Today over at WoW Insider, I talk about about haste and haste plateaus as it pertains to survival hunters.
Today, we’re going to talk about one of the most difficult stats to pin down with the needles of math: haste. Nowadays, haste does all sorts of different little things for hunters, and even in our best mathematical models, its behavior is tricksy and elusive, making big leaps up and down the stat weighting seemingly on a whim. Haste is like wizards or cats: subtle, and quick to anger.
Are there really all kinds of haste plateaus, where just adding 2 haste increases your DPS by large amounts? But then adding another 2 haste actually drops your DPS? Well, no, there aren’t. When you see that kind of behavior on the spreadsheets, it’s an artifact of the modeling process and not something that you’ll actually see in game.
Join me after the cut for a rundown of what haste is actually doing for you and why significant haste plateaus aren’t currently attainable. Since survival is currently so far ahead of the other specs that it can actually see its backside (and a fine view that is), we’ll talk about haste specifically in the scope of the SV spec…. Read More.
Thanks a lot for the post Frost. Haste had me confused before this article. I knew it was one of the worst hunter secondary stats, but then I kept hearing about the plateaus. Thanks for clearing that up!
This is the article i have been waiting for. I am disappointed about haste now, was really looking forward to stacking it to speed things up.
But, i kind of figured this would be the case, and not 10 minutes before reading this this morning, I raided the AH on a lot of +30, 35 and 40 Hit gems. They were so low priced, they were cheaper than reforging gear! So I stocked up. Unfortunately, Agility Gems are still the highest priced gems on my server !7:^( as are CRIT gems. And right now my 85 Dwarf Hunter GTyoungblood, is taking a breather, while I level my (right now 61) Worgen Hunter. So all of GT’s gold is going to keep him pampered, and leveling unbelievably quick.
Thanks for the articles, please keep ‘em comin’!
Am I correct in assuming that for the time being, all Haste above 6.325% can be reforged off in favour of either Crit or Mastery, taking for granted that I am Hit-capped?
last night i finally got round to getting my hunter to 85 and ive noticed that im always running out of focus in raids both BM and SV .. and thought oh maybe i should stack a ton of haste to see if it helps out much .. now im not really that bothered with haste
ill stick the usual stuff and try to work on the rotation you mentioned in this post
thanks for the info
Posted on WoW Insider, but putting it here too.
The other slightly, very slightly, useful thing about getting haste over that first plateau of 6.325% is input lag. If you play like I do with the new custom lag tolerance setting at 0ms (since I want to be able to react at a moment’s notice and not be stuck with a spell queue) then having an extra few ms of buffer space between your cobra shots helps to make sure you get your Explosive shot off on exactly every cooldown.
This is one I have been waiting for. Now I can reforge off some of the excess haste to crit or mastery depending on gear. Thanks again for being on top of things.
I was under the impression that the focus regeneration portion of haste, was there merely to compensate for shooting faster (without going out of focus). In other words a rotation that works at one haste level won’t suddenly focus starve you with more haste. I keep hoping that some invariant will show up to make the calculation of haste simpler, but I haven’t spent much time on it.
I wonder if there is enough of a ‘rotation’ so that the spreadsheet could take a boss fight in an integral number of rotations (rather than a exact set time) and whether that would even out some of the noise we are seeing. The noise really is drastically reducing the usefulness of the spreadsheet as a resource to which we can direct others. People already want a single set of stat priorities (actually they want a single stat to stack, but that is hopeless), telling them to go to femaledwarf after every upgrade, and then run it 20 times adjusting things a little each time, and looking for a stable result, just isn’t going to work.
I didn’t think this was what Blizzard meant when they said that they wanted to remove the need to have spreadsheets…
Your theory that Focus regen from haste compensates for shooting faster is slightly flawed. The problem with that is that it only increases how fast your Auto-shot shoots (which costs 0 focus) and decreases the cast time of Cobra/Steady shot (which also cost 0 focus.) So by shooting “faster”, you’re not actually spending more focus for the haste regen to compensate for. The only shots that do cost you focus are instant cast and limited by the 1-sec GCD, so you aren’t shooting any more of those no matter how much haste you have.
