The significance of haste breakpoints

[Quadstyle 0]

Hello all. First time poster here, but I've been a lurker since coming back to WoW for MoP. I want to start by saying thanks Zagam for all the had work and helpful info. I have read a couple posts questioning the significance of haste breakpoints, and I have had the same thoughts myself. So I wanted to make this post to discuss the significance of the haste breakpoints. I am writing specific to warlock affliction spec, but this should be useful for any class/spec looking to hit breakpoints for their dots.

First off we know haste breakpoints give more ticks to dots. That is great, but what exactly does that mean? Haste makes dots tick faster. This translates directly into increased dps. It also reduces the duration of the dot to line up with a constant number of dot ticks. Once the dot is ticking fast enough that it can squeeze another tick into the original max duration it does so, and the duration of the dot is pushed back up to the max.

Lets take Agony for example. It has a duration of 24 seconds and ticks every 2 seconds with no haste, so 12 ticks total. As you gain haste that 2 second tick is decreased until you reach about 1.84 seconds. At that point you can squeeze an extra dot tick in (1.84*13=23.92). What this does is essentially increase the duration of your dot by 1.84 seconds, as compared to what it was just before you hit the breakpoint. The key here is that this does not directly affect dps. It can lead to higher dps only because you have to refresh the dot less often so you have more gcd's to play with. And this is only the first breakpoint. Every subsequent breakpoint will add less time to the duration of the dot. The second breakpoint comes at 1.71 second ticks. The third, which many warlocks strive for at 6637 haste, is 1.6 second ticks.

So lets take the case of a player being 1 point below the third breakpoint. This will give you the maximum increase if you get that extra haste point and hit the breakpoint. You would gain about 1.6 seconds on the duration of your agony. So assume a 10 minute patchwerk style fight. If you fail to get that extra 1 point of haste your agony duration will be about 22.4 seconds. 600/22.4 = 26.78 so say 27. You would have about 27 full duration agonys throughout the fight, meaning you would refresh 26 times. Now you hit the breakpoint. 600/24=25. You would refresh 24 times. So in an ideal situation with perfect play and 10 minutes (which is much longer than most fights) you gain yourself 2 gcd's to play with. Maybe that is 2 extra ticks of MG. The same analysis can be done for corruption and UA.

The corruption BP comes at the 4717 mark where you gain 2 extra ticks instead of 1 (I will assume everyone has hit the first just from base stats on their gear). So with a duration of 18 seconds and 10 ticks before the BP, 11 ticks after, the duration changes from about 16.4 seconds to 18 seconds. 600/16.4=36.6 and 600/18=33.3. You gain roughly 3 GCD's.

The UA BP is 6637. You go from 8 to 9 ticks, and duration of about 12.4 to 14 seconds. 600/12.4=48.4 and 600/14= 42.9. You gain roughly 5 gcd's

This gives you a grand total of 10 extra GCD's on a very long (10 minute) fight. This is a significant number, but this analysis also assumes you are manually refreshing each dot every time. It does not consider that some of those refreshes will be SB/SS. It also assumes the fight allows for 100% uptime of dots. Many fights do not. And it assumes you are only adding 1 point of haste to hit the breakpoint. In the case where you are trying to add a few hundred, or even a thousand, haste then the difference between the pre-BP and post-BP duration will be less than the maximum gain. This will mean you gain even fewer GCD's by hitting it. So it is up to the individual player to decide how much effort it is worth to try and hit these breakpoints. My personal feeling is that in a realistic fight situation these extra GCD's will be absorbed by the mechanics of most fights, the less than 10 minutes time, and the less than perfect play of human beings. I also feel that if your dots hit harder because you didn't sacrifice mastery to try and hit a haste breakpoint then you will probably be better off in situations where mechanics do not allow 100% uptime.

