The topic of spell haste and healers has been touched upon in various other threads such as the haste mechanic primer and various healing guides. However I have yet to see the topic of haste and healers discussed in detail without derails into other areas.

Whenever this topic comes up in guild conversation it would appear that non-healers and dps casters in particular are inclined to view healing haste as a highly desirable stat. I on the other hand along with many healers of my acquaintance feel that it is marginal at best.

Therefore the question has to be raised... what is the value of spell haste for a healer?

before we start lets recap some basic facts and assumptions for spell haste.

• Spell haste has no effect on instant cast spells.
• Spell haste does not effect the operation of heal over time spells.
• Spell haste does not change the global cool down so is almost valueless for a 1.5 second cast spell.
• Spell haste rating is 15.76 rating for 1% spell haste at level 70.
• Spell haste rating is expensive in item value.
• Spell haste rating is usually applied to items at the expense of mana regen.

From this we can deduce that for a spell with a base cast time of 2.5 seconds you need 158 haste rating to reduce it to a 2.25 second cast and 366 rating to reduce it to a 2 second cast.

This is a large amount of haste rating required to get noticeable results. Given that most items with haste give somewhere in the vicinity of 30 haste rating we need between 5-10 items with haste to gain a noticeable advantage from this stat. Gaining this much haste will inevitably cut into your regen by a noticeable amount.

What are the advantages of spell haste?

• More chance of landing a heal before the target dies
• Ability to heal more targets in a limited amount of time
• More HPS in a chain casting situation

In my experience none of these advantages will significantly assist my healing in any of the encounters I have healed. (all of SSC and TK up to half way though Kael) The number of times the tank dies less than .3 seconds before my heal would have landed are not that common. When raid healing I cope fine using existing cast times and spell variety. If I need more HPS I simply use a higher rank of spell.

Do the advantages conferred by haste become more compelling for healers in more advanced content such as Hyjal and BT where healing spell haste is to be found?

In addition looking at the initial assumptions and facts it seems that certain classes will gain far more as healers from haste than others. Because spell haste benefits those classes with slow casting heals far more than classes with fast heals/Hots the class that would seem to benefit the most would probably be Shaman who almost exclusively cast slow spells. At the other end of the spectrum we would expect Tree Druids to be very dismissive of haste and virtually none of their spells benefit from it.

So in terms of desirability of spell haste I would expect it to go along the lines of Shaman>>Paladin~Priests~Non-tree druid>>>Tree druid. Does this in fact match with the observations of those in content where healing spell haste is plentiful?

From a shaman point of view spell haste is not a good stat at all. It's very usefull in fights that require lots of raid healing, which pretty much includes all of the later BT fights and Naj'entus. The problem is that on these healing heavy fights where spell haste is usefull you'll burn alot of mana, and shamans more or less totally rely on mp5 for regen. Seeing that I dont think any of the spell haste healing items have any mp5 they're far from optimal for us. Maybe if you would be guaranteed a shadow priest and multiple mana tides would it be worth using, but seeing that we mostly dump our shamans in dps or mt groups that's not the case for us.

My guess is that HL spamming paladins would actually be the class that benefits the most from gathering spell haste.

As a druid, I dismissed all items that have haste-rating on them. I don't know exactly what Blizzard was thinking, putting leather healing items with haste-rating on them. I once checked up how many haste I could get and I think it was around 15%, but I'm not sure anymore. So therefore I just check it again, and on the four leather healing items (shoulders, bracers, gloves, belt) the difference would be (considering epic gems, using red/orange/purple gems for each slot):

You gain: 30 sta, 6 int and 140 haste (8.88%)
You lose: 96 spi, 28 mp5 and 68 +heal

As you can see, to gain not even 9% faster casts, you need to give up a LOT of mana regen and healing. Granted, you get a nice stamina bonus as well, but having to choose between these stats I think the decision is rather easy. You could probably end up getting more haste rating if you gear rings/neck/cloak for it as well, but I don't think it would balance things out. I also can't think of an encounter in the entire game where haste rating would be "needed" and mana-regen would be less of a problem (for druids at least).

I'll reprise what I said in the 2.3 patch notes thread regarding spell haste.

Now since I don't have any haste items at the moment I'm of course no expert, but I can tell you how I think.

