As I predicted the shoulders are the piece that stays. The new KJ gloves are way way better than sunfire as well, it is kinda disgusting 52 dps above sunfire 76 above malefic in my current gear setup.

Keeping the shoulders also allows you to wear [Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] while you work on KJ, as well as better gem planning.

Looking at hit, the following items all have hit and are best in slot.

Helmet enchant - 14
Either t6 hat or shoulders - 16 (minimum)
Twins neck - 15
KJ gloves - 27
T6 belt - 20
T6 boots - 28
Loop of Forged Power - 19
Skull of Gul'dan - 25

Putting you at 164/169 hit before you have to really contemplate tradeoffs.

On a positive note, the [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents] is viable for a good duration of progression.

Well, with the new loot out I think its time to update the best-in-slot list.

Helm: [Dark Conjuror's Collar]
Neck [Amulet of Unfettered Magics]
Shoulders: [Mantle of the Malefic]
Chest: [Sunfire Robe] OR [Item not found!]
Back: [Tattered Cape of Antonidas]
Wrist: [Bracers of the Malefic]
Gloves: [Item not found!]
Belt: [Belt of the Malefic]
Legs: [Leggings of Calamity]
Feet: [Boots of the Malefic]
MH: [Sunflare]
OH: [Chronicle of Dark Secrets]
Wand: [Wand of the Demonsoul]
Ring: [Loop of Forged Power]
Ring: [Ring of Omnipotence]
Trinket: [The Skull of Gul'dan]
Trinket: [Shifting Naaru Sliver]

Gem [Runed Crimson Spinel] in red sockets and [Great Lionseye] in yellows until capped, then [Reckless Pyrestone]. [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] in the blue socket on helm/shoulders for the meta.

Like everyone else is saying, T6 shoulders are the piece to stay now which makes sense seeing as the new helm/gloves are off of KJ and ilvl 164 and the robe is a crafted 159 (not to mention T6 robe blows). Even with all of this new non-hit gear I'm finding Sunflare and hit gems to beat out the felmyst staff. Also, seeing as a lot of this is KJ loot there are a lot of other items that will still be very viable for most of SW (staff, sunfire gloves, even twins shoulders to an extent).

Will look better once the new items get added to Wowhead, but I'm sure you can figure out what the missing ones are. So am I missing anything here?

Add in 13 hit from dranei and 17 from chronicle/sunflare and you are at 199. Horde can gem 1 veiled pyrestone, and 1 great lionseye to reach 201.

Grand Magister's is really only viable if you can get the brutallus pants(we are currently at 0 pants, 5 reign of misery from brut), sunfire robe, sunfire handwraps, amice of the convoker and other similar 0 hit items early on.

Well, the staff allows you to use pendant of the sunfire too.

Given that everyone should have leatherworking, I'm pretty sure that sunfire robes+sunflare/chronicle+amulet is better dps than pendant+torrents+fel conqueror's raiments, making tailoring a better option than JC.

Even if you had no offhand or neck spell hit the staff would still put you way over unless you had every no hit item in sunwell or didn't have skull of gul'dan.

I'm hoping this isn't redundant, but in a quick search of the thread and a perusal of the recent posts, I didn't see anything about it, but the link to Debuffcount presented in the first post no longer works at all. I do see that an alternative is listed, but it seems as if the original mod has been completely removed from Curse and it is also not apparently present on WowAce. Just figured the OP might want to remove it altogether in the interest of staying current.

I heard about an addon called demon or somesuch, but can't find it right away. If anyone can point me to a good debuff counter/filter mod, I'll add it.

Debuff filter (can be found on curse) still works, I haven't updated it in several patches but it keeps chugging.

This is easily done. If you look at current gearsets, [Chronicle of Dark Secrets] to [Heart of the Pit], or [Nethervoid Cloak] to [Cloak of the Illidari Council] does the trick. Almost nobody has the ring of M'uru, so [Ring of Captured Storms] to [Ring of Ancient Knowledge] works as well.

Throughout this thread, there has been very little mention of the effect that a given boss encounter's fight dynamics have on the actual usefulness of haste.

I believe this is a great mistake. I am routinely seeing Warlocks spec into relatively low levels of haste due to Leulier's spreadsheet showing it theroretically increasing DPS, but not understanding that for many encounters those levels of haste actually only lead to a very minor increase in total damage done for the fight, or even no increase at all.