Please discuss, analyze, and tell me your thoughts. And if you find error with my analysis please don't hesitate to point it out. Also I did not consider the effect pandemic will have on this, but if you consider that after the first recast you are probably refreshing on average every full duration of the dot (i.e. 24 seconds for agony, etc.) then it should not affect the analysis. I also ignore the effect of stat snapshots. More ticks of an empowered dot does mean more dps. An analysis of this aspect of extra dot ticks might prove my thoughts wrong. However if you consider that you are only gaining 1 tick from a breakpoint, and that every dot refresh is not going to be empowered, I think this will be absorbed by the added dps of having all dots tick harder with more mastery.

[Zagam 1,982]

Your theorycrafting on Haste would be perfect...for a Shadow Priest. The main quirk that makes theorycrafting so difficult for a Warlock is called Pandemic and the snap-shotting feature.

Your haste calculations are correct and you do gain globals over time...but you should never ever be letting a DoT run its duration. The use of Affdots to monitor DoT spell power makes it so that you'll be refreshing DoTs way more often that a Shadow Priest, Moonkin, etc would. Pandemic can also be used in sync to increase durations of DoTs by 50% more than you can theorycraft because it's not always 50% of the maximum duration depending on the procs and when they happen. It's by this exact formula that Simcraft can't model Affliction DPS accurately because there's no human logic built in to monitor spell power of DoTs and reapply logically.

That said, Haste and Mastery work together with good synergy because Haste affects everything and decreases tick time, the speed of MG, DS, and Haunt. Mastery empowers your three DoTs, but does so and scales well. The problem with Haste is that it starts to diminish in its positive effects as you gather more of it. Haste scales with a negative exponential formula while Mastery always scales linearly. My early guess is that Mastery will outscale Haste by quite a bit in 5.2 and that will be accelerated into 5.3/5.4. Haste has several logical caps such as hitting the GCD for Haunt (already achieved) and Unstable Affliction cast time (almost, likely hit with 5.2) which means that Haunt and UA's cast times reach 1.0 seconds. However, because of Malefic Grasp, Haste is still worth something. The only way I can see Haste gaining a foothold against Mastery in 5.2 or later is if they allow Haste to increase MG ticks.

Everything listed above is based on a single target fight. If you were to focus more on multi-dotting lots of targets and you were letting the DoTs run full durations and falling off, then Haste thresholds would be worth mentioning. However, since refreshing with procs and Pandemic comes into play, thresholds don't technically exist to give you additional ticks. That automatically happens as you keep Haste and Mastery close in value.

[Quadstyle 0]

Thanks for the response Zagam! I feel I may have missed the mark in the point I was trying to make. I am not trying to say haste is not worth worrying about. Haste is great in that it makes dots and mg tick faster. I just think people put too much importance on hitting breakpoints. I have seen a number of players sacrifice a lot of mastery just to hit a breakpoint. I feel like the best strategy would be, as you said, keep them roughly even. Then if you are close to a breakpoint, maybe within 100-200 haste, go ahead and reforge some mastery to hit it. But don't reforge out of 1000 mastery just to hit a breakpoint.

Also as you said, pandemic and snap-shotting make theorycrafting more difficult. My analysis was done in disregard of those aspects. However I feel like if you consider pandemic and snap-shotting then the actual effect of the breakpoint (not the faster ticks because of the haste required to reach it, but the actual extra tick gained) is even less than what I theorycrafted in an ideal model. So my logic was that even if you consider an ideal model, an extra tick didn't mean a whole lot. When you add other factors in it means even less.

Edited February 16, 2013 by Quadstyle

[Omaric 246]

Everything listed above is based on a single target fight. If you were to focus more on multi-dotting lots of targets and you were letting the DoTs run full durations and falling off, then Haste thresholds would be worth mentioning. However, since refreshing with procs and Pandemic comes into play, thresholds don't technically exist to give you additional ticks. That automatically happens as you keep Haste and Mastery close in value.

Wait so... let's say I've got 18 seconds left on my unbuffed Agony. A trinket procs, so let's arbitrarily say I refresh it. By doing this, I do *not* reset the duration until the next tic? All it does is add time and increases the power?

If that's the case, as long as I'm refreshing dots before they fall off I'm always benefiting from extra tics with haste no matter how much haste I have? Which would mean, the only real thresholds would be if I never refresh the dot, yes?

