Friday, April 11, 2008

Rapid Fire/GCD/Haste itemization problem for hunters.

Why doesn't this (rapid fire) reduce global cooldown on shots as well?

With trinkets/rapid fire/serpent's swiftness/imp hawk procs/haste itemization... My autoshot speeds can go all the way down to 1.0 speed or lower, obviously much lower than the GCD, yet my GCD remains unaffected.

It's very odd that "buffing" myself with rapid fire can actually lower my DPS output by causing horrible shot clipping. I go from being able to do a continuous 1:1 steady/auto shot rotation as long as my weapon speed remains around 1.8s or so (factor in .3s or so off the 1.5s GCD due to latency issues), to increasing mana usage and decreasing dps by clipping shots because my weapon speed is dropped below what I call the gcd/latency boundary.

I don't think I've brought this up yet, but it has been bugging me for a while. Blood lust reduces GCD: Why doesn't rapid fire? It's just as dispelable as blood lust is.

I could almost make the same argument for imp hawk in the beast tree, as well as the current trend towards haste itemization for hunters in general.

Stacking too much haste is actually a bad thing. Classes shouldn't be penalized for getting gear "upgrades". As far as I'm aware, the hunter class is only class really suffering from this, as a tremendous amount of their dps relies on steady/auto rotations.

Obviously this is a problem. Noone wants to look at a piece loot like this and really have to worry if it's going to hurt their dps more than help it because of the high amount of haste on it.

15 comments:

Draele said...

Which ties into the same "problem" (perhaps by design) of mana users consuming more mana as Haste increases. Sure, Haste ups your throughput but what if you can't sustain that level of mana usage? You'll essentially just do damage faster and go OOM faster, not so much a problem for Warlocks but for other passively managed mana classes there may come a point where too much Haste isn't really an upgrade. Stats like crit and dmg both increase your DPM AND DPS, where haste just increases DPS under the potentiality that you may go OOM...

Sam said...

That's not even the same problem.

My point is, "haste" isn't actually speeding up the damage you deal, nor the mana you spend. It forces shot clipping, since your autoshots are going off faster than the GCD for your steady shots and other shots.

That's my whole point, haste on a hunter is NOT upping your throughput.

How can you say that haste isn't an upgrade because it causes you to go oom faster? That's ridiculous. How exactly does haste not increase a casters dps? I'm not following your logic. :/

Draele said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Draele said...

Imagine a rather long fight. 20% haste increases DPS by 20%, but also increases mana consumption by the same amount. If you go OOM before the fight ends then Haste has effectively done nothing for you. Crit and/or +dmg not only increases the DPS within the the haste timeframe, but also increases your damage-per-mana...so you're using less mana for more damage. Haste makes you spend more mana for the same overall damage assuming mana is an issue. It doesn't add efficiency. But I suppose that's *why* it's relatively cheap on the item budget. In the case of Hunters though you're entirely right.

Sam said...

I don't know what to say. I'm completely dumbfounded by your logic.

Draele said...

I don't know how I can put it any more bluntly. Haste makes you use mana faster. If going OOM is a possiblity it doesn't matter how quickly you can do said damage if you run out of mana before the fight is over. IE you're only going to be able to cast a Fireball 100 times before going OOM. Adding haste doesn't make a damn bit of difference if this is the case and it further trivializes any mana regen you might have by lowering your damage per mana efficiency.

Crit and haste, however, increase actual damage done by each spell. You're not using mana any quicker, so on a longer timeframe they are better than Haste *if* going OOM is a problem because they mesh better with mana regen mechanics.

Sam said...

If your mana pool can only sustain casting 100 fireballs before going oom, is spell haste the problem, or your mana pool?

Casting 50% faster means you lose mana 50% faster but the mob also dies 50% faster. It all evens out. Why is that so difficult to understand? If you can empty your full mana bar in 30 seconds vs 30 minutes, and agro wasn't a problem, so what? Then instead of 30 minute fights, you'd have 30 second fights. I fail to see how that is a problem, especially on fights such as brutallus when your entire objective is to blow everything you can as quickly as fucking possible.

My point remains: Haste is an amazing DPS increase for all classes _except_ hunters.

Jeez.

Anonymous said...

And again comes the immense mechanic knowledge requiered to actually know, how much haste would be an upgrade and how much is too much...

Especially if you try to count in all those procs like IAotH.

Why didn't Blizz told everybody in the class descriptions, that a study in higher mathemathics would would help playing a hunter?


And Draele, haste is a great option for a mage. Sure, in a extremly long and mana intense fight, you'd be better off with crit, spelldmg and whatnot. But on burstbosses, trash and even longer fights, if you're willing to chain pot. If you do that already, then maybe your manapool is not big enough for your amount of haste.

