I personally feel that the helm is the best item of 8.5 gear to switch out as well. The 8.5 set helm doesn't have any haste, so I forgoe the helm for the resto helm since it has haste. Once I get a trophy I will be looking at upgrading my helm first to keep the set bonus from 8.5 longer.

Indeed, my choice was made for me because I never won shoulders from Yogg.

And on the Shoulders, does anyone else think they look horrible?

I went with the shoulders as well, however there is a slight bit more calculation that needs to go into it. If you are planning on getting your hit via your tier pieces, you might want to make sure you aren't taking pieces that will place you even further over/under the hit cap depending on what mix of heroic/non-heroic you end up with.

I came to the realization that I'm probably not going to end up with full Heroic level tier gear for all 4 of of my pieces of t9 gear, and I plan to get my hit via outside tier hit pieces so I wanted to make sure I got my "hit" tier from Heroic pieces rather than non-heroic with would leave me a few points short of hit capped with the pieces I"d chosen.

(The reason I doubt I'll get all Heroic gear is just math, while we don't know if its 1 or 2 pieces that will drop from heroic, there are only 5 bosses, and everyone in your guild wants at least four pieces of those same drops. With a small guild of 30 at 4 pieces a pieces, that is 120 pieces you'll need to kit out your whole guild in 4 pcs. Even two pieces per boss yields a best case scenario of 12 weeks before you get the necessary drops, assuming the "Vanq, Conq, Prot" drops are in proportion.)

And, to the above, I like the shoulder graphic. Its not t6, but its better than the others have been in Wrath imo.

I'm almost certain ( for horde anyway ) that the tier piece we won't be using is the leggings or possibly the gloves. MMO-Champion.com is down for me at the moment, for some reason. All I know is that there is a 3 slot cloth leggings that are very good. I will be doing the math later, but was wondering if anyone has figured out which piece we won't be using?

I'm trying to determine which gear is better on my own. I use Sample Output: SampleOutputT8 - simulationcraft - Project Hosting on Google Code

There are two options for me: one with ToW and one without ToW. If anyone uses this site, can you tell me if the ToW they are referring to is the Glyph, or is it the totem?

If you don't use Sample Output, what do you use?

Wolfies,

To answer your question from yesterday:

[Legwraps of the Awakening]

mmo-champion list the Heroic Version as well

Ah, yea. I didn't notice that, thank you. Targon, I figured it was the pants in school

Just a quick question; when I do lootrank and wowhead from that site they give different numbers. How I calculate Spell power, intellect, crit or haste is the following:

Example: (I'll be using one as an example)

1 int = 1 x 0.32 = 0.32
1 crit = 1 x 0.98 = 0.98
1 SP = 1 x 1.39 = 1.39
1 haste = 1 x 1.25 = 1.25

I add them up and I get 3.94 DPS. I just want to make sure I'm doing this correctly.

Um... why do you want to add the EP values together? This doesn't really make any sense.

The reason that Lootrank and Wowhead values differ is that Wowhead "normalises" their values to make the highest one = 100, while lootrank just takes whatever values you give it.

I'm faced with the choice between the (heroic) Darkspear Ritual Binding and the Belt of the Fallen Wyrm. Fully socketed, I'd be trading 62 haste rating for 42 SP by switching to the 245 item. This seems like a wash at best.

I was adding them together to find the total EP value of the item. I thought that's how you do it. When determining my gear that's how I did it and it always came out right. If there is a correct way, would you mind telling me?

Yes, that is correct. I mis-interpreted what you were doing with your example.

As far as I know ToVP is a fairly weak trinket.
If you assume it takes about 10 seconds to stack the effect (you could assume it takes 8 seconds but then you're haste capped and there is not much use for more haste, so i just assumed a 1.25 LB cast time for ease sake), it means you get about 75% out of it (10 seconds full benefit + 10 seconds it takes to stack you benefit 50%, total is 75%).

That means 342 haste for 20 seconds every 2 minutes. Thats about 57 haste over time.

57 haste + 114 crit
vs
125 sp + 87 crit

I don't have any equivalent numbers here, but if Wolfies numbers were accurate thats:
183 dps for ToVP
vs
259 dps for EotB

[e]: As for the trinket. It says in the tooltip that it's unique. I personally highly doubt that you can equip the hardmode and normal versions both. But i guess time will tell.

With regards to the tier 8.5 4set, the effect it had on my dps never seemed to be more than contributing towards about 3% overall in the charts of abilities.

With the addition of items the new patch has brought I'm trying to figure out at the moment what would be best for elemental.

2set T8.5 + non-set pieces to 289 cap.

4set T9/T9.5 to 289 cap.

The hit rating seems to be the real pain at the moment. Getting the least amount of wastage as possible.

Thoughts?

I'd really like to know as well how much living in Australia and having a latency of 500ms is going to effect dps because I'm always in the middle to the bottom of the pack dps wise except for some fights with gimmicks or if I can CL spam because of adds.

In your wws log, there is a waaay long delay between casts, so it's latency related. Do you use a castbar addon that displays cast delay? If not, install one (like Quartz), and you can start casting the next spell when you see your previous spellcast entering the 'red' zone. Read more in the TTT.

Assuming you are using a casting mod such as quartz, I personally don't find with PVE too much of an issue with latency affecting my DPS.

What you are finding as Ele being in the middle to the bottom of the pack dps wise is normal. That's just how we wash out, unless it's a single target tank and spank fight (Patchwork) then we easily get overtaken.

Obviously the reasons for this are well documented so it wouldn't take to much reading to find out why

Your latency issue does affect your DPS by a bit, it's not a huge difference but you would notice when sitting on lets say... 20 MS.

I do have latency issues myself since i play from Sweden, but still i'm able to keep up with the DPS, it's just the starter that can be slow and switching between targets, but that's about it.

As for the T9 pieces, it is really depending on your current Haste/hit and SP, so there's not a specific piece that you should go for at first, as for me the head piece is the most valueable piece due to my current hit rating which is above the hit cap assuming you got a Boomkin/shadowpriest in the raid, which you mostly got in an organized raid.

Also regarding the haste/SP which is the most DPS increase, i would say that SP is the highest DPS increase due to the 4-set T8.5, assuming that your haste is atleast around 600 so you still got an extra LB cast incase that previous one wouldn't critt, that way you can keep up higher DMG with your LB dot and still keep your get out of jail card by not letting the Dot wear of all the time. Of course your % critt is a important part of it, i would personally say that the lowest % critt that you should have is around 26-28% as lowest (excluding EO and CoT or any other raid/talent buff)