PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 141

Arelenda · 07/25/08, 5:24 PM

Originally Posted by Torq

Originally Posted by Arelenda

All tests I've run, and addons I've written, have shown me that after hit rating, haste gave me the biggest benefit on a point-for-point basis for my gear and spec (0/21/40, 1300+ spellpower, capped hit, etc). Unless you went completely overboard and lost significantly more spellpower and crit rating than the haste rating you've gained, you should not be seeing a decrease in damage.

I find this interesting. I ran some sims that essentially were 5 locks with varying degrees of haste/damage combinations on top of a specific base, with randomized interruptions during the fight, and found haste to actually be worth slightly less than damage. I'm curious to the details of your sims.

Spreadsheet and ShadowSeer. ShadowSeer recorded fight data, and analyzed it. It calculated how much damage I would have done more if I had 100 more +damage. It kept track of all spells used, spellpower on cast, and spell coefficients. I'm fairly sure you can't get any better estimates than that.

It also did this for 100 extra haste rating, by calculating the time spent casting, and estimating how many extra spells you could have squeezed in. It compensated for the mana cost by also inserting life taps. This is by no means accurate, but I think it's a fairly good estimate.

Even before 2.3, the numbers for 100 haste were higher than the ones for 100 damage. This is for fights I did, with my 0/21/40 spec and 0 haste.

I remember that I actually was disappointed, because I had predicted haste to be worthless back when it was 22.1 per %, and I had to start rethinking my hasteless kit.

As for your assumption that haste doesn't necessarily benefit you when there are lots of interrupts, consider the following scenario.

lock A loves haste and has 1.25s cast Shadow Bolts that hit for 2500 on average.
lock B loves crit and spellpower, and has 2.5s cast SBs that hit for 5000 on average.

Both warlocks have the same dps when chain casting (2000). Now imagine a fight where both of them have to stop casting and reposition, say this happens 5 times during the fight.

Lock A loses 5 casts, losing 12500 damage.
Lock B loses 5 casts, losing 25000 damage.

Clearly, A is less affected.

Granted, it's not as black and white in real world scenarios, and the initial numbers are wildly exaggerated. But the point remains the same: if your casts are shorter, you will lose less on interruptions. It is completely possible that due to random interruptions you don't get full benefit of haste, but on average, interruptions favor warlock A's strategy.

On another point: I don't think it is possible nor necessary to make a metric for time lost when running.

Trickykid · 07/25/08, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Torq

Well, at least you're agreeing with me now. Before, you were insisting that haste could give you a better dps benefit than the spreadsheet value (earlier in the thread). This is where I was disagreeing with you. You were implying that if the spreadsheet states you can hit 2000 dps based on certain values of haste, you could actually achieve more than that.

You're disagreeing with me over nothing, then. I was stating that the dps value in the spreadsheet is your upper bound, and cannot be exceeded. The problem is, everyone bases their gear and stat choices off that dps value in the spreadsheet, since the dps values in the spreadsheet are based off of increases to that overall number, not necessarily the relative increases. Therefore, your dps increase from haste is still upper-bounded by that spreadsheet value. I'm comparing a single relation, you're comparing a double relation.

In your scenario, the following is true (neglecting crit):

Relative to the unhasted lock, the hasted lock is achieving 200% casts (100% more).
Relative to the hasted lock, the unhasted lock is achieving 50% casts (50% less).
Relative to the spreadsheet value, the hasted lock is achieving at most 100% of his theoretical dps.
Relative to the spreadsheet value, the unhasted lock is achieving at most 50% of his theoretical dps.

Note: The at most assumes that movement is a net loss of 0 seconds of casting time at best (obviously not true, but it's a lower bound of time lost).

