Minor speed is a low-level enchant with cheap materials that increases your base run speed by 8%. Alternative enchants for this slot are +7STA, +7AGI, and +5SPI.

It's obviously a great PVP enchant, especially for melee classes, and it's also very useful for certain PVE encounters. For example a fair proprotion of our group swaps in speed-enchanted boots for Ossirian.

I'm curious though whether for melee clases it's useful enough to make it your 'default' enchant. Even from a pure DPS point of view, getting to the mob and to your position slightly faster could potentially add up to more than the extra stats. Obviously this is going to depend on the types of encounters you're in.

I can't see it being particularly easy to measure in a controlled way, what are people's thoughts? Do many people out there use run speed as their main enchant in a raid setting?

(As a side note, do +speed/snares stack additively or multiplicatively?)

I know our tanks have extra sets of boots with that enchant for Razorgore, but I don't think it's worth enough to be the default enchant for any PvEr. If I were a melee I would take the fraction of extra damage from the agi over cathcing up to a mob a quarter second earlier

First off, +speed doesnt stack, at all, except for with pack I believe, there really isnt enough +snares in the game to have tested it (yet).

A warlock in my guild has said consistantly, and I agree with, that 8% more speed will save your life in PvE more then 70 life will. Blizzard seems to be adressing this by providing rogues/pallies with a passive 8% talent to allow them some more enchant flexibility. I simply cannot imagine not having some form on speed enchant on my boots, there are too many situations where 1 yard to short is death

Sorry, I worded that badly... (although i am curious about aotc/aotp, having a hunter).

If you were frostbolted (40% snare) and runspeed enchanted, what's your speed? And similar with slowing poison, dazed, etc.

I use my +speed boots more often than I thought when I had them enchanted for Razorgore. Anytime I find myself feeling like a little extra movement could've helped me out, and we wipe, I swap into them. I also use them to get back to a boss area if it's deep into an indoor zone, just for the coolness factor ;)

Either way, it's great to have as an option.

Have you seen http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=12418 ?

As far as stacking goes, it is multiplicative in the cases that it does stack.

dazed is unique as far as I can tell, nothing affects it except +Defense, which just reduces the chances of being dazed.

As for -speed and +speed, it should be easy to test, if they add you should be at 68%, if they multiply at 63%. Going from what we know about +mount speed (which does stack, by adding) it should be 68%.

As for -%chance to be snared, I believe its an extra resist check ontop of the binary resist check, you would still take the frost damage, but would resist the "100% chance to be snared" effect for frostbolt. I am intrested in seeing how mindflay is affected by this, as the dot seems to wrap the snare and damage into one effect.

Pre-AQ40, random stats on boots are reasonable. Most of the encounters are static, with some LoS that doesn't involve much movement. Kiting on Razorgore and ducking Chromaggus breaths would be the only big uses.

AQ40 and Naxx, I couldn't imaging not having speed on my boots. Specifically for Heigen, the difference between speeded boots (pausing to wait for the splashes) and no speed (moving the entire time) was huge. For encounters where speed would be better than another stat, I'd include Thaddius, Heigen, Twin Emps, C'Thun, Ouro, Satura, and GWF. Loatheb, Gluth, Anub, Maexx, Bug Trio and Razorgore could see speed being useful, depending on the person's specific role in the encounter. I haven't done 4HM, Sapph, or K'T so can't comment on those fights.

Minor speed is definately my preferred boot enchantment. Whilst an increase in stamina or agility is nice, having slightly faster movement speed is a concession I'm willing to make. Whatever helps me get to where I want to be faster, be it in a raiding or general movement context (e.g. trip to BRM), I am happier. Being able to outpace a pursuer is a lot more meaningful than +7 stam.

This has always been my standard enchant on my main gear.

This. 7 stats is so minor in comparison, I could only see myself using something else if I was tanking in Naxx.

It is also my standard boots enchant and pretty much always has been. (In fact, the first thing I do with alts is to get them a 'decent' pair of boots enchanted with it.) Now, a big part of that is just that there is nothing really compelling as a mage for the slot but I really do very much like the extra little bit of speed.

I think around the time we started doing Thaddius I've had it on my boots and have kept it.