Concept

+damage, crit rating and hit rating have a realised effect per single cast. That is, a single cast will cause damage (modified by +dmg), might result in a critical strike (as modified by crit rating), and so on.

However, a single cast of a spell modifed by haste will have a lesser cast time (over default cast time) but does not result in extra damage in and of itself.

Ok, I hear you say - but haste provides its value over time. But how much time is actually needed to see a return on haste? This is effectively determined by the "tiers" of haste rating needed to reduce cast time enough to provide an additional cast in a "segment" of time possible on a given boss. My argument is, for many bosses in high-end TBC raiding, these segments of time are quite small, requiring relatively large values of haste to see an increase in damage dealt for the fight.

Put simply, if you move before you can cast enough times to realise an extra cast over that possible if you were not using haste (or some relative level of haste if comparing various haste levels), your haste benefit resets back to "zero" - both in terms of total extra damage possible, and relative to your advantage over other DPSers.

Example

To illustrate using the simple example of High Warlord Naj'entus, an encounter where there is generally not a lot of caster movement and might particularly benefit from haste (especially if not having to remove a spine from a fellow raider):

- The example uses a Shadowbolt spamming Destruction Warlock with a haste rating of 63.08 (4% haste), meaning the cast time of their shadowbolt is around 2.4 seconds.

Note that this level of haste is often typical for Destro Warlocks working their way up through BT/MH, given the ability to work in various haste items available from ZA/BT/Tailoring/Badges without unduly compromising their other key stats.

- The main segment of time in this fight where caster DPS occurs is during the 60 second windows between Najentus' use of Tidal Shield.
- The maximum number of casts possible in a 60 second period for a non-hasted, 2.5 sec Shadowbolt Warlock is 24.
- Comparitively, the maximum number of casts possible in a 60 second period for our 2.4 sec Shadow Bolt Warlock is 25.

So for your typical 4 minute or so Naj fight, the following will apply to our hasted Warlock:

- No haste benefit in the first 60-second segment due to time lost in initial positioning and use of a GCD for the chosen curse
- Assuming the Warlock is a good player and listens to raid comms, and gets their first Shadowbolt off as Tide Shield goes down, then they have segements two and three to gain an extra cast in the 60 second window over what would be possible if they had no haste and 2.5 second Shadowbolts.
- No haste benefit in the fourth 60-second segment because Naj dies let's say, 20 seconds in, before the "extra" cast is achieved.

So all in all, even in this fight that seems a pretty good one for caster spamming, 4% haste only got us two extra casts (and whatever dmg that entails - any combination of normal/crits for the two casts). Additionally, if you had to pluck a spine at any point, then the related segments would see no overall damage increase from the haste.

The 2.5 second Warlock might have chosen to increase their crit rating in lieu of haste - perhaps 1% crit gained by doing this. In a modelling sense, all other things being equal (plucks, other statss, etc) that Warlock is theroetically capable of less DPS than our 2.4 sec Warlock using Leulier's spreadsheet, but due to the fight mechanics stands a better chance to realise higher total damage.


Think that example was stacked to make my point? Au contraire.. there are many fights that are built on this basis of "known factor + random factor" (ie Tidal Shield + Plucking Spine), and in fact they just become more complicated and pronounced as a guild progresses to higher level encounters.

Consider: Supremus (phase 2 ongoing movement), Gurtogg Bloodboil (bloodboil and pre-fel rage movement), Shade of Akama (extremly short duration of fight, movement to Shade once attackable), Mother Sharaz (random Fatal Attraction), Illidari Council (ongoing random movement to avoid Blizzard/Flamestrike), Illidan (short timeframe and threat senstive transitions/rotations between latter phases), Rage Winterchill (random Death and Decay), Azgalor (frequent silence timer), Archimonde (ongoing movement), and of course Sunwell encounters such as Kalecgos (limited demon realm time), Felmyst (periodic movement), etc.

All of these encounters have fixed and random factors that can limit the impact of haste substantially.

