I've always found MPS as a more coherent way to compare things. The problem with trying to evaluate DPM directly is that there are a lot of constant offsets to you mana consumption, based on MP5, VT, etc. Generally, when you're short on mana, what you need is a low MPS spell like Scorch, regardless of the apparent damaga/mana from the tooltip.
This is a false savings. It is better to go with the higher MPS, higher DPS, higher DPM spell and run out of mana. Then you can regen out of the fsr AND do more damage to the boss.
MPS savings are fine on trash but not for boss fights.
I noticed the same behavior of Scorch's mana efficiency falling behind Fireball's with the release of 2.3. At first I thought Dr Damage's numbers weren't calculating things right, but after I did all the numbers myself I came up with the same values. From what I remember, it wasn't a huge gap (6.3 vs 6 DPM), and can be explained by the 2.3 change to Fireball as well as the better scaling of the longer nuke. Scorch is still quite clearly less MPS as has been mentioned, but using it just to keep up the stack, Fireballing until OOM, and then wanding is going to be more damage.
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As to WWS's supposed nerfing of Fireball's DPS value due to the dot increasing the "damage activity time," something confuses me. Is not the only meaningful statistic the total damage done? Or are you referring to an inflation of non-Fireball specs where their damage activity time is lower due to the lack of dot? I know nothing about how exactly WWS does what it does, but it would seem to me that the only correct way of calculating DPS in a way that compares people in a meaningful way would be total damage dealt over time in combat. If WWS parses attempting to capture momentary DPS, wouldn't an Arcane Power mage top the DPS charts by not casting unless AP was active? If so, it makes the DPS numbers WWS provides basically worthless in my opinion.
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I hate to drop Pyroblast from a potential 2.3.2 build because I hate losing Blast Wave. Other than that requirement, it doesn't seem worth it. Having a Pyro land as a mob gets unbanished when you know its going to be taunted is alright, as is having a slightly higher damage (and thus threat) spell to pull Krosh with, but those are basically gimmicks that add relatively little to your raid and are not worth a talent point. But I'm not giving up any utility in AEing as long as Warlocks will always out-damage mages.
3. No. Pyroblast slows down your grinding. Double the cast time for way less than double damage just isn't worth it. I'd rather fireball for 6s and drink for 3s will do almost the same damage as pyroblast for 6s and fireballing for 3s and cost a lot less mana (which means you don't really need to spend 3s drinking if you want to look at it like that). Overall you will farm faster if you never pyroblast, especially if you have burning soul and/or gear that makes the mob die before/shortly after it reaches you anyway, which is doable even in full green "of fiery wrath" gear.
I was being partly facetious with my suggestion, but I went back and looked at what happens with those particular basilisks (in western Zangarmarsh), with my spell damage (about 1050 fire, self-buffed). The sequence goes Pyroblast, Fireball, Scorch. If the Pyroblast crits, cancel the Fireball, and Scorch x 1. If the Fireball crits, wand. Hence, I've optimized my mana usage on each encounter. The encounter takes about 8 to 11 seconds, depending on crits. I'm ignoring the times they feign death, and you have to start part of the sequence over. You then loot, run to your next target and repeat. You get 10-12 seconds of OO5SR. You've spent 625 to 1025 mana.
If I go Fireball x 3, I have overkilled them by about 1000 damage. If I crit with the first one, I still need a Fireball and a Scorch, and if I crit with the second one, I still need a Scorch, but there is little point in canceling to cast Scorch. Time taken: 7.5 to 9 seconds. You've spent 950 to 1200 mana.
The extra damage from Pyroblast is nice packaging for this particular grind. The encounter takes 2 seconds longer but almost never wastes any mana on overkill. I end up not drinking as long as I am fully buffed when I start, since Evocate is on an 8 minute cool down. When you are grinding these things a half hour at a time, you find yourself doing all sorts of "optimizations". I don't know if other people do it. I have a different spell sequence for Zaxxis Raiders, etc.
