We have been swimming in new loot for the past month or so, and we are crawling closer and closer to (or further and further away from) our soft crit cap. Up until Icecrown Citadel, I have been working feverishly on keeping my haste near 400, but with just a few upgrades from ICC, it is quite impossible. I am currently less than 1% away from being soft crit capped, and I am almost certain to reach it with the next major upgrade.
But it’s not all bad. I know I have scorned haste quite a lot in the past, but I have had a bit of change of heart after hearing a few arguments and checking through logs. But how do we go about handling haste and crit in ICC?
Why haste ISN’T bad:
Previously, I would have said that I would much rather stack crit over it’s soft haste cap than haste. Crit gives us faster eclipse procs, more wrath crits and helps our Languish from 4pt10. But haste is actually not too shabby either, because:
- Refreshing dots will drop your NG, putting your wrath cast time back to ~1,2.
- Simply running for 2+ seconds will mostly drop NG.
- Non-crit streaks on wrath (they are there, we all have them) will drop NG.
- Faster eclipse procs after lunar eclipse.
- The obvious, faster starfires = more damage.
That’s not to say that crit isn’t good. I will also be trying to get as much crit as I can, but my aim with my Better In Slot list is to pump up both my haste and crit to ridiculous amounts, and limit the amount of spirit I have.
But how do I compare stats then?!
Same as always. Up until 400 haste rating, haste is still what you would prefer. Then, up until you see a point where your crit is at 42% raid buffed and with your idol running, crit will probably be what you want to go for. At this point, crit and haste are worth more or less the same.
To put it in another language:
Pre haste cap: Hit > SP > Haste > Crit
Pre crit cap: Hit > SP > Crit > Haste
Post caps: Hit > SP > Crit = Haste
You might find yourself swimming in hit rating as you switch your gear – I certainly am. Hit over hit cap doesn’t really do anything for you, so you may consider taking a point from Balance of Power and put it into whatever else you want. I maxed out Owlkin Frenzy for a bit of a laugh. You can do this when you have 315 hit rating or more (as horde). Just remember to spec back once you reduce your hit. In my Better In Slot list, I am just 5 hit rating over the cap.
So, how are we doing?
I thought that with our stats only benefiting half of our spells, we would see moonkins creep further down the damage meters. In truth, I haven’t really seen this yet, other than on fights with a lot of movement – but I can’t blame the stats on that. A few months ago, 7k-ish DPS was pretty good on TOTGC25 fights in my guild, and I was at a comfortable place on the meters. I’m surprised to see how much my own DPS has increased, just over the last few weeks.
We went to TOTGC25 after our holiday break, and I was suddenly doing 8-9k DPS in the beginning of Northrend Beasts. My Jaraxxus DPS peaked at 8,9k DPS in the first minute, and ended on a good 8,1k DPS. And I am still wanting plenty of upgrades in ICC.
I think we’re still doing pretty damn well!
Tags: crit, damage, haste, hit, Icecrown Citadel, nature's grace, starfire, tier 10, wrath
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Heroic: The Crimson Hall (10 player)
Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10 player)
The Frozen Throne (10 player)
Fall of the Lich King (10 player)
We aren’t in a bad spot, true. But seeing how our feral druid simply scores about 2k-3k more dps is hard
For the BiS list: It doesn’t account in the heroic-mode items, does it? If it does, the heroic reins should provide more than 150 spellpower I guess.
Further: Do you have any suggestions for improving DPS in the movement-heavy fights? Specifically:
Rotface: It’s fairly predictable in general, but I don’t think this helps much.
Festergut: It’s predictable when we have to move in general, but the stun-debuff hits hard sometimes. I don’t think we can improve this other than standing in meelee range (that’s if we got enough ranged)
Prof. : Running here, running there, attacking this, attacking that.. I can’t think of any way to improve my dps. Suggestions?
