Comments on: A Question Of Haste

By: Tessy

Tessy — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:58:10 +0000

I don't play a mage myself, well, not a lvl 80 raiding one :-), but I think spellpower would be the better stat to go for when you are hit cappep. Check out Elitist Jerks raiding as frost mage-thread and the tool Rawr that lets you fiddle around with different gear/gems/enchants.

By: Kubawalda

Kubawalda — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:16:27 +0000

As a fire/frost PVE lvl 80 mage with half gear rated 213, and hit max’d at 14%, which direction should I go next? select haste over spellpower or spellpower over haste?

Thanks.

By: Tessy

Tessy — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:08:24 +0000

Excellent summary, thanks Gondir :-)

By: Gondir

Gondir — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:59:38 +0000

I’m a fair bit late here, but:

Haste for melee is fairly simple, lets say you have 10% haste: over any given time you will have 10% more autoattacks. That’s it. Haste generally is not a stat melee wants to stack. Exception to the rule ofc, but that is, well, an exception. With the unification of haste ratings you will gain spell haste as well, it’s not all that useful for melee, but it will lower the GCD for any spamable specials.

For casters it’s a little bit more complicated. It does the same as for melee, as well as reducing cast time. Wether or not it benefits a certain class depends what your primary source of damage is and how manabound you are. If you can live trough KT with mana in surplus you have too much mana and should consider haste. If you rely on casttime spells with no CD then haste is good. If you use DOTs and instants then haste is bad.

By: Tessy

Tessy — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:32:20 +0000

Fire, I was thinking along the lines that since warlocks have many instant dots we are better off focusing on spellpower, hit and crit, like you say a fire mage does, to really dish out some damage so the mob dies faster (at least when we start out raiding).

If I pack a lot of haste on the expense of sp, hit/crit I get my spells off faster but they would hit for less and it would feel rather useless to have to refresh an 18 second dot if you see that the target is about to kick the bucket in much less time than that.

But you are right, us locks usually don’t worry that much about going OOM :-)

By: Firesky

Firesky — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:02:17 +0000

Tessy, I’m not sure if OOM is such a big deal for locks? I mean, you can just life tap and go on, and let healers bring you back up to full health. We just have to stand idle and watch basically!

And yeah, I’ll be wailing like a baby when the inevitable arcane nerf comes around.. ;-)

By: Tessy

Tessy — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:55:51 +0000

Ty Pol, I hadn’t thought of that at all, and I guess that would apply to any spellcaster procs as well :-)

By: Pol

Pol — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:08:56 +0000

As aretri palla I’m currently stacking 268 haste, it has lessened my Melee swing by 0.43 of a second ( a lot on a big 2 hander) this has meant that there is a change from Seal of Command being the top seal / judge to Seal of the Martyr. It is also useful to consider how what procs you have on your armour, trinkets etc as my procs are now approx 13% more often generating more dps

By: Tessy

Tessy — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:35:46 +0000

Thanks Fire! :-)

And thanks for the input on what is good for a mage.

Guess it is applicable for warlocks as well and that I was on the right track then, not gemming or enchanting my raid gears for haste yet, sticking to the good old spellpower and crit until I gear up a little more.

OP arcane pvp, eh? Time for a nerf cry maybe? ;P

By: Firesky

Firesky — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:23:26 +0000

Nice article! :)
As a mage, stacking haste will give a big DPS gain, on par with hit and spellpower in most cases. However, stacking haste does not give more DPM (damage per mana) as it only deals the same amount of damage out quicker. Spellpower and hitrating gives more damage for each cast, therefore increasing both DPS and DPM.

Raiding mages risk going OOM earlier when stacking haste, and might have to talent for more mana regen to compensate. Thus, stacking spellpower, hit (and crit for fire mages) will usually be a better choice until higher gear levels.

Haste is a great stat for arena though, as you have to react quickly and usually rely on instant casts (at least as OP arcane pvp! :-)