I picked an interesting time to reactivate my account it seems....
I apologize to any readers in advance if this is too long. I also apologize in advance to the GMs and developers if any of this comes off as unappreciative of the hard, excellent, and sometimes thankless work you are putting in to implement the recent changes. Most of the changes are overwhelmingly beneficial to the game. It is, however, inevitable, that losing what people know and love strikes them more compellingly than unknowns they stand to gain. The responses you receive to these announcements will, unfortunately, mirror this, and I genuinely hope you are not angered or discouraged that the negative feedback so far outweighs the positive. Whether it's the speed, power, and mana-efficiency provided by rapid fire, the maneuver RT mitigation of haste, or the universally effective disabling RT and high kill probability of immolate, every wizard will be losing something they have enjoyed for years.
I have played a melee wizard from level 1 to 100, and have been running haste with 100% uptime since 1998. While any changes to this will have a dramatic negative impact on my way of life, and while I am still unclear as to the reasons behind these changes, I understand that the decision has been made.
In an effort to acclimate myself to the coming changes, I made some attempts over the past couple days to include brief non-hasted intervals while hunting. The results were extremely discouraging. In OTF, most ithzir die in about 3-10 swings depending on luck with crits and how high their DS is, constructs take 7-10 hits, and gryphons take 5-8. I normally also use 1-3 feints per kill, both to keep them RT locked and to lower their DS to a hittable range. This is all normal for me, and I was predicting that swinging in 5 seconds and feinting in 3 seconds would make me a little bit less than 5 times as slow during my haste cooldowns. The reality was much, much worse.
Normally, creatures are constantly swarming into the room and my hunting involves keeping successive waves of ithzir and constructs prone with ewaves, keeping gryphons RT-locked with feint, and fitting in my fast but weak killing swings between. Very low DS, weak maneuver defense, and soft armour mean that this is the only way to stay alive as a warmage in this area. But without haste, the swings are so slow that I can barely get in a feint and one swing before everything in the room is back on its feet ready to kill me again. I spend more time controlling the crowd than swinging, and unfortunately tremors (although it's a great spell and I love it) is not effective for this purpose in areas where the creatures are fast enough to stand up and kill you between tremor rounds. Even when attempting to only fight lone creatures, I could not kill them quickly enough to prevent the swarm from gathering. Killing even one creature in a 2 minute span without haste required a lucky D100 and a lucky crit. Bandits were equally disheartening without haste. A typical 3 bandit encounter would take more than 2 minutes to resolve. The other capped hunting areas would presumably be as bad or worse. Without the speed advantage to compensate for low AS, inability to aim, and very high vulnerability, swinging a weapon as a wizard is not viable at this level.
So what can I do during my haste cooldown? Running away and hiding is unpalatable to me, from both a role-playing and game-enjoyment perspective. That leaves killing with spells, an already mana-intensive proposition made more so by a warmage's AS disadvantage (even with 513 running) compared to a typical bolting mage build, and exacerbated by the extraordinary mana costs of even part-time haste usage under the proposed changes. Additionally, full-time 919 is - and will remain - critical (even with 919, surviving an area web is a 50-50 shot for me) to self-spelled warmage hunting in OTF, bandits, and elsewhere, putting further strain on mana resources if I'm expected to be spell hunting part of the time.
I know that full time haste usage is off the table; I don't know why, but I know it is. I've accepted it. I urge you only to reconsider the extreme steepness of the haste reuse costs. If I have to bolt during my haste cooldown, please leave me with enough mana to do so. 6, 12, 18, 24, etc... would, I feel, be much more manageable: prohibitive enough to prevent anyone from running it full time, but not so onerous as to make hiding in a corner during haste downtime the only option.
With respect to 950: this is an excellent concept, and I look forward enthusiastically to its implementation. I hope we will be able to prepare a string of weapon attacks while time is frozen, and not just spells. I also feel that the 50 mana cost, by itself, will prevent people from abusing the non-emergency version without any daily usage limits. Finally, I hope that you will consider implementing it before the changes to 506, 515, and 519. Everyone who plays a wizard will be losing something they love and have grown accustomed to having for years. Gaining access to a powerful and useful new ability, rather just the promise of one down the road, will go a long way to assuaging the grief and anguish many of your loyal, long-time customers are feeling right now.
TLDR version
1) Please reduce haste reuse costs (e.g. 6, 12, 18, 24, 30) so we have enough mana to bolt during haste downtime
2) Please implement 950 - and make it awesome - before you implement all the nerfs
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