For PVE at least, running is supremely important on Thaddius, Heigan, 4H, and Sapphiron. It's also mildly important on Anub, Faerlina, Grobb(but who gives a shit about him), gluth, razuvious(for casters), Gothik, Noth and Loatheb.

The fact that Thaddius, 4H and Sapphiron are two of the more critical fights in the raid game right now, and that being slow on Sapphiron/Thaddius can kill you and wipe your raid respectively, make every ounce of speed worth it.

As a priest I didn't need it so much before Naxx (though it would help on C'Thun quite a bit, but I rarely ever died due to no runspeed)

I can't stand not having it, I feel like a sloth without it. The thought of dropping 2 more arcanite bars for a 2nd pair of dreadnaught boots just to put speed on has seriously crossed my mind quite often. I wouldn't do that over someone else needing their 1st pair, but if we get to the point where everyone has their t3 boots, I might snag a 2nd pair to do just that. I really get surprised when I inspect random people and see just how uncommon the speed enchant is, I would have expected it to be more common than it is. Their loss, I guess.

Minor speed increase worked out nicely for me on Gothik/4HM due to I'm constantly moving.

Everything else though I just use +7 AGL.

In PvE, it has a ton of benefits (any fight with motion, more or less).

In PvP, it has the benefit of allowing me to use my best boots when I'm PvPing, instead of having to step back a tier to get a pair of speed-enchanted ones.

It's been my default boot enchant since BWL.

I use a few different versions of boots all with different enchants.

Boots of the Fallen Hero with run speed (highest Stamina of the DPS boots)
Chromatic Boots with 7 agility (for static encounters)
Boots of Unwavering Will (evenutually Dreadnaught) with 7 stamina

Though all those choices were rather easy, I swap in Fallen Hero for kite encounters (Razorgore dragons) and Sartura for trying in vain to pick her back up before she eats a mage alive.

Very very nice to have in some situations.

Constants:
Agility to boots = 7 agi
Speed enchant = 8% speed increase

7 agi = 7 ATP for Rogues
7 ATP = 0.5 DPS

Variables:
Time of fight: 360 seconds
Rogue total DPS = 300 (conservative)

Math:
360s * 0.5 DPS = 180 damage (contribution of damage from boot enchant)

So in order for the run speed enchant to be superior to the agility enchant, I need to make up 180 damage from being able to get to my target faster.

(Damage lost) = {(Travel Time) - [(Travel Time) / (1.08)] } * 300DPS
Set damage lost equal to the damage contribution from the boots and solve for travel time.

Travel time = x

180 damage = [x - (x/1.08)] * 300DPS
x = 8.1 seconds

Conclusion:
For a fight that lasts 6 minutes, if you spend more that 8 seconds traveling to a target to kill, you're better off with the run speed enchant as far as increasing damage.

This value of 8.1 seconds decreases linearly with an increase in DPS, that is if you're putting out 600 DPS, if you spend more than 4 seconds travelling to your target, you're better off with the run speed enchant. The same can be said for a reduction in fight time (180s fight has a travel time break point of 4.05s).

I just threw this together and I may have omitted something important or screwed up my math but if I didn’t, than I find these results somewhat surprising.

As a tank I have STA on my DN and speed on my Wrath. I only use the wrath on select fights, but it's definitely worth at least having it on a good pair. For other classes, yeah I can see putting speed on your very best pair, and the math above is pretty interesting.

Well, rogues get crit from AGI ;-) But as a ballpark figure, that does surprise me a lot. You could almost spend 8 seconds positioning for a static fight (note this time only counts if you can start DPSing as soon as you get there) and anything where you kill multiple mobs, or any movement it all, it looks like a no-brainer. Thanks for that! It's definitely going to be the way to go on my Heroism for mostly 5-20 man stuff.

Run speed is a PvE enchant. I've been saying this for months!

I cannot even imagine playing a dagger rogue without it, too painful.

And if people inspected EJ rogues you'd see we have it to a man. It's been the best PvE enchant for a long, long time.

Only class run speed enchant isn't too good for is hunters. Because it doesn't stack with aspect, and most of the time aspect will do the job better than any speed boots enchant. Every other class I've played I had at least a spare set of boots with it on, or had it directly on my main set, for pve. For PvP, it's pretty much a mandatory buff unlike you like getting outrunned by people.