Starfire

I believe a small smattering of spell haste would be worth it for a Lifebloom druid. Simply to lower the risk of human error in rolling 4x lifeblooms.

As for priests, keep in mind there are actually three ways to increase hps: +heal, haste, crit. Crit is unreliable, which is why healers do not desire it unless there is added benefit (set bonuses maybe, but mmostly I mean paladins). The thing is, +heal is always a fixed amount, haste is a percentage base. There comes a point where +haste will be better than +heal, simply because you have so much +heal than the percentage modifier of +haste would be better.

Like, for example. Let's say theorethically, you had to choose between +10% haste or +100 healing. If you were at +2k healing... +100 healing would only be a 5% increase, but the 10% haste would be a much larger thoroughput boost.

Still, there is something else you touched on that I think its worth mentioning. +Heal also translate to mana from our shadowfiends (with the +damage coefficient).

 

Jayde

I feel as if the main failure of +haste is that it's not traded for +healing, but traded for regen. If we had "normal" designed items with a portion of the +healing converted to +haste, it might be worth considering for some situations. However, the fact that most +haste items have absolutely no regen whatsoever means they become extremely impractical for general purpose use, IMO.

The [Swiftheal Mantle] seems like an "ok" haste piece, as at least it has some Spirit on it, in addition to the [Blessed Band of Karabor]. [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] is also an interesting item perhaps.

Sadly, those are the only three items I'm aware of where regen+haste exist on the same piece that Priests can use.

Oddly, there are some more compelling Plate/Mail items. [Hauberk of the Empire's Champion], [Hex Lord's Voodoo Pauldrons], and [Man'kin'do's Belt] are somewhat more balanced items...but, sadly, there don't seem to be any cloth equivalents to such designs.

But, anyhow, the key issue seems to be that haste as an incremental increase in damage is generally fine, whereas healers don't get nearly the same effect. So long as it's going to take up that much of the budget, it's questionable as to if it will ever really pay off.

 

Liths

That's all fine and dandy, except for that with the values blizzard has for spell haste, 10% spell haste is worth 345 healing, not 100. I know what I'd chose and Sunwell items won't make a big enough differance to change that. And remember, once WotLK is released and we gain more levels, it'll take more haste rating to reach that 10% spell haste.

If they ever make an item with heal/mp5/spi/sta AND spell haste ill be all over it. While they keep putting it on sub standard items with poorly balanced stats it'll just be another void crystal.

 

Havoc12

Remember that all heals have a base heal amount too.

100+healing on a gheal that heals for 5.1k already is ~2.1% more HP/sec. 10% faster cast time on gheal means 10% more HP/sec (I assume that 10% haste is 10% reduced cast time, correct me if I am wrong). More importantly it means that your gheal is now cast in 2.25 seconds and your GCD is only 1.35 seconds. That means you can save a lot of casting time when using PoM, renew and CoH, which also increases your overal HP/sec. Its fairly easy to substitute +healing for more mp5, but the increase in HP/sec that you get from haste u can't get with anything else. Faster heals are also a very important consideration. If you can get 20% haste, you can have 2 second gheals!

Also just looking at haste vs mana regen is not necessarily a very good idea without considering the increased HP/sec of lower ranks. With 20% haste I can increase the HP/sec of gheal rank 1 to 1300+. This is the HP/sec I currently get from rank 2 gheal. That means I can spam rank 1 where I would need to spam rank 2. Accounting for the 20% increased cast time this means that I can reduce my mana drain by 4.7 mana per second which is the equivalent of gaining 23.5 mp5.

If you look at higher ranks
for 2000+healing with 5/5 empowered healing

Rank 5 gheal has a HP/sec 1836 and a mana drain (talented) of 241/sec

If you add 20% spell haste that becomes
2203.2 HP/sec with mana drain 289.2/sec.

Compared it with unhasted rank 7 gheal which has a 2078 HP/sec with a 280/sec mana drain.

