Brissa

Its definitely not a problem with linear vs exponential scaling and I think that rogues as a whole scale lineary however haste proccs dont.
The number of haste proccs and as such how much haste you will have is determined by
p*swing speed, where p is the probability of a proc
swing speed = weapon speed*haste effect
as such Haste proc = p*weapon speed*haste effect.

This is not a linear relationship but rather an S curve.

 

Mearis

That's not that simple, since haste procs don't stack with themselves, and don't increase the amount of haste they give if they proc over themselves, otherwise you'd quickly spiral to infinite attack speed, but you are completely correct that different haste procs work like that with respect to each other, I didn't realize that most proc items worked on a proc per swing basis.

 

Brissa

Which is why I said it is an S-curve instead of a quadratic relationship.

And the procs are either a static percentage or a PPM value which is the same as a percentage modified by weapon speed.

 

Liebestod

It's not like non-melee classes don't have haste "on hit" procs which benefit from haste and can benefit in an superlinear manner. I know that the Ashtongue Talisman of Insight is being talked about a lot in one of the Mage theorycrafting threads.

Superlinear scaling isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself. It's differential scaling between classes (and specs) which is problematic. I can't speak much for which classes scale better than others, but it's definitely not as simple as "class X scales linearly, class Y does not", unless you water down classes to a few abilities, which may or may not be safe to do.

I do think it is a shame, however, that Blizzard does not always see the role of scaling behind class imbalances... and hence when buffs or nerfs are targeted at balancing players with a certain level of gear, even if those changes are effective towards the given end, they might negatively impact balance at other levels due to differential scaling. I believe that this is the source of many of the complaints at hand here.

It's actually interesting to break it down into scaling of individual stats. As a caster, in terms of raw DPS increases:

+crit/hit scale in a very slightly-sublinear manner.
+dmg scales in a sublinear manner as well, I'm not sure if it's more than +crit/hit or the same.. it may vary by spell.
+haste scales in a superlinear manner (though you'd need a ton of haste for this to really be noticable).

Is this a problem in and of itself? Probably not, if only because the sublinear/superlinear scaling effects are very tiny with reasonable gear levels.

But is the problem exacerbated when +X procs are improved by X? Maybe... because that leads, again, to superlinear scaling. When the proc rate of a haste effect benefits from more haste, you have scaling issues. When the proc rate of a crit effect benefits from more crit, you have scaling issues, etc. etc. And since procs tend to have more significance than passive effects, they threaten to have more noticable effects on gameplay.

I think it would generally be a good idea for Blizzard to try to steer away from these kinds of loops which could get out of hand (see the Mage arcane theorycrafting thread, where people are now speculation that they'll be able to keep the Ashtongue buff up 100% of the time, which would effectively equal a 10% DPS increase using 2.2 haste figures.) While I'm a fan of creative itemization, there's really no need to go into these dangerous waters.... avoid crit bonuses proccing off of crits, haste bonuses proccing off of hit rates, etc. Or at least add internal cooldowns to these effects - which imo is a lame way to balance them, but certainly better than nothing.

There's probably a lesson to be learned here.

 

Sapp

Yes, but they should have nerfed dragonspine to do it, not haste in general. This makes t6 miscellaneous passive haste drops inferior to t5 miscellaneous classic stats drops, or at best slightly negative / situational sidegrades.

 

Ghando

Nerfing DST might have made sense from an itemization perspective, but this addresses a larger issue than one overpowered item. Haste rating is extremely valuable for melee classes and pretty worthless for caster classes right now. In response, Blizzard makes Haste rating better for casters and worse for melee (making them both equally valuable point-for-point). That makes total sense as far as I'm concerned.

As a healer at least, the only piece of gear with haste on it that I want is the Blessed Band of Karabor, which is an aberration (Illidan-level drop from BT trash). The rest of the healer haste gear that exists completely sacrifices regen for haste rating, so F that noise. Maybe I'll craft a piece or two when we have hearts coming out our ears.

 

◊ Praetorian

Where can I look to see cold, hard numbers that prove this? Have people done detailed analysis and comparisons of BT melee haste items to their non-haste alternatives using the 15.75 rating multiplier? I'm sure it's somewhere, but a link would be nice.

 

• Aldriana

Not sure if there's an analysis in general, but for rogues the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet does a decent job of making the comparison; 0.7.4 has the option to evaluate gear pre- and post-nerf, and what you find is that the nerf makes all the passive-haste BT drops pretty much useless, in that they're comperable or inferior to SSC/TK drops in almost all cases (the exception being Swiftstrike Shoulders, which are still only beaten by Slayer's). In particular, post 445 has a summary of what happens to the passive haste items.

Looking through said sheet a little more, one finds that there are more items than just Dragonspine Trophy and the Warglaives with haste on them that are arguably overpowered. In particular, it seems to me that the following items are *also* too powerful for where you get them:

* Blacksmithing Maces
* The Bladefist

This is where my "haste isn't overpowered, haste procs are overpowered" theory comes from, and a few minutes playing around with the spreadsheet. Further inspection also reveals that the 10.5 -> 15.8 nerf doesn't really change this; Dragonmaw (not Dragonstrike, Dragonmaw) is still superior to Syphon of the Nathrezim, which still seems a bit off.

An additional point I might add is that the only haste proc that isn't overpowered is Thundering Skyfire Diamond, which, coincidentally, is the only one with an internal cooldown.

So, to summarize: from the rogue perspective, the analysis is that the haste nerf for rogues takes all passive haste itemization and renders it mostly useless, while all haste procs remain somewhat overpowered (with the possible exception of The Bladefist). As such, I feel a far better solution to the current problem would be to give all haste procs an internal cooldown of ~40 seconds, which would bring them into balance without ruining perfectly well itemized passive haste items.