If you look at the relations, you can see that if the hasted lock is achieving 200% casts over the unhasted lock, who is doing at most 50% of his theoretical dps, the hasted lock is doing at most 100% of his theoretical dps. So you are correct in that depending on the situation, haste can offer a greater "relative" benefit, but only in relation to the same caster with less/no haste. The disconnect in both of our arguments, I think, is using extreme examples.

But then we're back to my original point, of where it'd be useful to have a metric that would give some meaningful number to the amount of movement in a given fight...

Err, no I am not agreeing with you. I am still stating that haste can give you more value than the spreadsheet predicts because the spreadsheet gives you values relative to other stats. Once again, the "DPS value" in the spreadsheet is useless on its own, you should be comparing having and not having a stat, and the marginal gain there compared to the marginal gain in another stat. "The next stat" section does this by comparing the marginal gain from each stat on the average. In your example, the value of that haste is far more than the spreadsheet would tell you, since it would only give you that "theoretical" value. Given that the relative values of stats change based upon small variations in fight-segment length and that fight-segment lengths vary a huge amount, you may as well be using the expected average gain from those stats. Signing off of this discussion though as I'm tired of rewording the same point in different ways.

Sydane · 07/25/08, 5:47 PM

I think haste actually makes dps more stable. With more casts and fewer crits, you are less likely to have long streaks of good or bad. Now it's unlikely that anyone plays with enough haste to actually make a substantial difference, but as mentioned above, missing out on one cast out of 60 isn't as bad as one cast out of 40 or 50.

This reminds me a lot of the EH vs Avoidance discussion for tanking, it makes for a lot of interesting theory, but what does it really come down to? Usually just a couple of gem choices. Really the inclusion of haste gems just let people gem for socket bonuses without feeling too guilty about it, because the spreadsheet backed it up, whether it made much difference or not.

It's a real shame we won't be gaining new gem choices like melee dps is (Armor Pen and Expertise). Personally I'd still really love to see some true choices between gear. The idea of a weapon that had over 200 haste and zero spell damage really excited me, not because the weapon was that great, but because it was truly different. At best right now we get a choice between crit, haste, or hit, and at the top end you don't really even get that choice. Procs try to be different and creative but they are usually too unpredictable to be of use. Maybe something similar to Vial of the Sunwell for casters where you built up a charge and got a gcd free cast you could use while moving would provide some choices. Perhaps the inscription system will allow for some of that choice and variance.

Torq · 07/25/08, 5:59 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

Spreadsheet and ShadowSeer. ShadowSeer recorded fight data, and analyzed it. It calculated how much damage I would have done more if I had 100 more +damage. It kept track of all spells used, spellpower on cast, and spell coefficients. I'm fairly sure you can't get any better estimates than that.

It also did this for 100 extra haste rating, by calculating the time spent casting, and estimating how many extra spells you could have squeezed in. It compensated for the mana cost by also inserting life taps. This is by no means accurate, but I think it's a fairly good estimate.

Even before 2.3, the numbers for 100 haste were higher than the ones for 100 damage. This is for fights I did, with my 0/21/40 spec and 0 haste.

I remember that I actually was disappointed, because I had predicted haste to be worthless back when it was 22.1 per %, and I had to start rethinking my hasteless kit.

Wouldn't it have been a little more "fair" to weigh 100 haste against 120 spell damage? That way you weighing equal item stat weights and not equal values.

Originally Posted by Arelenda

As for your assumption that haste doesn't necessarily benefit you when there are lots of interrupts, consider the following scenario.

lock A loves haste and has 1.25s cast Shadow Bolts that hit for 2500 on average.
lock B loves crit and spellpower, and has 2.5s cast SBs that hit for 5000 on average.

Both warlocks have the same dps when chain casting (2000). Now imagine a fight where both of them have to stop casting and reposition, say this happens 5 times during the fight.

Lock A loses 5 casts, losing 12500 damage.
Lock B loses 5 casts, losing 25000 damage.

Clearly, A is less affected.