I don’t think kitties are that much overpowered. We don’t have one, and i only see one when our feral tank goes kitty on some fights, so i may be willfully ignorant. But comparing us against other classes, i think we’re doing just fine
No, the BIS list doesn’t include heroic items (i made a blog a few weeks ago about the BIS list where i talk more about my choices and such). I see no point in using heroic items, because they are just straight upgrades from normal items, and while i may get some 20 more hit overall, i don’t think it will change the list a lot.
I do have some ideas for the fights, and i plan to make a blog to survive the ICC fights in general. Hopefully i will manage to make it tomorrow (as i am going to see Avatar tonight
), but that should include some tips, observations and such for moonkins. I failed horribly on Rotface and Festergut specifically, but i am spending a lot of brain power trying to figure out how we can lessen the blow. My DPS on Prof Prut was very low initially, but i managed to improve it by changing my playstyle slightly – more agressively, but with a bit of effort i think it could work.
I think all casters are hurt on Festergut, not just us. We do get a bit of pain because we need constant eclipse uptimes, and we need to get the most out of them, but i’d really rather have healers near the melee and have the ranged take the beating.
Well, I don’t exactly mind the kitties being stronger, it benefits the raid
About Heroic items: I simply thought about the possibility, that some ring from normal AND heroic might be bis ^^
Hi,
You mention that you are less than 1% crit from soft cap, and i see on armory that you have 908 crit rating.
How do you calculate your soft crit cap?
Heres a link to my armory. Hope you can help me
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Grim+Batol&n=Vamlo
Thank you in advance.
Yagamoth > The faction ring is pretty solid as it is. It has an awesome proc effect, it has a socket, and the only reason why you wouldn’t use this would be if it was possible to be hit capped without it with something else, AND there is a ring that beats its haste and SP proc.
In any case, you would still want to increase both haste and crit, so getting 2x Ring of Rapid Ascent would work, but would probably throw you off a bit.
Vamlo > There is an easy way to figure out if you’re capped, and there is a hard way. I use the easy way out
You get 18% crit from raid buffs and talents (imp. insect swarm or imp. FF crit doesn’t show on your character sheet, for example). Then you get 40% crit from eclipse, bringing your crit to 58%. Whats left is 42% to 100%, so if you are at 42% crit (on your character screen) fully raid buffed, with your idol running and so on, then you are crit capped
just wonna say thx for that answer qieth just read up on ej then started looking through on mmo about crit cap, just turned my off-spec back to boomkins and misstakenly thought stacking haste as high as possible ignoring crit was way to go but looks like went little wrong, these post of your explain nicly about the effect without going over the top with theory and will recorment it to others.
Thank you once more for a really neat blog entry, Q.
I was surprised to see that items with haste on them still work well for you after being soft-capped when I compared a few items – with the ej stat-weights to find out which item would be the biggest benefit.
Lesson learned.
Have you yet looked at crafted items and other things meanwhile? I have the feeling that my hit goes through the roof and thus thought about changing the t9 legs to the crafted cloth ones instead of the t10.
But time will tell…
Well, here’s the point: Crafted gear is costly and takes a while to get. It can also only get to 264, where drops can get all the way up to 277.
With my current items, my hit is perfect and crit and haste is going up equally, and i can spend my emblems (or gold, but im not rich
) on tier pieces, the belt, idol and so on.
Just to show you that iv actually took a look, and seen this argument after our few hours debate that we finally decided to agree on someting, you know the results of that.
so im above soft crit i think 43.03% w/ the idol up and im at 581 haste w/ 377 hit. so the only thing i can do now is stack sp and haste i believe. If im wrong plz let me know
Nightstick of alexstrasa
Yep, you are 1% above soft crit cap. Everything is fine. Crit and haste are equal now, so just bump up those, and lose the extra hit when you can.
I repeat: Haste and crit are equal. Keep increasing them
what about my wraths they are less than a sec and the global is 1 sec
I actually covered that in the blog post you are commenting on