You are quite correct in the more general case. Pyroblast is a spell you keep on your cast bar because it has occasional uses, as we have outlined.
...it makes the DPS numbers WWS provides basically worthless in my opinion.
That is why the reading of WWS is an art form. You need to look at total damage, DPS, up-time, and several other measures to see how well people are doing. There is an excellent posting on this forum about how to read a WWS. If your raid leader is having problems interpreting those charts, point him to the posting.
But I'm not giving up any utility in AEing as long as Warlocks will always out-damage mages.
100% agree. Morogrim Tidewalker is currently my favorite fight because Arcane Explosion does so much damage with so little threat. I even forgive the warlocks the fact that SoC triggers because of MY Arcane Explosion.
Morogrim Tidewalker is currently my favorite fight because Arcane Explosion does so much damage with so little threat. I even forgive the warlocks the fact that SoC triggers because of MY Arcane Explosion.
Quick question while we're on the topic of Pyro/BW and AE. I haven't found much utility in Pyro/BW and none of the points above change my mind. I've been spec'd 13/45/3 since the day I hit 70 (about a week ago to be honest, but I think my point here applies all the way to BT). This spec gives up Pyro/BW and the floating fire point for 3 in Arcane Impact. Is this a bad spec for some reason that I'm missing? I don't think I've ever seen mention of it on EJ so I'm a bit curious if I'm just being a total nub here or what.
So that is infact the reason I can't keep up a scorch after 8 fireballs.
I did go to a manual cast sequence on Winterchill last night and was able to pull out a 1380 DPS. I was stationary almost the entire fight, except once when I had to move out of death and decay. I landed the #1 spot for that fight. On Kaz'rogal I dipped back down into the 700's. Im guessing thats the ignite pollution still up while Im running around.
Does anyone know what the cap limit is on spellhaste?
Kaz'rogal, what type of gear and did you run oom (and around where did you run out, 1 min from end etc)?
After playing around with spellhaste I can say that I don't value spellhaste that high really, crit to me seem much more important. After you reach 40% crit and 16%(13+3) hit self buffed I guess you can go for some haste gear. Before that my experience is that it gives less dps then crit. It doesn't seem like you can budget in more then 80-120 spellhaste on gear, max, as a fire-mage as well without negatively impacting dps.
Taking it roughly and just averaging stuff, with your numbers fireballing spends 250 more mana on average and takes 2 seconds less on average. Drinking restores 240 mana/sec ignoring spirit, so assuming drink regen >> spirit regen (which is true, as spirit is like 20 mana/sec or something) not using pyroblast is quite faster. Of course I'm also neglecting conjuring the water but I think that is honestly negligible.
Using the same method, always finish a mob with fireblast if fireblast will finish it off. While its mana efficinecy is horrible, the 1.5 extra seconds that you can use to walk to dead basilisk/loot/move on is probably more than worth it, again due to drinking restoring 240 mana/sec. On top of it, not using pyro means the mob will die closer to you, so less running involved, which we can all agree is a major portion of your farming time.
I never reall understood why people defined themselves as "bad at grinding" if they had to drink a lot. Taking advantage of drink regen is a key part to fast farming unless you're a class that has some powerful mean of mana regen (such as a low level spirit stacked shadowpriest which probably kills faster by chainpulling and wanding at the end of the kills to get more spirit regen and wand dps). If you hop to the ret pally thread you can also see how people try to reduce their downtime with SoW/JoW only slow down their kill rate over those who drink. Basically farming, at least as a mage, is about turning mana into damage as fast as possible so you can go out of combat fast and drink more to use more mana and kill more.
Regarding the OO5SR tick for pyro, assuming it goes by game ticks (such as ticks showed by rogue "energywatch" addon), you will only get an OO5SR tick when casting pyroblast in 50% of your experiments.
