Haste & GCD

[Shadowwolf]

[blizzard author=Drysc link=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4311224006&postId=43106874795&sid=1#15]
Although not terribly relevant to your discussion I thought I'd jump in and let you know about some Spell Haste changes in the upcoming patch.

In 2.4, Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. It won't apply to melee and ranged abilities though however.
[/blizzard]

I'm looking for if this holds true for 3.0+ but I havent found any solid confirmation on it yet so I'd imagine this is still the case.

[Nixphire]

You could get a whole bunch of haste stuff and spam some moonfire or something and see how the combat log looks.

[Shadowwolf]

I meant the melee part. Was a discussion in gchat last night, was clarifying for people. The nothing below 1.0 from haste I know is true, the not applying to melee is what I wasnt sure on.

[capnpop]

From what i read it speeds up auto-attacks (white hits) but doesn't impact specials (the 1.5 still applies despite haste buffs other than a few situations).  I wasn't entirely sure if it was right but I can't find anything to contradict it.

[JohnnieRat]

^ That

Haste is by and large garbage for most melee classes currently. It sucks up too much item budget compared to what you benefit since it doesn't affect our GCD and white hits are a minuscule part of our DPS.
It'd still be so-so for ret pallies even if it did effect the GCD since we have a 7-10second CD on judgements (Talent and Gear dependant... 7s CD ftw) which is our primary DPS source.

[Belandand]

Stop the presses...haste might stink for 2hdrs but it's really nice for DWers. Speaking from a rogue's POV (duh), haste is good for two main reasons:

1. more haste -> faster auto atks -> more white dps for us (which, despite w/e spec you are, still will do the most dmg for you)
2. energy regen- for every spec or variation of spec outside of subtlety, more haste means more OH potency procs or FA procs. More energy means less downtime in between specials/finishers which means an overall increase in our dps.

In raids, with all available haste buffs present (including potions of speed), my swing times drop to approx. .45/.45. I notice that I benefit ALOT from FA and the dps boost is a nice help in between those mutilates.

Simply put, if you're just starting wrath raids...you can't avoid stacking haste. Whether you do so directly or indirectly, I've seen a lot of haste on dungeon, heroic and 10 man gear. If you're into 25 mans, you'll see a transition from gear with haste to gear with hit. At this point, you can mix haste and hit very well.

[Shadowwolf]

Rogues and Druid cat form attacks are the only 2 classes though that have a 1.0 GCD on melee. Other classes have various abilities tied to a 1.0 also but theres a specific list and I think its still incomplete as far as what classes and what abilities are. The only thing haste will do for melee at this point is decrease the weapon speed times and I believe there is a cap to how much that is, 33% i think though Im not positive on that number. In order to hit 33% haste, you need something like 1800 haste rating which is just ridiculous and would eat in to other stats.

Here is a calculator for haste and how it will affect your weapon speed:

http://www.sourced.me.uk/forum/gw_ratings.php

I believe that Haste, at least for melee and even for the most part casters is still an unknown and poorly thought out stat. I think Blizz wanted to introduce it since they started to with T6 gear in BC and it made sense for them to continue to add it to items in WotLK however I think it still is not a completely organized stat for the game. I think it was another one of those rushed things where they thought it best to just throw it on items everywhere and then they can go back and tweak and fix it later. Gear itemizing is a lot better and is improving, but in order to gather enough haste for it to be of any large notice for most classes, other stats need to give way and then it becomes a waste at that point when you start losing hit and whatnot.