• Shifft

I've always just thought it was better because you're trading 2AP/19 crit for 25 weapon skill, and since weapon skill is itemized for the same value as crit/hit/2xAP it's just plain more stats. I don't count the stam of course because frankly I have enough HP as-is to live through anything. It also helps that the spreadsheets are supporting my claims, but that's hardly all I've gone by.

 

HaklePrime

Additionally, a lot of DPS spreadsheets assume you're hit-capped. While not a huge deal, when hit-capped, weapon skill negates the mob's last way to foil you hitting them, dodge. This gives it a slightly higher value than some items with hit rating on them, because those items, assuming the spreadsheet thinks you're hit-capped, provide less overall benefit.

That's how I understand it at any rate.

 

• Shifft

Well you wouldn't wear that belt if hit-capped anyways since weapon skill does increase your hit% as well as reducing dodge.

 

sp00n

Well, when you're in T5+ gear, you most likely aren't hit capped anymore, as at least T5 prefers crit instead of hit.

As to weapon skill and dodge, this value is as well unknown so far.

 

HaklePrime

That isn't true at all. We're well aware of Weapon Skill's affects on creature dodge.

The only way that the link is incorrect is if mobs have dynamic combat statistics. While there is evidence to suggest that some mobs, of odd levels, appear to have adjusted crit/hit/dodge rates, it hasn't been proven, so it's generally best to stick with what has been proven, several times.

Edit: Gah, stupid cached webpages. I just saw the contradictory quote that Crezax posted. However, this still is evidence that it does indeed affect the mob's chance to dodge.

 

Kaber

Actually hunters have all of their DPS increased with haste, so a hunter sees 100% of haste translate into his DPS. The only exception is MM with a 1:1.5 special rotation (mixing in arcane and multi to artificially boost DPS), however this rotation is incredibly mana intensive and unsustainable without a personal shadowpriest on top of constant mana potting and regen buffing at all times. Needless to say, the DST and haste allowing MM to move to a 1:1 rotation is a huge gain and allows him to become the highest Hunter DPS build.

But I digress, hunters gain full benefit from +haste, and using the slow end-game bows available it is near impossible to reduce shot times under the 1.5s GCD.

Now look at what haste did to rogues in the end-game: topping out at 2k DPS or more. Comparatively, mages were getting left way behind in the DPS curve as mythic has stated they are supposed to be one of the highest single target DPS right behind rogues (which they were not).

 

Morelis

Let's try to keep in mind that famous rogue everyone likes to point at as an example of how overpowered haste is wears only a single item with passive haste. No one is saying a couple procs out there aren't out of hand but labeling the entire stat as unbalanced because those 2 procs happen too often is ridiculous. I can demonstrate using the best thoerycrafting tools available to us currently that haste rating is just fine and is well balanced with other stats, unless someone can show the opposite it's all just meaningless speculation.

 

sp00n

You're quoting really outdated information here.
a) Glancing Blows have been reduced to 24% or 25% (can't remember exactly).
b) The miss % is 28% and not 27%
c) 0.04% per point of weapon skill may have been true for pre TBC, but is not now, at least for hit.
d) It is very likely that weapon skill has an effect to dodge and crit (and maybe parry as well), but as I've said, the value is completely unknown so far (we haven't even figured out how much 1 point of weapon skill is worth for the first 5 points so far!) and therefore each and every assumption regarding it and regarding its effect on DPS is just a guess.

 

Kaber

I did not point to any rogues in particular. I have seen WWS parses from a great number of rogues that are doing 2k DPS, while the highest I have ever seen from a mage was ~1500 on an AE intensive fight.