Gentlemen, if mana economy is what you're after, Scorch is your man. Not only is it inherently less MPS (though less DPM) than fireball, but it procs MoE more due to Incinerate and (most importantly) procs twice as many JoW.
Scorching JoW is mad. The only thing that is more MPS is lvl1 AM with JOW up, but that nets you 0.lol DPS, whereas scorch nets you respectable MPS while keeping not-insignifficant-dps.
I'd not hesitate to advise dropping from Fireball to Scorch spam on Morogrim in between AoE if one of your fellow AoEers die. The slight bump in economy will cover for the added 1-2 AE/Fstrike you'll have to use to cover the difference.
Scorch efficiency is independant of shadow priest, potions etc. If you're hurting for mana you'll be doing more dmg with the higher dmg/mana ability with a slight advantage to equal dmg/mana but higher dps spells due to the mana regen outside the 5sr when oom not to mention if you're wanding on a jow. Of course with this approach master of elements and JoW procs (if available) should be considered as a flat mana cost reduction and therefoer a DPM increase, which would have a different effect on DPM on different spells of course. Shouldn't be too hard to calculate.
Of course if you'er going oom long before a fight is over, usually something is *very* wrong. Either your DPS is just way too low, your shadow priests are really bad (or just don't exists which is at least as much of a problem), or something else is going on in a wierd way, like requiring way more AOE than actually should be needed.
On morogrim for example we let our locks seed everything as the murlocs run towards the paladin, nova them when they're all close enough (right as they're about to kill him), and from that point recast novas as they break using a rotation and only starting actual mage aoe after the first seed pops (to give the locks maximum time to seed as many as possible), and not using any fire aoe until the last mage's frost nova had broken (which most often happens before they're all dead with 3-4 mages in the raid). This means the locks are doing the bulk of the AOE (which is good for mana due to life tap) although the real reason for it is that you simply get to get rid of the murlocs while taking very minimal damage from them without having someone actually tank them (all offtanks do is pick up loose murlocs that somehow didn't get into the AOE, beats me how that happens though but anyway they do it fine in dps gear). So with that strat there is no reason for you to even slow your DPS on morogrim if people don't die early and your raid's dps and shadow priest aren't terrible.
Personally, I think four piece T4 is a lot harder to get than two piece T5.
Sorry, had to correct myself. I meant that four piece T6 was a lot harder to get than two piece T5. In practise, I think a lot more raiders are in SSC/TK, or early BT/Mt Hyjal as compared to farming Illidan. So, arcane would be a competitive, spec for many of these raiders given it is far easier to get two pieces of T5.
So, I guess its also how applicable we want the info on this thread to be. If the info is strictly for the top mages who are farming Illidan, then since I am not there yet myself either, so I would bow to the conclusions made. If its trying to cast a wider net to include the majority of raiders who are in all T5 and T6 instances, then arcane shouldn't be written off as a viable and competitive spec.
After playing around with spellhaste I can say that I don't value spellhaste that high really, crit to me seem much more important. After you reach 40% crit and 16%(13+3) hit self buffed I guess you can go for some haste gear. Before that my experience is that it gives less dps then crit. It doesn't seem like you can budget in more then 80-120 spellhaste on gear, max, as a fire-mage as well without negatively impacting dps.
Cite all the experience you like, its simply not true. afaik at 70 it's never the case that a point of haste (or the itemization value of a point of haste) is less valuable than a point of crit. And reaching for 40% crit is a sure-fire way to minimize your dps, as between haste, crit and spell damage crit is the least desirable stat.
My biggest beef with Haste is that you don't in actual fact see any benefit from it until you get that one extra spell. Assume the following scenario:
In between breaking casting (macro/decursing/movement/opening door for pizza delivery) let's say you have times of 30sec to cast. That would make it a grand total of 1 scorch and 9 fireballs. That's 28.5sec.
