The Haste vs Crit Theorycrafting Thread

[Fridgeowl]

I'm not much of a raider due playing mornings on a very quiet server, but I've noticed that the high end gear seems to be forcing a choice between spell haste and crits. I get the feeling that Blizzard is trying to reduce long term dps by forcing people to use mana faster rather then boosting damage done with it with the new gear.

My question for the more experienced locks is whether the trade off in faster damage (but more mana intensive) is really worth it when you factor in...

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[corpsemonger]

you have got the hit and damage right in my book, hit is top priority up to 180, cap at 202, spell damage 2nd priority up to about 1200 (softcap 1400), crit 3rd priority up to 25% (on your character sheet) and then finally haste up to 750 or so. Obviously if you have gear that will give you 30 haste OR 25 crit, I'd go with the haste unless you're at or below around 20% crit.

buzzkill doesn't go crazy in depth with explaining his theorycrafting, but he is solid. he does extensive in-game testing with his studies, which is more important bottom line than calculations. he has an a+ in my book.

[nocturnus]

You don't need to wait untill you reach T6 content to go destro people. I know what the poster before me means, but his theories are misleading.

If you can manage to cap your hit with crafted/kara/lower tier items, go destro for you will provide more damage than an affliction lock. Even if your crit % is relatively low. About the 10k crits, don't worry, you won't crit that high with that gear on most bosses and if you do you have soulshatter.

Purebalance, your gemming is aweful

*** Information added 4 Minutes and 30 Seconds later... ***

Originally Posted by corpsemonger

you have got the hit and damage right in my book, hit is top priority up to 180, cap at 202, spell damage 2nd priority up to about 1200 (softcap 1400), crit 3rd priority up to 25% (on your character sheet) and then finally haste up to 750 or so. Obviously if you have gear that will give you 30 haste OR 25 crit, I'd go with the haste unless you're at or below around 20% crit.

buzzkill doesn't go crazy in depth with explaining his theorycrafting, but he is solid. he does extensive in-game testing with his studies, which is more important bottom line than calculations. he has an a+ in my book.

Uhm, guys 'extensive testing with studies'? It's not rocket science! It's pure logic and no, playin a warlock is not hard, nor is any other class.

[Necronomis]

Buzzkill doesn't backup a lot of his statements with a lot of TC bullcrap but that doesn't mean he doesn't do the math and test his conclusions. He is (along with the other top end-game guilds) in a position to figure out the BEST solution and then use it. Most of his explanations are brash like "do this, if you do that, you suck and should die" probably because of threads just like this one. He'd rather get the info out there rather than arguing with spreadsheet afficionados all day.

EDIT: PB's points are still valid but a bit misleading. With the OP crafted items you can get along with badge gear it's not hard to gear for destro without ever setting foot in T6 content.

T4 gear is affliction, T5 gear is demonology, T6 gear is destruction or at least that's how blizzard wants to pigeon hole you.

[Pure Balance]

I agree with some of you on that nocturnus, but not all of it.

First, while gemming for crit is bad, the ratio on a crit/damage gem remains the same and it is only a slight increase in dps over the pure crit gem. A pure 12 spell damage gem will always be the most dps until your haste or crit is worth 1.21 damage equivilent(not dps before we get into that fight again on here). The thing that is flawed about using the potent pyrestone is once you've used more than 1 it really didnt matter anymore as you could have used a pure red and pure yellow and gotten the same effect unless you were REALLY struggling for color combos.

I also agree with the statement that damage and haste must be increased in tandem, but if your haste is worth more than the 1.21 damage equivilent then you can gem pure haste until it is at 1.2 damage equivilent.

Also, haste will not increase your chance to crit in theory or in practice. While you may see the same NUMBER of crits by trading off a little crit for a bunch of haste, if you keep your crit rating the same you will see a higher number of crits as you stack haste and the % of crits you have done will remain the same over the course of your raids in general. The whole SD spread that in the end makes your crit even out to what it should be is typically seen over the course of more than 2 raids or so. On a raid by raid basis, casting an extra shadow bolt it will always still have the X% chance to crit so I see where you're going with it, but it's not that clear cut.

Everything else you said I 100% agree with however and I'm sure you do damn well with your raids.

Yeah I know my gems are bad :-P

The robe I just kinda tossed all of those in mostly pre vendor and I kept hoping to get vestments and got lazy and left them in there(as the honor gems were better than using blues 10 crit rating>10 spell damage in my set up)

Unless the socket bonus is 6 spell damage (or 5 if you use the green haste gem I think should even out just barely in dps), you don't need to match them if they require a blue gem. It's a dps loss otherwise. 1 spell damage and 7 stam is never greater than 2 spell damage(using a blue would be either the 6 spell damage 7 stamina or the 5 haste 7 stamina).

There's more than enough reasons to not go destro other than gear until you hit late t5/t6 content. I provided all of them already in my many posts that have gotten so scattered. The HP of early content bosses makes haste less worth using as you won't see enough extra shadow bolts. Your tanks are going to be less capable of handling your damage. You need the crit to back up why destro scales better in later gear. RUIN and Shadow and flame are the 2 reasons it scales better. Ruin requires a certain level of crit to make it worth using.

