Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGhostcrawler: Haste-y DoTs and HoTs for Priests
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 7th 2009 at 4:40PM
There is a tradeoff here -- if your ticks come faster, then the HoT or DoT component will end earlier, which means you'll be casting the spell more often. GC isn't sure (and neither are we) about how that will balance out yet -- on the one hand, it means that within a certain period of time, you will be able to do more damage or healing... but then again, you'll be spending more mana to do it. So instead of throwing this into talents, they're starting it up with glyphs. In the next patch, priests would get three glyphs that make their instant cast spells have their DoT components affected by Haste (Mind Flay's glyph is likely being moved into the base spell, and they'll use that one as an extra glyph choice). GC says if it works there, it may be spread out into talents or even base spells.
Will it work? It's an interesting idea, but mana cost seems to be the toughest problem to deal with -- any time you're casting spells more often, you'll be going through more mana. But it does seem like a good way to make Haste a little more worthwhile, and especially with the stats refinement coming up in Cataclysm, Blizzard will have to even out all of the stats they can. What do you think?
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Valent1ne Oct 7th 2009 6:06PM
No one's mentioned this yet, so I'll bring it up. As a Survival Hunter, if this ever makes it past casters and into physical damage dealers, I would expect to see DPS go through the roof. Explosive Shot, especially, would benefit greatly from a change like this.
I look forward to seeing how this change plays out.
Candina@WH Oct 7th 2009 6:29PM
I play a survi hunter. I don't expect this to move to exploding shot, etc as Hunters are already one of the top 3 damage dealers in the game.
where as Spriest and Afflic Locks are not (are Afflic locks even in the top 10 DPS specs right now? hmmm...).
And Druid healing through put needs to deal with bursty damage better, which shorter HOT tick times would help with
Azizrael Oct 7th 2009 6:08PM
Yay for a useful Glyph of Corruption and actually making me think about which Affliction glyph I can get rid of. Yay for haste being tested on the one I don't need to reapply myself.
I give it a week until someone manages to hit the new lock haste cap - where Corruption is increased to the point where it expires faster than you can re-Haunt your target.
Ugh Oct 7th 2009 6:10PM
Thank god Blizz is finally giving locks the buff they so badly need
Candina@WH Oct 7th 2009 6:24PM
From a game design standpoint, I support this.
As it stands now, Haste for SPriests is (not quite) useless. Also for Afflic Locks and Druids (don't play those classes, but it stands to reason).
Now, itemization that contains haste will be useful for more class/spec combinations than current. (haste on cloth now is useful to spriests and afflic locks (instead of just destro locks, mages and holy priests) and haste on leather is now useful to boomkin and healkin druids.)
They should just drop haste entirely, instead making it a base line caster function of spirit. Then spirit would be useful to all casters and they only have to itemize for one stat.
--When everyone is special, then no one is.
Valent1ne Oct 7th 2009 6:43PM
I'd agree with this, except that this would be a more short-term change, which I doubt Blizzard prefers. They stated at Blizzcon that spirit will only be on healer gear, and will only affect Mp5, barring any talents that change this. Of course, things change, so we'll have to see.
Sharee Oct 7th 2009 6:50PM
Blizz, Shadow Priests thank you for opening your eyes =D
dlar3 Oct 7th 2009 6:57PM
The "it will cost more mana" argument is a poor argument. It currently costs x mana for x damage (or healing). That value will not change. Technically the cost will not change, you will just use it faster. Speaking from a leveling point of view, if you chain pull, you'll still take down the same amount of mobs before going OOM. You'll just go OOM sooner. I don't see a downside to this as long as the individual player can choose if and how much haste they want to stack, as they currently do.
Abbadon Oct 7th 2009 7:31PM
It's hard to imagine that they didn't have this already planned... The spriest t9 gear is swimming in haste although it's already been debated that this is a subpar stat compared to crit currently.
I agree with the previous posts that this should increase the # of ticks per buff and not the buff duration itself. Otherwise, rotations will really get out of whack when comparing a toon with a lot of haste to one without.
Overall, I can't wait!! I play both a spriest and an afflock; so it's win win for me! And to those that dis affliction, it's not that far behind destro on raid fights like in VoA and whatnot. I hold my own rather well when up against an equally geared destro lock. However, the setup for trash pulls and the 400k bosses in heroics or just too short of fights to allow our numbers to really shine. I'll concede that destro blows us out of the water for those quickie fights with their burst damage.
Now I just hope this makes it into 3.3 and not the xpac...
