To Haste or Not to Haste, that is the ?Question?

[andrew729]

So I have noticed lately a lot of different gemming choices for Shamans, mainly spell power/mp5 or haste/mp5. That leaves me to ask the question...Should I go full haste gems or spell power?

For a while I have been experimenting with haste gems and to be honest I am loving every moment of it. I enjoy having my CH/HW/LW way down in cast time. I also know that the use of spell power gems really increases the ammount healed, but at the same time, spell power is really packed on gear now, but haste isn't. What do you guys think?

[Goomba]

balancing this is a tough question for me, too...i'm a priest, one spec holy, the other disc, and now that my gear is finally good enough that I'm not running out of mana constantly and running with folks who know their characters better, I'm looking at nuance gemming, too...I'm gemmed for int and spellpower mostly right now, but as the stats on my gear get better, I'm thinking of shifting to more haste, as well...I think balancing these is a very individual question based on your play style, who you group with, what instances you're spending the most time in, and what gear you have....if you gem toward haste, let me know how you like it...on another thread, I did find out that trying to get more than about 5-6% haste is probably not helpful because it starts up a bell curve because it is multiplicative rather than additive, so the cost doesn't produce the benefit....which helps me make these decisions....

I think personally, I'm going to shift a little toward crit and haste, and as my gear gets more spellpower and int, probably shift even more toward crit....if you gem for haste, post your experience....I'm curious how it actually plays out for you..

[Therelin]

the two shammys in our guild have 740 spell haste at least! and one maybe a a little more than the other but it makes a huge impact.... I am a resto druid and i am only at 380 i think but i am mostly healin with HoTs but i think haste is important for all healers and Spell Power is just as imporant as well their SP is over 2400 each and are pretty close on the healing meters as well....i havent healed with my Shammy only DPSed so hopefully someone would have a little more insight

[Insahnity]

Haste for me is pretty cut and dry. Some classes need it, others don't, although a little bit is desirable even for them.

In order of my experience, from least needed to most:

1) Disc priests just do not need much haste from gear. They get a fair amount from talents, shields are instant cast, and penance is already close to instant. Haste will let you move on to the next cast from penance and lowers your GCD. If they need haste on demand, such as getting out a Prayer of Healing, they can cast a shield and get a hasted cast.

2) Druids need haste for lowering GCDs primarily, and if assigned to MT heal they need to push out their nourishes (and the occasional regrowths) out faster.

3) Paladins crave haste to push out their Holy Light really fast, and make their Flash of Light seem as fast as a druid's "Rain of Renew" on the raid. However they do have judgement of the pure to get a huge 20% haste bonus.

4) Shaman should stack a bunch of haste, much like paladins to push out their HW and LHW, but also make their Chain Heals viable. With enough haste and a tight cluster of targets, a shaman can and will put a holy priest to shame on sheer raid healing throughput. On my shaman, I have exclusively gemmed for haste first, then mp5, then spell power, and there are a few guides out there for resto shamans that advise the same.

5) Holy Priests are just ridiculous victims of lack of haste. During normal raid healing, they can get by with CoH, renews and flash heals. When the excrement hits the whirling blades on the ceiling, they get *one* bomb (either Prayer of Healing or Greater Heal) and then they are slow as heck unless they have the time to build up another few stacks of serendipity. Although many people just love rolling holy priests, it is truly a gear demanding spec, you need a lot of haste to get stuff out, spirit+mp5+crit to not go OOM is 3 seconds flat, and spell power. Disc is very gear forgiving, by comparison.

So yes, if a tank stacks stamina when everything else is ok, in my opinion shamans should be stacking haste if their mp5/crit and spell power meet the needs.

[Goomba]

I went back again to the posts about haste on disc priests, and the cap I was looking at is because of our haste talents and buffs, so while as a disc priest I only need 5-6% and basically haste cap at 11%, that's due to talents and stuff....much different as holy or shammy, sounds like

previous post rings true to my experience as a holy and disc priest...holy feels sooooo slow now that I'm disc as well...I would really encourage you to try it as shammy just because I'm finding healing to be sooo much more fun and responsive with haste compared to my holy build, and it sounds like shammys out of the box feel slower, but can benefit from the haste a lot...love to hear what happens when you try it...

[tillara]

Oh good- a thread already started and it's a question I have as well

I'm a resto druid The World of Warcraft Armory

I tend to put myself on raid healing, but take tank duty occasionally.

Recently I have noticed that my overheal/effective heal ratio has really shot up, specifically from Rejuv which I use to top off raid members. CUrrently when raid buffed and actively healing my +heal is a whisker below 3K.

I have 191 SP in gems, 24% crit chance and +171 haste.

I am toying with the idea of regemming either for crit or for haste.

The aim of gemming for crit would be to increase the proc of Living Seed- which heals when damage is taken- a nice bonus. I could either do this with +crit gems, or +int and gain a bigger mana pool too.

The aim of gemming for haste would be to reduce my global CD so that i could get even more Rejuv out on the raid and speed up Nourish spam when the tank is in a sticky moment.

I have no mana issues so i have no need to consider gemming for that.

If i get this wrong it will be a very very expensive mistake (2K ish gold) so i would appreciate some good advice