Unless you have so much haste that you manage to slot in 10 fireballs and 1 scorch, you have seen 0 net benefit from your haste, however much it is.
Haste "gains" a little bit of time for you each time you cast a spell. Untill that time is long enough to get one more cast through, it's worth zero, because the interruption you'll have to do will bring you back at the same point you would have been without haste in the same scenario.
From this model, it can be seen that:
1) The longer the initial cast of your spell, the less likely you are to see the benefit from haste occur, thus netting you an increase. This means AM spam is the best recipient of Haste, as it has one spell hit per second by default and the next-best competitor is Scorch which is GCD limited and thus null.
2) Haste is less likely to be diminished on fights with little or no interruptions to your casting-chain. Bear Boss in ZA is a perfect example: The only thing that can stop your cast-chain is his random charge and it's not even sure you'll be the recipient. It is conversely most likely to be compromized on high-utility fights, like Kael'Thas, Vashj and Zul'jin.
3) Simulators over-evaluate the effectiveness of haste due to their boundary conditions and the way they interract with gear. In a simulation it is assumed you stand and nuke. With the exception of actual DPS, moving or interrupting (not considering Arcane Rotations) does not affect simulated values. That is, 40% Crit will mean 40% of your spells crit. Whether you cast 100 in succession or 10 while moving is irrelevant, it still will occur. The same holds with Hit and Spell; This does not however hold with Haste, making Haste unique amongst the stats in that it's Simulated benefit is not acceptably accurate.
4) Yes, having haste -might- mean you get one spell off more before you move. But bare with me: We're not talking 40% haste, passive haste from gear does not surpass 3-10% meaning at least 30sec before a firemage sees the extra spell. Granted, in certain borderline cases (VR's orb was coming and i had 0.1sec to finish casting and vamoose) it -may- give you that extra one spell which will justify it's existence, but I have to ask: Is it really that valuable? Most of the time you have to move/decurse or some other spam-break, you're happy to even cut a cast in half. It's never the case "I have to do something else, but clearly I have 2.87sec for my hasted fireball". I've found in such utility cases the choice of champions is Fireblast on the move, icelance on the move (to keep WC up) or even a cheeky quick scorch or scorch/fblast combo. Not another Fireball/Frostbolt. "If only I had 200 haste rating" is something I've tried to immagine saying but simply can't fit it in.
To me it smacks like Penetration. Manly once said he wouldn't get Subtlety on Cloak because he felt that 2% was negligible and I agree. Getting Pen in fact does make him hit Supremus for distinctly more than 2% aggro benefits in his oppinion. This is the same way I feel about haste at this junction in time: It's good if you can't get anything else, or what else there is to get is negligible. ie. Comparing an item with superfluous Hit to one with some haste, yes I'd have the hasted one, but given the choice I'd rather have any other stat than haste on the simple basis that we don't get to stand around much at all.
I think Blizz has been too optimistic and conservative with Haste. Diablo 2 LOD proved that reduced cast time can be stupidly overpowered given no boundaries; I recall a Sorceress spec where enough ICS (Increased Cast Speed) would make you cast the same spam spell at 11FPC down from a base of 37FPC (Frames Per Cast). You can see how this is more than triple the cast speed than base. Now however we're at the other end of the spectrum, where Haste seems great in a simulator but in actual fact is anything ranging from debateably kinda-useful to bad.
I used and did argue the same thing a few months ago about haste. However, my view on the matter changed a little, because we both didn't consider all the cases. Here is the major loophole in your logic: The fight duration is not exactly static. The fight might last 3 min or it might last 2min 58 seconds. We can't really know for sure. While I do agree that you need a good amount of chaincasting before you do see any tangible benefits from haste, the fact remains that those 'split seconds' of spell haste might give you one extra fireball on the boss.
