Haste....I give up

[Aurorawind]

Okay, since haste is being shoved down our throat at gunpoint, I can't find enough gear without that damn stuff. So to make the best out of the situation I'm kicking around the idea of taking points from Serpents Swiftness and moving them elsewhere now the upcoming nerfs are reducing its effectiveness.

Currently I'm at 4% haste, so if I remove the 1 point then it's a net loss of 2% pet attack speed with the upcoming nerf. So a transfer to say, kindred spirits for +4% damage, would balance that out approximately.

Thoughts?

[Xyriin]

I've thought about this before but am running into a few issues...

First, with pets losing half the haste bonus of Serpent's Swiftness there is the question of the pet maintaining all the needed fast attacks to keep the procs rolling for optimization of BM. So with the nerf to the talent, its almost like pets need this limited haste even more. Spending extra points in Frenzy kind of sucks and to be quite honest the tree breakdown isn't kind enough to offer filler points for that area of the tree.

Also, haste for BM effectively only boosts Auto Shot damage after the soft cap. In most of my parses I'm already doing more damage via Auto Shot than Steady Shot. With the incoming nerf Auto Shot will only become the larger portion of my ranged damage by a greater margin. So in a way haste almost becomes more valuable since AP is the most devalued stat with the changes to Steady Shot scaling. (AP loses 50% of its value for Steady Shot)

Kindred gets nerfed to 3% pet damage per point. Prior to the pet talent nerfs my pet could hit 45% of my damage which would have yielded an effective 1.35% overall dmg gain. Unfortunately after the nerfs my pet's damage will be closer to the 30% range when accounting for two 5% dmg multiplier nerfs, Serpent Swiftness nerf, and rake nerf. Which will result in a 0.9% overall dmg gain.

They really should have nerfed the Steady Shot glyph before changing Steady Shot but it looks like its too late for that. I'm sure that after Ulduar we'll get a buff and a promise to be 'fixed' in the next expansion just like BC. ;)

[Assault]

Also, haste for BM effectively only boosts Auto Shot damage after the soft cap.

Can you explain what this means? Just idle curiosity on my part.

[Xyriin]

Haste will always affect Auto Shot, at least down to the hidden internal cooldown/cast time of 0.5 seconds. Haste will also affect Steady Shot cast time. The catch is that unlike other casters haste does not also lower our GCD, therefore while we can lower Steady Shot below 1.5 seconds (base of 2.0 seconds) anything more than that offers no return on Steady Shot since it is still limited by the GCD. This results in an effective soft cap since any haste beyond a 1.5 second cast time of Steady Shot will only see an increase in Auto Shot damage.

So in summary we're 'soft capped' with 25% haste, and the hard cap varies depending on base weapon speed. (About 82% haste with an weapon speed of 2.8)

Hunter haste effects...
Improved Aspect of the Hawk talent in BM tree (15% haste proc)
Serpent's Swiftness talent in BM tree (20% haste)
Rapid Fire (40% haste use ability)