Granted, it's not as black and white in real world scenarios, and the initial numbers are wildly exaggerated. But the point remains the same: if your casts are shorter, you will lose less on interruptions. It is completely possible that due to random interruptions you don't get full benefit of haste, but on average, interruptions favor warlock A's strategy.

On another point: I don't think it is possible nor necessary to make a metric for time lost when running.

Ah, that's an interesting spin on it. Obviously an extreme example, but still, makes quite a bit of sense.

The time lost when running isn't necessarily the goal. More of an average (or percent of) time casting during a particular fight. Would assume it'd generalize to (average length of fight) / (average number of interruptions). Something like Brutallus should be easy to figure out. Average length of fight = 6 min (or maybe a little less). Average number of interruptions would be twice the number of Burns in the time period weighted by your odds of getting at least one. With a fight like that, the odds are greatly in your favor of it being nearly the whole 6 min. Obviously, with a fight like Council with a long duration and extremely large number of interuptions, it'd be much smaller.

Arelenda · 07/25/08, 6:40 PM

Originally Posted by Torq

Wouldn't it have been a little more "fair" to weigh 100 haste against 120 spell damage? That way you weighing equal item stat weights and not equal values.

It certainly would be fair now. I didn't do this because there were no haste gems back then. (haste didn't speed up GCD either)

The time lost when running isn't necessarily the goal. More of an average (or percent of) time casting during a particular fight. Would assume it'd generalize to (average length of fight) / (average number of interruptions). Something like Brutallus should be easy to figure out. Average length of fight = 6 min (or maybe a little less). Average number of interruptions would be twice the number of Burns in the time period weighted by your odds of getting at least one.

Yeah, I see the point. ShadowSeer quit working with 2.3 and I don't have the drive to rewrite it for the new event system. It did lots of things similar to this. In the end, I don't think it's worth the work. For ideal fights we have the spreadsheet, for everything else we can use common sense and make reasonable judgments.

clavarnway · 07/26/08, 3:12 PM

I was just curious if 21/40 Fire is a popular spec with Warlocks today? I knew it was a FOTM for awhile but I haven't seen much chatter about it, but I dunno if that's because it's not good, or because people know it's good and just aren't talking about it.

The one problem I have with that spec is that haste kinda messes things up - you gotta fit stuff in the Immolate window, so at some point of hastes they aren't really helping much because you can't fit another Incinerate in that window.

edit: Before ya flame me, I did spreadsheet it and it shows DPS jump of like 100. That's a big jump, and why I'm asking.

PsyBomb · 07/26/08, 3:21 PM

Originally Posted by clavarnway

I was just curious if 21/40 Fire is a popular spec with Warlocks today? I knew it was a FOTM for awhile but I haven't seen much chatter about it, but I dunno if that's because it's not good, or because people know it's good and just aren't talking about it.

The one problem I have with that spec is that haste kinda messes things up - you gotta fit stuff in the Immolate window, so at some point of hastes they aren't really helping much because you can't fit another Incinerate in that window.

edit: Before ya flame me, I did spreadsheet it and it shows DPS jump of like 100. That's a big jump, and why I'm asking.

While 0/21/40 Fire Destro has the best PERSONAL DPS of any Warlock spec (arguably the greatest of any spec in the game, period), it contributes exactly nothing to the rest of the raid. The 5-6% edge in personal DPS is more than outweighed by the loss of Improved Shadowbolt. That, and Incinerate scales ever so slightly slower than Shadowbolt, such that will be more or less a draw at the end of Sunwell in terms of personal DPS.

Oh, and about the haste thing earlier, the big thing missing from that demonstration is mana use. Unless the haste-loving warlock has double the mana pool of the Crit/Power one, he's going to lose out on DPS when he's forced to lifetap.

Zasz · 07/26/08, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

As for your assumption that haste doesn't necessarily benefit you when there are lots of interrupts, consider the following scenario.

lock A loves haste and has 1.25s cast Shadow Bolts that hit for 2500 on average.
lock B loves crit and spellpower, and has 2.5s cast SBs that hit for 5000 on average.

