Spell Haste, Arenas, And Multiboxing

[Silly Gooooose]

So I would like to know your opinion on haste, especialy as it pertains to 5v5s / BGs, as ele 4 shamans.

A quick bit of info about myself before I start. I mainly PvP, BGs and 5v5s with a friend and my 4 Ele (40/0/21) shaman.

I am trying to decide whether to start getting gear with haste, or whether I should just stick with the traditional route and go with Crit. My Question is, should I try and stack some haste for arenas? Haste pvp ring, Haste PvP Cloak (badges) Haste Gems and the haste S4 Wepon (lol if I ever get the rating). Also in my perfect gear set I would have 4 pieces of arena gear for the 4 set, and 1 piece pve dps gear, which I think would end up being the Badge shoulders with haste, if I went the haste route.

30 Haste from the PvP Ring
40 Haste from the PvP Trinket
8 Haste gems x 8 sockets (64 haste)
16 Haste on the PvP Cloak
33 Haste on the Badge Shoulders
227 Haste on the S4 Wepon (lol doubt I will get it)

So 183 haste without the wepon, 410 with.
Or 11.43 Haste without, 25.62 With.

Basically, do you think haste would be good for arenas? My theory is that while I will not be critting as much, I will be shooting 4 lightning bolts out very fast (I always have blood lust up also). So while I won't crit as much, I will be shooting 4 bolts out faster. Plus, as a caster, and especially as a multi-boxer, Line Of Sight is a huge pain, so the faster I cast, the more dmg I can do.

Also, how is haste calculated, will 10% haste take .2 seconds off the 2 second lightning bolt, or since it's 2.5 seconds without talents it would take off a different amount?

[Desible]

I haven't M-boxed in arenas so I can't tell you what to stack but WoWWiki (http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_haste) has the formulas you want to look at to obtain a good amount haste for what you want. And in regards to your question. It takes it from the base untalented casting time (2.5 seconds), making it a smaller amount.

[Silly Gooooose]

well, if it took it from 2.5, wouldnt that make it .25 seconds off? I don't get how it's less.

I will have to read the wiki.

[Desible]

The less haste you have, the more a single point of haste is worth. For a 2.5 cast speed (sorry, I play a warlock) 1 point of spell haste = 0.00159 seconds removed from the cast time. 200 points of spell haste makes each point worth 0.00141 seconds per point. This might seem like it has diminishing returns, however, this is not the case. If we divide DPS increase by haste points, the single point is a 0.063694267% increase in DPS per haste point, and the 200 points are also 0.063694268% per point. Practically speaking it will give you a constant increase in DPS per point, something to keep in mind when selecting your gear!

So yes and no. :P

[Reprisal]

And lastly, While I realize there is a lot of hate for multi-boxers, It would be much appreciated if we can keep the maturity level up in this post.Just curious, did you put this exact post on the wow forums as well? I haven't seen much anti boxer propaganda on the forums made specifically for boxers... That just seemed like an odd comment to make here.

[Moxy]

Yep, we are pretty multiboxer friendly since we are... well... boxers as well. :P But then, maybe i'm lowering the maturity level of this post..

[Silly Gooooose]

And lastly, While I realize there is a lot of hate for multi-boxers, It would be much appreciated if we can keep the maturity level up in this post.Just curious, did you put this exact post on the wow forums as well? I haven't seen much anti boxer propaganda on the forums made specifically for boxers... That just seemed like an odd comment to make here.

rofl yes, sorry. I coppied the post I made from there to here, and elitist jerks.

[cepheus]

I'm not exactly sure how good haste is for pvp yet, but a little thought about sacreficing too much damage for haste:

your NS/EM/CL combo will gain nothing from haste(or crit for that matter) This is usually one of your most important spellcombos for arenas. You will need to drop an enemy fast to stand a chance. If you have a lot of haste, you usually will have much lower damage, and this will result in a weaker combo. I also think that with bloodlust up, you will gain less benefit from haste than you would from damage/crit. Personally I think I will focus mostly on spelldmg/crit instead of haste.

[Silly Gooooose]

I don't know about the lower damage. I think the only place I would be sacrificing damage would be the gems. Every where else, I would just be losing crit.