Just an example to refute your pure gems are bad nocturnus, you could realistically have gone 12 damage red gem, 10 haste gem, and haste damage orange gem on your leggings of calamity and gotten the EXACT same effect. Really it's all a matter of availability of the gems in that case if you're getting them from guild or ah. If you're getting them from the vendor then yes get the combo ones.

[nocturnus]

Originally Posted by Pure Balance

Also, haste will not increase your chance to crit in theory or in practice. While you may see the same NUMBER of crits by trading off a little crit for a bunch of haste, if you keep your crit rating the same you will see a higher number of crits as you stack haste and the % of crits you have done will remain the same over the course of your raids in general. The whole SD spread that in the end makes your crit even out to what it should be is typically seen over the course of more than 2 raids or so. On a raid by raid basis, casting an extra shadow bolt it will always still have the X% chance to crit so I see where you're going with it, but it's not that clear cut.

You clearly misunderstood what i said. Of course haste does not increase the chances you crit. The % remains the same, or deteriorates. But you cast more shadowbolts with a certain amount of haste, therefore the amount of shadow bolt that crit, might be the same, or even more, even if you have slightly less crit %.

Just calculate it for yourself 5 min of sb casting with 30% crit and 0 haste --> How many will crit?
5 min of sb casting with 25% crit and 200 haste --> Giw nabt will crit? EDIT: <-- now THAT's a beautiful typo hahah. It was: 'How many will crit?' ofc

About socket bonusses, ignore them unless they provide a useful bonus. 2 spelldamage bonus and alike are usually negligible. Doh, balancing out 2 kinds of pure gems all over your gear will give the same results. But it's rather silly isn't it? We have the split gems for that. I can imagine someone wanting to do that if the guild bank is out of pyrestones. But that's not likely to happen if you raid hardcore.

About your destro theory, again I do not agree at all. In pure terms of DAMAGE output, destro WILL provide more damage than affliction on a single target once you're hitcapped. The low percentage of crit will not be the bottle neck factor for this build.

[Lopennie]

All this leads me to see is, that basically anyone that wants to be 0/21/40 spec in kara pretty much just wants to be top damage. I was affliction while raiding from kara to tk. When I got to Hyjal I made the switch and my dps/damage skyrocketed. It makes me sad to see bunch of people that barely have the damage/crit/hit to make 0/21/40 work at its full potential.

[Pure Balance]

Look at any post about destro scaling. The only reason destro scales better are the 2 talents I listed and they both require a certain degree of spell damage and crit rating to function to their best potential. An affliction lock who is in similar gear to the OP but more focussed towards hit and damage will more than likely out dps him.

On your haste crit example, you do 3 more crits on the 30% example assuming you actually do 30% of those as crits and 25% of the others as crits. Also that example is way skewed in haste's favor. You will never be able to trade 110 crit rating for 200 haste unless you gimped other stats. Crit and haste are typically around the same quantity in gear plus or minus here or there but it evens out ultimately. So sacrificing 200 crit rating for 200 haste would put the example at more like this

5 minutes of shadow bolts at 30% crit 0 haste= 120 shadow bolts 36 of which crit

5 minutes of shadow bolts at 21% crit 200 haste= 134 shadow bolts 28 of which are crits

That's all assuming you do your actual total crit chance that you should have.

[levinho]

@ the OP:

Seems like a bunch of T6 raiders (myself included) have hijacked your post and driven it in directions that don't really address your issue. I recommend taking everything you read here with a grain of salt and just focus on progressing at the pace you want to. Getting to the point where you can raid sunwell takes a lot of time and luck with drops.

Right now since you only have 132 hit you really shouldn't even be worrying about haste whether destro, demo, or affliction.

Try out different specs and learn the class and enjoy it. These min/max debates are only necessary when you get to the point where you're pushing content that few have done before. For KZ you just don't have the option to min/max the way these guys are talking.

I see a lot of stam or crit/damage gems that could be turned into hit gems. Also, for where you're at in progression I highly doubt that the haste shoulders are worth breaking the FSW set bonus not to mention the extra hit you could squeaze out of the FSW shoulders.

[Bodhisage]

The crit vs haste debate is something that my brain continues to go back and forth on.

Unbuffed I sit at 1164 damage, 199 hit, 19.5% tooltip crit and 41 haste (from gems and pvp neck).

Spreadsheets say haste is going to be my biggest upgrade, so the only gems I've been using are +12 damage and 5 haste/6 damage gems. But is my haste being wasted because it's not getting "stacked" enough? I gemmed for haste/damage because raid buffed I can get to the soft cap of 1400 damage, as well as get close to 28-30% crit. Since gemming for crit is bad, is gemming for damage/haste the only way to go from here?

https://www.wowarmory.com/character-...nd&n=Bodhisage

[Pure Balance]

That depends really. Although it will say haste is a bigger upgrade, what would you sacrifice for it? That's another reason some people just say wait until the sunwell drops that not only give you haste but either keep the same spell damage and crit/hit or increase them a lot as well.

As far as the gemming goes there's a whole thread that me and another lock were kinda cat fighting about senselessly saying about when you should gem for haste rather than spell damage. Do a search for it I'd say