If all of this is true my mind is blown and I can stop crying to my raid about our only spell haste bringer, shadow/disc priest, constantly swapping between fights based on what role they need to play. I mean, obviously 5% haste is pretty big, but I've been tunnel visioning the threshold and assuming my haste is going to waste when I don't have the buff.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Omaric

[Zagam 1,982]

That 5% haste buff is huge...not just for you, but any caster and especially your healer. There's no reason NOT to have 5% haste. If you're class stacking in a bad way, someone needs to change it up.

That said, I'll try to visualize the effect of Haste on DoTs. Let's work with Corruption because it's the easiest (ticks every 2 seconds for 16 seconds). **NOTE THESE ARE NOT THE ACTUAL CALCULATIONS, THIS IS FOR SIMPLICITY ON EXPLANATION**

With 0% Haste, your tick interval would be 2 seconds. Take 16 sec / 2sec/tick = 8 ticks

With 5% Haste, your tick interval would be 1.904 seconds. Take 16 / 1.904/tick = 8.4 ticks

With 10% Haste, your tick interval would be 1.818 seconds. Take 16 / 1.818/tick = 8.8 ticks

With 15% Haste, your tick interval would be 1.739 seconds. Take 16 / 1.739/tick = 9.2 ticks

Notice that at 15% Haste, we've gained a tick of Corruption. It happened somewhere between 10% and 15%. To reverse calculate it, we can say we want 9 ticks in 16 seconds so our interval needs to be 16/9 = 1.778 seconds or 12.5% Haste. This 12.5% Haste would be reported as a "Haste Threshold" because this is the value where you would gain an additional tick inside the same DoT duration.

Notice that this would only happen if you let the DoT run its entire course. For example, at 12.5% haste, you would have the following tick times...

t=0, time = 0

t=1, time = 1.778

t=2, time = 3.556

t=3, time = 5.333

t=4, time = 7.111

t=5, time = 8.889

t=6, time = 10.667

t=7, time = 12.444

t=8, time = 14.222

t=9, time = 16.000

With 12.5% Haste, you would speed up your tick speed so that you would get 8 ticks at 14.2 seconds compared to 8 ticks in 16 seconds with 0% Haste. These thresholds are important to other DoT classes because they let their DoTs run their course with high amounts of Haste, like Shadow Priests, so they squeeze out as many ticks of damage per execute time as possible. This increases their damage per second, affectionately referred to as DPS. However, refreshing a DoT before its last tick is frowned upon for these classes because it lowers their effective Damage Per Execute Time, affectionately referred to as DPET.

However, with Warlocks' Pandemic ability and the fact that a majority of our damage comes through monitoring procs and updating our DoTs, we don't rely on thresholds. Let's say at t=5 Light of the Cosmos and our Tailoring proc happens. Because of this, we would refresh our DoT. With Pandemic, at t=5, we would refresh Corruption right before a tick (8.8889 ticks, which means 8 ticks have happened and a 9th one is really soon) and empower that DoT. Because of Pandemic, we now have a duration of 11 (the remainder of our Corruption time) + 16 seconds. However, Pandemic says that the remaining time added can be up to 50% of the max duration, or 8 seconds. Since the maximum amount of time able to be added here would be 24 seconds, 11+16 becomes 11+13 with a new duration of 24 seconds but the same tick speed. So you can see that you never really achieved your 'extra tick' from the original cast because we updated it, but we will see 2 additional ticks during this new 24 second duration because of Haste effects.

Because Mastery empowers the damage of each tick, Haste and Mastery work together to increase damage multplicatively. You don't really worry about thresholds as Affliction because your Haste will cause increased DoT speed passively while Mastery makes them hit harder. Modeling these values against each other, we find the maximum DPS to happen when Haste = Mastery.

Hopefully this helps you see how thresholds aren't too important for Affliction to focus on.

[Omaric 246]

I see the light and I love you.

Also, yeah, our group makeup is definitely not optimal.

