I've been wondering about the +50 haste glove enchant. I'm recollecting that if we're not needing to hit a haste threshold immediately, the value of haste drops dramatically. That fact gives rise to this question: Are there points at which we would get more value from the old Wrath enchant +28 spell power to gloves?

First I would like to comment on Dark Intent, I frequently run with a Resto Druid whose Mastery innately triggers DI every HoT that he casts.

Second, it seems that the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond still requires more blues than reds. However I have been doing some gear calculations and with Hit now being a stat for blue gems it seems relatively necessary to gem blues to reach the hit cap unless you would rather miss out on some of your enchants. Personally I have been looking at the green lightning cuts for haste/hit in particular and many of the better pieces of gear get decent socket bonuses for blue or yellow gems. Shadowflame Hood gains +30 crit, Shadowflame Robes gains +20 intellect, and Shadowflame Legwraps also gain +20 Int. I think that each of these bonuses, while considering the need to reach the hit cap, are worth gemming for the socket bonuses and thus meeting the requirements of the meta gem.

Not an issue for me, either, since I use the Soulburn+Soul Harvest trick pre-combat (which my Imp's Firebolt is not bound to), which queues up an insta-Soul Fire and keeps me at full Soul Shards for the boss fight.

There's a post on MMO-Champion that succinctly lists some findings about the relative worth of Dark Intent targets in the raid. You'll notice that Feral Druids are actually a very good target: it's got nothing to do with caster/melee and everything to do with the amount of damage the target derives from their DoTs and haste. Healers are listed in how well they proc the bonus for us.

You'll also be saddened to learn that while you can put Dark Intent on your Imp, Burning Embers will not proc it because (despite what you might imagine) it's actually one of your DoTs that the Imp can proc, so the imp doesn't actually have any DoT effects. If you're solo then putting on your pet is fine, but any party member is almost certainly a better target.

I'm not sure where you read that using cooldowns separately was the same as using them together, but it's quite easy to show that this is not the case. Imagine I can do 100 dps unbuffed and I have two buffs that each cause me to deal 50% extra damage for 10 seconds. The fight is 20 seconds long.

Sitation A: Use both buffs at once, for 10 seconds I do 100*1.5*1.5=225dps and for 10 seconds I do 100dps, so in total I do 3250 damage.

Situation B: Use the buffs sequentially, I do 100*1.5=150dps for 20 seconds, so in total I do 3000 damage.

I don't know about you, but Situatiion A looks better than Situation B to me.

I just used simulationcraft for my character (Lazermon @ Al'Akir - Game - World of Warcraft) and i noted one thing. When looking at the scale factors, i found that mastery had passed haste in value for me. Does someone have an explanation to why this can happen? my haste right now is 1382, nowhere near the 2 haste thresholds.

(This isnt the first time i simulated my character, but it is the first time haste is the worst stat for me)

Ok, let me explain both points a little bit more. I did read that post on mmo sometime ago but it does not cover the Dark Intent mechanic enough. 1) He does not offer the math behind it. E.g. he regards healers on their "crits per minutes" and not if they benefit from either the 3% haste or the 9% extra healing. 2) He does not cover inter-warlock action. Did you see where he lists a demo warlock buffing an affliction? 3) (and this is the critical point with the new haste mechanic to most of the dot classes) How does he calculate a "near-cap" caster like an affliction warlock who only needs additional 3% to get to the next haste cap? 4) And last but not least his calculation in damage increase is only dot related. In his example it's a 8.99% damage increase in _one_ dot and NOT overall.

In short: I wouldn't give it to a Shadow Priest if I had an Affliction Warlock who needs 3% Haste to gain extra ticks for his dots (the post is good, but doesn't cover the whole Dark Intent mechanic.)



To the second part. I said that using trinkets, procs and "on use" items like engineering enchants as often as possible results in the highest possible dps instead of waiting to use them during bloodlust/heroism. Some people tend to "save it up" for burst phases of a fight which doesn't result in higher overall dps (you can use your pots etc during bloodlust however). If you can use your trinkets/procs during bloodlust, it's nice, but you should not wait just to use them during it.

Did you have a recommended macro for using Soulburn/Soul Harvest on boss pulls? Forgive me if I'm blind and not seeing it in the original post.

Could be something like

/cast Soulburn
/cast Soul Harvest

But then you should probably use a
Pot
CotE (in combat)
Shadowbolt (1.5sec)
SoulFire (1.5sec + SB casting time)
combination for debuffs and max Soul Fire damage. I would also recommend to cancel Soul Harvest after the shard was regained and use it ~5-10sec pre combat.

Immo Bane of Havoc should not be optional but required. A (theoretical) 15% dps increase on several raid encounters make it mandatory to me. E.g. the first 2 encounters in Bastion of Twilight really lend themselves to exploiting Bane of Havoc.

I'm not 100% sure how BoH behaces with Rain of Fire, the last thing I heard was that it will only deal the damage to the baned target as if you used RoF on one target. Is this still correct or has it been fixed to apply 15% of the full AoE damage?

Anyway, here are the encounters in which BoH boosts your DPS:

Halfus Wyrmbreaker: On Halfus until both drakes are downed.
Theralion and Valiona: Obvious, put it on whichever dragon is in the air.
Ascendant Council: Put it on the one you're not DPSing, until Phase 3.
Cho'gall: Depends on your raid's DPS, but I spend a good chunk of time DPSing the tentacles in Phase 2, put it on Cho'gall at that point.

Council of Wind: Pretty obvious, put it on one of the bosses, that you don't DPS.
Al'akir: BoD all the way.

Magmaw: Put it on his exposed head shortly before the chain phase ends.
Omnotron: Put it on a boss when he reaches 50 energy and you switch target, expect for Magmatron, because BoH WILL break his shield.
Maloriak: Depends on your strategy, if you just AoE the adds in the green phase, stick with BoD.
Chimaeron: BoD
Atramedes: BoD
Nefarian: Depends on your strategy, but generally I wouldn't advise using BoH as you could accidentally set off the Lightning Machine.

That's 7/12 in which you'll have a definite DPS increase and a few maybes. I'm not sure why it's always treated like an optional talent.

On Maloriak BoH is a dps increase when used shortly before every "green phase" because your dealing massive aoe dmg (shadowflame+rain of fire+[does infernal awakening transfer to BoH?]).
In 10 mans BoH deals about 200000 dmg every 9-mob green phase which is better than BoD by a far margin.