Haste; it's a mixed bag of a stat for a variety of classes. Some love it, some hate it, others really don't care either way for it. Haste, however, is very important for all casters. Elemental and Shadow will probably disagree, but there is truth here. Haste cannot be avoided, and in many contexts is can be very, very awesome. But what about those times when Haste goes wrong, I mean, really, really wrong.

I'm not talking about the flirtation Haste currently has going on with spells that have cooldowns and how it works with rotations, no, I'm talking about the one thing that Haste is married to; that ball-and-chain Haste can never get rid of: the global cooldown.

For nearly every caster in the game, the GCD is an after thought. It's there, they know it exists, but they really don't care for it. It's like that internet relationship; sure they talk to it over Skype, but they never actually go outside to see it.

Balance Druids, unfortunately, aren't so lucky. We got trapped by our internet relationship. We didn't just go out and visit them in the 'real world' we moved it, got married, and popped out five screaming kids with it. And now, Balance Druids, Haste, and the GCD are in some strange threesome and all three are fighting with each other.

The issue Balance Druids have with Haste is two-fold. First, Balance Druids are the only casters in the game whom use a 1.5 second cast spell as a central part of their rotation. Second, Balance Druids are one of only two classes, Destruction Warlocks being the other, that can not only reach but completely blow through the 1 second cast time limit of the GCD. For Warlocks using Incinerate or Chaos Bolt, this isn't an issue because they would need thousands of Haste to cap out their spells, but, for Balance Druids, we only need the lowly little number of 400.

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Q u o t e:

Exactly. That is how direct spells work. You have to cast more of them. That means more mana per second but also more damage. This is why we think haste is an interesting stat (for casters anyway) when compared to just straight damage. More haste makes you do different things than more crit or spellpower would.

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A fine quote from GC, and one that I agree with. Haste is fun, it's interesting because it can really have some difference effects on rotations that no other stat in the game currently does. But, Balance Druids are in the same boat with Shadow Priests and Affliction Warlocks in a desperate struggle against Haste. The only problem is, Blizzard is stepping in to stop the fighting between Shadow and Affliction have with Haste, but what of Balance?

Balance Druids are still sitting there, casting Wrath over and over, and crying as their spells dip below the 1 second GCD, which ruins all that Haste on their gear. Not only that, but the true evil shows itself in the spell queing system. This system is awesome, but it fails for casts that fall below the GCD. Spelling queing is limited to the GCD, you cannot que a spell before the GCD is up, therefore, when casting well below the GCD, Balance Druids take a stab in the back from latency.

Which brings us onward to our next great quote:

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Q u o t e:

You are assuming our goal is to make all stats equally attractive to all characters. It isn't. We have no problem with say mages valuing haste more than Shadow priests. The problem is just that the difference is too large right now. When an item drops you should have to consider whether it's a good item for you or not. We like that different specs might approach the same item differently. We like haste in part because it has a lot of depth - did you reduce your cast time by so much that you can squeeze in an additional spell? -- that sort of thing.

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Again, this is a completely understandable stance. Every stat should not be valued by every class in exactly the same ratio. That not only makes all of the classes boring, but it makes gearing boring and aggravating since everyone will get the same variable DPS gain for each item and thus all only want the exact same thing. That is not fun.

But, where is it that we draw this line? What decided when too much is too much?

Balance Druids already have these issues when gearing. When some awesome new item drops, I have no clue if it's actually going to be a DPS upgrade or not. As a Balance Druid, I have to look at the item and see its Haste value, then, compare it to the Haste value of the item I'm replacing. You see, if I end up dipping below the 400 Haste mark, then Haste becomes a very, very valuable stat worth more than anything else, yes, even better than Spell Power.

It's a balancing act of extremes, and one that isn't fun. Now, going well over 400 Haste won't kill a Balance Druid, that's for sure, but, here's the real problem of the issue - the value of Crit does not increase.

Before 400 Haste (and at the start of WotLK when all Druids wanted was gobs and gobs of Haste for their awesome Lunar Eclipse procs) Haste is valued approximately on par with Spell Power, a little less or a little more depending on where you stand on the Spell Power spectrum (the 'break-even' point seems to be approximately 3,600 Spell Power or so.) Crit, however, is way down on the list. If Spell Power holds a DPS value of 1, then Crit holds a DPS value of around 0.78. Once we hit that 400 mark in Haste, the value of Haste drops drastically, all the way down to Crit levels also hovering around the 0.78 mark.