 

virtuzoso

How is mongoose affected by this? Does it grant an actually haste rating, or is it a flat 2% haste?

 

songster

I wonder how hard it would be for them to scale the proc chance for all on-hit or on-crit procs according to your current haste rating. That would automatically subtract out the effect of haste rating on procs. Haste would still scale well, but it wouldn't amplify all your pre-existing gear as well, which is the real issue here.

 

• Aldriana

Mongoose is a flat 2% haste and thus totally unaffected.

 

Morelis

For enhancement shaman our testing has shown haste rating to score right in line with strength, crit rating, agility, AP and a bit better than hit rating. With this change it will drop well below hit in value and since haste items to this point feature large amounts of the stat they'll go from being small upgrades from SSC/TK items to clear downgrades. If the stat had been worth 50% more than comparable ones the nerf would be justified but since it only scores averagely any item with large amounts of it will become useless.

 

david0925

agreed. Haste by itself was a good concept in that its a scalable attribute with your gear at level 70 (this will change at next expac). However it is very reasonable other than the fast that haste procs all have zero internal cooldown. Rather than nerfing the hell out of melee haste, giving internal cooldowns to said procs are much more reasonable. They have already done this to many items, so it is not a hard concept to apply

 

Sapp

Considering how sweepingly bad this is I'm going to hold out hope that it was just an accident done while they built the PTR.

 

shed

Its only bad for a half of a tiny population, while the other half are somewhat happy spell-haste is getting a buff.

Anyways, I agree that mele haste needed some nerf as they get ready to add higher ilvl items and will likely keep adding haste (higher values) not only in Sunwell but in the next expansion with lvl 80 gear.

 

Morelis

If the dps contribution of a point of haste rating is comparable to the dps contribution of a point of any other relevant stat how can the nerf be justified? I can only speak for my class but haste rating was definitely not overpowered, it was right in line with other stats, all this change will do is make the items that have passive haste borderline useless. Can rogues, hunters and warriors comment if their theorycrafting showed haste to be way out of line in value?

 

suicuique

It's the same for warriors. The items with passive haste rating on them sacrifice a LOT of stats. As such they were barely (if at all) better than comparable items without passive haste on such slots.

Take e.g. [Grips of Silent Justice] and [Pillager's Gauntlets]. Both BT drops. Both ilvl 141 The former was already considered to be superior or at least on par to the later. That was pre nerf.
Now they're not in the same league. I'm wild guessing here, but even [Gauntlets of Martial Perfection] from Gruul are not a clear downgrade from [Pillager's Gauntlets] anymore.

I have all three gauntlets, but my play time as DPS warrior is very limited, so correct me if I am wrong.

 

◊ Praetorian

In general, almost any socketed item beats a comparable unsocketed item if you're min/max'ing for DPS potential or healing longevity or whatever.

As a rule, items with haste on them had no sockets. The fact that the socketless +haste items were superior to their socketed alternatives is just evidence that melee haste was too good, in my view. If some of the haste items you now say are inferior had sockets instead of some of their other stats, you wouldn't see them as inferior.

 

Cesar2000

Yes... 15.8 hit rating gives 1% hit, 15.7 haste rating gives 1% haste. Both will increase white dps by 1% (unless im forgetting something here)... so it seems perfectly fine like it is. The only problem is Blizzard are still not very good at itemizing.

 

Zerix

Item breakdown for rogues:

[Insidious Bands] > [Swiftstrike Bracers]
[Slayer's Shoulderpads] > [Swiftstrike Shoulders] -- This was the only questionable item upgrade of all the haste items, but you need slayer's shoulderpads for 4 piece since the Illidan helm is a clear winner for the off-set piece.
[Don Alejandro's Money Belt] > [Shadow-walker's Cord] -- This was the only haste item I currently wear and considered it to be the best piece for the belt slot. However now after the nerf its pretty much completely useless.
[Band of the Ranger-General][Stormrage Signet Ring] > [Band of Devastation]

I really don't get where people claim "stacking" haste right now is out of control. The only thing out of control is dragonspine. I mean if you think using SnD, BF, Drums of Battle, Bloodlust, and a Haste potion is out of control then I guess more power to you. Does Blizzard think we won't use every tool at our disposal to do more damage? Thats what rogues are designed to do, help you kill bosses faster doing whatever we can to get the job done.

Like I said before, nerf dragonspine now, keep melee haste where its at, and buff caster haste rating.

 

• Shifft

On a side note, [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths] is still > [Don Alejandro's Money Belt] making Vashj loot the best item for that slot.

 

Hozz

I believe a similar conclusion can be drawn for the plate items with Haste on them, from a DPS Warrior perspective.

I would agree that the issue is really that of certain haste procs being overpowered. The DST and Warglaive for sure, perhaps the Drakefist line of maces.

 

• Wodin

[Ring of Deceitful Intent] is better than [Band of the Ranger-General] too(thanks to Kings/UR). It's pretty much nitpicking, though, as they're 2nd and 3rd in the progression of desirability regardless.

 

sp00n

I wonder, why does everybody say that [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths] is the best belt out there? Remember, the effects of weapon skill haven't been fully discovered yet, and if you're referring to the DPS spreadsheets (both) you have to take into account that neither of them are utilizing a correct theory at the moment. They're only guessing how useful it is (those 25 skill rating would give 0.6% hit and an unknown amount of crit to current knowledge).

 

suicuique

in reference to the plate gauntlets:

But this was not a given fact at all. ^^

IIRC the ruling was out there which of the plate DPS gauntlets were the better one. I e.g. used [Grips of Silent Justice] and had [Pillager's Gauntlets] sitting in the bank (for the few occasions I tend to do damage). Could have been the wrong decision though ... in any way the difference was very miniscule. Now, it's not.