Both warlocks have the same dps when chain casting (2000). Now imagine a fight where both of them have to stop casting and reposition, say this happens 5 times during the fight.

Lock A loses 5 casts, losing 12500 damage.
Lock B loses 5 casts, losing 25000 damage.

Clearly, A is less affected.

Granted, it's not as black and white in real world scenarios, and the initial numbers are wildly exaggerated. But the point remains the same: if your casts are shorter, you will lose less on interruptions. It is completely possible that due to random interruptions you don't get full benefit of haste, but on average, interruptions favor warlock A's strategy.

On another point: I don't think it is possible nor necessary to make a metric for time lost when running.

Even if its an extreme example, the first time for me that haste does make sense more than crit.

Originally Posted by Sydane

I think haste actually makes dps more stable. With more casts and fewer crits, you are less likely to have long streaks of good or bad. Now it's unlikely that anyone plays with enough haste to actually make a substantial difference, but as mentioned above, missing out on one cast out of 60 isn't as bad as one cast out of 40 or 50.

My thought is this: A crit does twice the damage than a normal hit does in the same time casted. Haste increases the amount of normal hits but lowers the amount of crits.

Can the spreadsheet calculate crit damage too? Or are faster casted non crits more dps than normal casted crits?

clavarnway · 07/26/08, 3:32 PM

Originally Posted by PsyBomb

While 0/21/40 Fire Destro has the best PERSONAL DPS of any Warlock spec (arguably the greatest of any spec in the game, period), it contributes exactly nothing to the rest of the raid. The 5-6% edge in personal DPS is more than outweighed by the loss of Improved Shadowbolt. That, and Incinerate scales ever so slightly slower than Shadowbolt, such that will be more or less a draw at the end of Sunwell in terms of personal DPS.

Oh, and about the haste thing earlier, the big thing missing from that demonstration is mana use. Unless the haste-loving warlock has double the mana pool of the Crit/Power one, he's going to lose out on DPS when he's forced to lifetap.

Well the way ISB uptime works, 1 Warlock speccing Fire while still having let's say, 2, Shadow, wouldn't mess with ISB uptime too much right? And would generate higher raid DPS?

For the record our raids have a TON of Warlocks (5 is not uncommon).

Also if *all* the Warlocks spec'd Fire, wouldn't the DPS increase of that outweigh the static DPS increase from ISB?

PsyBomb · 07/26/08, 3:55 PM

Originally Posted by clavarnway

Well the way ISB uptime works, 1 Warlock speccing Fire while still having let's say, 2, Shadow, wouldn't mess with ISB uptime too much right? And would generate higher raid DPS?

For the record our raids have a TON of Warlocks (5 is not uncommon).

Also if *all* the Warlocks spec'd Fire, wouldn't the DPS increase of that outweigh the static DPS increase from ISB?

ISB being up helps more than warlocks. Notably Shadow Priests... which translates to anyone in a group WITH a shadow priest. Also keep in mind that raid synergy works in reverse, too, and speccing shadow lets you leech effects off of the other Shadow warlocks and Shadow Weaving as well. Like I said, taken in a vacuum, Fire will do more. However, in a raid setting, Shadow is the better spec for everyone.

clavarnway · 07/26/08, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by PsyBomb

ISB being up helps more than warlocks. Notably Shadow Priests... which translates to anyone in a group WITH a shadow priest. Also keep in mind that raid synergy works in reverse, too, and speccing shadow lets you leech effects off of the other Shadow warlocks and Shadow Weaving as well. Like I said, taken in a vacuum, Fire will do more. However, in a raid setting, Shadow is the better spec for everyone.