With the hunter it's a completely other story. We are forced to minimize "dead" time (as a BM it's the time between the next autoshot and the end of your stead shot cast). Depending on weapon speed, haste buffs and procs only a certain amount of haste benefits us, while having too much of it actually hurts our dps. Not the time, we'd be able to dps, but the actual dps itself.

Your argumentation is something in the line of: Haste isn't beneficial to hunters, because we'd run out of arrows faster. And if we haven't any arrows in the end, we'd not be able to continue dpsing. While a crit or +RAP would have given us more damage per arrow.
The answer to this would be: Get a bigger quiver, look for other options to regain arrows, like the crafted arrowmakers or the arrow selling repbot. Port to Shatt buying some more and have yourself resummoned by a warlock...

Draele said...

Anonymous- Yeah. Pretty much on the spot with your arrow analogy. It wasn't even supposed to be an argument really, it was meant as more of an offhand "it's similar so I'll mention it" that devolved into something of an argument =P

Either way I probably shouldn't have posted that comment to begin with as it wasn't really germane to the discussion...I have a bad habit of veering off topic :/

Anonymous said...

./clap

Bingo you have found one of major indicators how bad our mechanics is.

And something we were crying about since first level 62+ hunter proced IaotH + pushed Rapid... not to mention SS talent, Bloodlust, Berserking, Haste pots and Haste gear... :)

I'll just point you on this EJ thread for detailed info and discussion:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-hunter_shot_rotation_illustrated/

Witch lead to this "Summary of the problem" post by Lactose&Cheeky.
(Cheeky posted same post on US Hunter Forum - This one is Lactoses on EU):
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2062236264&sid=1

Haste can be very easily "wasted" stat for hunters. Combined with FPS and Lag issues this can bring hunter into serious problems. (like shooting steady 5 times with no auto shot... resulting in 50% dps... or suffer large amounts of dead time, or... clipping.)

That if auto shot bug (doesn't want to fire) doesn't stop you first. :)

Interesting: Hunters have found that frequency of macro spam is very important factor... G15 with 0.2s macro spam for instance is 20% better than 0.05s macro spam. ;)

Wonders of hunter DPS indeed.

Anonymous said...

Haste also hurts alliance retribution paladin DPS. Not due to the same precise issue, but because Seal of Command and Seal of Vengeance are PPM based and faster weapon speeds make procs less likely on crusader strike.

Due to Seal of Blood, BE retadins scale extremely well with haste, which means there's a legitimate imbalance between the two factions.

That said, while ret dps isn't completely lolable anymore, it's still not up to the point where it's the reason you bring a ret pally.

re: what Draele said, leiah's "with 50% haste the mob will die 50% faster" only applies itself correctly while soloing or if the entire raid has the same haste rating.

Anonymous said...

"with 50% haste the mob will die 50% faster"

In (MY) Survival hunter case with 50% haste mob will die at same time, costing me less mana.

IF I respec to BM (SS talent), with 50% extra haste mob will die in same time... for same mana.

Anonymous said...

draele was talking about casters when he mentioned the manacost effects of haste, not hunters.

Anonymous said...

Even if haste did lower the GCD, there would still be the .5 second autoshot delay issue, as I don't believe haste lowers that. I don't think this would have a very serious affect until you got to very high haste ratings though.

However, you are spot on about the GCD, and having haste effects lower the hunter GCD would be a big step in the right direction.

Autoshot/steadyshot weaving as it is just feels really weird and not intuitive at all. Having a variety of different weapon speeds, but steady always being the same cast time (and not being a factor of weapon speed) also feels weird.

- Kardonnis

Anonymous said...

First off I'm a Hunter and completely agree with the comment Leiah is stating about haste being a hunter's worst stat in many cases causing our overall damage to go down due to clipping. And yes it sucks to have an amazing piece drop that is an upgrade in all other stats but it has haste, it's simply depressing.

NOW, for Drael's comment. I have to be honest I'm not sure why it is so complicated for you to understand or you simply want to stay on point that haste hurts hunters period. I have a Druid and see where Draele is coming from perfectly. Drael's point (IMO) is not that haste is bad for casters but that Crit and other stats are much more useful. AS AN EXAMPLE AND NOT ACTUAL NUMBERS. If one caster has 20% haste then he will go out of mana and lets say do 20k damage. The other caster has 10% haste + 10% crit, then this caster is lasting longer in the fight and critting many many more times than the first caster out damaging him with the same mana pool.

Final point, haste is bad for hunters in almost all ways including BURST DAMAGE where haste is good for Every other class, simply not for longer fights where you have enough time to use your entire mana pool.