[Boylston]

your NS/EM/CL combo will gain nothing from haste(or crit for that matter) This is usually one of your most important spellcombos for arenas.

This is why I will not really be pursuing haste that much. Spell damage is still king as far as I'm concerned. Plus, shocks/totems also don't benefit from Haste at all...

[Sanctume]

This is why I will not really be pursuing haste that much. Spell damage is still king as far as I'm concerned. Plus, shocks/totems also don't benefit from Haste at all...

Spell haste lowers global cooldowns to a cap of 1.0 from 1.5 seconds.

[Boylston]

This is why I will not really be pursuing haste that much. Spell damage is still king as far as I'm concerned. Plus, shocks/totems also don't benefit from Haste at all...

Spell haste lowers global cooldowns to a cap of 1.0 from 1.5 seconds.Totems already have a 1sec GCD. Shocks may have the GCD changed by Haste, but their damage doesn't change. I'm going to shock someone as a finishing move in Arena-- I'd rather have +Dmg working for me there rather than a very small decrease in GCD after I've shocked them. Can't chain shock anyhow do to the shock cooldown timer...

Haste is a PvE improvement for long, extended fights in my opinion. There's plenty of instances where losing 200 spell damage (times 4-5) means that I need another volley to kill an elite anyhow. That totally negates the haste advantage, in my opinion.

[Silly Gooooose]

I still don' think id lose more than 25 dmg if I didn't have the weapon.

[Boylston]

If you have haste in your gear, it means you're not getting +Dmg...

[Bluepants]

If you have haste in your gear, it means you're not getting +Dmg...
From what i can tell, alot of the haste gear gives +haste instead of +spellcrit.
So the real issue will be crit or haste.. Only the weapon is really off-balanced, where you loose a ton of spelldamage.
When it comes to crit/haste i tend to choose haste, as pure reliable damage is better than random massive hits..
However.. with the +100% critdamage talent and the +3% critdamage gem, a crit = 209% damage and not 150%.
So its more of a preferance rather than a "whats best".

(feel free to shoot me down on this 1, as i am keen to see pure numbers on this)

[Zaelar]

Spell haste also indirectly increases mana used.

[Boylston]

When it comes to crit/haste i tend to choose haste, as pure reliable damage is better than random massive hits..Imagine a scenario where you are fighting a character in the arena with 12,000 HP in the arena.

Your team of (let's be crazy here) 4 Elemental Shamans is capable of doing one of the two amounts of damage:

a.) 4000 damage per second, with a minimum of 3000 damage per second if nothing crits or a maximum of 5000 damage per second if a couple of spells in a volley crit. They have a spell-cast that is on a 2second timer, so this really means the average volley impacts the target for 6000-10000 points depending on the number of crits.

b.) 4000 damage per second, guaranteed, consistent. They're totally pimped out with haste gear so that the 2 second cast time is reduced to a very quick 1 second. Each volley is hitting for 4000 damage every second.

If no one ever heals the target, it will die in either b.) exactly 3 seconds or a.) somewhere around 4 seconds (2x2sec volleys). If no one ever healed the target, haste would reign supreme.

But targets get healed, and if you're fighting a 2-healer team, they might be able to sustain about 4000 healing per second. In this case, the haste team with a damage profile in b.) can never win. The first team, however, can actually pull it off. They can get a lucky string of crits and work away at the reservoir of 12,000 health that the target has.

Team a.) can take advantage of their 4xEM+NS+CL combo to finish off a player if one of those 10,000 point volleys hits. Team b.) will never make a dent large enough to have their 4xEM+NS+CL combo kill anyone. (Their combo may be "gimped" too because if they traded spell damage for haste).

You used the word "reliable" when I think you meant "consistent". I actually agree with reliable in the sense of finishing someone off (4xEM+NS+CL is VERY reliable because of the guaranteed crit aspect of the combo).

For arenas in WoW right now, a very powerful combination is being able to do DPS with a reasonably unpredictable and large variation paired with something that does sizable, reliable, burst damage to finish someone off. Spell haste steals itemization budget from attributes (crit/+dmg) that contribute to that combination.