Here is an example:
-you said you need 30 seconds of chaincasting to get 1.5s of 'free cast time' and thus see any benefit from haste. (note: the amounts aren't important, so I'll just go with this)
-if the fight lasts 30 seconds, then you can only cast 10 fireballs (9 of which will have the time to reach the boss before it dies, but lets forget about this)
-if the fight lasts 28.5 seconds, then without haste you can only cast 9 fireballs. However, if you had the aforementioned amount of spell haste, you would have had the time, in fact, to cast 10 fireballs.
You could also argue that the extra haste makes it sure your last fireball reaches the boss in time before it dies, it pretty much boils down to the same thing.
In other words, your argument that the benefits are only seen once you've reached a certain time of chain casting could be argued the reverse way that using unhasted casting you only 'hit the boss' every 3 seconds interval.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Cite all the experience you like, its simply not true. afaik at 70 it's never the case that a point of haste (or the itemization value of a point of haste) is less valuable than a point of crit. And reaching for 40% crit is a sure-fire way to minimize your dps, as between haste, crit and spell damage crit is the least desirable stat.
Please elaborate as to why you've come to this conclusion? Crit gives 216.3% dmg + 30% mana return (with for a fire mage ) as where haste gives you faster cast and no beneficial returns (you'll run oom faster), it solely relies on hit and crit to be efficient. And saying that 40% crit is a "sure-fire way to minimize your dps" sounds rather weird to me, your own ignite rolls (not in the old sense), so you never loose damage from e.g. crit 4 times in a row. It gives what it should give.
And as Pintofbrew just said really well, those are the problems with the current haste implementation. Huge difference between haste in theory and haste in practice.
I got a small idea to fix this issue though (since they almost made spirit useless for mages). Change Mage Armor and Arcane Meditation to be based around intellect. Then convert our spirit to spellhaste (or any other stat). Since they so kindly felt like evocation should be based around intellect due to arena balance (I believe thats what the conclusion is at least).
edit: Fixed for Pintofbrew logic malfunction, typos are bad.
Manly: You do have a point and it's pointless to argue about "but then again if it's (some other time multiple)". It is also fact that the more haste you have the more likely you are to get another increment in as the spell under question will be able to "fit" in a smaller packet of gained time, becoming ever closer to the AM-style "1 delivery per second".
Grecasi: You've opened more parentheses than you've closed. Please review your syntax or suffer an <<ERROR: expected variable not returned (Line 1)>> for your insolence.
As for any thoughts anyone may or may not have about Spirit, please keep them to yourselves for the time being, because we're all aware Spirit will get a massive revamp in WOTLC so asking for everything to change from spirit to something else might be prematurely shooting ourselves in the foot.
Please elaborate as to why you've come to this conclusion? Crit gives 216.3% dmg (with for a fire mage + 30% mana return as where haste gives you faster cast and no beneficial returns (you'll run oom faster), it solely relies on hit and crit to be efficient. And saying that 40% crit is a "sure-fire way to minimize your dps" sounds rather weird to me, your own ignite rolls (not in the old sense), so you never loose damage from e.g. crit 4 times in a row. It gives what it should give.
The reason why haste is better for dps than crit is simply because it costs less (in terms of item budget). All rating points cost the same, but you only need ~15.7 rating points for 1% haste, and ~22.1 for 1% crit. With 1% additional haste you will fire off an extra fireball out of every 100, with 1% crit you will get the equivalent of an extra fireball+10% every 100 (not sure where the 6.3% extra is coming from, unless you are assuming the use of a CSD). Obviously crit is preferable if mana efficiency is your aim, but where dps is, haste is better.
Re the second issue, I think greyberger's point here is that because spellcrit is a suboptimal dps stat, actively stacking it means you are going to do less dps than you would had you stacked spell damage and/or haste instead.