The outlier here is, of course, Aimed Shot; however, you should not be using this in your rotation except for Master Marksman procs, so that point is moot.
What is wrong with Frostheim´s / my maths?
Frost says we need 6.325% haste from gear to reach 1.66 Cobra Shot cast time
I say we need 5.91% which is roughly 50 haste rating difference.
Basically, we need 20% altogether from gear, Pathing and Hunting Party to be able to cast three shots in 5 seconds. Pathing gives us 3%, Hunting Party 10%. That means we need 1.20 / 1.1 / 1.03 = 1.0591 (= 5.91%) haste from gear
They’re really close. Your calculation puts your cobra cast time at 1.66672… a *teensy* bit slower than idea to get in 3. I did the math to get to a 1.66 cast time and mine puts it at 1.6602… a *teensy* bit faster than what you’d need, since the actual point is 1.666666-repeating. I then we both suffered a bit from cutting off our trailing numbers.
But I figured the safest bet was to calculate for a 1.66 cast time — and realize if you have latency (you do) and aren’t using the queue at all (which really, why not?) you’ll need it yet faster to account for your latency.
Hey there, this isnt about haste more than SV’s rotation really. I have just noticed on Zeherah’s website that if i remove Arcane Shot from the rotation completely my dps goes up. Now it says for me at least that the avg dmg for Arcane is about 8100, Cobra 9400, what i would expect. But seeing as Cobra has a cast of 1.66 sec and Arcane is instant in my mind Arcane should win. I am aware that Careful Aim makes Cobra better when the target is at or above 80% HP, is that why Cobra’s over all dps is higher than using arcane when possible or is there something i am missing? I basically just wanna know if i should keep Arcane in my rotation.
If you are using Arcane shot instead of Cobra, wouldn’t your damage go down because you will be out of Focus once Explosive shot comes off cooldown?
Arcane Shot is a focus dump. You don’t use Arcane Shot as part of your normal rotation, you use it for those moments when you’re close to capping focus but Explosive Shot is still on cooldown.
The Cobra Shot boost above 80% does help skew the numbers in favor of Cobra Shot. I mean 60% more crit is pretty substantial. If you average that out it, it would almost be like a static 12% crit bonus on Cobra Shot. If you want to compare AS to CS sub 80% just head to any WoL parse and set page to the back half of the fight and compare AS damage per shot to CS damage per shot.
Since hitting max focus is about the greatest DPS sin you can commit as a hunter what are you going to use to dump focus if Explosive Shot is on cooldown? Serpent Sting is perma-up due to your Cobra Shots, Black Arrow is on a long cooldown, and Cobra Shot only keeps you at max focus if you use it again. The answer is Arcane Shot.
Look under the rotation setting in the spreadsheet — there’s a checkbox option to disable arcane shot during the Careful Aim period (so it doesn’t cast arcane shot during the first 20% boss health, but does afterward). That should give you a more accurate look at how your dps compares with and without arcane shots
This explains a lot to me as to why as an ilvl 334 hunter, I could not even crack 7k dps on the target dummies. I’ve got way too many points in haste, and my rotation is/was not consistant.
I will readjust my haste into mastery & crit, and re-evaluate my rotation. Thanks!
this is one of those pesky stats that really mess with the female dwarf spreadsheet. I “reforged” all my haste into crit or mastery and it showed a dps decrease. However, when I did it in game there wasnt a signifigant increase or decrease but my rotation did seem to flow a teensy bit better. I reforged a full 2% points off my haste and turned it into mastery. I assume that while I may not notice a diff. on the dummy I will see the change on boss fights but I am just not sure. Thanks Frost for all this helpful info.
Extremely good article. I was confused with the plateau and have a better grasp of it. After looking at my hunter, I stacked just fine. at 6.54 I did ok(big surprise to me) When I started I though I would have to reforge/gem.
This and the tanking article, I’m set for both specs. Very informative, and very grateful for explaining both. :>
I get frustrated with people thinking we need to get down to a shot speed of 1.25s in order to get a DPS increase out of a 4-rotation. That simply isn’t true.