Now haste being nerfed is perfectly fine in my opinion, because different classes benefit from haste in very different ways. When haste is an incredibly strong stat for some, and weak at best for others it creates a divide, especially since there is nothing comparable to stack for classes lower benefits from haste. Now that haste is comparable to hit rating, is normalizes things to the point where people have options for what they stack to see a similar gain for their class. The problem is they need to itemize it better, and in its nerfed form it will be much easier to itemize without overpowering. When haste takes over for Hit Rating as the optimum raiding stat for classes that have no limitations (mana bars), I think there is a problem. With Haste being normalized to be the same as Hit, it opens up avenues for differentiation in spec, gear, and mentality. It would simply be nice to see haste with better itemization, and I think the new dungeons might be the place for Blizzard to do that.

With haste in the old form where 10.5 points equated to 1%, it would have been difficult to itemize without making haste completely overpowered, and as such you can see the items with haste having sub-optimal stats to keep the gear from being over the top.

 

Morelis

Do you really believe that nerfing the hell out of haste rating is going to drop these 2k dps rogues down to 1500-1600? A lot of the ones I've seen don't even use very much haste if at all. By the way, hit rating isn't the end all stat for every melee class, for myself it's currently the worst way to budget items, until the haste nerf goes live at least then haste will take the bottom spot. And why should haste be the same for every class? Crit rating, hit rating and AP certainly aren't the same value for everyone.

Statements like this just don't make any sense. As far as I can tell haste is already well balanced in its dps contribution per point and the evidence that it's not seems to be lacking.

 

Kaber

No, but combine it with the windfury nerf and we'll see a significant decrease in rogue damage.

Care to explain how hit rating is the worst way you can spend your points? Until you reach the hit cap it is the cheapest and most effective item stat to increase DPS. Only haste could beat it before, and now haste is equal to it. 15.7 item points to increase DPS 1% vs 22 is a no-brainer. Once you reach your hit cap, you now have a decision: stack crit at 22 rating per point, or stack haste at 15.7 per point. I'd take haste. The only exception comes when analyzing the entire item vs just 1 stat on said item.

An overpowered stat is an overpowered stat no matter how much people are utilizing it. How many of those rogues actually would go to the trouble of crafting those extremely powerful items? Obviously not many since leatherworking is considered by and large to be worthless. When was the last time you saw a LWing rogue? Most I see are weaponsmiths. I wouldn't expect to see very many capable of crafting the T6 level Haste gear. If you actually take the time to look at it, Haste items are itemized poorly and have fewer worthwhile stats because the haste itself on the item is so powerful. If I'm choosing a ring in the old system with 30 haste and 20 agility versus a ring with 30 hit, 20 agility, and 20 crit, obviously I'm going to take the second because it is over-all a better item even if by a small margin. This change opens things up to allow for greater itemization, but if they choose to avoid itemizing haste in a useful way, then I fail to see the reason for nerfing haste when they could have easily changed the few overpowered items. However, I simply cannot see them making this change based on 2 items, and must assume that they have plans for the future of haste if they are to make this large a change to haste as a whole.

Whether or not people were aware of how strong haste is also plays a very large role. I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but people are sheep. One well-known and respected person in the community does something or places a talent point somewhere arbitrarily, everyone else follows suit whether it is the most intelligent use of that point or not. They emulate that person's gear and spec choices, and you see guilds doing the same trying to copy Nihilum's raid composition whether it is the best possible mix or not.

What I am saying is this: the prevalence of something does not equate directly to its strength. They want to nerf haste for melee and buff it for casters, I'm fine with it. You want to argue that different classes get different amounts out of stats, the only thing that's true for is str and agility. Crit rating, hit rating, and haste are all the same across physical damage classes, and the same applies across magical damage classes. Agility comes in different amounts for different classes based on gear and focus, and has different strengths based on talent spec and what affects their damage. As such, things like agility and strength have to be balanced on a class-by-class basis. What kind of crit rate will a hunter or rogue see that gets lots of agility on his gear if it were normalized to what warriors/shaman get? Well over 50-60%. That would be overpowered. Meanwhile a the shaman/warrior are down around 20-30%. The stats are different because they are itemized differently for the classes. Hit rating, Crit rating, and haste on the other hand are not itemized differently based on class. All physical classes generally have equal access to the three stats, and as such they have equal impacts on the classes.

