The world of raids SS's show them with 2050 ratings:
http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/may...ter-waraxe.jpg
http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/may...er-hatchet.jpg

Stats are odd on them, from the S3 2H - 0stam, -6Crit, -5Resil, +3hit, -8AP, -14ArPen.

As for the caster weapons, I like the idea of playing around with the stats like they're doing; however, I do question if arena gear is the right place for that experimentation.

It seems like there must be some good pve applications of these new spell haste weapons. Would this be useful for AoEing? It seems like some AoEs have a low benefit from +dmg, but no penalty for haste except gcd.

I wonder if there is a not-yet-revealed weapon in PvE (Sunwell last two bosses) which stacks haste this high.

I wonder how warrios are going to interrupt casts now with their 1.5sec GCD. Think of roots for example. If you use mortal strike and the druid starts to cast roots, there is no chance whatsoever you will be able to interrupt it. For rogues it isn't that much of a problem with 1sec GCD.

What happens if you have the haste weapon equipped at the start of the heal and swap the healing weapon mid-cast?

AoE scaling with +damage is alright actually, although haste is a bit better.
That is until you hit the AoE cap, after which +damage does nothing while haste increases your DPS.

Although for mages spamming AE with sunwell gear (350 base haste) and [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight], drums and that weapon, they'd be at 800+ spell haste, which is above the cap for instants (~785 haste rating = +50% haste = 1s GCD).
And to be honest, AoE in Hyjal and on Felmyst is trivial regarding the AoE DPS requirement.

And when mages spam AE, they are limited by their mana, which haste does not improve. It would speed up Evocation though. Warlocks have to life tap more, which is improved by haste.

It might make pure speed spamming better (Chain Heal on twins? Not been there. Mass Dispel on Felmyst perhaps, or decurse at late Kalecgos.) but I don't see it make or break a fights.


I see it useful in PvP, where the actual HPS of a heal is far less important than getting a heal in quickly, or the speed at which you spam instants (like dots/debuffs/dispels).
I just can't see (m)any "good PvE applications".


Have we determind for certain yet if spell haste shortens the GCD you get from switching weapons?
If it does not, I can only see some dispell spam as a benefitting PvE application.


Then you get the hasted heal with the increased healing. But at some point before, where you must have switched your heal => haste weapon, you must have had a slow heal with decreased healing if you swapped mid-cast. Or you wasted a GCD for swapping at some point.

You can use this trick to swap to your haste when you can afford the loss on one heal, to swap back later for one hasted and increased heal. Invest 0.2 seconds into your future, kind of
Same works for Cast - Evocation (or some Life Taps) - Cast sequences.

You'd get the benefit of both weapons.

This already happens frequently with Cyclone, courtesy of [Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves] + lag, so really it's nothing new that bad timing will screw a warrior who is just trying to refresh his hamstring or MS.

The haste weapon is so good I don't think you would want to unequip it when PvPing, especially as a Pally or Warlock with many instants to cast.

I don't think it is better than a normal +healing or +damage weapon for PvE though.

The only problem though is the lack of PvE acquired equivalent. The two spell haste weapons have a lot of uses in PvE environments because there's no alternative to pick up, which in a way will "force" raiders to get those weapon PvP weapons to use in PvE. I can't say that I'm personally pleased with that way of thinking on Blizzard's part.

Even if you weigh haste fairly generously, there certainly are many alternative weapons from PvE, especially compared to weapons of similar ilvls. If you're saying that there's no equivalent for the unique situation where you want haste and fuckall to other stats, that's different of course.

Yeah, the point is that this will be a unique itemization option available only to PvPers. I don't want to have to hit 2050 just because some itemization guy came up with the idea of replacing the ilvl-based healing with haste once Sunwell was already itemized but before S4 was.

This could be huge for PvE Resto Druids, in that a single item swap in the weapon slot (which can be made mid-combat!) can let you switch between a hastes 5-bloom setup and an normal high-healing 4-bloom setup.

Moreover, the lack of a pre-S4 equivalent means that there's a significant difference between, say, a priest with one and a priest without one. (I use priests as the example because they use a lot of non-damaging or non-scaling spells, which benefit from haste but not from +healing or +damage. A priest with one could use it full-time, or could switch it off with a healing weapon; a priest without one doesn't have that option.)

Ideally there would be a S3 or preferably S2 equivalent to make a weaker version more widely available and lower the rating/gear gradient (which is otherwise not that steep between arena tiers); I don't think the hunter weapon solution of just making the first one lack a rating requirement is a good idea here.

I don't understand, does the ignite dot tick immediately after a fire spell crits?

