18 February 2009

Death to haste

It's everywhere, it's like the god-damn wandering plague, you determine the existence of haste on an item simply by inspecting it, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, it will still be hasted, physicists now believe the mysterious dark matter that exists in space is actually haste.

It doesn't affect spell cooldowns and it doesn't affect dot durations. And of course our spell casting decisions are entirely determined by... spell cooldowns and dot durations.

It's fat, and pushy, and shoves crit off just about everything it touches. Crit boosts my dot power, crit boosts my spell power, crit gives me mana, crit is my friend. Haste sits on crit until it cries and runs away and hides. I miss crit.

Haste makes my head hurt. It does weird things to my spell rotation that I can't work out, and it all goes out of the window anyway when I get an upgrade or group up with a retadin or the shammy pops bloodlust and it totally screws up my spec because I need an extra point in improved mind blast that I just don't have.

Haste is what designers put on items when they are:
a) hungover
b) late leaving the office and want to get away
c) mages/hunters

I. Hate. Haste.

9 comments:

Ho Ho said...

"it totally screws up my spec because I need an extra point in improved mind blast that I just don't have."

Really? After getting all the basic DPS increasin talents I have 2-3 points free to put anywhere, I've chosen inner focus and 2x imp. VE. Do you use some kind of hybrid pve/pvp spec that you are short on points or you just waste them on shadow affinity?

Merlot said...

Damn, I didn't expect to be pulled up on that so quickly lol. I am
behind the thinking on spec, for sure. I still have the standard 14
points in disc and hadn't even thought to take points out of shadow affinity.

What's the general feeling about shadow affinity then? Do you need any points at all? I don't have any threat problems on bosses, but with mind sear on trash or add scenarios I'm constantly surfing the tank.

I did think when I specced imp ve I was being a little self-indulgent
but I really like the extra personal healing. But you're right, it's a crappy raiding talent.

Ho Ho said...

Shadow affinity is useless. I rarely get anywhere near tanks, pretty much the only fight where I do is Malygos but even then I'm not as much threat capped than mages-locks and some other dps'ers are.

Leigh said...

Shadow Affinity is a waste of points, we get enough threat reduction from Shadowform now. You can easily pull out 12K DPS on trash packs and once the tank is reasonably well geared you ain't going to touch him.

For the rare occasion a mob hasn't been properly tagged Fade actually works and does it's job!!

As for haste it's a nice stat that comes with some of the top end pieces. Without having aimed for haste i am sitting on about 350 or so. Makes MF spam enjoyable and i don't really have much of a problem with my rotations. When heroism is popped the only dot i am concerned with keeping up is VT. DP can drop off as i don't bother wasting a global when i could spam MF and MB as much as possible!!!

Anonymous said...

I hate the fact that blizzard seems to think that people want to equalize the number of items they have with hast and the number with crit. More crit equals more procs equals more mana back equals more better. More haste equals a slightly quicker cast time added with wasting more mana in a shorter amount of time. I can see the point of haste on a few items, but anyone who stacks it is just not thinking

Phil Ullrich said...

Maybe if youre in top-end raiding circles you can forgo shadow affinity. Me, I mainly PUG and find that Im pulling aggro in 25 vaults or naxx with just about 3k DPS at best. This is the case even when I am a DPS sub in a solid guild run. I aim to get some points back into shadow affinity.

Anonymous said...

I must admit haste is not a stat i really look at now.

I would take Int and Crit over it any time and if its there then Meh its will just be there.

Im with grayhammer as i pug as well and find i am pretty high in threat so need shadow affinity as well.

Unknown said...

I definitely ride the line on threat. I have 2 points in shadow affinity and I'm reluctant to lose them. There's no other talent worth picking up anyway.

In fact, on trash groups, I use Fade on every pull, and often Shadowmeld as well. I miss that short series of patches when both of those spells totally wiped aggro - now *that* was OP.

Haste is cool (and heroism, coupled with a crit pot, is a RL adrenaline rush), but I don't try to gear for it at all. It comes on it's own.

Somidna said...

Get a better tank, 'nough said. I can go all out on any pull, anywhere: raid, instance, w/e, and the tank I run with I can trust to hold his target in check. I had the three points in shadow affinity and found them a waste of time.

On a more relevant note, priests seem to be split almost down the middle when it comes to haste. Some priests shun it (as do I, but only because crit is my love) because it seems to serve little purpose to a class that rotates dots and a few other spells (mind flay, mind blast). Why not just try to swing crit and get an overall improvement to three of your priority spells while making your other spells do larger amounts of damage? Still, some priests call it a godsend because they can cast mind flay more often, but then they lose out on so much more. (Sorry for practically blogging in your blog)

Death to haste.