Viable to stack haste instead of mastery?

[DisRuptive1]

This assumes hit and expertise caps. You're at a point where you can choose either Haste or Mastery in gemming and reforging. Would it be viable to stack Haste? Priorities would be Hit=Expertise>Haste>Mastery>Parry~Dodge.

Assuming you do stack Haste is there a point at which you should stop such as when you get your GCD down to 1 second? Doing some napkin math it looked like I could reach that point with 36.36% Haste and raid buffs.

If stacking Haste is viable, is there any benefit to stacking it beyond the point of a 1 second GCD? I imagine it would feel wrong because your GCD would be at 1 second but Crusader's Strike would be at a 2.9 second cooldown, Judgment would be 3.8 seconds, etc and there would be downtime between waiting for a spell to come off cooldown after the GCD is up.

TL;DR: I want to stack Haste instead of Mastery. Am I daft?

[theckhd]

1) Yes, haste>mastery is a viable gearing strategy. It's been discussed quite thoroughly all over the place - here, EJ, my blog, etc.

2) 36.36% haste doesn't get you to a one-second GCD, for starters. You'd need 50% haste, not counting the 10% from SoI (which is only spell haste, not melee haste).

3) The more interesting question: let's say we do get to 50% haste. Is there a benefit to having more? Yes and no. At 50% haste, your GCD is 1 second, CS's cooldown is 3 seconds, J's is 4 seconds. Your rotation is still the same as it is with no haste: CS-J-X-CS-X-J-CS-X-X. Stacking more will reduce spell cooldowns, but not the GCD. That means we'll have an odd choice to make: we can skip fillers for higher HPG (but probaly much lower DPS), or use fillers and push HPG back.

For example, assume we have 80% haste. At that point, CS is a 2.5-second cooldown and J is 3.33 seconds. If we cast CS-J, we can either choose to wait half a second and use CS again, turning our rotation into CS-J-wait-CS-X-(repeat), or we can keep our normal rotation and push back CS. The former will be higher HPG than the latter, but will probably be lower DPS.

We'll run into this clashing until we get to 125% haste, at which point CS becomes a 2-second cooldown (and J a 2.67-second cooldown). Then we get to a clean CS-J-CS-X-(repeat). After that, there's another gap until we have enough haste to push J to a 2-second cooldown, which happens at 200% haste, turning our rotation into CS-J-(repeat).

Haste isn't completely useless in-between those break points - we're still increasing SoI healing, and getting more Sacred Shield ticks every 20% haste. But it's not worth a lot, because those are both small effects.

So, TLDR: Haste is good up to 50%, uneven between 50% and 125%, and then relatively weak unless you can reach 300% (and then weak again until you can hit 600%, where you can spam Judgment every GCD).

[Morwo]

So then, do i aim for any haste plateaus like mentioned here, 1%, 8.33%, 16.67%, 25%, 33.33%, etc.
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=746448#p746448

or can i go for just stacking haste?

[theckhd]

No, I don't think there's much sense in aiming for particular haste break points. Haste is always good.

[Morwo]

Thanks!

[xQi]

While reforging and gearing haste would be viable, what about gemming haste? Assuming you aren't sacrificing hit or expertise for haste, would that be another way to go about?

[Kihra]

While reforging and gearing haste would be viable, what about gemming haste? Assuming you aren't sacrificing hit or expertise for haste, would that be another way to go about?

Yes, this is a completely viable approach (so is gemming Mastery, so is gemming pure Stamina, it's really just a matter of personal preference). This is what I'm doing currently, and I enjoy it, mainly because it results in more damage.

I've been gemming Exp/Haste in Red sockets, Exp/Stam in Blue sockets, and pure Haste in Yellow/Prismatic sockets. You do end up sacrificing some Stamina with this approach, however, so you have to be comfortable with your health pool before doing something like this.

[DisRuptive1]

No, I don't think there's much sense in aiming for particular haste break points.

What about the fact that it feels wrong? I'm still trying to gear up through heroics and have some Ret gear with Haste that I'm using just because it's better than any tank gear right now and I'm at the point where the cooldowns of some of my spells are ending at slightly different times along with the GCD (I remember earlier today where Crusader Strike and Judgment were both coming off cooldown at the same time but the GCD ended a fraction of a second before I could use Crusader Strike).

What are the Haste plateaus where everything lines up perfectly or what figures do I need to know to calculate it from my own gear? Is it ok to stack haste to one of these plateaus and then stack mastery or do haste and mastery have an exponential effect which is diminished when trying to stack both?

And just one final question which I think would be a good place to ask here. Is the 10% attack speed raid buff equivalent to 10% haste?

[Fetzie]

Is the 10% attack speed raid buff equivalent to 10% haste?

No.

[theckhd]

No, I don't think there's much sense in aiming for particular haste break points.

