Originally Posted by Wizeowel
I'll need to say it again, the first two are false assumptions; the third misleading.
Haste causes you to run out of mana faster because you are casting faster. It doesn't in itself mean that you can cast less arcane blasts, you could still be doing the same total damage, just quicker. The number of ABs cast has more to do with the total length of the fight in terms of I5SR regen, consumables, VT and JoW and not at all with how quickly you are casting them.
With regards to haste messing up AB cycles, if you can't watch your gcd timer due to fight mechanics, passive haste still isn't a problem. It is activated abilities which affect haste which can throw your timing out: drums, skull, IV, heroism, etc. Quite honestly though, if you spam your button you should be okay. This is more of a learn-to-play issue than any kind of real drawback.
Lastly: yes you are right you don't want your passive haste + drums to put your AB under 1.0 seconds. Preferably you'd also rather that heroism gives the full effect while casting AB with drums. But seriously what kind of gear will do that? Even full Sunwell gear for arcane probably only has little more than 300 haste. Furthermore, there are many ways to make full use of IV, skull and heroism even if you have high passive haste. Whether you figure out a solution with AB or you end up hasting your regen cycles, it doesn't matter. You just need to be more flexible, rather than stacking all your cooldowns on 1 macro and hoping for the best. Rawr is excellent at providing suggestions for how to stack your cooldowns, so have a look at it.
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Mana that you have in an entire fight is essentially finite. Based on constant 60% regen, evoc, pots, gems, etc. If you have 20k mana in a 4 min fight, that is it.
DPM stays constant when you add haste rating. But DPM goes up when you add +int, +dmg, and even +crit. So yes, you will run out faster on a stat by stat comparision basis. In a situation where mana is finite for a fight, haste makes you reach that point where you "lapse" into your high DPM, lower DPS rotations. In contrast, +dmg, +int, +crit does not make you reach that stage sooner. They add more damage without the cost of having to use more mana. And to an arcane mage, mana = damage.
Taking this to an extreme, if you add enough haste, then you won't be regenning mana even during your AB rotations because you cast them so fast they use up more mana than you regen.
On throwing AB rotations off. It depends on the rotations. But various rotations are already set based on the inherent cast times of the spells such that they take advantage of the third debuff on AB. All the 3xAB rotation variations are meant to sqeeze in DPS and then start the cycle again with an AB just before the debuff runs out. Add haste in any increasing amount and you will soon find that you have to change the rotations because you are casting spells so fast you start the AB too early, yet you can't quite squeeze in another spell, etc.
In the end, it boils down to mana and sustainability. If you can stack more haste and still sustain your 100% AB spam, by all means. But if you can't stack on more haste without running into serious mana problems, then stack +dmg, int and crit which doesn't cause such problems. It is raid comp dependent. Not every arcane mage has such luxuries of super heavy mana support. As long as you are having to resort to rotations in a raid boss fight, then there is much more leeway to add +int, +dmg, and +crit because if you are in a situation to get more mana, you can easily transform all that into more ABs to use it up and obtain higher DPS anyway.
Its only when you are already at 100% AB spam, with mana to spare. Then you want to add on haste because you have excess mana that you can't use. If the goal of every aspiring arcane mage is to reach 100% AB spam in a raid fight. Then +int really helps, +dmg and +crit is just more damage but doesn't help, and +haste actually puts you further away from this goal.