The problem here is that the same iLevel points were not being applied to casters in a way that made haste, or any other stat, a comparable DPS upgrade. So you had a divide between casters and melees. As icing on the cake, casters take a substantial hit to their mana longevity to stack haste, while rogues, warriors, and shaman do not. This is the same argument used for the nerfing of windfury, and to be honest I see exactly where casters are coming from. Why bring a mage when you can stack 4+ rogues, 2 shaman, and 2 dps warriors in their respective DPS groups?


You have nothing to back a statement about hasting being well balanced, so trying to call out evidence to the contrary strikes me as quite hypocritical. If anything the strength of the DST and Glaives are evidence enough. Even if they were nerfed to 1PPM they would still be more powerful than any comparable item based on the fact that haste has the same iValue as crit and hit, which allows for it to make a much larger impact. As we all know, Blizzard creates items based on level and stat distributions. If they were to make a large number of end-game items with haste, the actual DPS increase would be much larger for a piece of gear with the same iLevel. Obviously that was a fairly debilitating limitation for item generation when you are already increasing the strength of items beyond the prior tier.

 

• Wodin

I would have thought the fact that higher-to-even ilvl gear is now strictly worse than standard-stat gear in the post-nerf era would provide that evidence quite well.

No, the strength of the DST is evidence that haste procs were undercosted. It's an important distinction to make - the Dragonspine Trophy gives 325 haste rating. It's counted as a point of hit/crit, yet something like [Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality] only provides 145 crit. Same with the Warglaive proc - those specific procs are too cheap, and the proc-increasing nature of haste is what pushes them from "very good" to "way too good." Ordinary haste rating, however, doesn't have that problem. No matter how many timers I pop, my gloves are still only going to give me 37 haste.

Oh, and this?
If you're truly serious about raid DPS, you pick up either leatherworking for drums, or enchanting for the ring enchants. They've got about the same net effect, and most serious raiding rogues are one of the two.

 

vorda

Notice how the person you are quoting is a shaman. Try reading this: Enhance Shaman: The Collected Works of Theorycraft, Vol I

 

◊ Lactose

This is incorrect.
First, using Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot is better for all specs, although it's mana intensive.
Seconds, pets gain (close to) nothing from us having haste.

But the effect of said stats does not stay the same across all classes. If you're going to claim a stat / proc / item / whatever to be overpowered for another class, especially if people who theorycraft a lot on said class disagree with you, you better bring something more than claims to the table. E.g. using a spreadsheet or similar.

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

Kaber

Excuse me, I was not aware that shaman have some mysterious mechanic that causes hit rating to be less worthwhile to them than it is to every other class. The shaman AEP valuation shows haste to be the #1 DPS stat in its pre-nerfed state. The hunter AEP calculations show the same, as do the rogue and warrior valuations. Prior to haste, the #1 DPS stat varied from class to class. The valuations you just linked to me reinforce my point that haste was too powerful for all physical DPS classes. You claim it was 'balanced' while the actual DPS contribution from haste is calculated at a much higher value than anything else for physical DPS, while haste for casters was by far the worst stat across the board. I fail to see how you can argue against a nerf to haste, or claim that it was simply one or two items that were overpowered when haste was valued so highly by every single one of us.

You guys wanted evidence? Well you just provided it for me. Thanks.

I could have sworn I had already proven that haste increases hunter DPS substantially in my Haste rating thread, where moving from 1:1.5 to 1:1 for a MM with DST and haste had substantially higher DPS. If you want to argue over semantics be my guest.

Pets gain from haste my increased number of crits over X period of time. Technically the only stat pets really "gain" from is AP, and as we all know, AP is the least valued of all hunter stats for every build. Pets gain nothing from Hit Rating, yet it is still the highest valued damage stat for hunters short of haste (I'd prefer to avoid the MP5 and int debate here).

