Ret question, Crit vs Haste, @iiris

[Klamnei]

Hello Iiris!

I have a ret question for you. There's been some talk lately about Crit, Haste, and their priority. Apparently there was a bug in one of the spreadsheets that was used to calculate ret dps, and the new values show Haste to be values higher than Crit. The actual coefficients, equations, and spreadsheeting aside, I was taking a look at what Haste actually does for us. (Sidenote, we all know Mastery is #1, this is a question to determine which stat is #2.)

Haste benefits:
Autoattacks
Art of War Procs
Divine Puprose Procs
Censure (is refreshed every 1-2 seconds, therefore can be assumed that every point of haste will allow for more ticks, more beneficial on longer fights)
Seals of Command
Crusader Strike/Divine Storm CD

However, there is a problem with all of this: the gear of this tier has a hefty amount of crit on it. There's a lot of haste as well, but a BiS list will predominantly feature crit. The trinkets make the matter worse, as 1 of them is crit-reliant, another has crit on it with a crit-proc to boot, and the last is undervalued at the trade-off of being on use and a slightly higher uptime.

With my personal experiences in the Firelands encounters, (6/7 HC-25, working on Rag) and with the level of gear I'm currently at, I find myself preferring Crit, but it's primarily because of multiple fights with target switching which devalues Haste, as well as I'm using Apparatus of Khaz'goroth, which needs crit to get the stacks reliably.

On my opener I use Judge, build 3 HoPo, Inq/GoaK, 3 HoPo, AW/Zeal, HoW, CS, Use Apparatus, Go balls deep. By this time I usually have at least 3 stacks of TItanic Power built up, usually the full 5. By the time I use Apparatus, There is 15 seconds left with GoAK, AW, and Zeal, so it all falls into place. The only thing out of whack is Heroic HoR, which procs whenever it damn well feels like it.

I was wondering about your thoughts on all this, in regards to your experience so far in Firelands as well as what your personal tests and theorycrafting have shown.



TL;DR: What are your thoughts on the recent discussion of Crit vs Haste, and with your personal experience, Firelands gear and trinkets itemized the way they are, which stat do you prefer behind Mastery and why?

[Iiris]

Hi Klamnei

I had not read about ret theorycrafting at all during progress or after it but decided to check it because of your post. Seems like haste was undervalued in Exemplar's spreadsheet because adding more haste didn't somehow increase your autoattack count at all and seems like there was some wrong values for meta gem crit dmg also. Fixing this bug made haste better than crit and nearly as good as mastery, in SimCraft haste is still the worst stat but what I've read SimCraft doesn't have any active ret contributor so I think I would trust Exemplar's numbers more and go for mastery>haste>crit.

I think the itemization of Firelands gear is ok. There are plenty of mastery items for ret and the trinkets aren't that bad, you can't really assume that you are going to get perfectly itemized parts for every slot. Only thing that annoys me is that there isn't 391 piece for every slot, I think cloth dps is the only one that gets 391 or better for every slot since there hasn't been any confirmation from blizzard's side that you could upgrade the reputation items.

[Grimlyn]

Hmm...I've been really wondering about this too. All signs point to my gear being reforged into haste...I really like to hit harder though. Getting to the 3 sec CD even with the Crushing Weight Trinket is rough. The trinket just doesn't allow enough time to use a 3 sec CS rotation. If it were on all the time then it would be nice. Fully raid buffed I believe I get to a 3.48 sec CS CD when I had a few more haste items on. That trinket would do it, but then my time would be really limited.

[Mémphys]

Between the benefit of haste, you should also consider the reduced GCD triggered by spells like Exorcism, Holy Wrath etc.

By the way, in Cataclysm, we have a lot of problems when we have to switch target, burn down an add or doing some AoE stuff; and haste doesn't help at all in these points.

I've no doubts that Haste, Mastery and Crit can perform pretty similar against a static boss or a training dummy, but in all the other situations (including Bloodlast and Haste procs) Crit and Mastery result in a higher dps.

Actually i'm using Crit >= Mastery > Haste (with Hit and Exp capped ofc) and i feel perfectly tuned.

I hope to have been useful... bb ;)

[northgan]

By the way, in Cataclysm, we have a lot of problems when we have to switch target, burn down an add or doing some AoE stuff; and haste doesn't help at all in these points.


Hate reduces the cd divinestorm and increases attack speed making you use more ds and more sealssproc, and give more attacks = more chance to proc Divine Purpose that can generate extra TV (more bust), also reduces the cd of crusader strike and makes ticks censure cause more damage I personally agreement with the Exemplar: mastery>haste>>crit

iiris are u testing ?
and sorry my poor english