Haste feels like one stat that you either need a ton of or it isn't worth it. To get greater heal from 2.5 to 2.0 sec you need 20% haste and to get to 1.5s (optimal) you need 40% haste. You'd have to give up on mana regen entirely to get those numbers.

You'd be an insane healer, until your mana ran out. Healing is not DPS, you still need to cast the same amount of spells to heal your tank. Faster spells lets you have faster reaction times, which I guess would be the point of spell haste for healers, but priests can also spam fast 1.5s casts which are mana inefficient if they need to.

I'm not against haste really, it is just that it is too costly in item levels and most often replaces mana regeneration. Since it increases healing done over time it is really more analogous to +heal in a way but less versatile since it doesn't affect HoTs or instant spells.

Haste is good for (certain) DPS casters and valued from that. Maybe if we got double the haste like we get double the heal vs dam/heal it might be more useful.

Comparing the healing mace from ZA with the mace from Vashj (about the same itemlevel) you trade 28 stamina and 11mp5 for 30 haste rating (1.9%), or 0.05s shaved off your greater heal. Am I the only one not wanting that trade?

Pre 2.2 I didn't really have any mana problems in BT with the possible exception of the buffed bloodboil fights. With the new 2 pc t6 getting 10% mana reduction to chain heal it would make 10% equal out to previous 0 haste build in mana / sec with dramatically increased healing throughput. Personally mp5 is not a problem I chain chug mana pots with an alchemist stone if needed but frequently I didn't even have to do that. Now with 2.3 improvements I ran around ZA all last night with only +healing trinkets on and never ran out of mana. If you aren't running out of mana haste is great for a resto shaman. I do think you need to have reached the point where your gear can support this though. If you collect alot of haste then run OOM it completely defeats the point.

As a Priest, this issue was already discussed. The conclusion drawn for Priests was that it might be beneficial to acquire the Spell Haste Cloak (I can't remember the name), and 2x [Blessed Band of Karabor]. Beyond that, the sacrifice in other stats to equip the other Spell Haste items are not worth it, practically speaking.

The main reason Paladins wanted spell haste was because with Light's Grace and the 4-piece T5 bonus, your 2.5 second heals were already down to 1.75 seconds. Additionally, any spell haste you had was applied to the original 2.5s cast time, so even a small percentage was a decent amount of time reduced off of the 1.75s. So, we only needed 0.25s of haste, or 10% of 2.5s. This means about 158 haste rating, or ~5 items.

There's 120 rating that's very easy to get for an Illidan killing guild: [Dawnsteel Bracers], [Shroud of the Highborne], and 2x[Blessed Band of Karabor]. The two other haste items available in Hyjal/BT are [Girdle of Lordaeron's Fallen] and [Dawnsteel Shoulders], but these are so much worse than their comparable, non-haste items that they're just not worth using ([Girdle of Hope] and [Lightbringer Pauldrons], for those curious).

The main healing strategy while using this haste set was to use a lower ranked Holy Light spell (rank 4 or rank 5) that would give roughly the HPS of Flash of Light and keep Light's Grace up. That way, you could throw a big heal (without any extra delay at the beginning) in about ~1.5-1.6 seconds. This led to huge HPS and was great for many encounters in Hyjal/BT where lots of raid damage is being taken (Naj'entus and Teron are good examples).



Now, with 2.3, all of this has changed. Blessing of Light no longer gives the same amount of benefit to all ranks of Holy Light, so downranking HL is no longer viable. Additionally, the T5 bonus has been changed to give you -0.5s on Holy Light for only 10 seconds every minute. With these two changes, the downranking HL haste build is no longer a healing alternative for Paladins, and mostly we have been relegated to Flash of Light spambots.

Is haste still useful for Paladins? Sure. If you stack enough of it like all other classes, you could see some good HPS benefit on your Holy Light spells. But as the OP noted, you now give up way too much in other stats in order to get to that good HPS benefit. As a Paladin, you are far better off stacking +healing to increase your HPS than haste, and it also has the additional benefit of increasing your efficiency (whereas haste would only lower efficiency).


TLDR: Haste used to be good for Paladins before 2.3, but it is no longer worth going for over +healing to increase HPS.

I have contemplated using some spell haste items as a DPS caster. The benefit just isnt there. Sure imma increase my DPS output but im also gonna burn through my mana and create more threat.

I see the same problem with using it for my resto set. Imma be able to heal alot more in a limited time, but once again my mana is gonna go poof and my healing threat is gonna be higher.

