What is a "Haste Breakpoint" and why should I care?
Please refer to http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=436" target="_blank
To start things off a little differently this time, let me post the TL;DR early. Obviously, TL;DRs are general statements and there will always be exceptions.
TL;DR: Haste Breakpoints do not matter for Mages.
Gearing your Mage around Mage Bomb breakpoints is not worth it.
The rest of this post will just be me explaining why.
To start, we need to establish what breakpoints look like. On a scaling graph, BPs are sudden "jumps" in your DPS. They are vertical, or very steep slopes where you gain a lot of DPS with a small gain in haste. Here are examples of meaningful haste breakpoints from other classes:
Demonology Warlock, +4 Corruption(EA) & +2 Doom(EA) @ 8094 Haste. ~1.32% gain from BP.
Balance Druid, +4 Moonfire @ 10289 Haste. ~1.60% gain from BP.
Shadow Priest, +3 DP & +3 SW:P @ 14873 Haste. ~1.46% gain from BP.
Now, here are the "important LB breakpoints" often quoted in guides:
Arcane Mage, +2 LB @ 13163 Haste with Mage Armor. ~0.28% gain from BP.
Frost Mage, +2 LB @ 9522 Haste with Frost Armor. ~0.29% gain from BP.
If you have no trouble with the graphs, it should be obvious by now why BPs don't matter to us. For demo locks, moonkins and shadow priests, all of them have a ~1.5% gain just by the breakpoint. For us, there's a <0.3% gain. This tiny gain means that if you sacrifice more than a few hundred of your main stat, you're actually losing out on damage to reach it.
Why do our breakpoints do so much less for us? There are a few reasons for this:
1. LB is not a true "pure" DOT. The majority of this "breakpoint gain" actually comes from the explosion, which increases slightly in size with each extra tick.
2. Mage Bombs only account for a small portion of our overall damage. Even for Arcane, it is below 25%.
3. Mage Bombs do not offer powerful spec interactions for fire and arcane. For frost, while it offers brain freeze procs, Frostfire Bolt is also only a small amount of our damage. This is different from Doom which creates wild imps and Moonfire which gives powerful Starsurge procs.
4. As a cast-time based class, haste effects on cast time filler spells often counterbalance whatever effects they apply to Mage Bombs anyway.
So what's the point? The point is that we should stop telling people to gear for 9522 or 13163 haste, and just tell them to focus on stacking their tier-1 stats, or reaching soft caps. Ignoring breakpoints, for 99.99% of players, is the best strategy to follow.