Now if you wanna see the effect of haste for mana regen

Rank 4 gheal has 1717 HP/sec and a mana drain of 185.2/sec. With 20% haste that becomes 2060.4 with a mana drain of 266.4/sec. That means you can use rank 4 gheal where you previously had to use rank 7 and save yourself about 14mana per sec which is the equivalent of 70mp5.

In most cases you will just be able to cast nothing but rank 1 and rank 3 gheal and still achieve the kind of HP/sec other people need to spam rank 6 and rank 7 for. On top of that you will probably have a lower mana drain too, so you will need less regen to get the same effect.

Do not understimate the power of haste. If it starts decreasing your GCD as well, it may actually be worth sacrificing some mana regen to get haste.

Haste can help you reduce your mana drain a lot, by allowing you to just spam lower ranks. It also allows you to cancel cast a lot more safely thereby increasing the amount of mana you can get from clearcasting and inner focus.

I would be happy to exchange some mana regeneration for haste. However I would not be happy to exchange ~350+healing for 10% haste, as at 2k+healing I get a better deal from 350 +healing than from 10% haste overall.

I strongly doubt that haste will every be a very strong stat for healers, but I think that having a certain amount for it in exchange for some mana regen, may be very beneficial.

 

Merple

I think, if anything, this will bring a bit more interest in the [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle] for CoH spamming priests, considering 320 haste in a spam situation would push your GCD down considerably. Combine that with [Eye of Gruul] and you've got some pretty decent spammage. The beauty is, each CoH has 5 chances to proc the Scarab, so the whole "chance" bit loses a bit of it's unreliability.

That's about as far as I can speak for haste, but I'm glad to say I've got my scarab.

-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.

 

Bendyr

Yeah I'm definitely going to have to pick up that scarab for my CoH spam set. Right now I have the Eye of Gruul and the Fel Reaver Piston, which is underwhelming. I may also buy up that Swiftheal Mantle pattern and the Hearts of Darkness while they're still cheap.

Has anyone theorycrafted a new lootrank for CoH priests, given the new change to spell haste? Previously I valued spell haste as a "0", but I'm thinking I have to give it some value now.

 

Liths

Actually, its 100/110=90.91%, so 9.09% reduction in casting time.

 

Liths

Again, the problem here is that 20% reduction in casting time is worth the same as 157 mana/5s.

 

galzohar

If you're looking at your efficiency and haste at the same time, you're probably looking at it wrong. Haste increases HPS without increasing efficiency, which is exactly what it's supposed to do and is exactly how the items with haste on it are itemized - lots of HPS and no regen. Haste items are meant for people doing fights where they have no real need for extra efficiency but getting those few successive extra-fast heals is more important. There is no fight in the game where this difference is actually black and whilte but quite a few are short enough for haste to have a purpose (yet you could still do fine with any gearset, heck that's why healers will never stop arguing about gear as you have a lot of leeway of what to gear and it'll still work even if it sucks).

Using haste so you can downrank more is very counter-productive. The efficiency gain from this "attribute" of haste is very low per itemization point and if you care about efficiency you should really be looking at other items that actually give you what you're looking for.

It's not that haste is useless, it's that it's situational, as it's only good if you really need more HPS but don't really need more efficiency - or in other words you simply can't go oom but having a higher burst would be beneficial/safer/etc. So I don't see what's all the complaining about haste itemization - it's exactly what it's supposed to be - max HPS for people who don't need the efficiency.

On a side note haste scales HPS much faster than +healing with same itemization cost, for a good reason, as haste doesn't increase your efficiency while +healing also increases efficiency.

 

Havoc12

Oh that is true 10% reduction in cast time would mean 11.11% increased HP/sec and HP/mana. So the HP/sec and HP/mana calculations are wrong its just the cat time calculations which are wrong.

10% haste is 2.273 gheal
and 20% haste is 2.083 gheal.