Tanks:

-Pally

-Monk

Heals:

-Shaman x2

-Disc Priest swapper

DPS:

-Fury Warrior

-Frost DK

-Arcane Mage

-Monk

-Affliction/Demo Warlock

-Shadow Priest swapper

If I had my way the monk would be a hunter with a sporebat, but... you know how it goes. XD

Edit: Also, I don't understand your rings. Is the 7 ilvl drop per ring really worth it to avoid having crit on them?

Edit2: Do Malefic Grasp induced Corruption ticks have a chance to proc Shadow Trance as well?

Edited February 19, 2013 by Omaric

[Gravyspasm 70]

Also, yeah, our group makeup is definitely not optimal.

Tanks:

-Pally

-Monk

Heals:

-Shaman x2

-Disc Priest swapper

DPS:

-Fury Warrior

-Frost DK

-Arcane Mage

-Monk

-Affliction/Demo Warlock

-Shadow Priest swapper

so you sometimes have 5% haste on the easy fights, and when you need a 3rd healer it goes byebye.

:(

[Omaric 246]

Yeah it's awesome, haha.

[Zagam 1,982]

1) My rings have always been a sore spot. All thoughout Dragon Soul, I always had 391 rings. I can't find justice in upgrading 7 item levels and adding Crit to a ring for 1250 valor when I can spend 1500 valor and upgrade a better piece that has Haste and Mastery on it. If we had a better spawn time on Galleon, I could snag that Hit/Mastery 496 ring and things would be great. Blame Blizzard for putting two 496 rings available to get...one being valor vendor and the other being another ring with Crit available in Heart of Fear. Our BiS rings have Spirit on them -_-

2) I can't confirm that, but seeing as how I've gotten two Soul Shards in the same time interval, I would like to think that it is possible to achieve Soul Shards from MG and DS proc'd Corruptions.

[Pandariah 6]

I'm glad these guys were able to help you! :o This is why I only heal. Lol!

Edited February 19, 2013 by Pandariah

[Jenaye 9]

Aye, that 5% spell buff is a reason why I weep during most of our Wind Lord fights; our shadow priest swaps to disc. I've been trying to (lol) make our lolhuntard swap to boomie so I can keep my buff =(

[Omaric 246]

Aye, that 5% spell buff is a reason why I weep during most of our Wind Lord fights; our shadow priest swaps to disc. I've been trying to (lol) make our lolhuntard swap to boomie so I can keep my buff =(

What's stopping them from using a sporebat to provide the buff?

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah if you didn't mention a Hunter. My old Hunter teammate felt like his Sporebat was more valuable to the raid group than he was. He was 75% correct because he was a Beast Mastery Hunter. His pet did 50% of his damage AND he provided 5% haste for all casters.

[Jenaye 9]

I started raiding as a rogue, and even then, I was new to wow as a whole (friend from work brought me in, had "endgame" experience from FFXI). They brought me in to FL, and I left at the start of DS due to deployment. Came home after DS was done and people were waiting around for MoP, and was headed to Japan, so I had to find a new server, etc. Long story short, I've only been actively raiding for FL, and about half of the current content. Still learning about everything.

[Twinkielock 15]

Wait so... let's say I've got 18 seconds left on my unbuffed Agony. A trinket procs, so let's arbitrarily say I refresh it. By doing this, I do *not* reset the duration until the next tic? All it does is add time and increases the power?

If that's the case, as long as I'm refreshing dots before they fall off I'm always benefiting from extra tics with haste no matter how much haste I have? Which would mean, the only real thresholds would be if I never refresh the dot, yes?

If all of this is true my mind is blown and I can stop crying to my raid about our only spell haste bringer, shadow/disc priest, constantly swapping between fights based on what role they need to play. I mean, obviously 5% haste is pretty big, but I've been tunnel visioning the threshold and assuming my haste is going to waste when I don't have the buff.

]

Get the addon AffDots.

Green = refresh now

Blue/Yellow = Think about refreshing or not

Red = Don't refresh

[Omaric 246]

^^^

I've been using it for awhile. We were discussing haste breakpoints; not DoT power.