This is a very major scaling issue, and one that is actually very much apparent in the game right now. If you take a Naxx geared Balance Druid and pit them against other Naxx geared classes, they will perform well. But, as gear starts to increase, Haste starts to increase, and players reach the 400 mark and beyond, Balance starts to slip. We may not slip as much as Shadow and Affliction have, but we do start to fall down the list. This next pact will, hopefully, address the issues of the other two, but it won't help Balance at all.

Nature's Grace or Wrath's cast time needs to be addressed - preferably both, but the latter is most important. Haste and Wrath simply do not get along very well, and their constant fighting will continue to push the two more and more apart. As Crit increases, the value of Haste over 400 begins to decrease in respects to Wrath. This is due to the fact that the uptime of Nature's Grace increase with higher values of Crit, and any Haste over 400 holds no value (actually a negative value) while casting Wrath under the effects of Nature's Grace.

Due to the way Eclipse has been constantly changed, Balance Druids cannot avoid casting Wrath - we absolutely must cast it. We cannot avoid casting Wrath, we cannot avoid Haste, and (so long as we have functioning brains) we cannot ignore Nature's Grace. Something needs to change here, please. Change Nature's Grace, change Wrath's cast time, remove Wrath from our rotation - whatever the solution, just please do something.

Someday wrath will be fixed....at least it's slightly getting better (the 3.1 buff)...just needs a few more fixes. :(

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Q u o t e:
They could reduce the cast time reduction on Wrath from Starlight Wrath to .25 seconds and instead buff the damage to compensate.

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They could indeed.

I'll have to go do some digging, but I already did the math on the damage increase it would take to ensure that the raw DPS value of Wrath remained unchanged if you increased its cast time to 2 seconds instead of the current 1.5.

If I recall it correctly, the number was around a 45% increase in damage or so. I'm fairly certain that I calculated that as being an additive bonus to Moonfury, but I would have to return back to my work in order to double check. However, I know for certain that I didn't take any Eclipse calculations into account since, at that time, no one was using a Solar Eclipse. Therefore, the numbers would probably have to be re-adjusted in order to accommodate the current rotation.

The one down-side to simply altering the damage of Wrath in such a way is the impact this would hold on PvP. I think Horth would have my head on a pike if I made his Wraths cast at a 2 second speed instead of a 1.5 second speed. So, there would have to be a means in order for PvE to get the damage/cast time increase they need, but for PvP to keep the current system.

Talent wise, the only way to do such a thing would be to give some new talent the 'Juggernaut' treatment - either create a talent which increases both the damage and the cast time, or, change Starlight Wrath to increase the damage of Wrath (instead of altering the cast time) and then a new talent which reduces the cast time and damage. Since PvE specs generally have more 'free' points than PvP specs at the moment, the former option is probably better than the latter.

I say we take Wrath off the GCD entirely! Launch a little ball of green doom as fast as we can mash that button!

I'm sure that wouldn't break the server or game at ALL :D

Don't have much input for Boomkin, my Druid is Resto, but...

Just wanted to point out that for Elemental, haste is godly (assuming you have ~25%+ crit and are hit capped), while you implied otherwise at the beginning of your post. No idea about SPriests.

The more you know...! :D

Also, just making insect swarm & moonfire scale with haste won't fix the haste scaling problem for balance druids.

With the "rotation" that we have, hasted moonfires (ie. moonfires lasting for a shorter duration) could actually not benefit from being hasted, especially if we lose the benefit of the duration extension that the starfire glyph gives moonfire. Insect swarm always verges on the edge of not being a DPS increase, and some of what props it up is the buff that it gives to wrath's damage. So, casting insect swarm more often may not be a good way to make haste scale. We also couldn't afford to drop one of the glyphs we use to pick up scaling with haste, since all 3 of the glyphs we use in PvE are already "required" based on increasing the DPS of our DOTs to make them worthwhile.

Its probably to late to do something about Wrath and haste, however long term I see Wrath being removed from our typical pve rotation, or heavily down played because it would be replaced by a new spell with at least 2 second cast time.