What about the fact that it feels wrong? I'm still trying to gear up through heroics and have some Ret gear with Haste that I'm using just because it's better than any tank gear right now and I'm at the point where the cooldowns of some of my spells are ending at slightly different times along with the GCD (I remember earlier today where Crusader Strike and Judgment were both coming off cooldown at the same time but the GCD ended a fraction of a second before I could use Crusader Strike).

This is a weird quirk due to melee and spell haste being separate. Sanctity of Battle reduces the cooldowns and GCD of CS, J, etc., and it does so based on melee haste. Thus, CS's cooldown will always be an integer number of "melee" GCDs (3 GCDs), as will Judgment (4 GCDs), Cons (6 GCDs), etc.

However, spell haste natively reduces the GCD incurred by spell-type abilities. For us that's our fillers: Cons, AS, HW, L90 talents (HoW is ranged, so that should fit under the melee haste category). Since we'll always have more spell haste than melee haste, these abilities will have a slightly shorter GCD than CS or J will. Note that the cooldown of these abilities is still reduced by melee haste (via SoB), it's just the GCD that's shorter.

The difference is small enough that there's no advantage to slipping in another filler in that <0.05-second GCD window, and latency will generally make it impossible to take advantage of it anyway. In your scenario above, you'd just spam CS until it comes off of cooldown.

What are the Haste plateaus where everything lines up perfectly or what figures do I need to know to calculate it from my own gear? Is it ok to stack haste to one of these plateaus and then stack mastery or do haste and mastery have an exponential effect which is diminished when trying to stack both?

There aren't any, unless you're playing without SoI and without the raid spell haste buff.

[DisRuptive1]

Since this thread was about stacking Haste, I figure I'd ask this question here.

I had already brought up sacred shield ticks before, and after running it by Theck quickly we figured out our 30% (spell!) haste breakpoint is attainable and at around 5336 haste rating. This is assuming SoI and the spell haste raid buff active on you. This will give you a 2nd extra tick and thus 7 shields over casts lasting ~32 seconds.

This was posted on EJ. Is this information correct?

[Lastwolf]

seems achievable, it's double my current haste bu my gear is hardly the best.

[Fetzie]

Since this thread was about stacking Haste, I figure I'd ask this question here.

I had already brought up sacred shield ticks before, and after running it by Theck quickly we figured out our 30% (spell!) haste breakpoint is attainable and at around 5336 haste rating. This is assuming SoI and the spell haste raid buff active on you. This will give you a 2nd extra tick and thus 7 shields over casts lasting ~32 seconds.

This was posted on EJ. Is this information correct?

The 7th tick does indeed happen at 30% Spell Haste.

[Brokenone]

This is a weird quirk due to melee and spell haste being separate. Sanctity of Battle reduces the cooldowns and GCD of CS, J, etc., and it does so based on melee haste. Thus, CS's cooldown will always be an integer number of "melee" GCDs (3 GCDs), as will Judgment (4 GCDs), Cons (6 GCDs), etc.

However, spell haste natively reduces the GCD incurred by spell-type abilities. For us that's our fillers: Cons, AS, HW, L90 talents (HoW is ranged, so that should fit under the melee haste category). Since we'll always have more spell haste than melee haste, these abilities will have a slightly shorter GCD than CS or J will. Note that the cooldown of these abilities is still reduced by melee haste (via SoB), it's just the GCD that's shorter.

The difference is small enough that there's no advantage to slipping in another filler in that <0.05-second GCD window, and latency will generally make it impossible to take advantage of it anyway. In your scenario above, you'd just spam CS until it comes off of cooldown.

When you say there is no advantage, does that mean you simmed both ways? It feels very weird to pause when I have another ability up I could use. How significant will the spike frequency / TDR / DPS change when moving from one way to the other?

Also, isn't it a bigger gap on the CS-X-X part of the cycle since you'll likely have two "spell haste" category fillers?

[Brokenone]

This is a weird quirk due to melee and spell haste being separate. Sanctity of Battle reduces the cooldowns and GCD of CS, J, etc., and it does so based on melee haste. Thus, CS's cooldown will always be an integer number of "melee" GCDs (3 GCDs), as will Judgment (4 GCDs), Cons (6 GCDs), etc.

However, spell haste natively reduces the GCD incurred by spell-type abilities. For us that's our fillers: Cons, AS, HW, L90 talents (HoW is ranged, so that should fit under the melee haste category). Since we'll always have more spell haste than melee haste, these abilities will have a slightly shorter GCD than CS or J will. Note that the cooldown of these abilities is still reduced by melee haste (via SoB), it's just the GCD that's shorter.

The difference is small enough that there's no advantage to slipping in another filler in that <0.05-second GCD window, and latency will generally make it impossible to take advantage of it anyway. In your scenario above, you'd just spam CS until it comes off of cooldown.

When you say there is no advantage, does that mean you simmed both ways? It feels very weird to pause when I have another ability up I could use. How significant will the spike frequency / TDR / DPS change when moving from one way to the other?

Also, isn't it a bigger gap on the CS-X-X part of the cycle since you'll likely have two "spell haste" category fillers?