Like you said above, needing 5-10 items to make a drastic noticable difference isnt worth losing the item value to it over healing, int, stam, spirit or mana regen.

It is my understanding that you do not give up healing for haste you give up regen for haste. So arguments saying that they choose healing over haste are largely immaterial since the actual healing difference is relatively small, and for the most part due to the ilvl of the items rather than their haste rating.

The only time you can use haste is when you have enough regen to maintain your HPS throughout the entire encounter that sacrificing a significant portion of your regen from gear does not cause you to run oom prematurely.

So some priests with the mediation change, and some paladins with a lot of crit might find that on many encounters they no longer pot or use mana oils. These people could replace items with haste instead of regen and heal more quickly and presumably effectively simply by resuming the use of consumables.

The problem is that any fight where one might benefit significantly from heals landing faster and a higher HPS, are fights where mana is constrained and regen is a significant issue. For example I might like .25 seconds off my Gheal for encounters like Na'jenuts Gorefiend or even Illidari council, but in the case of Council particularly if due to the length of the fight I no longer have the mana regen to go the entire duration of the encounter because I dropped 30-40 mp/5 to stack haste then I've really accomplished nothing besides shooting myself in the foot. Particularly when only a portion ( albeit a large portion) of my total healing comes from non-instant cast spells.

By and large for most people outside of a novelty for farm encounters or encounters they outgear vastly haste is just too expensive and not a significant enough upgrade to warrant taking for general purpose use over the traditional healing items.

Pretty much 100% correct. I would additionally add that as a paladin at least haste is now a completely worthless stat largely. I am a strong believer that if you want additional HPS a better method rather than stacking haste and thus gimping your + heal very slightly but really gimping your regen, simply uprank heals and space them out slightly longer if need be. For me some fights this means upranking from HL9 to HL11. Keeping the regen, while having the increased HPS. And since FoL gains no benefit from haste, 99% of the time it is a largely wasted stat for most paladin healers.

Sorry if the above doesn't make complete sense its early for me and I'm still half asleep.

I would think that Resto Shaman would see a decent benefit from wearing some haste gear. Especially on certain fights (Illidan?). There are regen periods, then periods of all out healing. Seems like a perfect situation for some haste gear. Since haste would effect all Shaman heals (except Earth Shield) they would seem to be a good candidate for some haste pieces.

Druids on the other hand...

Close but not quite. You are semi correct but give some thought to the fact that upranking will compensate for lack of haste when HPS counts. And if you want to reach the upper ends, no pally can sustain chain cast HL11 with substantial haste gear. Illidan phase 2 yes I could see it helping slightly but then again paladins would most of the time be on the tanks and once again upranking as needed suffices.

I really don't think they have any choice but to eventually make haste reduce the GCD. There are just too many spells that don't benefit from haste otherwise, and I can't imagine they want that.

Either that or make haste effect HoTs. Like, with 10% haste, Renew would last for 13.5 seconds instead of 15 but still tick 5 times (once every 2.7 seconds). This would really make haste damage gear more viable for DoT classes as well.

This is true that +healing is determined based on the ilvl of the item, so that haste gear and the similar non-haste gear have the same amount of base +healing. However, what's not mentioned is the fact that the non-haste gear has more points left over after spending the haste points on mana regen (since haste is so expensive), and these points have been, in several cases, given to gem slots. This means that you have the option to put +18 healing in these slots to increase your +healing over what the haste items would give you.

For example:

[Girdle of Lordaeron's Fallen] vs. [Girdle of Hope]
2 gem slots = +36 healing

[Dawnsteel Bracers] vs. [Blessed Adamantite Bracers]
1 gem slot = +18 healing

[Dawnsteel Shoulders] vs. [Lightbringer Pauldrons]
2 gem slots = +36 healing

That's another +90 healing right there from gem slots. That much healing (+90) and the extra regen is a lot to give up for haste. The argument that you can stack more +healing to increase your HPS if you don't go for haste is valid. I would say, though, that if you're comparing non-haste items that don't have extra gem slots to haste items, that yes, the +healing is the same.

One possible use for haste that I haven't seen mentioned yet is for PvP healing. Regen is much less of an issue in PvP, but spell haste will make your spells slightly harder to interrupt and will "save the day" more often than it would in PvE. Granted, true PvP gear with stamina and resilience is probably more useful, but haste gear seems like a decent alternative for people who don't have the time or interest to build a true PvP set.

