I absolutely love a casting speed stat. It's been largely ignored since DAoC and I've since found stale cast times a drag across recent MMOs.

That being said, Alacrity doesn't offer enough of an advantage to make it worthwhile for what it costs(at least to DPS). Why it's on every piece of Sith Sorcerer Rakata gear is beyond me.

Let's say I have 12% Alacrity. That's high, but not unreasonable with end game Rakata gear. My 3.0 second channel becomes 2.64 seconds. So I gain .36 seconds per channel. That means I would have to channel 8.33 times at 2.64 seconds per channel just to gain one extra channel more than if my cast time was still 3.0 seconds over the same duration.

Of course I'm not going to just channel over and over. That would be terrible DPS during a fight, and I'm not even taking into account movement. So let's say I average 1 channel and then 1 instant spell in rotation. So now Alacrity doesn't help my GCD for instant spells, so now we're looking at ~34.5 seconds before I've accumulated enough "time" to have added an extra free spell into the mix.

That just isn't worth the investment. Not to mention that in my current (and popular) Sith Sorcerer DPS spec I am not going to "cast" anything but my channel because it's all instant or made instant. In all those cases Alacrity is 100% useless.

Please reconsider either the frequency that this stat appears, and/or the magnitude at which it effects casted spells (if not instant spells and the GCD).

I think I underestimated both the amount of traffic on the general page, and the average forum-goer's interest in threads not based on flames and failed expectations.

Please, my fellow classes plagued with Alacrity, support this thread to get some Dev attention.

Alacrity doesn't even work properly yet cause lol have to wait for animation.

Also, people simply don't know anything about the optimal DPS rotations/gearing/compositions due to not having enough information about what is actually going on.

So your thread, at the moment, isn't interesting at all. It might become interesting once the game starts working properly.

No, I agree. I play a Sawbones Scoundrel. I have one spell that Alacrity helps, my primary heal. In the absence of any instant or faster cast heal without some sort of prerequisite (like Upper Hand which is granted mainly by the primary heal spell), I can see that it might be nice to knock 0.5 seconds off it's cast time, but that's the ENTIRE function of the alacrity stat on my 'Field Medic' Artifact gear.

To be clear, Underworld Healing has a cast time of 2 seconds with first tier Sawbones skills. I could choose the first tier Dirty Fighting skill to give myself 4% alacrity off the bat, and with full purple gear I could have another 15% or so alacrity, reducing the cast time down to quite close to the minimum, which is the global cooldown of 1.5 seconds. Every other ability I have other than my DPS AOE which I would barely ever use as a healer, would not benefit.

Needless to say, I attempt to equip more crit, surge and power instead.

As a mercenary healer, I actually think alacrity could be nice in end game. I can see how it's not as appealing to a class that uses mostly instant casts, especially if it appears frequently on high end gear. That being said, perhaps there's another sorcerer spec that benefits from the lowered casting time? I definitely don't think the answer is in modifying the stat to be less useful to other builds, just to benefit one play style.

As a healer it's a little different because you don't have to keep casting. If you're goal is keeping a main tank up, and he's full, you can stop casting. Alacrity can shorten the time it takes you to cast your next heal, making the difference on whether or not it lands or the tank dies. So yes, it's better for healers. But I wouldn't say it better by a large amount.

It's not a playstyle question either. If one tree uses 90% instant spells on a class, and another tree uses 40% instant spells in the same class - why would you design a stat to only help one of those?

If alacrity did other things such as speeding up dots/hots, or lowering the GCD then it would benefit either of the examples above.

By the way it's on every piece of Rakata gear for Sorcerers. Sure I can take that enhancement out (and I will) but only after I've spent a ton of extra time gathering equivalent enhancements to replace them.

Interesting, but how much alacrity is reasonably obtained? Is an item with +12 alacrity equal to a 12% alacrity rating?

No it takes quite a bit of alacrity rating for 1% activation speed. I'm not at home or I could quickly tell you how much rating roughly equals 1% at 50. It's not linear though due to diminishing returns.

In always wondered how that worked. It would have been nice if there was a tutorial in the game that popped up as soon as I found a peice of gear that had a stat that introduces added effects.

Such as I pick up gloves with 6 alacrity and a pop up comes up saying what it's good for, why I should like it, and how cool it could be if I used it.

