Scaling factors
Sta=0.0350 Int=4.6378 SP=3.1804 Hit=6.3289 Crit=2.7720 Haste=1.4481 Mastery=3.0874
Above are the scale factors for destruction, if you’re in BiS gear. You’ll notice that haste is not very valued, yet everyone says that haste is awesome and you should reforge for haste where you can, so why are these values so different? What aren’t they telling us?
Before diving into this, this post is in regarding to some light theory crafting using something called scaling factors, if you don’t know what these are, then it might be worth a skip at least until I do a ‘what are scaling factors?’ post and then this might make a bit more sense. But the shortest version possible is that it tells you what each point of a stat will give you in terms of DPS (in “Theory”). So the TL;DR; Always take generic scale factors you get from a website with a rather large grain of salt.
The first thing to note, is that scale factors do not stay the same at all gear levels. In fact they can change by a large margin with just a few pieces of gear. Haste scaling for destruction warlocks isn’t liniar, that is to say that depending on your haste . Even when most of our spells are ‘haste capped’ we still like it, but only to a point and this point just isn’t the ‘haste cap’ for the majority of our spells. To say where this point is we have to understand just why hast is so good for us.
These days DoT (Damage Over Time) ability’s scale with haste in such a way that instead of getting shorter as they did in Wotlk, they stay at the same length and at certain haste levels they gain another tick at the end. The levels of haste required is determined by some formula that I don’t really want to get into, but the main thing to know is that it rounds, and its effected by your haste and the dots length
“Instantly deals fire damage equal to 60% of your Immolate’s periodic damage on the target.” – Conflagrate
conflagrate deals damage based on how much damage Immolates dot does. So when immolate gains a extra tick, Conflagrates damage goes up by a noticeable margin. The last reasonably attainable point in haste to get another tick in top end raid gear, is 1406 (of the top of my head I believe the next tick is at over 2000 haste).
So what does this tell us? That scale values can vary dramatically based upon your gear, and how those stats interact with the mechanics of your class. For Destruction Warlocks the closer you are to the next tick for Immolate via haste, the more valuable haste is. So are we meant to know exactly how valuable each stat is for you? The most reliable method is to run simcraft on your character, with your available raid buffs. Sadly right now, simcraft isn’t quite there, numbers are still changing, bugs abound, but if you are feeling dangerous, you can head to the project hosting on google code and download the source, keeping in mind that you’ll have to compile it yourself.
Post inspired by people on warlocks den who went and reforged all their gear to mastery/crit instead of haste/mastery after seeing said scaling factors >_>
