Is the 4 piece set bonus worth it?Follow

You be trolling mgjr?

the set bonus is amazing. 18% more damage for 30 seconds every 3 minutes? I'm regularly critting my ABs for 30k+ while CDs are popped. Unless you are getting more than 200+ dps from those gloves over the other set gloves (news flash: you aren't) you should get that 4pc asap.

the images have never had anything to do with the 30 second MI buff (threat loss, etc) that you get. You get it whether they are alive or not, the only thing they give you is about 1% more damage on an entire fight.

You should seriously break that habit. Everything is relative.

If you have low SP, you won't be getting what you want out of haste.

Compare:

You have 2K SP (say a spell hits for 3K) and no Haste, and it's a 3 seconds cast time. That's 1K DpS.

If you can cut that to 2.7, with 10% haste, it's 1111 DpS.

If you up that to 15% Haste, it's 1176 DpS.

If you add 200 SP, but remain at 10% Haste, it's 1185 DpS.

If you add 200 SP, but remain at 0% Haste, you get 1066.

See?

I don't care if you fling spells every second. If they only hit for 1K, you still only get 1K DpS. Flinging them for 2.5K every 2 seconds is better DpS.

Both Haste and Spell Power are great stats. But there's a reason you prioritize Spell Power first.

Remember:

If you have 10% haste, that means each SP you have is actually worth 1.1 SP.

If you have 50% haste, that means each SP you have is actually worth 1.5 SP.

So, let's compare gems (without socket bonuses):

23 SP or 20 Haste.

20 Haste Rating is .61% Haste, slightly rounded up.

So, if we say:

.0061X = 23.
X = 3770.49

SO, you need 3771 Innate Spell Power for a 20 Haste Gem to be equal (actually SLIGHTLY better) than a 23 SP Gem.

Now, this IS rough, since different spells use different coefficients. If it has a low SP coefficient, then Haste will become more effective. If it has a high one, then SP is more effective. It's relative.

But that's how it would work out on a 100% SP attack. I'm not trying to show the actual math for an arcane rotation, I just want to demonstrate why they depend on each other.

This also shows why Orange gems in yellow slots is usually worth a SP slot bonus. HOWEVER, that was not true for me until recently. Because, if you only have 2K SP, that's only 6.1 SP gained through haste. That makes the gem equal to about 18 SP. If the socket bonus was equal to or greater than 5 SP, it was worth it.

But, now that I have 2.4K SP, that same gem is now worth 7.32 SP.

See? It scales. Now that 5 SP socket is a larger increase.

Diggory is right yet again.

What I've been seeing more and more lately is people speccing and gearing in such a way that it becomes easier for them to keep their rotation flowing neatly. The thing is, you do not automatically deal optimal damage if you can keep your rotation going. The reason you use that rotation is because it puts out optimal damage - you do not put out optimal damage because you are using that rotation. If you use ********* of haste to make it easier to keep your rotation perfect, that's all good, but like Dig pointed out you're going to miss out so much on other stats that your DPS will still be lower than a rotation without (or with less) haste, EVEN if you mess it up at some point. You have to keep in mind that it is indeed all relative and that your rotation might be less important than you think.

Ok. I'm convinced. I got the 4 set bonus last night and I accidentally pulled thread on Saurafang. I wasn't paying attention because I never pull threat on that fight since I'm switching targets. I also did almost 8k on Festergut. So anyone else reading this at a later time. It is DEFINITELY worth it. The only issue I had was that replacing the hood and gloves pushed me below hit cap. I had to switch out trinkets to the hit/haste trinket from the intellect/spellpower trinket to get back to hit cap.

being a little below cap is fine, really. It is when you have virtually no hit that it is a problem. I raided at 195 hit (208 is my currently specced cap) and it was a very rare occasion to see a resist. It is especially not worth the sacrifice of a sub-optimal piece of gear to make up a small amount. Worse case throw in a spellpower/hit gem if it bothers you to get you at the cap. I really just wait or if I am close throw icewalker on boots instead of tuskarr's.

Edited, Mar 10th 2010 1:45pm by Anobix

I really HATE losing Run Speed though. Much nicer to just do a /hit gem instead of a /haste one.

Rawr has consecration for me as well (then again I'm 80 over the 8$ cap sitting at 289 I believe), I would generally stick with those and you may find an offhand or wand that has hit that will be a smaller dps decrease in upgrading to rather than using a pair of boots that were expensive to craft to throw you over the hit cap.

Edited, Mar 17th 2010 2:17pm by Anobix