Well according to the spreadsheet, and talking with other people, one Warlock not proccing ISB doesn't affect raid ISB much at all. So in this scenario wouldn't Fire be better for him? Keep in mind I spreadsheeted it and with all applicable debuffs (including Shadow Weaving and Imp Scorch and ISB) it's a staggering DPS increase, at least 100. Of course I'm still not sure how to perfectly model ISB on the spreadsheet but this is a pretty big difference, and with Brutallus coming very soon I would just like to make sure I'm bringing my A game.

Arelenda · 07/26/08, 5:13 PM

Originally Posted by clavarnway

Well according to the spreadsheet, and talking with other people, one Warlock not proccing ISB doesn't affect raid ISB much at all. So in this scenario wouldn't Fire be better for him? Keep in mind I spreadsheeted it and with all applicable debuffs (including Shadow Weaving and Imp Scorch and ISB) it's a staggering DPS increase, at least 100. Of course I'm still not sure how to perfectly model ISB on the spreadsheet but this is a pretty big difference, and with Brutallus coming very soon I would just like to make sure I'm bringing my A game.

Note that with 5 warlocks in the raid, even small percentages in ISB uptime affect a lot of damage. This has been discussed before, I suggest you look it up earlier in the thread.

Arelenda · 07/26/08, 5:16 PM

Originally Posted by PsyBomb

Oh, and about the haste thing earlier, the big thing missing from that demonstration is mana use. Unless the haste-loving warlock has double the mana pool of the Crit/Power one, he's going to lose out on DPS when he's forced to lifetap.

Granted. It was merely an illustration of the point that "faster casts makes interruption less of an issue". No one should gear solely into +haste.

Johnneke · 07/26/08, 9:25 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

Note that with 5 warlocks in the raid, even small percentages in ISB uptime affect a lot of damage. This has been discussed before, I suggest you look it up earlier in the thread.

In fact it's quite sub optimal to run with more then 3 shadow desto locks and the gain from a 4th and 5th shadow destro lock is definately a whole lot less then the gain from a 4th and 5th fire destro lock. Math for this has all been done before so I'm not gonna repeat this.

Personally I find the sweet spot to run with 2 shadow destro locks and the rest fire destro since the uptime gain from the 3rd and further locks provide less raid dps then a sunwell/t6 geared fire destro lock will gain. (Both the spreadsheet and magegraf provide 200+ dps increase for a mix on sunwell and t6 gear)

Flamingcloud · 07/26/08, 10:35 PM

Originally Posted by Johnneke

In fact it's quite sub optimal to run with more then 3 shadow desto locks and the gain from a 4th and 5th shadow destro lock is definately a whole lot less then the gain from a 4th and 5th fire destro lock. Math for this has all been done before so I'm not gonna repeat this.

Personally I find the sweet spot to run with 2 shadow destro locks and the rest fire destro since the uptime gain from the 3rd and further locks provide less raid dps then a sunwell/t6 geared fire destro lock will gain. (Both the spreadsheet and magegraf provide 200+ dps increase for a mix on sunwell and t6 gear)

You have to keep in mind that is in infact possible that isb uptime will be so high that shadow will have a higher personal dps than fire. Ofcourse this is all theoretical, in reality there are no 3000 dps fire locks, because fire is way worse in practice than in theory. When I see fire locks pushing 3k on brutallus with a burn then I might have some sort of belief that the spec isn't ridiculously overrated.

clavarnway · 07/27/08, 12:14 AM

See, the previous 2 posters said almost the exact opposite things - one said that a Fire lock is much higher dps, the other said only in theory, in practice it's less! I would just like to know if anybody has actually tried speccing Fire or had guildies who went Fire and what results you saw. Originally when I first started my posts about this, I was curious how it actually played out in combat, since haste seems wonky with Immolate/Incinerate timings.