 

Morelis

The value of hit rating for a shaman has been extensively modeled in the class mechanics forum, there is a mountain of evidence to support my claim of it's low value, if you'd like to disagree with the work done by numerous people to determine it's relative value feel free to take it up in that forum. Also declaring a 1% increase in a stat to equate to a 1% increase in DPS is exceedingly naive, class mechanics are much more complicated than that.
Without even looking I'd feel very confident in placing a large bet that the number of LW rogues substantially outnumber weaponsmith rogues in end-game guilds. LW offered a couple nice items in T5 and the drums are widely used now. Weaponsmithing offers nothing to a rogue with a clue, the sword is a mediocre off hand and mace spec offers nothing to PvE. Also note of the two craftable haste items, one of them is BoE.

If you understood itemization half as much as you think you do you'd see what a terrible pointless example that is. Your first ring spends 50 stat points, the second spends 70 so of course it's the superior item. To simplify, when an item designer is making an item each "stat" costs 1 point, that includes agi, str, int, spi and crit, hit and haste rating. Stam costs 0.66 per point, and 1 point will also buy you 2 ap. Don't take my word for it though go to your favorite item database site and use those values to add up items of similar ilvls they'll score roughly equal, even the ones with haste.

The "sheep" in this case are the people nodding their heads saying "yea, haste must have been OP of course it got nerfed".

Uhh no, I'm saying that different amounts of stats have different impacts on different classes. For example both a warrior and a shaman get 2 ap from 1 str, however 2 ap isn't the same increase in effective dps for both classes. The same holds true for every stat.
No, the ilvl points were the same, the problem was casters get a poor per-point return on haste and as you mentioned it also comes with other baggage. Hmm and yet despite melee apparently being completely OP most raids still only have 1 melee group, I wonder why that is.
Actually I can point to the sims used in the class mechanics forum as evidence, using them tells me that haste is well balanced right now and the proposed change will make it worse than any other melee dps stat. But once again don't take my word for it, feel free to test it for yourself. They may not be perfect but they're a hell of a lot better than your gut instinct. I know which one I'll put more value in.

The bolded section makes no sense at all, the theorycrafting I've seen says that if you replaced the 325 haste rating proc on DST with 325 crit rating, it would actually be a better item.
No, it wouldn't, unless you can point me to something concrete showing 1 point of haste rating is substantially more valuable than 1 point of any other stat.

Actually if you looked a little further you'd see that this is only true for shaman geared at a kara level, by the time they're in T6 and have access to haste gear it no longer holds true. Grats on skimming the subject without understanding it though.

 

Kaber

If haste is so worthless when you get to T6, why would you care so much about it getting nerfed? If different classes are to value stats at different levels, again I ask, why do you care if something that was clearly overpowered for most classes gets nerfed? Congratulations on turning the topic of haste to be entirely about shaman and no one else. I stand by my point that haste in its current form is far too powerful. Maybe you want a special case to be made for shaman to keep it as is, but seeing as how both hit and crit give the same amounts across the board, I don't think you are going to be successful (THAT was my point about hit/crit having the same value, ie: 22 CR for 1% for all of us, I am well aware that 1% crit affects everyone in a slightly different manner).

Fine, I was wrong about shaman getting the biggest return out of haste, I do not bother researching them because I have never had a need to, so excuse me for making generalizations about physical DPS across the board (before someone hops in about druids, I am well aware they gain less from haste than most). However, Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors (with the exception of slam spammers) all gain an incredible amount with haste. When it gets to the point where classes would gain so much more by stacking haste over everything else, there is a problem. At least with Hit rating there is a cap on it's effectiveness, so one cannot simply stack it ad naseum over other damage stats. Whether or not these people were utilizing the haste is another story, and has no bearing and is not evidence to "haste being a poor stat choice."

You can have your argument about shaman not getting much out of haste, but once again, why should a haste nerf have anything to do with you if it is such a poor stat?

That is exactly what I said, if you took the time to actually read my words we wouldnt be having quite this big an issue.