(AlacrityRating / max(Level,20) ) / 0.55 = Alacrity%

That calculation may be a bit out of date, I think it was worked out based on Beta information, but when I'm in game again I could easily calculate it. The above means that at level 50, 300 Alacrity Rating, which is easily obtainable from a full set of artifact gear, the formula becomes:

(300 / 50) / 0.55 = 10.9% Alacrity

As a healer it's a little different because you don't have to keep casting. If you're goal is keeping a main tank up, and he's full, you can stop casting. Alacrity can shorten the time it takes you to cast your next heal, making the difference on whether or not it lands or the tank dies. So yes, it's better for healers. But I wouldn't say it better by a large amount.

 

It's not a playstyle question either. If one tree uses 90% instant spells on a class, and another tree uses 40% instant spells in the same class - why would you design a stat to only help one of those?

 

If alacrity did other things such as speeding up dots/hots, or lowering the GCD then it would benefit either of the examples above.

 

By the way it's on every piece of Rakata gear for Sorcerers. Sure I can take that enhancement out (and I will) but only after I've spent a ton of extra time gathering equivalent enhancements to replace them.

Play style was probably the wrong phrase; I guess "role" may fit better with what I was trying to express.

Thinking of how to make alacrity more broadly useful, having it reduce the GCD may make sense in some ways, but I feel that is maybe too broad an effect with possibly unintended results. I keep coming back to the fact that the stat reduces cast time on an ability with a 1.5s cast, which certainly does seem useless in situations where abilities are being chained together immediately.

Speeding up DoT and HoT seems like a good idea to me too.

As to the Rakata gear for sorcerers, it seems the designers envisioned a certain role for the sorcerer, but neglected the other ways the class could be played. Good topic, subscribed.

(AlacrityRating / max(Level,20) ) / 0.55 = Alacrity%

 

That calculation may be a bit out of date, I think it was worked out based on Beta information, but when I'm in game again I could easily calculate it. The above means that at level 50, 300 Alacrity Rating, which is easily obtainable from a full set of artifact gear, the formula becomes:

 

(300 / 50) / 0.55 = 10. = 10.9% Alacrity

Formula seems spot on for me;

Level: 36

Alacrity: 11

Activation Speed: +0.56%

(AlacrityRating / max(Level,20) ) / 0.55 = Alacrity%

 

That calculation may be a bit out of date, I think it was worked out based on Beta information, but when I'm in game again I could easily calculate it. The above means that at level 50, 300 Alacrity Rating, which is easily obtainable from a full set of artifact gear, the formula becomes:

 

(300 / 50) / 0.55 = 10.9% Alacrity

That may be basically accurate for a ballpark example in this thread. So thank you for posting Just keep in mind there is a diminishing return so as your alacrity rating increases, the cast speed % you gain for each point lowers.

An excellent graph and explanation for all stats and their diminishing returns can be found here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=157437

Formula seems spot on for me;

 

Level: 36

Alacrity: 11

Activation Speed: +0.56%

Good. If accurate at 50 too, which I'd assume it is, then that means...

27.5 Alacrity Rating = 1% Alacrity (at level 50) approximately.

Edit: oh, diminishing returns - I had thought that did not kick in until a certain threshold?

That's a very flawed way of looking at the stat. 12% faster is 12% faster; the number of extra casts it gives you is not really relevant. What matters is how the stat performs relative to other secondary ones. In other words, is 12% alacrity better than an equivalent amount of power or surge or whatever. We can't really accurately know that answer until we have the right tools, but what you can assume is that some classes benefit largely from it, while others benefit very little from it, just like in other MMOs.

To use your example, 12% faster is 0% faster on almost everything I cast except my lowest priority spell. So I would say it's not performing well.

I don't think that alacrty was ever intended to be game changing but to allow for only a slight speed increase becuase over the time of a boss raid fight that little bit of alacrity can make a large difference especially when all the raid members have it. When your rushing against an enrage timer I'll take all those extra casts even if it is 2 or 3 and day try hit for 1200, if you had a few extra points in crit/power/surge that will add maybe 10 or 20 per hit. Not sure what the math would be but it makes senseto get those exta casts to me.

At work on iPod so cnant really figure it out lol

I don't think that alacrty was ever intended to be game changing but to allow for only a slight speed increase becuase over the time of a boss raid fight that little bit of alacrity can make a large difference especially when all the raid members have it. When your rushing against an enrage timer I'll take all those extra casts even if it is 2 or 3 and day try hit for 1200, if you had a few extra points in crit/power/surge that will add maybe 10 or 20 per hit. Not sure what the math would be but it makes senseto get those exta casts to me.