Flamingcloud · 07/27/08, 1:32 AM

In all reality the fact that you are casting more spells has nothing to do with anything, with the proper spamming you can get it down to < .01 seconds between every spell, though I obviously can't claim that everyone is doing the proper spamming. If you check WWS Scoreboard you will see on every non-expired report that the warlock is shadow. If they actually had higher personal dps even though there are less fire locks you will still get some.

Arelenda · 07/27/08, 3:32 AM

Originally Posted by clavarnway

See, the previous 2 posters said almost the exact opposite things - one said that a Fire lock is much higher dps, the other said only in theory, in practice it's less! I would just like to know if anybody has actually tried speccing Fire or had guildies who went Fire and what results you saw. Originally when I first started my posts about this, I was curious how it actually played out in combat, since haste seems wonky with Immolate/Incinerate timings.

I tried it and immediately saw a dps loss in ZA. Mind you, fire is horrible on trash since your incinerates require immolate which is horrible if you don't use full duration.

Fire is also less mana efficient than shadow due to Immolate being super expensive and Life Tap using Shadow spellpower. Incinerate itself is cheaper then SB though, but not by much.

There are a few caveats, because in theory you could have one warlock keep up immolate for the raid. CoS/CoE merge means 2.7% more fire damage. It's a rather different gear setup, fire wants haste and doesn't care much about crit. Any warlock casually speccing into fire will see an immediate dps loss. You'd have to change your Soulfrost into Sunfire, and lose most crit gear or haste.

We've had this debate before. In practice, all highest dps warlocks seem to be shadow. The WWS scoreboard doesn't work for me at the moment, but when we had fire vs shadow discussions we came to that conclusion before.

Fire does in fact scale better than Shadow does. Shadow bolt gets (3/3.5+0,2) every 2.5s, Incinerate gets (2.5/3.5+0,2)*1.1 every 2.25s. It's slightly higher.

I'm still not sure how Incerinate casting speed increase interacts with haste though.

I'll do a couple of quick tests, and might even try to get all our locks to spec fire and have one immolate bitch. Just to see how our damage evolves if we all can nuke with Incinerates.

clavarnway · 07/27/08, 10:51 AM

I think alot of guilds probably already have a Affliction lock for SE/Male/BP, so maybe that person is already the Immo keeper-upper. If that's true, it should enable a lock who specs into Fire to spam Incinerate more, without worrying as much about Immo uptime, right?

Of course, you have to be aware that that is occuring, because if the Affl lock dies, or is thrown around (ex: Archimonde), or is otherwise incapacitated, you have to put up Immo. But it does seem like you get the best of both worlds.

Actually, since I've never spec'd Fire I've never done the math - Is keeping Immolate up higher DPS than just spamming Incinerate anyway, because of all the talents? I know it's higher mana cost..., but I wonder if it's higher DPS. If it's anything like it was when I was Affliction, a spec'd DoT is always good to have up over a spec'd nuke, assuming both benefit from the spec.

If you check my armory, you should see that I have no shadow specific gear except for the enchant on my weapon. I'm using the Zul'jin sword atm, but I also have the Scryer's Blade of Focus. I am considering putting Sunfire on the Scryer Blade and running with that, but otherwise leaving my gear the same. Look like a plan?

As for having all the locks spec fire, that sounds kinda hard on the Spriests, and anybody who is in their group.

Zasz · 07/27/08, 11:19 AM

Go fire if you want ego dps, go shadow for raid dps. Fire locks need fire mages, shadow locks boost themselfs with ISB. Also shadow locks boost shadow priests, boost managain for that group and so on. Fire locks boost... well.... nobody.

clavarnway · 07/27/08, 11:25 AM

Right. I'm asking for any proof you have of that. If going Fire increases RAID dps more than staying Shadow (due to the minimal impact (as I understand it) of a 3rd lock for ISB uptime, then it is a good decision to go fire. After all the spreadsheet shows huge DPS gain. If I'm gaining let's say 150 personal DPS by going fire, and the raid loses less than that due to losing my ISB help, it's worth it.