Outcomes

Perhaps the important outcome that Warlocks wishing to truly maximise their build in the area of haste is as follows:

Closely understand the "segments of time" for boss encounters that are relevant to your guild's raiding - and ensure your chosen level of haste allows you to actually cast enough times to realise an increase in total damage dealt (not just a theoretical increase in DPS).

If you can't achieve that level, then use an alternate set of gear for the encounter that pushes +dmg or crit% to achieve the damage increase instead.

And be very mindful of this when deciding on the relative worth of items you are modelling in Leuliers, which rightfully cannot and does not factor the dynamics of a given fight. However, more than other stats, haste is impacted significantly by this and must be understood to achieve the ideal build.

This work both ways... you cast a SB in 2.2 sec ( which is about 200 rating). You're on archimonde and you have to move when doomfire get close, well at 2.2 you might get the SB off and at 2.5 you might have to cancel it losing quite a bit of dmg.

I mean if you start going this way you're going into a never ending stream of math and in the end, where is the fun?

You will only see such "tiers" of haste if you neglect all sources of randomness. In a realistic environment you will see benefits long before you gained the full casttime of one SB.

Two extra casts is actually pretty much, at BT gearlevel probably ~7,5k extra damage. You would need ~200 +dmg to achieve a similar gain in 60 sec.

This doesn't make any sense tho.. you can only determine the levels of haste required to suit a reasonable number of encounters if you factor the dynamics of WoW high-end fights, including randomness (as best you can).

The more realistic/random the fight, the more that haste is negatively effected (i.e. the more it moves away from theoretical dps/dmg increases) - can you elaborate on the benefits are you saying you will see long before you gain the full castime of one SB?

You are saying relatively small amounts of haste isnt good because you wont fit another shadowbolt into your dps window due to randomness and predictable effects. But dps windows are rarely exactly 2.5*n_shadowbolts seconds long (add time for lag if you wish). A dps window might very well be 15.6 shadowbolts in length. And small amounts of haste might allow you to squeeze in that last 0.6 shadowbolt.

And I doubt anyone is aiming for 68 spell haste, but if you're going to stack haste you need to start somewhere. When you are progressing through content you usually have to settle with the loot you can get. Not everyone get to be picky and build multiple gear sets.

Ok, depending on the variance of lag there can be noticeable steps int the damage gained when you regard a specified time slice. The smaller the variance the better you can notice the steps. But when the duration of the slices changes, the position of the steps also changes. And as most of them are not static in duration I see only little influence on gear selection. Even if they were static, you would have to change gear for specific encounters.

The average benefit of haste does not change if you add the effect of these steps, but the damage gained can fluctuate around this average.

If you want a bit of a visualization on this, you can refer back to my previous comments on modeling the Quagmirren's Eye trinket. It's a much more limited example, but the graphs posted clearly show the "tiered" effect that he's talking about. The difference is, I was modeling "effective haste," so instead of the downward trend you see in my graphs, you'd see a static line that periodically "hops" upward as each breakpoint is hit. See: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17008-w...08/#post727890

And I was thinking about the counterpoints to this, where haste would provide that extra time to squeeze off one extra shadowbolt before moving; really, you're just looking at the same picture, from a different angle. Your "slice of time" is the time to move, which is exactly what his is.

So regardless of the fight mechanics, or the fight itself, you're always limited to the effect of haste. The full effect of haste is only realized when the fight can be carried out standing in one place spamming shadowbolts. Otherwise, haste is actually worth far less than advertised by the spreadsheet.

Fights like Illidari Council demonstrate this clearly. At any given attempt, you could spend more time moving than casting, or vice versa. Obviously, there's a slight possibility you could carry out the whole fight without ever having an aoe dropped on you or the tank move out of range, but more often than not, you will have to move. Therefore, across the entire duration of the fight, haste has now lost some effectiveness.

In fact, IC is a very good example of the randomness of fights having a huge impact on the added value of haste. I'd say, from personal experience, it's not uncommon to spend about a third of the fight moving, whether it be from aoes or to keep up with the tank as he moves out of aoes/consecrations. Obviously, this is a prime opportunity to lifetap (if at full health, the dreaded blizzard/flamestrike combo when lifetapping is not fun), but you're still losing benefits from haste because you're not chaincasting, and probably had to move, interrupting your current cast.

