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?)

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.

Unless it's an encounter like Twin Emperors where you're moving every 40 seconds to a new location. Is one extra "tick" of damage better than +7 agi? There are plenty of encounters where the movement increase helps you both survive and deal more damage.

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. 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.

Hmm? I have to stop between each splash even without speed on my boots on Heigan.

Past BWL I'd never put anything but speed on my boots as a dpser, but for healing it seems mostly unnessesary, as getting somewhere faster will just mean I spend more time standing there. Sartura's the only boss where I've often wished I could move faster, but I never really had trouble surviving that. It's definatly nice for post-emps trash, though.

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.