I've done my homework and while there are a few threads that touch on spell haste, there's nothing concrete or recent enough for me to not create a new thread about spell haste and paladins. My guild has recently entered Black Temple (4/9) and Mount Hyjal (3/5) and we're starting to see spell haste drops. The general consensus of most of the before mentioned posts is that the itemization given to spell haste is too high -- i.e. you sacrifice too much in other stats -- for it to be worth it, but are there certain pieces that are better than others? Is it good to stack say 60 spell haste as opposed to 120? Should one shoot for both rings, craft the bracers, pick up the belt, etc.? I'd just like to open the floor to more experienced paladins and find out what your experience with spell haste is and what your general take on it is. Furthermore, if you have any experience with spell haste in arenas, I'd love to hear about that too.

Well I have no experience of this whatsoever but with one of your primary healing spells being 1.5sec casttime wouldn't it be a waste considering that gcd is not affected by spell haste ?

It really depends on a lot of factors. I personally have been passing on most of the spell haste gear for the moment; I might pick some up later, but at this point in time my mainstay heal is FoL, which is unaffected by spellhaste (Haste cannot dip you into the GCD). If I were to finish off my T5 4pc bonus, maybe come across the Lurker libram (unlikely b/c SSC is all but removed from our schedule) I might consider trying to collect enough spellhaste to push HL's to 1.5s.

All in all, it depends on how you heal. If you find that you are mostly a flash spammer, Haste = mostly useless and is generally overpriced. However, if you find that you downrank HL's pretty often, Haste might be the way to go.

It depends, I think.

If you're only casting HL, it has a pretty big value, since Haste Rating will apply to the 2.5 sec base cast time, meaning it will be great together with the -0.5s talent as well as 4pc Tier 5.

Obviously, Haste Rating will increase the hps of your HL substantially. If you go for full haste gear together will 4pc Tier 5, I think you can get your HL down to almost 1.5s cast, or thereabouts.

Now, you'll burn your mana faster, which in some fights might not be what you want, but on fights that require burst healing, it will serve you well.

I guess that its value also decreases if you need to cast FoL, but there's also the fact that you spend less time casting it, even if it's in the GCD, so you have more time for movement in fights that require it.

in my experience Spellhaste is a PVP stat, so it doesn't really belong into BT loot in the first place.

It's also pretty good for trash if your officers like to look at healmeters. For bosses not so much because of the regeneration you're sacrificing for spellhaste...

As said before, it depends on fight and assignements. If you need tons of HPS and are getting a spriest, I doubt anything can beat 4pcT5 + enough haste rating to bring holy light down to 1.5 .

I think I've seen the math somewhere around lately of sticking to that combo + lurker libram and using very downranked holy lights, compared to going for t6/random BT/Hyjal loot. I vaguely remember the 'non haste' setup winning with a pretty decent margin.

In the end though, I'd really try to go for both setups. A 4pcT5 pala with a spriest can do some insane HPS.

There are two really great points. I keep forgetting that spell haste does not affect FoL and that haste cannot dip you into the GCD. Personally, I was unlucky with getting t5, so I don't have the 4/5 t5 set bonus to drop my HoL down, so I'm mainly forced to heal with FoL.

I think what can be said then is if you have 4/5 t5, downrank to say HL 7 or HL 9 with the libram off Lurker then spell haste should definitely be something you look to get. However, if you don't have 4/5 t5 or the libram off of lurker then you're pretty much screwed and prohibited from taking the full advantage that spell haste has to offer to paladins. This is too bad, because I'm one of the only paladins in my guild who knows how to downrank efficiently and/or even takes it into consideration.

Spell haste is very good when combined with the 4-piece T5 bonus and the proper play style since it gives you options that are not available with 2 second heals. Against really hard hitting bosses, you only have 2 options for healing with normal gear: Spam flash of light, keep up light's grace with a small holy light, and use a big heal if the MT is low, or preheal with large heals. With 1.5 sec holy lights, however, you can heal reactively with rank 9 or 11 instead of prehealing for 75% of the fight, or spam rank 4/5 holy light then switch to a large heal if the MT needs it.

In our raids I like to have 2 paladins spamming rank 4 or 5 holy light on the tank while I preheal with rank 9 or 11 so they keep the tank alive through large burst damage and I fill his health back up with big fat 8k heals. The strategy before was to have some casting flash of light, but haste with holy light is much more effective since you crit more, keep light's grace up, and you can switch to a large heal on the fly. I think it's the best setup for a paladin to have while learning new content.