 

◊ Lactose

Yes, Haste increases Hunter DPS. I am not arguing this.
Contrary to your claim, 100% of Haste does not translate to DPS (especially for procs), due to using abilities which are not affected by Haste.
When it comes to this trinket especially, you have a set amount of time where you're under the influence of a Haste effect. When you, under this effect, choose to use an ability not affected by Haste (e.g. Arcane Shot / Multi-Shot, both more damaging options in most cases), some Haste will be lost. Additionally, as far as I know, the Auto Shot cooldown of 0.5 seconds is not affected by Hastes. When a lot of Hastes are flying around, you will delay shots, again reducing the benefit to less than 100%.

I know full well that a lot of this is more pertinent to BM Hunters. As an example:
The DPS loss (post-nerf compared to pre-nerf) for this trinket is much greater for other specs. In other words, for BM Hunters, 100% of Haste does not translate to DPS. If it did, we'd see a much larger gap pre- and post.

The pet gain from our Haste is very small, which is why I said 'close to' nothing. Again, this is especially true with the trinket in question in this thread. Extreme hastes, like the one you can get with this trinket = very high chance for focus gained on crits to be wasted/not being used fast enough. Pet global cooldown is a limiter.

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

Davia

Just about everything Morelis is saying for Shaman also applies to warriors; Haste was already only roughly as good as crit per point of rating, it wasn't far and away the best. So just like for Shaman, post-nerf haste rating is going to go below hit rating as a stat for warriors, staying ahead of only agility (which is so bad for warriors because it takes 33 agility to get 1% crit vs 25 / crit for a shaman).

 

Morelis

My whole point was that it isn't worthless right now. Currently it's a good stat, not quite as good as str but pretty even with crit and clearly better than hit. If the changes go through as planned it will become worthless. And since I've already collected several pieces of it, which included leveling LW I'm a little peeved at having the rug yanked out from underneath me. By the way, I'm still waiting for your evidence that haste is "clearly overpowered" for other classes. I mean you just keep repeating it, but that doesn't make it true.

 

Kaber

Which spec are we talking about for a warrior? I was under the impression haste was not good for slam, but incredibly good for fury.

 

• Ren

You're the one who doesn't understand itemization. WoW's itemization discourages stacking a couple stats on an item through exponentially-increasing costs. For example, here's two pairs of gloves with ilevel 141:

Gauntlets of Infinite Ignorance (121.7 points of stats)
+101 Strength
+31 Stamina

Gauntlets of Near Perfectionism (148.7 points of stats)
+31 Strength
+15 Agility
+31 Stamina
Equip: Increases hit rating by 20.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31.
Equip: Increases attack power by 62.

Item level calc: http://wow.virakar.com/stats/itemlevel.html

 

Morelis

Gee, I guess it's good thing Blizzard puts more than 2 stats on T6 quality items eh? Otherwise your imaginary point might carry some weight(in case you missed it I was "simplifying" in the previous post).

 

koaschten

Link em? And please, if the rogues get melee shaman, warrior and feral, make sure the mages got a Moonkin, Ele-shaman and Shadowpriest.

 

• Ren

Ok, here's some real world examples. Items with an item level of 141, and assuming we use BT gems:

Insidious Bands (99.7 points of stats)
+28 Agility
+28 Stamina
Yellow Socket (5agi 5hit)
Socket Bonus: +2 Agility
Equip: Improves hit rating by 12.
Equip: Increases attack power by 58.

Swiftstrike Bracers (94.4 points of stats)
+20 Agility
+34 Stamina
Equip: Improves haste rating by 27.
Equip: Increases attack power by 50.

--

Don Alejandro's Money Belt (133.3 points of stats)
+29 Agility
+37 Stamina
Red Socket (5agi 5 hit)
Yellow Socket (5agi 5 hit)
Socket Bonus: +4 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 19.
Equip: Increases attack power by 76.

Shadow-walker's Cord (127.3 points of stats)
+27 Agility
+38 Stamina
Equip: Improves haste rating by 37.
Equip: Increases attack power by 76.

The point is, the haste items scores lower, even if I discount socket bonuses.