Regardless of your personal numbers, the ratio of the damage of our shots is generally about the same for all. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that Arcane Shot and Cobra Shot do 1 point of damage and Explosive does 3. (The ratio is slightly less in favor of Explosive, but the numbers improve as we reduce the ratio.) So in the course of a 3-rotation, you will do one Explosive and 3 Cobras, or 6 damage. You deal this is 6 seconds. Therefore, this is 1 DPS.
In order for a 4-rotation to have an increased level of DPS, we don’t need to get our shot to the soft cap. We just need to get it so we’re beating 1 DPS. And with one explosive and four cobras, or 7 damage, that means we have SEVEN seconds to do it. That’s right, folks. You’ll benefit from a four-rotation even while keeping Explosive on hold for as much as a full second.
In the case of using four cobra shots, that means we have 6 seconds to do 4 shots, or 1.50 speed. This requires an overall haste of 33.3%. After Hunting Party and Pathing, that’s just 17.7%. That’s WAY better than the alleged 41.2%.
But wait, it gets better. If one of our shots is an instant, the GCD on that shot will finish faster than a Cobra Shot, leaving more time for the rest of the rotation. If we use an Arcane Shot (or more likely we’re just due for a Black Arrow refresh,) that means that the 7 seconds we have to deal our damage is spanned by two shots eating one second, and that leaves 5 seconds for our 3 Cobra Shots. Why does that amount seem familiar? Oh yeah, because it’s the EXACT SAME SCENARIO as the one everyone uses for the haste cap for the 3-rotation. If you can beat 1.66 on your Cobra shot speed, you should at least be squeezing in four shots when using Black Arrow or Arcane in the mix.
And to piggyback on anyone who wants to critique the numbers…
BLACK ARROW) If we are refreshing Black Arrow as one of our shots, during a 3-rotation, we’ll be doing just 5 damage. Since we’re already haste-capped, our time doesn’t improve. 5 dmg / 6 sec = .833 DPS. To achieve this with a 4-rotation, which will do Ex (3) + BA (0) + 3 Cobras (3) = 6 dmg, the time for the rotation needs to be under 7.20 sec. That actually tilts further in our favor, requiring a shot speed of just 1.73 sec…which you practically have by default!
LESSER RATIO) If we change the damage numbers to be 2 and 5 instead of 1 and 3, for a ratio of 2.5:1 instead of 3:1, then the damage on a 3-rotation is 5 + 3*2 = 11, in 6 seconds, or 1.833 DPS. To beat that with a 4-rotation, which deals 5 + 4*2 = 13, we would have 7.09 seconds. Again, we gain a little bit of time to our rotation over the 3:1 example. In reality, your explosive shots might do more than 2.5x your cobra shot damage, but they WILL be less than 3:1, so use the first post as a worst-case scenario.
ALSO, keep in mind that the numbers I’m giving are cut-offs. You need to achieve them for the literal damage output of your specials cycle to achieve greater damage. However, do keep in mind that your overall DPS will be higher on the exact cut-offs (theoretically) because you will have increased focus production from an extra cobra shot per rotation. And because we aren’t disregarding haste, our auto and pet damage will also be increasing.
You don’t have 6 seconds between explosive shots, you have 5. Which is why you need 1.25 for a 4 second rotation.
You don’t have 6 seconds between explosive shots, you have 5. Which is why you need 1.25 for a 4 cobra rotation.
Good article. I saw a hunter on the forums the other day who reforged to get 15% haste, “in order to hit the haste cap.” Made no sense, but strangely when I entered him into femaledwarf.com his pet had 1000 dps over mine, however he was 3400 total dps below me with 2 points higher gearscore.
I reforged my gear to have the correct haste amount, and got to 15648.52 dps over 15623.25 dps, which is 25.27 dps gained. If you factor in moving around, trapping, and all the other dynamics figured into a fight, I think I’d rather have absolutely no haste and to keep reforging all haste into crit or mastery. Better to have a serpent sting, black arrow, or trap tick up with extra mastery and crit than to rely on being stationary in one spot and getting in perfect cobra shots in between explosives. Not to mention the AOE damage would be more with crit/mastery.
