[Caster] Haste

So, with haste drops and patterns slowly filtering into the raiding player base now, and with Bolche adding haste into his wonderful Warlock spreadsheet (www.leulier.com), I was hoping to open up spell haste theory for discussion.

Tetracyloide came to the conclusion that Haste is way over budget at the moment, and shouldn’t be given prio over hit / crit in each slot.

It got me thinking, at the moment with bracers and shoulders crafted, I will be sitting on around 4% passive haste as a destro lock.

Stating that my average Shadowbolt in a raid environment hits for 4k ( Give or Take, including 31% crit rate, just for arguments sake)

So for every 100 Shadowbolts I would have cast pre haste, I now cast 104, giving me 416k damage instead of 400k. What does this equate to in terms of raw spell damage added to my bolts?

If the nimble bracers give a2 % ( Rounded up) more nuke dps, that’s equivalent to 8k per hundred casts ..so a passive 80 ish spell damage boost on the bracer?

Does this make any sense? I realise that Immo with a 1.5 sec cast time I don’t gain much ( aside from laggy cast) from haste…but Shadowbolt spam really is the bulk of my dps.

As haste is over budget at the moment with the equivalent allotment of hit/crit ,would you end up doing more damage?

What does everyone think.

Well, a lot depends on the class - yes?

A shadow priest is casting almost all instant or 1.5 second spells. Haste would only be useful on MindFlay (the bottom of his priorities), so VERY overbudget for them. For a mage who is mostly casting Fireball with an occasional scorch thrown in to refresh the stack, haste is probably where it should be. For a raiding frost mage (against A'lar or whatever) it is even better since Frostbolt applies it's own damage multiplier (Winter's Chill) with no need to do a GCD-speed spell (Improved Scorch).

There are also intangibles. Every point of passive spell haste gives you more mobility. Some fights don't need that, but it is a benefit that can't be measured in terms of how big your average Shadowbolt is. Because of this, it is hard to tell exactly what the budget "should" be.

Haste is a pretty good stat for destro warlocks, mages, moonkin, ele shamans. It's not so hot for shadow priests and affliction locks. I don't think we'll ever see it becoming equally desirable for all caster DPS classes/specs unless they make it affect the GCD so instant casts and 1.5 second casts are also sped up. Right now, making an item with spell haste good enough for a shadow priest of affliction lock would take so much haste that it would be retardedly good for any of the other casters.

Please append discussion to the existing primer, as it is already linked from the "Immutable Laws of Theorycrafting" at the top. Any new finds will be added, happily, to the first post to keep it easy to find stuff. The value of this forum is increased by having threads with clear and available data.

The primer is here:

[Mechanic Primer] - Haste - How it works, and what that means.

Haste increases dps but doesn't really affect dpm, unless if you want to say that regen during a spell is subtracted from the spell's dpm (as in common mods), in which case spell haste lowers your dpm. So if you want to do equivalences between spell haste and common things like +damage/hit/crit, you really need to count it on dps only. The most direct way to go about it (I think) is to measure/calculate base dps using whatever, then measure it using a fixed amount of +damage, then calculate the haste-modified dps. For my Fireball dps in a raid setting according to Vonture's spreadsheet, I come up with:
Base: 1109 dps
+1 damage: +0.55 dps
+1 spell haste rating: +0.528 dps

Plus there's the added issue that faster spells are more affected by casting lag (as casting lag is independent of casting time, so it comprises more of actual cast time as spells get faster). This definitely doesn't negate or balance the effects of haste, but each point of haste benefits you less and less. (Certainly a stopcasting macro will help, but then you've gotta relearn the timing with every upgrade, which seems like a lot of work for every haste upgrade)

I'm really not much of a fan of haste effects unless I have a shadow priest with me, but it's definitely an interesting way to squeeze more dps into the item budget by spreading across new stats.

Edit after typing and seeing a new post on preview: what do you mean by "append"? Do you mean to double-post in both or close this thread? The word append is confusing, as I don't think we have any choice but to post on the end of a thread,