StratFu
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As I mentioned in On Resource Systems, haste affects casters different from melee, in that it increases the regen rate of our resource (cast time) but only increases the rate of their autoattacks. This too is getting fixed in 4.0, haste will now affect melee autoattacks (and, oddly, the mana regen of enhancement shaman and retadins -- I don't even want to touch that one as far as speculation goes, I'm uncertain that design will last past the end of 4.0 alpha.)
The 4.0 design is to make haste more valuable for everyone and, in Ghostcrawlers words, to make it serve its original purpose: Haste lets you push buttons faster.
However, unless some changes are made, multiple classes will be left out of this brave new world: Shadow priests, Retribution Paladins, and Enhancement Shaman.
Note: this assumes there's an actual haste stat. We don't have the full and accurate list yet of what stats will still be around, but I love to speculate and think so I'm posting anyways. Nyah nyah.
For the full post, click on the link to continue:
Haste and Resources
I've got nothing but good things to say about the new haste from a melee standpoint: it always should have increased the regen rate (since energy = cast time!) and this will finally bring the stat "into its own."
Ghostcrawler didn't specify whether haste would affect the melee gcd. And currently rogues already have a very short (1.0 seconds) gcd, which is currently the gcd-cap for casters. Dropping it below 1.0 would start to cause more severe latency issues and make WoW twitchier than I think they want.
Simply having it affect regen rates may be sufficient as long as they rework the melee classes that are currently gcd-locked. (warriors in a high-rage environment, ret/enh depending on procs. DK's are when you take into account runic power -- but that's an odd setup to begin with.)
Haste and Cooldowns
Unfortunately Ghostcrawler very adeptly (although perhaps not intentionally) dodged a very pointed (but lengthy, like my posts) question about how their haste design didn't seem to include two other key methods of dealing damage:
- DoTs
- Cooldowns
Shadow priests are, obviously, the hardest hit by this, since over half their damage comes from dots or cooldowns.
But enhance and retadins also lean heavily on cooldowns and will continue to do so in the future: dots and cooldowns are the only way (other than cast times) to pace the damage of a mana-using class, since mana isn't a pacing mechanism it's fuel.
Even destruction warlocks and mages won't escape this devaluing of haste, since both have cooldowns/dots as part of their damage (larger parts depending on the spec.)
Remember dots are essentially a spell with a cooldown: you won't cast either more often than once every X seconds. The advantage of a DoT is that it can be applied to multiple targets, or reapplied if dispelled/target dies. The advantage of a cooldown is that it deals all its damage up front, making it more useful on a target that is about to die.
Originally haste was more valuable for melee than casters. In 3.x it's more valuable for casters than for melee. While this plan supposedly makes it equally valuable, they will need to solve the dot and cooldown problem to actually make it a globally useful stat.
Honestly speaking an Affliction Warlock suffers exactly the same from haste not affecting dots. What may change is the magnitude of suffering, but the problem still remains. Compaired to shadow priests we do not suffer from the "haste blocks" issue, not having a high DPS spell on cd. But the problem, apart from that, it's exactly the same.
Scaling factor is the number one issue: Affliction is rapidly following the TBC pattern, that is being benched in favor of Destruction after the first tier of raiding. Simulationcraft is highly misleading about this, showing the spec apparently not "so much" behind Destruction (assuming BIS Ulduar gear, still haven't see the updated version where Destruction will completely break through the roof). The reality is very different.
And apart from a factual problem, this is also bad design. A huge part of an Affliction Warlock DPS output does not benefit whatsoever from a stat so much prevalent in our gear and from a number of buffs present ina raid setting. This was much less evident when the tree offered 2 other dots (Siphon Life, Immolate) and the contribution from Drain Soul to total DPS was much higher than what it is now.
Haste does indeed benefit Affliction allowing it to cast more Shadow Bolts:if a stat only benefitting a spell that it's not even in the tree you chose to spec into isn't bad design....
Looking at it from a resto druid perspective:
I'm not sure I'd want the GCD for HoTs reduced below 1 second. The cap keeps healing life at least somewhat sane. If I could machine-gun Rejuvs and Wild Growths and Lifeblooms, that'd be great for a short period of time as an "oh shit" manuever, but I wouldn't want such speed to become the standard.
Maybe there could be a 5-minute or even 20-minute cooldown that will remove the GCD for a short burst period to allow that... but I don't see how that could be easily tied into the haste stat for the purpose of making haste globally loved.
I'm having a little trouble understanding your first paragraph and reconciling it with what I've read, and I wonder if there's a typo in there.
DoT classes do surprisingly well with the current implementation of haste, because the filler spell gets a double-dip benefit: it's faster, and you have more of your time to cast it since you spend less time refreshing DoTs. Of course, the filler spell necessarily has a lower damage-per-cast-time than the DoTs, so you don't quite reach the benefit of a BC-era destro warlock, but it can be closer than one would guess.
I'm not sure what I think about a design where everyone just gets uniformly faster with haste--that is, whatever you do, you can do 10% more of it with 10% haste. A game which is too ideal and linear becomes boring, just as a game which is too full of mathy edge cases becomes inaccessible.
Article author
You may play a warlock, which might be the difference: spriests having mindblast on a cooldown plus dots is what hurts them far moreso than locks when it comes to haste.
I hope they do more with it than that because if left unchanged its only use would be to keep up SW:P. I'd probably just cut it off after one tick and then go back to the proposed nuke, and that’s just a really lame use for a spell that right now is a huge part of SPriest dps.
I think there has to be some bigger change coming for SPriests because Mind Flay already fills the niche they are supposedly introducing a new spell for. The real problem is SPriest scaling, especially with haste, so if they fix that why bother introducing a new spammable nuke unless there was some other change (that we haven’t heard about yet) it was needed for?
Mind Flay will probably be in a similar place as Drain Life is now--an ability you use more for the secondary effect than the damage, and I imagine that's the design intent.
Article author
Funny thing is, Mind Flay is the one SPriest spell that scales properly with haste.
Ok, dumb question, I've never played a shadowpriest but...what if they took mindblast off the cd? Make it into an ordinary nuke? Is there any good reason for it to be on a cd?
Article author
The reason abilities are on cooldowns is to allow them to make them hit for more than they would otherwise. It's the easiest way to force rotational complexity.
"This is so good you want to use it every time it's available. But without a cooldown, you'd do nothing but hit it!"
Same deal with a DoT and why it's essentially a cooldown: you'd cast it more often because it's amazing damage for its cast time, except you'd just overwrite it so there's no point.
More complex ways include combo-point-like systems (which includes arcane blast's debuff), or things like immolate where having it on the mob makes another spell do more damage.
According to Blizzard shadowpriests should be getting a nuke with no cooldown in 4.0, which would probably have a similar effect to taking Mind Blast off cooldown. I have played a shadowpriest for quite a while, and I'm a bit curious about how they plan on changing some other spells to accommodate this nuke, like Mind Flay.
Mind Flay is used right now when all dots are up and Mind Blast is on cooldown, and its clipped when a hgher priority spell needs to be used, but if we get a nuke I don't see the point in using Mind Flay unless they change it. I hope they do, because if not we're basically an affliction warlock with less dps.
What I'd like to see (to fix haste) is to simply adjust the tick rate of DoTs. This would boost spriest dps by TON, and it would be consistent with the way haste affects other casters' rotations. Your spells hit just as hard, but they hit faster and you need to cast them more often. Tada!