Ghostcrawler dropped a bit of a mind bend on the official forms today in regard to haste and its attractiveness or lack thereof on classes that deal in HOTs and DOTs.  Read for yourselves:

We are trying to make haste a slightly more attractive stat for classes that utilize a lot of damage or healing over time spells, specifically Shadow priests, warlocks (though especially Affliction) and Resto druids. We realize other classes use hots and dots too, but I think we can all agree that it’s a bigger problem for the ones I mentioned.Because of this, we are planning on introducing the concept through glyphs. Glyphs represent a great test bed for new ideas because they are easier to change (and easier on the players when we do change them) compared to core spell functions or even talents. If we like the way it feels and players like the way it feels and the glyphs prove popular or fun, then this may be the kind of thing that shifts from glyphs over time — not unlike the way some favorite set bonuses eventually become talents.

I’m going to share with you an idea that the class and item designers came up with for 3.3. This is a work in progress so it’s possible we’ll end up going a different way after we see how it plays. However I also wanted to explain our logic here in case it wasn’t obvious.

We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster — the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we’re not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case.

 

For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we’re not sure how we’re going to resolve those yet. For Shadow Word: Pain, we are likely to rename the current glyph to Glyph of Mind Flay, remove the old Glyph of Mind Flay, and increase Mind Flay by 10 yards in the base spell.

 Again, these are not promises (nor ponies). For a variety of reasons, you may see these changes on the PTR or you may not. If you do see any or all of the three glyphs implemented however, we wanted you to have some idea of what we were trying to do. Feedback is certainly appreciated, especially if you get to try them out.

Woah, right?  I didn’t see that coming!  Does applying haste to HOTs making them tic faster appeal?

I can see clear pros and cons with having my rejuv tick faster as my haste improves.  The pros would be that I could get out more HPS per rejuv target on high damage fights, or during fights where the damage cycle was somewhat cyclic, making high healing attractive for a limited amount of time.  In this second case, the change might actually cut down on overhealing, which is often through the roof for HOTs.   The cons, on the other hand, are that we would have to cast Rejuv more often in order to keep it up, and would be able to keep it running simultaneously on fewer targets.  And, obviously, you could not rely upon it providing a damage mitigation buffer for he length of time that you now can.  With the last tic of max level Rejuv disappearing in 3.3, the spell is already being reduced to a 12 second spell.  A reduction of duration on a 12 second spell may not leave it very far at all from the 9 second duration of a Lifebloom talented with Nature’s Splendor.  There is no indication yet as to how much haste would affect the tic duration for Rejuvenation, but I can see this spell quickly losing all resemblance to a set it and forget it kind of spell.  It would also, by the nature of the change, require more mana from the druid to provide the same sort of ongoing coverage for a raid as is possible now, as the spell would have to be cast more frequently.

In addition, I see pros and cons to the haste changes being glyphed.  It would certainly be nice to have this change be optional, to be able to take it off or put it on with a quick glyph swap in response to the mechanics of an upcoming fight.  However, “switching it on” by glyphing for it would deprive druids of a spot occupied by a current glyph, almost all of which add healing to other spells.  Further, it would make gearing more complicated if a druid’s intent were to use the glyph for certain fights and not for others.  In this case, the druid would need to consider whether or not they would want to build a gear set that maximized haste over crit, whether they would want to use that set regardless of which glyphs were in place, and, if not, how to balance out (and manage) gear changes and priorities in loot drops if they decided to have a haste glyph set and an alternate set.

I am curious to see if Blizzard does actually implement this idea on a PTR build.  If they do, I’ll be watching the egghead number crunching closely.  It’s hard to come down on one side or the other with no actual numbers to look at.  We don’t yet know how much faster rejuve would expire per point of haste.  I do like that Blizzard is doing some thinking about how to make haste more attractive for us.  I’m just not sure yet whether this change would do that.  More attractive?  Maybe.  More complicated?  Yes, oh yes.