Maybe I am wrong but with the way I understand the spreadsheet ISB function it shows not losing much ISB uptime with 3rd lock.

Arelenda · 07/27/08, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by clavarnway

Right. I'm asking for any proof you have of that. If going Fire increases RAID dps more than staying Shadow (due to the minimal impact (as I understand it) of a 3rd lock for ISB uptime, then it is a good decision to go fire. After all the spreadsheet shows huge DPS gain. If I'm gaining let's say 150 personal DPS by going fire, and the raid loses less than that due to losing my ISB help, it's worth it.

Maybe I am wrong but with the way I understand the spreadsheet ISB function it shows not losing much ISB uptime with 3rd lock.

For comparison:
with 5000 raw shadow dps, one percent uptime = 10dps (raw means without ISB)
with 10k raw shadow dps, one percent uptime = 20dps

So fire needs to beat shadow by about (uptime loss * shadow damage/500) to be equal.

Let us know how it goes.

clavarnway · 07/27/08, 11:50 AM

Those are some good numbers, thank you. When we get to Brutallus I would be most interested in testing it out, but Kalecgos really isn't going to be that helpful because of the problems with WWS.

Shabaz · 07/27/08, 12:45 PM

All,

I would love some feedback on a gear decision I'm poundering. My guild is just starting MH/BT. Using the DPS spreadsheet I have most of the upgrades that will help me from instances leading up to MH/BT. Currently I'm a 21/40 Destro raid build. Raid buffed for bosses I am:

Spell hit - 201
Shadow Damage - 1350 (ish)
Spell Crit - 25.5% (30.5% with Devastation)
Spell Haste - 90
Approx 10,000 health and Mana

I recently switched to the Mantle of Nimble Thought, Bracers of Nimble Thought, and Guardians Pendant of Subjugation to try adding some haste. (prior to that I was using PVP bracers, the PVP crit neck, and Elven Kings Shoulders...all with more crit and no haste) So, I decided to work on a haste build and it's been good so far, but I'm a little worried about my crit, which used to be in the 33% range. I tend to be the only raiding Warlock in our guild, (though we have a couple up and coming) so I work fairly hard to keep my crit up to keep ISB up for Shadow priests.

So, here is the question. I have some Sunmotes and was thinking of getting the Loop of Forged Power made. I would swap out my Ring of Reccurrence (from Kara uggh!) which would make the Loop and the Fused Negarathon Band my boss rings. I would lose 19 Spell crit, but gain another 30 spell haste, as well as 26 spell damage (I have (2) +10 spell hit gems I would replace with (2) +12 Spell Damage gems. This seemed like a no brainer, but I'm worried I'm limiting my spell crit to much. My other option would be to replace my Studious Wraps with Sunfire Handwraps. If I made this change I could add about 30 spell damage and 17 spell crit. This change is more expensive then the Loop, but I'm wondering if at my level 30 more haste for the cost of another 1% crit is to much of a hit. (not to mention that the T6 gloves are only a couple bosses away.)

Anyways, I would love some advice from people who went through this gear phase. Am I pushing hit to hard? Should I get the ring but try and swap one of my other hit items to get back crit? (I was eyeing the Hatefury Mantle... )

Thanks in advance!

Arelenda · 07/27/08, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Shabaz

All,

I would love some feedback on a gear decision I'm poundering. My guild is just starting MH/BT. Using the DPS spreadsheet I have most of the upgrades that will help me from instances leading up to MH/BT. Currently I'm a 21/40 Destro raid build. Raid buffed for bosses I am:

Spell hit - 201
Shadow Damage - 1350 (ish)
Spell Crit - 25.5% (30.5% with Devastation)
Spell Haste - 90
Approx 10,000 health and Mana

Use the spreadsheet.

I'd reckon haste will still be better than crit for you, in equal amounts.

Especially as alliance 201 hit might be pushing it, if you're used to having a shaman.