At least part of the problem with haste is that the items upon which it has been placed are generally incredibly badly designed. Haste and +healing both improve healing throughput, spirit and mp5 longevity. Most good healing gear improves both throughput and longevity, via a combination of +healing and spirit/mp5; haste items just have a double dose of throughput. Ideally you would want items with haste and spirit/mp5, or even a combination of all 3 or 4 stats.

Couple this with the fact that haste does not improve HPM like +healing does, does not facilitate downranking (thus increasing longevity) like +healing, and simply does not apply to over half the spells that priests and druids use, and it is small wonder healers find it underwhelming.

If I were Blizzard, I'd modify spell haste either directly or via new talents in WotLK to do some or all of the following (off the top of my head):

- affect HoTs (as mentioned above).
- have a different rating conversion for healing spells - 1.5x or 2x as effective.
- have a reverse scaling effect on temporary buffs and HoTs i.e. 10% haste means your HoTs and PW:Ss, inspiration procs etc last for an extra 10% of their normal duration (would be fiddly with HoT ticks and spell coefficients, but meh).
- increase your in-combat mana regen i.e. 10% haste = 10% increased mana regen as well, while in the 5-second rule.

Combine some/all of these with some better itemisation, and we'd have a properly competitive stat.

No even as a Shaman I do not find spell haste an interesting stat even in BT.
Can I sacrifice mp5 for spell haste? Probably.
Is it needed? No, just work with a second shaman and/or a CoH priest to help you top the raid.

I guess the fact that I can do it is the only reason to try it.
Healing is not dps. You can't invariably do more healing as you can dps.
If no healing is needed then you are not casting and your haste serves no purpose. This is already the case without using haste so why get any haste at all?

Raiding is currently balanced with certain healing and dps requirements and both are being met without spell haste for healing as an attractive modifier to balance this.
So I can only consider spell haste for healing as a PvP toy.

I don't know another environment where landing a single heal in the shortest time possible is any more crucial as opposed to mana regen.
With crowd control and -50% healing debuffs being able to land a heal before you are interrupted/silenced again is attractive.
Ironically crowd control, healing debuffs, interrupts and silences are what makes PvP not fun for me so I'm not usually motivated to pick up spell haste for this purpose either.
At least not without the ability to throw people off of me thus buying a limited amount of time to actually heal. That would allow the stat to shine.

I would think if it was so awesome pallies would have louded the awesomeness of +haste long ago?

PS: There are some fights in Zul'Aman where the raid takes significant damage followed by a short pause to allow you to top the raid. I suppose spell haste could be experienced more useful there.

I really don't think Haste belongs in PvE healing. The whole idea of building a well-rounded team of healers revolves around the concept of each healer covering everyone else's ass. You have Druids providing the raid with a Lifebloom buffer, Paladins keeping them topped off, Shamans healing the AOE damage and Priests bombing the tanks through spikes.

If you have a well-built healer team and well-geared tanks, Paladins would not need the extra Haste if/when they scramble for their R11 Holy Lights since they have Lifeblooms and Renews ticking, as well as NS'ed HTs and HWs on standby. Neither would the Shaman need haste because you could have CoH and/or other HOTs at the ready (I think I'm overusing the Druids in my examples).

Of course, I may be speaking from an ideal standpoint, which certainly leaves room for stuff to go wrong, but given the current limits of itemization (haste vs. other stats) and mechanics (haste vs. the GCD), I don't see any particular reason for a healer to deliberately take a significant amount of spell haste.

The only class/build that made good use of this were Paladins wearing 4PT5, and that has since been nerfed. Shaman are the only other healer who utilize enough 1.5+ cast time heals for Haste to be of any use, but then they can't afford the mana regen trade either. I would think that it's easier to stick with mana regen to overheal through bad spikes and forego haste rather than stick with haste and try to muddle through a lack of mana.

If you have such a clear picture of a given fight that you know just how much mana regen you can give up in favor of haste without going OOM, then you probably have it on farm, which sort of makes it a moot point.

PvP is an interesting frontier for practical applications of spell haste, but is again shot in the foot by the limitations of whatever itemization Blizzard has only given us to work with. The pre-nerfed Paladin 4PT5 might've been awesome for PvP healing given the implications of a hasted high rank Holy Light's HPS output, but even just 4 slots is a significant hit to STA/Resilience.

