EbanySalamonderiel wrote:
Got 509 haste just now. Should I be looking to make sidegrades from Crit/Haste gear to MP5/Haste gear?
And is Haste now better than crit? Is MP5 better than crit?
As Bodhi said, Haste is throughput and Crit is regen. However, with Seal of Wisdom, Judgement is a major regen tactic for us in the post-3.2 world. And Haste gives you more GCDs, so unless you're spamming you can Judge more often, which leads to more regen. My napkin math says that moving from 20-second Judgement (to keep the debuff rolling) to 10-second Judgment (Judge on cooldown) is worth 150mp5 with a 25k mana pool (200mp5 with a 35k mana pool). That alone clobbers what you can get from swapping a couple pieces of gear. This also implies that the 2T9 "bonus" is actually a penalty unless you really are spamming so hard that you can only afford one GCD per 30 seconds...
Something else that surprised me is that, at my gear level closing in on 219, for a tough (bordering on progression) fight, crit and mp5 are practically even in itemization for me. So my best gearing strategy is to just take whatever's best and not worry about stacking any particular regen stat except Int (I still see no particular reason to gem for anything else in the absence of meta requirements and/or tasty socket bonuses). Your mileage may vary, of course, based on your content and your gear level, but that's why there are simulators, as well as extra bag space to keep both pieces and try them out.