Another huge factor is Lifeblood for herbalists which I use for 20 secs every 2 minutes, then rapid fire or heroism where I’m not using that. Used at the right moment in an encounter where you don’t have to move around, it gives all the haste benefits cited here without having to reforge. Not to mention the Thundering Skyflare Diamond proc (480 haste for 6 secs) or any other haste procs.
Anyway much thanks for clarifying haste .
Simple question. Assuming I am hit capped and If I get my Haste to exactly 6.325% should I then be reforging anything I can’t put into Crit into Mastery?
This is awesomesauce!
So I’ve got hit capped at 8.00% hit chance (mine’s at about 8.23% so that’s nice) and capping out Haste at +6.325% is the new goal, after which it’s time to focus on Crit and Mastery. Doing it in this order seems logical, since hit and haste first, enables me to get my rotation down pat and also make sure I don’t miss. Gawd, this site’s awesome!
Anyway, to look at Crit and Mastery and the stat interaction, Frost has put up this explanation: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/12/hunter-stat-scaling/
In short, Crit and Mastery scale better together than they do apart, sort of the same way that the sum of the whole is larger than the sum of the integral parts =)
Crit is still somewhat better than Mastery, but reforging out of Mastery at all times, seems a bit over the top. With so much magical damage out of the SV spec, Mastery is indeed very nice!
Have a look through the thread I linked above, very good discussion!
Before this post, assuming we where hit capped, we wanted crit > haste >mastery.
After this post crit is still the best second stat, but haste is only better than mastery if we stay at the haste plateau (6.325%).
When we stack haste after we reach the plateau is losses a lot of strength. We will still get faster attack speed and our pets attack speed and regen will also increase, but since we wont be able to shoot another Cobra or Arcane its not that usefull.
So am i right when i conclude the following?
The best second stat is crit.
The second best second stat is haste untill we reach the plateau at 6.325%. Herafter mastery is better than haste.
Hope to get a respond from u Frostheim to clearify this.
Keep up the good work!!
Not necessarily. We know that hit is the best secondary stat. If you’re hit capped crit is the best secondary stat. Then it gets murky.
Even after you have over 6.325% haste, haste still might be better than mastery for all of the other things that it does. It’s complicated, and none of our models currently give us a very clear answer, but that bonus to auto-shot speed, pet attacks, and focus regen for you and your pet looks like it’s still better than mastery — but you definitely want at least that first 6.325…. though you don’t really have to try to end up above there.
Don’t forget that goblin hunters have the racial of 1% haste so only need to gear up to 5.325%, unless I’m missing something.
I know the majority of us are Survival nowadays, but Id really like to work on these bonuses from the BM perspective as the benefit from a raiding BM/Survival hunter combo is larger than two survival hunters.
It seems to me a BM hunter may benefit more from haste than survival would. Could you post the numeral effects of each of these benefits that you have listed out?
increases your rate of Auto Shot fire
decreases the cast time of your Steady Shot or Cobra Shot (and Aimed Shot too, technically)
increases your base focus regen
increases your pet’s attack speed
increases your pet’s base focus regen
ummm…it increases the rate at which you do all those things by the haste percentage? (Note that increasing the rate by 10% is not exactly the same as decreasing the time by 10%.)
That said, if you use a line of reasoning similar to the one I used above for SV, you can determine if/when to squeeze in an extra shot. Problem is that BM has more doohickeys to push. Focus Fire, BW, and Fervor are all going to disrupt your usual KC->Arc->CS,CS,CS pattern. Then again, that’s still probably not as game-changing as Lock and Load is.
should i reforge some haste to mastery?, i currently have haste at 7.25% (929 haste). the plateau 6.325%. now, on most of my pieces of gear (if i can) i normally either reforge mastery or haste to crit (already at hit cap), now on the few pieces of gear that i cannot reforge to crit, should i reforge the excess haste to mastery? is mastery better then any haste beyond the rating of 6.325%?
I love it that you actually figure out the mathematical reason why haste isn’t all that important when compared to other stats. You put the effort in that a lot of others wouldn’t, and it really does help to understand haste when you break down the mechanics of it. Thanks again