Saxsy’s Haste

That might be a good title for a short story, but alas, it’s not. Rather, I wanted to delve into what seems to me to be a very interesting if technical aspect of Saxsy’s current gear.

I use SimulationCraft to model the dps of my characters. Sometimes I use it to determine whether one character should do more dps than another character. One of the things I like about it is that it will spit out stat scale factors: numbers that tell me, in theory, how much an extra point of a given stat would be worth. A while ago I ran the numbers on Saxsy and got what was a surprising result:

  • A point of Crit was worth 2.2076 dps.
  • A point of Mastery was worth 1.5892 dps.
  • A point of Haste was worth 1.2706 dps.

These results were surprising because Mastery is almost universally held to be the weakest stat for a fire mage. Any site you go to will tell you that Int>Hit>Crit>Haste>Mastery, with the only exception being at lower levels where haste is better than crit. So how does haste go to be the lowest valued stat in this setup?

In that particular gear setup, I had followed standard reforging rules. I reforged mastery to hit, until cap, and then either mastery or haste into crit, where possible. This resulted in the following ratings:

  • Crit of 1544 (33.47% as buffed)
  • Haste of 1675 (22.3% as buffed)
  • Mastery of 938 (13.23% as buffed)

Why is haste valued so low? I think because at that point it reaches some of what are known as “soft caps”: values of haste above which you will gain an extra tick of a periodic spell.  I went into this a little while ago, and with these values you can see that it’s driven by combustion. At 1996 haste, I would get an extra tick from combustion. Since my tier bonus gives me up to 500 extra haste and should be fully stacked before I hit combustion, or lifeblood should give me 480 extra haste, I should always get that extra tick of combustion. Haste then is valuable for speeding up my cast time, but that has diminishing returns.

(It is also possible to get extra living bomb and pyroblast ticks from haste, but one extra tick requires so little haste and two extra ticks requires so much haste that it’s not a practical goal.)

Here’s the problem with taking SimCraft results for granted. If I took those weights and plugged them into a tool like Mr. Robot, it would tell me that my reforges are incorrect. Instead of reforging mastery into something else as a first priority, I should be reforging haste as my first priority. Mastery should be my second priority. Logical thinking, based on the weights that I gave it.  I did that, and got a new configuration of gear that gave me these stats:

  • Crit of 1538 (33.44% buffed)
  • Haste of 1342 (19.48% buffed)
  • Mastery of 1266 (15.06% buffed)

I ran that through SimCraft and was disappointed to discover that this reforge reduced my dps by about 200 points. What was more interesting to me was the change in stat value:

  • A point of Crit was worth 2.2287 dps.
  • A point of Mastery was worth 1.5208 dps.
  • A point of Haste was worth 2.285 dps.

That’s right!  Haste now was the most valuable stat, just as it was prior to T13. It’s not difficult to see why.  With a haste rating of 1342, a full 10-stack of Stolen Time wouldn’t get me an extra tick from combustion, and I’d have to rely on Lifebloom and Stolen Time in conjunction. And in general the lower haste is, the more valuable a point of haste will be.

In any case, that obviously was not the right reforge option. If I went back to Mr. Robot and plugged in these new values, it would tell me all sorts of things about reforging mastery and crit into haste and changing some of my enchants, and it would all likely be wrong. The reason it would be wrong is that the value of a given stat is not static; it varies based on what your stats are.

In any case, I decided to do a bit of reforging on my own. My hit % with this reforge was at 17.02%, a value I quite liked because it was minimally over the hit cap. I didn’t want to mess with that. What I did do is in places where I could reforge mastery or haste into crit, I reforged mastery instead of haste. This got me to the following stats:

  • Crit of 1534 (33.42% buffed)
  • Haste of 1516 (20.95% buffed)
  • Mastery of 1096 (14.11% buffed)

Running these through SimCraft resulted in a dps reading more or less equivalent to the first set.  My stat weights were as follows:

  • A point of Crit was worth 2.1797 dps.
  • A point of Haste was worth 1.5317 dps.
  • A point of Mastery was worth 1.5266 dps.

Mastery and haste had achieved a near equilibrium. I have a feeling that this is in fact the optimal reforge for my gear, one which involves a combination of preferences of reforging haste and mastery. It’s not one I’d get from Mr. Robot. It’s one that acknowledges the varying value of a given stat.

Ultimately this makes very little difference. As I noted above, even the completely messed up reforge away from haste strategy ended up reducing my dps by only 200. But I think it’s interesting as an intellectual exercise. I also think I need to squeeze every bit of dps out of my current gear, because the way things are going, it’ll have to last me to the next expansion.