CC spells and haste

We're not getting rid of spell haste and I agree it's fun to get quick spells.

I was talking more about the PvP environment (and to a lesser extent PvE) where the balance has shifted too heavily towards very fast or instant spells that leave the other side with no chance to predict, react or attempt to counter what you're going to do. It's a problem with CC, I'd agree, but it's also a problem with some of the really hard-hitting nukes where someone can die in a couple of GCDs before they can pop a defensive cooldown or even get healed.

We want combat to be less binary, where someone can get into a wounded state and then move either towards being fully healed or being dead depending on what they and everyone else involved in the battle do. We want there to be some back and forth -- some chances to make mistakes and then recover from them. PvP can currently feel like a tennis match where the team who scores the first point wins.

There still need to be moments where if you line up all your cooldowns you can kill someone who is wounded, but those need to be not every spell you cast. Given talents and gear, fully three-second cast time spells aren't really going to be that common for actual casters, but spell interactions are balanced around having a cast time so that the other side has a chance to respond. When every spell is at the GCD cap or hasted by a talent or proc then you sometimes die before you even know what happened.

Q u o t e:
But doesnt this make interrupts too powerful in PvP and make movement even more punishing in PvE?

We don't want interrupts to be binary either. They shouldn't be able to lock a caster down. We currently have something of an arms race where the melee got more mobility and interrupts, so the casters got more escape methods and instant spells. We just need some bilateral disarmament, so that melee can sometimes interrupt spells.

Movement is supposed to be a challenge in PvE. Handling the times when you have to move elegantly is one of the differences between a kill and a wipe. For Cataclysm we are making sure everyone has something they can do when mobile, whether it's Moonfire for Balance or Fel Flame for warlocks. In the same way you need to master when to AE and when to single target, you need to master when to use the mobile spells and when to not use them.

Q u o t e:
The common creed has been "WotlK" is too bursty for the past two years, but when GC starts musing on one of the key causes of this breakneck pace of combat, you suddenly see a lot of casters freak out, as if their concern was limited only to when such speed worked against them.

The question is whether or not the community (melee or caster) is really concerned about the quality of PVP gameplay, or is simply subtly begging for an advantage. Do the melee classes really hate mad-hasted casts and think it's bad for the game overall, or do they just want the advantage or momentum of the game returned to them? Are casters really concerned about the return of melee dominance, or are they afraid of losing their edge?

I've noticed several topics crop up on this forum and others containing declamations of doom from casters about the return of melee dominance. It concerns me that the protest of changes that both sides will have to adjust to is revealing a rather untoward amount of bias, like a sort of repeat of the DK mentality in S5. There were a number of people who asserted they liked the DK class because it was fun...when it was eventually shown by demographic shift that a great number only liked it because it was overpowered at the time.

People honestly need to check their motivations at the door when looking at this topic. Do you really want the game to improve, or are you just afraid of losing (or desperate to gain) an advantage?

I thought this was worded well.

Q u o t e:
Uh, sometimes I wonder if you even play this game on any sort of a competitive level. My mage, in PvE gear can spam arcane blasts to a 4 stack and rip a 1.3 second cast arcane missile into an average player in a BG and not even manage to do a total of 20k damage to them. How is fast cast speeds an issue in BGs when resilience reduces what should be about 90k damage to less then 20k?

I'll turn this back around on you. Assuming you play this game at a competitive level (I didn't check), is your contention that caster damage per time in PvP too low? Because that's not something we hear a lot. If you think Arcane needs buffs, then approach it from that angle rather than arguing that haste is good for the game or you'll never be able to kill anyone. Because as Noïn pointed out above, we've spent many of the last months hearing that damage and healing per unit time are too high in PvP.