Although haste does not improve the mana efficiency of your spells it improves your overal mana efficiency because it allows you to downrank more. It may not do so as much as other stats, but as a tradeoff it gives you a big boost to HP/sec. You don't use haste to allow yourself to downrank more, you use haste to improve your HP/sec, but many people here have expressed the concern that you lose a lot of mana regen for that, the point to make here is that even though you lose mana regen that is counteracted to some degree by the fact that you can downrank more during the phases of the battle where you don't need the increased HP/sec, and still have the big HP/sec burst for when you really need it. So rather than having a set of full haste gear that you only use on some situations, it looks to me like it would be better to have a certain amount of haste all the time, as it improves your handling of emergencies, gives you higher burst HP/sec if you need it (and that is a very usefull thing to have in every battle) and on top it does not nerf your mana efficiency too much, due to the fact that you can downrank more when you don't need the extra HP/sec.

Its always a question of what you gain versus what you are losing.

 

Liths

No offense, but you obviously haven't got a clue about priest healing and you're not helping the discussion here by throwing out false statements as facts. At least attempt to do some math on the subject at hand for relevant spells. Haste scaling for priests isn't the same as for a paladin spaming flash of light.

Let's compare HPS scaling with +heal vs spell haste for Circle of Healing.
10% reduction in casting time on spells take 174.4 haste rating(100/X=0.9 X=111.11 11.11x15.7=174.4)
174.4 haste rating is equal to 383.3 healing (174.4/0.455=383.3)
Going from 2000 to 2383 healing would take CoH from 949 (495+2000x0.227=949) to 1036 (495+2383x0.227)

In other words, for CoH, the differance in HPS scaling between +healing and haste is minimal, 11.1% vs 9.2% in this case. 1.9% hps at a cost of 10% mana efficency isn't worth it in any shape or form. The results for staple spells like renew and prayer of mending will be similar. Downranked Gheal efficency have already been touched and showed how poor spell haste preformed. The only thing it really is viable for is cast canceling max rank gheals since you're really not too worried about efficency in that scenario and haste scales very well with the large base heal from the spell.

 

galzohar

I should've been more specific and say it outscales +healing by far for greater heal, not all spells. Renew and PoM can't even be cast more often than the cooldown/duration, and as you've shown CoH scales overly well with +healing that you might as well not bother with the haste gear over +healing, although again, if you drop regen, that you already don't need, to gain that haste, it actually becomes something to consider even for CoH. So it's back to "haste is only good if you're not mana limited", and I suppose you can add that when including CoH/PoM/renew it's only good if it's in place of unneeded regen.
And you said it like I said the opposite thing, but we both actually said the same thing about haste allowing more downranking - the efficiency gain is minimal for the itemization cost and you should be better off with mp5 (or +healing).

 

Anedris

One thing to perhaps add is that I know of very few examples where the tradeoff is between haste and +healing. In almost all cases the haste item has about the same +healing as the non-haste item and gives up regen. So even if several spells scale better with +healing, this is somewhat beside the point - you're choosing between haste and regen, not between haste and +heal.

 

galzohar

Exactly, which makes it a "do I need efficiency" VS a "do I need burst HPS" question after all.

 

Venatus_Deus

Why would you take 0/5 Holy Specialization and 3/3 Inspiration? It makes no sense, to have a spell that procs on CRIT without the CRIT to back it up.

 

Calya

Because you might prefer to spend those points in Spell Warding? Inspiration is a good talent and worth speccing even if you have no additional crit other than your base crit rate. It's not like it only becomes worthwhile if you have 5/5 Holy Spec.

 

Irise

Let us compare how a Haste set stacks up against the "ideal" Healing set. Here are the gear choices.