But why use Wrath then? I dont know, but honestly I would prefer to stop casting Wrath in raids all together. I'm not a fan of 1 second cast spams. As one poster mentioned last week in a similar thread, if it bugs me so much I should just bind Wrath to my scroll wheel and roll that. ...eh no thanks.

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Q u o t e:
Its probably to late to do something about Wrath and haste, however long term I see Wrath being removed from our typical pve rotation, or heavily down played because it would be replaced by a new spell with at least 2 second cast time.

But why use Wrath then? I dont know, but honestly I would prefer to stop casting Wrath in raids all together. I'm not a fan of 1 second cast spams. As one poster mentioned last week in a similar thread, if it bugs me so much I should just bind Wrath to my scroll wheel and roll that. ...eh no thanks.

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it would be nice to leave wrath as the PvP quick-fire spell...

Making wrath & starfire closer in cast times makes the rotation between the two of them even LESS interesting than it is right now.

At least now, I alternate speeds of button pressing (ie. bam... bam... bam..... bam.... for starfire to BAMBAMBAMBAM for wrath.

Why do we have haste in PvE? its probably the hardest stat to balance and it can change drastically the gameplay... theres no solution to haste and it has the potential to "sunwell" the game.... why do we need 1.1 flash of light or 1 secs wrath in pve?... the game was more funny without alll this spam.
i hope honestly Blizz remove haste form Pve gear, or just put it in one content tier.... it could be great in pvp gear btw, where we need fast reactions

Simplest solution would seem to be to just change Starlight Wrath to reduce the base GCD of Wrath by .5s and allow the spell queuing system to work for sub 1s casts.

As for new spells, I would rather one that works to interesting effect with both Wrath and Starfire rather than just replacing Wrath. One of the things that makes an Elemental rotation interesting for example is the ability to insert CL instead of LB when it makes sense or to better catch the cooldown for LvB. Right now, both Wrath and Starfire fill the LB role – they could move Wrath to a CL-style role while adding a new spell to fill a LvB-style role.

As for Eclipse itself, I'm hoping that the mechanic changes significantly enough that it can matter less and be more of the flavor talent that it seemed like it was trying to be back in the alpha & beta cycles.

A temporary way to fix wrath would be to chance the way nature's grace works. Extend the duration to 5 seconds and change it to 10% haste and 5% damage and healing or something similar.

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Q u o t e:
Simplest solution would seem to be to just change Starlight Wrath to reduce the base GCD of Wrath by .5s and allow the spell queuing system to work for sub 1s casts.

As for new spells, I would rather one that works to interesting effect with both Wrath and Starfire rather than just replacing Wrath. One of the things that makes an Elemental rotation interesting for example is the ability to insert CL instead of LB when it makes sense or to better catch the cooldown for LvB. Right now, both Wrath and Starfire fill the LB role – they could move Wrath to a CL-style role while adding a new spell to fill a LvB-style role.

As for Eclipse itself, I'm hoping that the mechanic changes significantly enough that it can matter less and be more of the flavor talent that it seemed like it was trying to be back in the alpha & beta cycles.

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Wrath, or possibly Starfire, would have to have some form of non-RNG based system to boost their damage (or to give a boost to something) in order for the practicalities of switching between one or the other to exist. Chain Lightning, Lava Burst, Mind Blast - these all have cooldowns, if they didn't, then these spells would be all that the class would cast. Pyroblast, Soulfire - these are all very high damaging abilities, but their excessive cast times make them unfeasible, however large haste effects make them usable.

Balance has no spells which fit into the Chain Lighting not Soulfire category. If Wrath deals more DPS than Starfire, then we will only cast Wrath; if Starfire deals more DPS than Wrath, then we will only cast Starfire. Without a talent that says "When you cast a Starfire you gain X" or, "When you cast a Wrath you gain X" we won't cast the lower DPS one. It is a nice theory, but isn't one that practically works for the spell set that we have. Wrath was never structured to be a PvE spell until WotLK - and this has caused some obvious problems.


As for lowing the GCD; not possible. Sub-1 second Wrath casts would be too strong. Perhaps I am wrong in that - after all I do not know how well every other class is going to end up scaling, but the 1 second limit is there for a reason and we should not be the only ones to break it.