 

At work on iPod so cnant really figure it out lol

Well that's just it. Is 1 extra cast every 30-50 seconds depending on your cast rotation and amount of alacrity, worth more than a similar amount of Surge in the same rotation. Going by the Sorcerer example I would suspect not.

I absolutely love a casting speed stat. It's been largely ignored since DAoC and I've since found stale cast times a drag across recent MMOs.

 

That being said, Alacrity doesn't offer enough of an advantage to make it worthwhile for what it costs(at least to DPS). Why it's on every piece of Sith Sorcerer Rakata gear is beyond me.

 

Let's say I have 12% Alacrity. That's high, but not unreasonable with end game Rakata gear. My 3.0 second channel becomes 2.64 seconds. So I gain .36 seconds per channel. That means I would have to channel 8.33 times at 2.64 seconds per channel just to gain one extra channel more than if my cast time was still 3.0 seconds over the same duration.

 

Of course I'm not going to just channel over and over. That would be terrible DPS during a fight, and I'm not even taking into account movement. So let's say I average 1 channel and then 1 instant spell in rotation. So now Alacrity doesn't help my GCD for instant spells, so now we're looking at ~34.5 seconds before I've accumulated enough "time" to have added an extra free spell into the mix.

 

That just isn't worth the investment. Not to mention that in my current (and popular) Sith Sorcerer DPS spec I am not going to "cast" anything but my channel because it's all instant or made instant. In all those cases Alacrity is 100% useless.

 

Please reconsider either the frequency that this stat appears, and/or the magnitude at which it effects casted spells (if not instant spells and the GCD).

Didn't even need to read it. Alac is horrible because it doesn't affect the GCD. Any WoWer who's not a moron could see that in 1 second. It's a useless stat unless >70% of your casts are more than 1.5 sec, and you don't have efficiency problems. Which is to say... practically useless for everyone.

My Merc Healer with my Alacrity at what it is, casts her 3s (2.5s specced) long cast heal, in 1.74s.

That's enough bang for me. My 1.5s cast heal is 1.3s.

After I use a relic, that drops to 1.5 and 1.1s respectively.

This is with 294 Alacrity rating for a 9.18% increase, and then my 45 increase from skill points, for a total bonus of 13.18% speed increase.

Alexis

*smiles*

Didn't even need to read it. Alac is horrible because it doesn't affect the GCD. Any WoWer who's not a moron could see that in 1 second. It's a useless stat unless >70% of your casts are more than 1.5 sec, and you don't have efficiency problems. Which is to say... practically useless for everyone.

I would have been that blunt but I wanted to explain it in more detail in hopes it got developer attention by the nature of it's well thought out explanation.

Thanks for your support

I would have been that blunt but I wanted to explain it in more detail in hopes it got developer attention by the nature of it's well thought out explanation.

Thanks for your support

Hahaha no problem. I didn't mean to belittle your post at all. Sorry if it came off that way. I read your OP and it was spot on.

To the BH merc above: You aren't min maxing. You are playing less than optimally. Yes, you have faster heals. No you are not better at healing than another BH who stacked Power instead of Alac. You are objectively worse at healing.

My Merc Healer with my Alacrity at what it is, casts her 3s (2.5s specced) long cast heal, in 1.74s.

 

That's enough bang for me. My 1.5s cast heal is 1.3s.

 

After I use a relic, that drops to 1.5 and 1.1s respectively.

 

This is with 294 Alacrity rating for a 9.18% increase, and then my 45 increase from skill points, for a total bonus of 13.18% speed increase.

 

 

Alexis

*smiles*

Maybe I missed something in your example, but there is no way with 13.18% you can cast a 3.0 second (specced to 2.5s) heal in 1.74 seconds unless you are adding the relic, which you didn't include the stats for:

2.5 * .1318 = .3295

2.5 - .3295 = 2.1705 second cast time.

Let's say the Alacrity is treating the spell as 3.0s long:

3.0 * .1318 = .3954

2.5 - .3954 = 2.1046

Also, 4% increase from talents is a large amount of alacrity when you consider how much Alacrity Rating you would need to get that. If it took way less rating to get 4% at 50, this topic probably wouldn't exist.