How religiously should I follow Pawn?

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So every time i get an upgraded piece of gear i update my pawn strings by getting new ones from simcraft. However, all i ever hear on here is people saying "Stack mastery stack mastery!" Which Is what ive been doing. currently every piece of my gear except 1  has mastery. Today in Kara I got some WF 860 shoulders with low crit high haste and a socket. Pawn says theyre a 9% upgrade over my 850 shoulders but im kind of reluctant since equipping them would be a net loss of around 500 Mastery.  I already have a buttload of haste, and according to simcraft its the stat i want the absolute lowest right now. 

So my question is, can simcraft be wrong? Or am I just being too greedy with mastery?

[Iridar 80]

The very simple answer to be 100% certain: sim it. 

Sim your current gear, and do a separate sim with your new shoulders equipped. You will see for yourself whether that leads to DPS increase.

However, provided you did everything when creating Pawn string, it should be correct.

That's just how stat weights work. 

Stat weight is how much extra DPS you would get if you increased a certain stat by 1. 

So if you multiply all stats from a certain gear piece by their respective stat weights, you can calculate how much DPS you gain by having that item equipped. You can compare that value with another gear piece's, and learn which is better for you.

Pawn just automates that simple task for you. Before I learned of Pawn, i used to do manual calculations in Excel spreadsheet.

I wouldn't recommend to religiously follow Pawn for small increases of 1-3%, because stat weights change every time you change gear, and it may turn out that if you equip an item that's supposedly a small upgrade, the stat weights can shift and it may suddenly turn out that your old gear piece is an upgrade now. The ideal item would be something inbetween, but without access to reforging we get what we get.

Edited November 9, 2016 by Iridar