[Guide] Haste and You

[Amedis]

Purpose of thread: To compile a working definition of what haste does for each class, and then make some conclusions about it's value.

Constraints: We will concern ourselves only with haste effects that do not impact the global cooldown (This appears to be all of them.). We will concern ourselves only with haste effects on players. (No frenzy discussions) From here forward, Haste refers to any effect which increases your real attack rate without affecting your global/internal cooldowns - be it obtained from procs/talents/static haste rating.

Disclaimer
This is my personal understanding of haste as it applies to warriors, rogues, and hunters. I am not familiar enough with casters to venture an opinion about spell haste, although I understand the basics (dots hate it) etc. I would very much appreciate a caster that feels comfortable talking about _all_ of the casters weighing in with their understanding, and will add it to the first post once it's expressed in the thread. Added below under "Haste for casters".

Haste and Procs:


Any proc without an internal cooldown (the most noticable being windfury totem) receives increasing returns from haste. However, recent testing suggests that most post-tbc procs have internal cooldowns - these items do not see above normal gains from haste, the most obvious example would be windfury weapon's 3s cooldown. (They will still have higher avg uptime as a result of haste effects, but their gains are generally discountable.) Additionally, some procs in wow have a modified chance to proc that varies as your hastes vary and your procs per hour may be impacted as a result of this interaction.


Haste for Melee:

Haste has no cap for classes who's primary attack is auto-attack. Unlike all other attacks investigated, auto-attack appears to have no internal cast time or cooldown, and thus adding more haste will always increase your actual rate of attack. Additionally, melee using instant attacks and "on next attack" specials only do not push back their swing timer. As long as you limit yourself to those type of attacks, haste provides full value (or better) for each additional point. Lastly, haste adds white swings, and can change your ratio of white:special attacks. This in turn can impact other abilities in odd ways. Note that some gear/enchanting/talent decisions (see above about procs) may make haste more or less effective for specific melee classes.

Additionally, as soon as you start branching off into effects with actual cast time, especially skills which reset your swing timer such as the warrior skill Slam, you will be reducing the effectiveness of your haste effects for similiar reasons to the hunter auto-shot pushback discussed below. Therefor 2H warriors may find other stats more appealing.

Haste for Hunters:

Haste has a cap on effectiveness as a result of auto-shot having a .5 second cast time. Sufficient haste would push a hunter to a displayed auto-shot cast time of less than .5 seconds, yet their auto-shots would only fire every .5 seconds due to their internal cast time. Thus additional haste would do nothing. Note that at this theoretical cap any non-auto-shot would clip your auto-shots, resulting in minimal dps gains. Thus for dps purposes, there is an even lower practical cap on haste. Additionally hunter auto-shot/special weaving requires some human reaction time for best effect, so leaving yourself a comfortable time between auto-shots is advisable. I've found the following rule helpful:

Attack speed after all hastes should not go below 1 + .5 + latency seconds. The 1 is to give me a second in which to fit a special attack. The .5 is the auto-shot clipping buffer, and the latency is to account for travel time to the server. Your mileage may vary, but this has worked for me.

Haste for Casters:

Haste has a cap on effectiveness for casters as a result of the global cooldown being 1.5secs. Sufficent haste would push many spells to less than 1.5 secs of cast time but they would still only be castable every 1.5 secs due to the gobal cooldown requiring a minimum of 1.5 secs between casts resulting in a net gain of little actual damage once that state of one cast per global cooldown is achieved..

However, haste will still reduce the actual time spent casting which can be advantageous when dealing with spell push back or trying to avoid interupts. Haste will also reduce the amount of time before the first cast which is also situationally advantageous when trying to move and cast at the same time or other situations that encourage narrow time windows for casting.

Channeled spells are effected by haste and will see a reduction in their time spent channeling the spell but no change in overall damage resulting in a DPS boost, additionally haste scales at the same rate for channeled spells and spells with a standard cast time.

Instant cast spells gain nothing signifigant from haste, and most DOTS gain little as well.

Closing Thoughts

Generally, haste will provide the largest real return on damage or threat output to any class up until that class reaches their personal cap on returns. For some classes, that cap is almost immediate due to talents and spell choice. Some classes may find other stats which provide equivalent returns, and should carefully weigh the advantages those other stats have vs the secondary burst potential haste provides. As an example, hit rating for warriors provides similar returns, along with a secondary benefit of stabilizing rage flow and threat flow at a cost of less burst potential.

Credit to EJ

[Amedis]

Haste for Casters:

Haste has a cap on effectiveness as a result of the global cooldown being 1.5secs. Sufficent haste would push many spells to less than 1.5 secs of cast time but they would still only be castable every 1.5 secs due to the gobal cooldown requiring a minimum of 1.5 secs between casts.

However, haste will still reduce the actual time spent casting which can be advantageous when dealing with spell push back or trying to avoid interupts. Haste will also reduce the amount of time before the first cast which is also situationally advantageous when trying to move and cast at the same time or other situations that encourage narrow time windows for casting.

Channeled spells are effected by haste and will see a reduction in their time spent channeling the spell but no change in overall damage resulting in a DPS boost.

Haste scales at the same rate for channeled spells and spells with a standard cast time.

Instant cast spells will gain nothing from haste.

[Krillere]

I cant see that green text. Really annoying..

[xram7]

would you like to change the font color? so ppl can READ IT?

[Amedis]

Still green, but any better?

[xram7]

Still green, but any better?

waaaaaaaay much better

me love you big time

+rep bud

[Gelormino]

Well done Amedis, I like the way this is written up and I also learned a thing or two :P
+rep

[edd0dd0]

i thought that spell haste affected the global cooldown

[Albedo]

"Haste for Casters:

Haste has a cap on effectiveness for casters as a result of the global cooldown being 1.5secs. Sufficent haste would push many spells to less than 1.5 secs of cast time but they would still only be castable every 1.5 secs due to the gobal cooldown requiring a minimum of 1.5 secs between casts resulting in a net gain of little actual damage once that state of one cast per global cooldown is achieved.."



Spell Haste reduces the Global Cooldown for spells, so for example, Mind Blast, which is a 1.5 Second Cast, will ALWAYS finish casting when the global cooldown is done (unless you have over 785 spell haste, the amount needed to reduce the global cooldown to 1 second, which is impossible by the way). In other words, with 10% spell haste, mind blast will be a 1.35 second cast, your SPELL global cooldown will be 1.35 as well. This does not account for latency.

[SmotPoker]

looks good but i didnt want to actually read all that

[Zergy555]

That means for fire mages as an example should get spell haste since the fire specc gets stun on hit chances and such.

[amynnet93]

thanks m8 very helpful +Rep

[Czchar]

Very well put!!!! Good cause I have been thinking of rerolling a mage, also it is good for not only fire but frost because of frost bite.

[XViRuSX]

good guide thanks

[imtel]

Nice , thanks.