[Blessed Band of Karabor] vs [Band of Eternity]
[Shroud of the Highborne] vs [Shroud of the Final Stand]
[Angelista's Sash] vs [Belt of Divine Guidance]
[Swiftheal Wraps] vs [Bracers of Martyrdom]
[Dark Blessing] vs [Lightfathom Scepter]
[Brooch of Nature's Mercy] vs [Lord Sanguinar's Claim]
[Achromic Trousers of the Naaru] vs [Leggings of Eternity]

You loose a total of 112 +healing, 43mp5 and 41 spirit. In exchange you gain 235 Haste which shortens a GHeal cast to 2.17 second and Flash Heal to 1.3 seconds.

I personally don't think the trade off is worth it but everyone should come to their own conclusion.

 

Bendyr

you're underestimating the contribution of Spell Haste. In 2.4, 235 haste will also reduce the GCD to 1.3 seconds, which is pretty significant.

It doesn't necessarily have to be stacked, but now it doesn't have to be completely avoided as wasted budget either.

 

Kass

I do agree that every person should come to his/her own conclusions. What I disagree with is assuming it's an all or nothing trade-off. A couple of things worth pointing out are as follows:

I value [Blessed Band of Karabor] over [Band of Eternity]. I wear two of them.

For guilds that didn't run TK [Lord Sanguinar's Claim] might not be an option. With upwards of 8-10 healers fighting over one healing neck in T6 content, [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] is fantastic for Priests and Druids.

Other than those two items, I agree the trade off isn't incredibly appealing. However, I wouldn't net those two items in the "bad" category. Sure it's not a lot of haste, and not a huge chunk of cast time, but I will say that it is noticeable...even with just three pieces.

 

Irise

In trying to quantify spell haste the most usefull metric for me is latency. I notice a difference between 200ms and 500ms but not between 200ms and 300ms. With the Blessed Band and Nature's Mercy I am shaving off 0.096 seconds or 96ms on Gheal casts which I doubt I will notice. While casting Flash Heal the amount you shave off is 57ms. I think if there were a few more items like Blessed Band then it might be worth it to stack around 150 Haste which would translate into 2.23 second Gheal (or 218ms reduction).

 

• borisson_

If you compare: [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] to [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] with a [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] or [Royal Nightseye] I think the vindicators is better, I've passed on the Brooch several times because I don't think it's good for a priest but it is good for a Paladin imho.

 

Sunchips

This question was answered pretty precisely back in the old Holy Priest Theorycrafting thread.

http://elitistjerks.com/387317-post143.html

 

galzohar

You're comparing rings of different item level, so obviously the higher one will give up little stats for lots of haste, making it pretty good overall. At the end it's about what you find yourself doing more - going "oh shit need massive heal(s) now!" or "oh shit I'd better not waste mana like that or I'll go oom"? That should decide wether you want spell haste or not - if the former is important enough for you and the latter isn't really an issue, you'll want even the not-so-great haste items. If it's the other way around, even the great haste items will be of little to no benefit.

If you decide an item is good or not based on wether you can feel the difference or not, you might as well never upgrade your gear as you'll rarely see a noticeable upgrade just from upgrading 1-2 pieces, especially something like a neck and/or a ring. Item upgrades are usually small that you wouldn't noticed, but in the long run it matters (a little). And it adds up. But yeah as a healer if your raid is playing properly you have a lot of leeway with your gear and won't really feel much difference with slightly different values of haste/healing/mp5/etc.

 

Starfire

A better comparison would be: [Blessed Band of Karabor] vs. [Band of the Eternal Restorer]. The proc on which is absolutely amazing.

Also, to the other poster, think youre looking at this the wrong way, you're comparing T5-level ilevel 128 legs vs. ilevel 151 Archimonde legs.

 

Kass

I don't disagree with that comment, but his comparison was on the two rings for which I gave my opinion.

As for the proc, how is it? We quit running Hyjal with me about 2 runs short of Exalted. I was going to trade in my ring for the DPS one, but I've not had any experience or seen much discussion on the proc or any numbers on the proc.