The best argument for haste on a healer is in the case of Priests and Shamans and the changes in 2.3. Simply put these classes have on the whole gained 50 mp/5 or more from 2.2, and since every encounter has been beaten with that amount of mana regen, AND those players contributing a significant amount. ( I assume they weren't dead weight before), It stands to reason that they could afford to sacrifice some of the "new" regen they've gained through talents and ability changes by taking it off their gear. Now of course this could mean using fewer 11/2 gems and more 22 healing gems, but even with 10 sockets worth of regen reduced there's plenty of "wiggle room" before you'd be reducded to pre 2.3 levels.

The alternative is picking up pieces of gear with no mana regen on them. I.e. haste pieces. Picking up a solid chunk of haste rating is not particularly hard and assuming you don't mind potting and consider the new regen a bit on the overkill side, you could apply some haste and increase your HPS AND theoretically the amount of mana regen you need =P

Additionally there are several pieces of haste gear which stand on their own merits. Mainly the [Shroud of the Highborne] and [Blessed Band of Karabor]. Additionally for people NOT at the top end of BT gear several haste pieces are competitve at thsoe gear levels, and a couple ZA drops have potential as well notably [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] which sacrifices sta instead of healing or regen (albeit spirit regen) and [Dark Blessing] which compares well enough with weapons from t5 areas.

Those 4 items alone are 122 haste rating which is I believe is getting close to a quarter second off a gheal or a Healing wave, and all 4 of those could be equipped with marginal losses ( the weapon is a pretty big drop from Crystal Spire, but who knows what gear people have access to). Add to that say Swiftheal bracers or even Angelista's Sash and you have a fairly potent haste set (i'd personally take swiftheal and sash over the Dark blessing if I had crystal spire but to each his own).

All in all I think its wholly possible for a BT farming shaman or priest to get 120-150 haste while still staying well above the state of their regen prior to 2.2. 120+ haste rating 2300+ healing and 185+ mp.5+ unbuffed stats on a priest should be obtainable with a full set of tier 6 quality loot and 4-5 pieces of haste gear.

the real question I guess is whether its better to resocket your gear for + healing exclusively, pick up haste gear, or both to lessen your regen from the level where its just a bit much and might even support sloppy or less skillful play. I know already I cancel fewer casts because I know I'm less likely to need the mana. Heck I've even taken to Mind blasting or casting SW:P on some fights just to spend some mana. I'm still not convinced haste itself is good, but it might be something players could at least afford to obtain.

And of course, continuing as things were pre-2.3 is still an option as well you could probably get some pretty ridiculous mana regen, and there's always more expensive spells to cast or other ways to burn mana if you're dedicated for finding them.

The problem with this is you need to have a solid set of T6 level gear first. If your just moving from T5 to T6 content the loss of mana regen will be fairly crippling. As for foregoing stam that seems crazy for a healer transition to T6. Our Raid leader has stated that healers that don't hit 10K health buffed won't be coming. Personally I will be relying on the recent buff to compensate for having to use non optimal stamina heavy gear once we get there. I expect that we will need every bit of regen we can scrounge up to make up for the fact that many healers have lost out on set gear to Tanks as we progressed through T5 content. could you honestly say you could afford to forgo stam and regen for haste when you first set foot in T6 content? I'm perfectly willing to admit that I have no first hand experience there and that our RL may be overstating the case, but talking to healers I know who are at that level it doesn't sound like he is.

As someone else said if your gear is good enough to allow you to swap to haste gear you probably have everything on farm anyway so honestly who cares? I could probably do a decent job of healing Kara in my dps set now but it doesn't make it good gear.

And as people have said before the slight increase in hps doesn't matter so what exactly are you gaining from taking haste? unlike dps healing is a zero sum game in that you can only heal damage that has occurred. so long as no one is at risk of dying and you don't run out of mana you have done everything you need to do. Having read through this thread I can't see how haste helps a healer achieve this goal? Honestly from a PvE perspective spell haste is primarily a dps stat that blizz has blindly lumped onto healer gear as all casters must want it. Just like warlock/mage gear has traditionally been well loaded with highly situational spirit.

What about healing touch?

Stacking on haste gear seems nice for it, if you spec for moonglow and HT you'll have 30% extra healing on it and 19% mana reduction cost to make up for the loss in mana regen.