In theory I agree, you're all right on haste. But due to how the client handles packets (Nagle, removed in 2.3.2) haste suffers a invisible penalty. Which is why the results so far with haste have been worse then they should be I guess. I've been experimenting with haste for well over a month now and it's very situational how good it is. The longer a fight is the better it becomes. But again client is messing about with packets and delaying so its not applicable it seems until you get round 90 haste rating minimum (maybe more even). 2.3.2 will be interesting in many ways for mages.
And yes, 216.3 is CSD, else the numbers would have been 210%, maybe I should have clarified that.
Pintofbrew: WoTLK changes will be interesting, though as we've done before I am wondering if we'll draw the short straw again. My suggestion was merely something non-important. I hope spirit becomes useful again but we'll have to wait another 6-12 months I guess.
My biggest beef with Haste is that you don't in actual fact see any benefit from it until you get that one extra spell. Assume the following scenario:
In between breaking casting (macro/decursing/movement/opening door for pizza delivery) let's say you have times of 30sec to cast. That would make it a grand total of 1 scorch and 9 fireballs. That's 28.5sec.
Now I have shorter feet and a longer way to the door, and thus have windows of 28s to cast.
I can only cast 8FB/1Sc in that frame, sadly. But if I had 0.5s less cast time from haste (1.8%), I would get an additional fireball in every cycle, which would be huge, and way beyond the 1.8% increase on paper.
You see, the argument works both ways, and people could argue over it endlessly for days.
It's even worse than arguing over the effect of 1% hit in a fight with 50 casts total.
From another point of view, if the whole raid got 1% haste, the boss would would die 1% earlier, so haste is fully effective. (Yes, GCD and DoTs don't scale with haste and melee/hunters don't scale on a 1%haste=1%DPS ratio, so just assume a raid of spamming casters or something. It's just a mind experiment anyway.)
Two more quotes from Binkerani's Elemental Shaman thread:
Originally Posted by jourikdv
Going from 0 to 30 spell haste rating (LB around 1.98) for instance does not increase DPS because it's horribly difficult to start casting your new spell 2ms faster (using Quartz myself).
Originally Posted by Tejs
Increments in 0.1 Seconds are the only things worth it imo.
I picked up Pauldrons of the Furious Elements a while back reducing Lightning Bolt to 1.96 Seconds. 0.04 Seconds is hardly noticeable, and for the most part made little DPS difference when compared to using my T5 shoulders. Until you can see more than 0.1 in cast time reduction while maintaining the relative spell damage and crit you have, I'd hardly bother with it.
My stance is that haste is effective from its first point in haste rating.
But I see the issues, because it works different than the other stats that simply increase the average damage per cast.
Boundary conditions on boss fights, as have been discussed, are changeable and hard to wrangle.
Boundary conditions on trinket effects are easier to deal with. If haste lets you get an extra fireball started with Heroism, or with Icon/Head/Skull up, that's a small but undeniable benefit.
WRT lag, if I have 0 lag and my spell casts 1% faster, I've gained the same DPS as if I had 10sec lag and my spell cast 1% faster. Moving house may be superior to stacking haste, but that does not make haste any less useful.
[quote=Grecasi;576279]Please elaborate as to why you've come to this conclusion? Crit gives 216.3% dmg + 30% mana return (with for a fire mage ) as where haste gives you faster cast and no beneficial returns (you'll run oom faster), it solely relies on hit and crit to be efficient. And saying that 40% crit is a "sure-fire way to minimize your dps" sounds rather weird to me, your own ignite rolls (not in the old sense), so you never loose damage from e.g. crit 4 times in a row. It gives what it should give.
/QUOTE]
haste is adding a % modifier, so the faster you cast, the more crits you are doing also. It's the same reason +hit is so valuable until cap. Ignites don't roll, and critting too much in a short window of time has been shown to lower dps, as sometimes a tick is not counted properly. Ignites also suffer from double dipping against resists (and resilience in pvp, but that's a separate discussion). The initial crit is subject to a partial resist, causing the ignite to register for less, and each tick can be partially resisted.