If you want to look at it another way, every time you have to move is considered a chance to lose a portion of a cast. Haste lowers the probability of losing a portion of a cast, by some amount that's dependant on the amount of haste, the amount of times needed to move (on average) and the length of the fight. However, I'd say for most fights, you never gain the full benefits of haste.

With that in mind, though the spreadsheet may count haste:dmg on the order of 1.15:1 (depending on your gear), in all reality for any fight with random movement, this value could be much lower.

That is true, but it is also true for spelldmg and crit. You do not benefit from having either stat when you are not casting. The spreadsheet is a theoretical upper bound on your dps. In practice the numbers are often lower. As destruction your dps suffer from having to move, but the effect is not limited to haste.

Those saying haste is undervalued keep focusing on the negative side of movement. The argument goes: "Due to movement creating arbitrary time windows, I'll never get that 'extra cast' out of haste, so it's worth is less than the spreadsheet". However, the more haste you have the more likely you are to get that extra cast in a time window, which "overvalues" haste compared to the spreadsheet. It goes both ways, you can't just focus on the lost casts. In fights with downtimes, haste will be just as strong (arguably stronger since it scales worse with life tap than spell power).

Until someone shows that time windows necessarily fall on side of losses rather than gains from haste, I'll count it at the value of a stand and nuke.

I would say the movement effect is more drastic on haste, if you're looking at it from a per-cast standpoint. Unless every bolt is getting interrupted (hence leaving you with 0 dps anyway), crit and dmg have a greater effect per-bolt (or sequence of bolts) than haste does, under less-than-ideal circumstances. Going back to the breakpoint discussion, unless you can squeeze in an extra bolt every cast chain over what you'd get without haste, crit or dmg are going to give you greater gains.

The problem with haste is that the benefit can only be quantified with integer values. Going from 15 bolts to 15.99 bolts before having to move is 0 benefit, since 99% of a bolt is not 1 bolt. However, going from 5 crits to 6 in that same timeframe (on average) is a benefit, even though it is subject to the RNG effect. Going from 3000 average damage to 3050 average damage for each of those 15 bolts is even better, because it is even less subject to the RNG effect.

To be honest, unless it's a straight burn fight (aka Brutallus, unless you get extremely unlucky with Burns), dmg > haste > crit. On a percentage increase basis, it's actually dmg > crit > haste, but since crit is so expensive on items, it drops in value.

It might be helpful to generate some sort of metric for fights: Average # of movements and average fight length, to give you an average burn length (length / movements) to scale the value of haste accordingly. It'd at least give you a slightly more realistic idea of whether or not haste will give you an actual benefit (integral increase in bolts cast).

I mean, if you take a fight like IC, and see that the length is on the order of 10 min (very roughly), you might think 10% haste will give you a 10% dps increase, or an extra 24 bolts. However, if you have to move ~20 times, on average, then your average burn period is ~30 sec. A 30 second burn period with 10% haste will net 1 extra bolt over 0 haste, meaning haste does give you a benefit. However, due to movement, you're only squeezing in an extra 20 bolts, a net 4-bolt loss over the expected gain. The scaled gain would be 20/24 or 83% of the expected gain.

But see, there's a fallacy of logic. Movement will always interrupt burn periods, regardless of the amount of haste, and with roughly the same probability. In other words, at any given point in time, you are casting, meaning a movement is interrupting a cast. So, your actual dps will always be lower than the expected. Again, like I stated above, the problem with haste is it operates on gains in the bounds of integers. Unless you're always fitting an extra cast in your burn periods, you're losing the full benefit of haste. It's just less drastic when you are getting an extra bolt than when you don't, because 0 extra bolts means every point of haste has gone to waste, whereas x extra bolts just means some fraction of the haste has gone to waste..

Hasted or not, that .5 sec of a shadowbolt is lost; and in fact, if it's hasted, .5 sec of casting is worth more than .5 sec of unhasted casting; you would agree this is the case, especially when under the influence of heroism, etc.

Average is the value computed with #casts = time_window / (hasted_casttime + avg_lag). Simulation is a simulation averaged over a few thousand iterations without counting fractions of the casttime. I used
(this is a guess)
with (µ,) being the normal distribution with mean µ and standard deviation .

Please note that the benefit of haste is close to the average. Increasing further smoothes the graphs.