There's this wierd thing with server lag and travel time where if a fireball that will crit is in the air when ignite ticks, that ignite tick gets double-counted. Ignite damage gets carried over if you refresh it, but its calculated on spell cast, not spell impact. Ignite damage that occurs after calculation but before the debuff is actually updated will still be carried over to the next ignite. You have to have roughly 2-second fireballs for this to work.

No item in the game has frustrated me more, at first I thought it was even a typo by blizzard giving it THAT much haste.

The fact that probably the best resto shaman PvE weapon will be a PvP weapon with all haste is just somewhat frustrating, not because I couldn't get it, my ratings are better than 2050, but rather that there so far is not a Sunwell equivalent, although there could be, haven't seen everything yet. I guess this will probably replace my Crystal Spire though as soon as S4 hits because getting 14.4% haste on chain heal when I already will have over 14.4% from all other items and dropping my healing down to 2100 or 2000 seems worth it to get insanely fast chain heals.

The neat thing about the Spire is the 50% heal proc can work on each hit of Cheal plus higher mana usage per second.
No doubt the new weapon is by far the best for PvP.

For some reason I think this item will lead to a new form of "totem twisting" but for dps casters.

As a mage I can hypothetically think of some uses.

The first fireball I cast would be hasted and with a reequip mid cast get +damage benefits also. I could macro in a reequip of the haste weapon into defensive spells such as fire ward, frost ward, ice block (perhaps), as well as utility spells like decurse or polymorph.

Thus the spells that did no damage would also reequip my haste weapon allowing me to double dip haste and damage for a fireball. Someone better than theorycraft than I am could explain how losing the damage of a weapon on a scorch in a 8 fireball 1 scorch rotation is beneficial against a double dip of haste and damage on the following fireball.



I can only assume that such a haste weapon will be required for PVE raiding......it adds 2+ percent effectiveness just by having it in your bags with some good macros. And thats just my thoughts about mages. What about theorycraft about having a requip of the haste weapon macroed into a downranked heal spell? So that you could macro in the reequip of a +healing on the max ranked spell to double dip haste+healing when you need a big heal...

I can see getting this for myself (prot paladin) - swapped in at the right moment, I might be able to throw off a FOL between slow boss hits. Threat + healing = win.

A 600-700 heal FoL at the risk of getting crushed? Rather you than me..

Obviously not something one would normally do, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

Both swapping a weapon and casting a spell with cast time will reset your swing timer, so I wouldn't be so sure it's a good idea threatwise. There's also the (minor) issue that you'll be denying yourself mana equal to 180 plus 10% of the healing done to yourself this way, which might make it less mana efficient threat than it might seem at first sight. Consecration will also do less damage while you have the Swift Judgement mace equipped (Consecration being fairly unique in that it's damage dealt is always influenced by your stats at the moment of each individual damage tick it does, not pre-determined on the cast like basically everything else).

Speaking from my own perspective it'd be a fairly bad idea, as I'd lose 276 spell damage for Consecration for ~2 ticks, as well as losing 2 swings worth of auto-attack + Seal of Righteousness (As you'd swap back to your spell damage mace the moment you start casting Flash of Light). I'd lose 141.9 threat from Consecration, 208.4 threat from auto-attacks and 488.6 threat from Seal of Righteousness. That's 838.9 threat in total, for which your Flash of Light would need to heal 1738.5 to equal this which is pretty hard to achieve in tanking gear.

Obviously this'll differ a bit depending on the gear you have, though I suspect it won't be worth it in most situations unless you're really desperate for the extra healing it provides.

The more interesting question is, what does this open the door to? It made perfect sense that caster weapons would trade melee DPS for spell damage. In fact, it was probably necessary to make casters scale in any comparable sort of way. Ditto feral AP, and the analogy to +heal is present although slightly less clear (pre-TBC mana regen was a primarly healing stat). So, now that itemization is allowed to trade this base weapon DPS for other stats, I'm really curious what else we may see. Haste, in a sense, isn't very far from +dmg or +heal since it's still basically throughput-oriented. The next logical step would be things like crit and AP, which are directly comparable and generally inferior so I wouldn't spend much time thinking about them. But might we start seeing tanking weapons with 400 stam or 10% dodge? Feral tank weapons with several thousand armor? Healer weapons with a hundred mp/5? PvP weapons with 250 resilience? Hunter weapons with 600 RAP?

Anyways, back to haste: I think there are crazy stunts you can pull with channeled spells. Their damage is calculated periodically instead of at completion, so you can actually chain them at the cost of one tick per channel, instead of only being able to use it once every time you're interrupted.