As far as arena goes, I don't know how good it is since I've never tried it, but I assume the faster heals would be good for avoiding counterspell and all the different types of interruptions we get screwed by. Your healing per second is also much higher so healing through mortal strike would be less difficult, as long as you don't sacrifice to much crit for haste.

I don't get what you guys mean with FoL no spellhaste. Of course Spellhaste decreases the casting time of FOL and unless you're running at 10ms you won't run into GCD issues either. I'm not getting GCD errors when spamming FOL while under Blinding Light.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't the GCD 1.5 seconds and being that FoL is a 1.5 second cast then even if you've got spell haste, you cannot cast it under 1.5 seconds because the GCD won't be back up?

You aren't mistaken. You can't spam sub-1.5s FoL with spell haste from gear.

You can if you use stopcasting macros.

Do you actually use a stopcasting macro (i.e. with Quartz, etc.) for FoL because I've been scared that I'm going to mess up a cast when spamming FoL? I use it for Holy Lights, but with a 200ms ping and sometimes having to spam FoL, I haven't been using it with FoL. I may try it again, though.

You can't spam FoL with spell haste, but your heals will land sooner. So while your HPS in the long run with spell haste gear won't increase, landing heal sooner might save a tank occasionally.

Yeah, you can use stopcasting with FoL and spam it every 1.50s. It works fine.

To be precise you can spam FoL every 1.5s+whatever safety measure you have to take to not interrupt your spells. That safety measure is required due to ping variance - so its duration greatly depends on your connection (and not nescessarily your actual ping although larger ping values seem to also be less stable in general).

Yeah, I should've phrased my earlier post better. Spellhaste makes FoL go off faster, sure, but because you can't dip into the GCD and Stopcasting macros/Quartz/etc. keep your casts as close to the GCD as possible, it's worth is questionable.

Don't not take it if it's around, I mean there's some pieces that have spellhaste that are just plain good (Blessed Band of Karabor comes to mind). But I am of the firm belief that you will not see top results unless you're downranking HL's.

You guys surely have godly timing if -0.02 seconds on your FoL won't increase your HP/S.

Fact:

Spellhaste saves Jhuffen from warriors.

It will still fail if I click before 1.5 seconds, and still work exactly the same if I click after after 1.5 seconds. Spell Haste will not improve my timing.

Unless your ping is perfectly steady, it is impossible to stopcast every FoL after exactly 1.5 seconds without occasionally interrupting one. With some haste, it is possible. However, the benefits are pretty minimal considering that many players can get under .1 second added by using stopcasting.

I did some gear spreadsheeting comparing top level gear in Black Temple between a "Haste" Setup, and a "Holy Power" setup. Couple notes. I loaded up with 22heal gems in all items, except T6 body and Bastion of Light were I have orange/purple gems to fulfill meta gem requirements. Trinket and Metagem regen rates are middle road estimates depending on playstyle. (TLDR @ bottom)
Note: assumes Kings, Lights Grace, 5/5 Divine Intellect, and 5/5 Holy Guidance

Spell Haste Setup: (1.77s Holy Light, 1.36s Flash of Light)


Holy Power Setup: (1.95s Holy Light, 1.48 Flash of Light)


Total Difference-
14stam
2 intellect
32 +heal
2% chance to crit
27 mana/5

So the real question is, how much do you value 2% crit and 27mana/5 compared to the boost in HPS when you can cast 12% more Holy Lights (based on speed) over the course of a fight.


Another chart. I take all spell haste gear and add to it 4pc T5 (head shoulders legs body).

4piece T5: (1.52s Holy Light, 1.36s Flash of Light)

This also loses your 5% Flash bonus, and the 5% HL Crit bonus.



TLDR: Here is the final stats for the 3 maximized gearsets above:



My general opinion. If your a Flash of Light only spammer, and thats fine, going the first route with maxed healing and spell crit, totally ignoring spell haste, is probably your best solution. However, if you wish to maximize HPS, and reduce casting times (keeping Lights Grace up with R4/5 HL and have 8-11 ready at any time), a hybrid heal/haste setup is definately worth a shot, assuming you can get the gear.