Olicon Oct 7th 2009 7:32PM
I don't see why mana expenditure will be increased. You're in control of your damage--it's the old Arcane Mage philosophy. If you only need x amount of damage in time y, it doesn't matter if your DoT ends before the time expires. All casters spends more mana for higher throughput with Haste. If it works for them, why not for DoT/HoT classes?
Wulfrixx Oct 7th 2009 7:41PM
How about combining both GC's idea and jennnolan's, and simply increase the rate at which the DoTs tick, however simultaneously extend the duration of the DoT/HoT so that there are no dead zones, only an increase in # of ticks.
So, say, you have a 15-second HoT that heals every 5 seconds, having no haste would make it tick 3 times in 15 seconds, having a little haste would make it tick 4 times in 19 seconds, and having a lot of haste would make it tick 4 times in 15 seconds. This way, there aren't any dead zones and all of the haste helps, however the ticks don't get so fast that they run out before, say, frozen blows is over. Yes, the guys at EJ might find that having 503 haste is better than 512, but generally more haste would be better, there would be no dead zones, the duration difference would be minor, and it would be (relatively) simple to understand.
Lissanna Oct 7th 2009 7:47PM
They can't just add on an extra full tick at the end to keep it the same length. It would effect how much each tick healed for it if had to heal one more tick...
Evanessa Oct 7th 2009 9:23PM
A possible solution is to maintain the length of the Hot/Dot and also retain its SP value but have an adjusted amount tick more frequently based upon the casters Haste, EG:
0 haste = Rejuv, 1600 over 15sec @ 320 per 3.0sec
100 haste = Rejuv, 1600 over 15sec @ 266.7 per 2.5sec
200 haste = Rejuv, 1600 over 15sec @ 213.4 per 2.0sec
And so on, although forgive the math's, tis not my strong point.
Just a thought.
Clbull Oct 7th 2009 7:58PM
Breaking News! Warlocks become more OP in Arena than they've ever been.
No really, if Haste is going to reduce the time between DoTs as well as cast times and GCDs for spellcasters, this is effectively a large damage increase to a Warlock with a decent amount of Haste who can just spam DoTs, Death Coil, and Chaos Bolt, effectively twoshotting us with no chance of survival.
Also, I am still waiting for Haste to give a better benefit towards Hunters. All it is for us is a way to reduce Steady Shot to a 1.5 second cast, and a tiny auto shot damage buff. Sure, we're getting better regeneration in Cataclysm, but still no actual fix for us until then.......
jeanericuser Oct 7th 2009 8:56PM
This looks like something that is great for casters but why the hell are hunters even looking at this when it has little to do with them since they cast almost no dots other than serpent sting which isnt even affected by spell in the first place unlike other classes which use dots on a regular basis.
As far as I see with this, this will probably be in large part meant for affliction though I can also concievably see this as something for demonology since a lot of the old buffs that it previously offered will probably gone once the new soulstone system goes into effect. Either way this could be a serious help to locks which Im sure some other class users are already starting to dread since the last thing anyone wants is locks like the good old days.
Sanguinefrozenboy Oct 7th 2009 9:22PM
I'm being pessimistic about it.
The way I see it, we'll get this glyph and it'll be a tiny dps boost but we won't be where we need to be.
Then cataclysm will come out.
Everything will seem neat and dandy but when we're decked, we'll be back where we were before.
That's just how I feel though.
I hope I'm wrong.
Socialcockroach Oct 7th 2009 10:28PM
All I know, is that haste-able dots + Shadow priest Tier10 4 part set bonus is going to be pwnage. Mana hasn't been a problem for shadow priests for quite a long time... I can only see good coming from this.
Heremod Oct 8th 2009 1:53PM
Argument for: Haste will be a useful stat for classes that have dots.
Argument against: The tradeoff with haste is more damage for more mana and more button presses per minute. This is NO different from a single spell nuke rotation, except there are gear choices. Keeping a dot up when you need the debuff is not an issue.
The big problem I see is they're going to have to make dots refresh everything on a tick at this rate. As popping a hot right at the end of heroism, like shadow word: pain, when it will last for the next 10 min, would be abusively good.
mordenov Oct 8th 2009 4:55PM
as an avid affliction lock, adding a component of haste to corruption would be a huge dps increase without having a singe effect upon my mana as haunt refreshes corruption on use. With t9 4pc bonus adding a 10% bonus to corruption it represents about 27% of my damage and with my haste of about 20% this would a solid 5% increase in my total damage and that is just from one of my dots.
Long story short, i would love it.
Animalis Oct 11th 2009 3:25PM
So when a druid casts a full complement of hots on a tank he has two modes, bored and lets dots do all the work and O shit tanks dead. this would give us more time before tank is dead in a burst.