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Q u o t e:

Why do we have haste in PvE? its probably the hardest stat to balance and it can change drastically the gameplay... theres no solution to haste and it has the potential to "sunwell" the game.... why do we need 1.1 flash of light or 1 secs wrath in pve?... the game was more funny without alll this spam.
i hope honestly Blizz remove haste form Pve gear, or just put it in one content tier.... it could be great in pvp gear btw, where we need fast reactions

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This has already been answered; Haste is interesting. Increasing cast speeds is far more interesting that a RNG this may or may not happen stat and just raw Spell Power. It has the draw back of mana consumption - the stat itself is very artful. So far as I've seen, no one caster has scaled out of control yet, and Haste certainly wouldn't be the cause for it if they did. It is melee that is worrisome - but that is a different bag entirely.

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Q u o t e:
Its probably to late to do something about Wrath and haste, however long term I see Wrath being removed from our typical pve rotation, or heavily down played because it would be replaced by a new spell with at least 2 second cast time.

But why use Wrath then? I dont know, but honestly I would prefer to stop casting Wrath in raids all together. I'm not a fan of 1 second cast spams. As one poster mentioned last week in a similar thread, if it bugs me so much I should just bind Wrath to my scroll wheel and roll that. ...eh no thanks.

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It is never too late Hroth!

Agreed, though, I would prefer to have Wrath removed completely. But that's a much more difficult task. Without a new spell to take its place; removing Wrath removes Eclipse, and so much of our DPS is tied up into Eclipse right now that we cannot afford to lose it.

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Q u o t e:
Also, just making insect swarm & moonfire scale with haste won't fix the haste scaling problem for balance druids.

With the "rotation" that we have, hasted moonfires (ie. moonfires lasting for a shorter duration) could actually not benefit from being hasted, especially if we lose the benefit of the duration extension that the starfire glyph gives moonfire. Insect swarm always verges on the edge of not being a DPS increase, and some of what props it up is the buff that it gives to wrath's damage. So, casting insect swarm more often may not be a good way to make haste scale. We also couldn't afford to drop one of the glyphs we use to pick up scaling with haste, since all 3 of the glyphs we use in PvE are already "required" based on increasing the DPS of our DOTs to make them worthwhile.

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Insect Swarm has been a thorn in our side since it came out. I will give Blizzard credit, they have really been trying to ensure that Insect Swarm has a higher DPCT than Starfire or Wrath, however, those calculations never included Eclipse.

Without Eclipse, Insect Swarm will never, feasibly, be out-paced by our nukes. The issue is that, now, Druids are spending +75% of any given encounter under the effects of Eclipse and that boosts the DPCT of out nukes to non-feasible levels. This depreciates the value of our DoTs.

Yes, this is me whining about Eclipse again. I won't stop until I have that talent's head on a stick and can parade it around Stormwind crying "The witch is dead!"

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Q u o t e:
Don't have much input for Boomkin, my Druid is Resto, but...

Just wanted to point out that for Elemental, haste is godly (assuming you have ~25%+ crit and are hit capped), while you implied otherwise at the beginning of your post. No idea about SPriests.

The more you know...! :D

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I did not know this, thank you.

I only look at Elemental posts where I can, and I still remember when all of them were up in arms about Haste due to the CD on Lava Burst and how it held little to no value are specific levels.

Nice and well thought out post, I'm sure GC is going to be reading this.

I think what Blizzard is trying to do is make it so stats no longer behave "weirdly." Armor pen's convoluted mechanics made it behave weirdly. Haste's interactions with fixed DoT durations and cooldowns still makes it behave weirdly, and Blizzard is correcting that to some extent. While there are some fears this will homogenize stat values across classes, that is not in and of itself a necessary effect; indeed, there are much simpler ways to make classes value stats differently (different rating conversions, for example) that would accomplish the same thing.

The 1 sec GCD cap still remains, however, and I think it's an unavoidable conclusion that to make haste behave less strangely, this cap must be removed as soon as possible.

The simple fix would be to make a new Glyph.

Glyph of Potent Wrath:

Increases the cast time of your Wrath spell by 0.X seconds, but also increases the damage of your Wrath spell by Y.