Getting to 40% crit means you have stacked crit and neglected +dmg, which is much more valuable then crit. That's why he said you minimized your dps. It's better to get items that spread the budget among the stats.
The faster you cast the more crits you can do if the gear which you have haste on does not remove your crit. And for this to even be valid you have to have a lot of haste to catch up. More then you can budget for to maintain hit.
Getting 40% crit with end-game gear and in a raid is not that hard. 36%+Elemental shaman+Combustion and you've broken the 40% crit barrier for a fight. Add to that the fact that you can go as high as 39-40% without gimping and add ret paladin and elemental shaman.
The ignite issue where only 1 stack gets recorded is only valid if you crit twice in shorter then .2 seconds from where the server recorded the first crit. This means the fireball+fireblast dipping of combustion. Spamming fireballs in a rotation of 8/1 won't cause this (unless it's when you do a scorch with MSD as the fireball is in the air and both crits). As for ignites partially resisting, it might happen but I can't even remember last time I saw it (not counting heavy resist fights such as supremus).
The faster you cast the more crits you can do if the gear which you have haste on does not remove your crit. And for this to even be valid you have to have a lot of haste to catch up. More then you can budget for to maintain hit.
Getting 40% crit with end-game gear and in a raid is not that hard. 36%+Elemental shaman+Combustion and you've broken the 40% crit barrier for a fight. Add to that the fact that you can go as high as 39-40% without gimping and add ret paladin and elemental shaman.
If you crit 40% of the time, casting 100 spells or 200 spells, the same percentage of your damage will be in the form of crits, which will proc ignite. But you can also assume your hits are less so your crits would be less with haste gear over +dmg gear, having the same % crit in both cases.
The argument that "Haste is only useful if you get off an additional spell" is just as invalid as the old argument "The last few percent of +Hit is only useful if you're getting lots of Resist messages." The reality is that neither of these criteria are objective, valid or useful in objective evaluation.
The objective measurement is that spell increases the DPS of your Fireball. This will work out in a variety of ways in practice just as crit rating and hit rating are working out in a variety of ways. You'll never know if you might have had no resists with only 15% hit in a given boss fight, nor is it important. The reality is that 16% his is better than 15% hit and getting that last percent is more useful than spending that item budget anywhere else.
Likewise, haste rating is more potent point for point than crit rating. You can use any number of subjective criteria for explaining how you might not take advantage of it ("Any time you sneeze and don't hit your Fireball fast enough, you've lost the benefit of all your haste gear.", "If are fighting a boss that causes bad performance on your computer you can't benefit from your haste gear.", et cetera.) But none of this is really useful.
Just as in my example above, you'll never know what would have happened if you were not using haste gear in a given fight, nor is it important. Would you still have been able to cast the same number of Fireballs? Not important for any given instance. The "what if" game is not objective evaluation but subjective speculation. A 2.87sec Fireball is more powerful than a 3.00second Fireball, just as a Fireball with 99% chance to hit is more powerfull than one with 98% chance to hit.
Haste has the added benefit of pushback prevention. If I've got an interrupt that occurs every 3 seconds, with 0 haste I can't cast a fireball without pushback. With ~25 haste, my fireballs go to 2.95 seconds, allowing me to chain cast them.
Admittedly a somewhat contrived scenario, I still don't think that anything that makes a spell take less time to cast would be a bad thing. How much we should value haste is possibly the issue, and possibly current theorycrafting analysis is overvaluing the stat.
Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.
There are only two kinds of MMOs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody plays. (inspired by Bjarne Stroustrup)
Just a quick clarification about spell haste effect that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread:
Is the cast-time of a hasted spell calculated from the spell's base cast-time or its current cast-time? I'm thinking specifically about Arcane Blast and it's accompanying debuff, but Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt might also apply.
With 10% spell-haste, would Arcane Blast's cast times be...
12/13/07, 2:57 PM
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