In a Raid Environment you should only need 175 Haste to reach the Hastecap,
You get 5% of the Wrath of Air Totem of the Elemental Shaman
and another 3% of the improved Moonkin Aura.

Adding up to:

20% Gift of the Earthmother
5% Wrath of Air Totem
3% Improved Moonkin Aura
5,34% Haste of yoour 175 Haste Rating
33,34 Spell Haste for LB, RJ & WG

But this "much" haste you are "forced" to have, because so much Items in WotLK have haste on them...
Having said this I would even go so far to say you should prefer crit over haste.

I'm of this mindset as well - Haste is sorta useless, even without the cap (if only because we don't *need* to squeeze our heals into a 7 second cycle). Crit is rendered useless by the natural 50% on Regrowth, though it does help Swiftmend/Nourish/HT, and we get bonuses from Nature's Grace/Living Seed with our Crits. Straight mp5 costs far too much, I'd much rather just see straight stats + SP gear if anything. Though really I think they need to give us some way to scale with Crit, like Shadowform or that Lock talent. Though that might be a different issue entirely.

What you're saying flies in the face of how itemization currently works. The amount of SP on an item is more or less fixed (+- a few), given it's slot and item level. In addition, as tiers progress, you get more stats, not less. Blue items usually have 4 while the T7 epics have 5.
The only real way to cheat on SP is via gemming. Hence, as a general rule of thumb, items with sockets are better than ones without - assuming the same ilevel, of course.
The lack of scaling from haste and crit has been rehashed here, dating back to WotLK beta. Yes, we scale poorly with both stats - but our SP scaling is unmatched. In blizzard's eyes, this evens out.

Improved Regrowth does not make Crit Rating useless.
Without any Crit Rating you have around 60%~ raid buffed for Regrowth? not exactly reliable - you would have to assume it will not be a critical and enjoy the bonus if it does because it is not far off a 1:1.
Crit Rating will help you push that up into the values (75%+) where you can almost always count on it being a critical which is obviously a much better place to be in for healing.

Our magical SP scaling is nothing different from a Shadow Priest or Affliction Loc however? or have I missed something where they lost a chunk of that before they got crit conversion talents?.

Haste also will allow you to dump out points in GoTEM which might be useful - this is generally not worth it if you intend to put those points in Natural Perfection though.

It does all depend on your healing style in the end. If Nourish, RG or even HT end up being a high % of your healing then it will be worth investing gear into enhancing it provided that this does not compromise your SP in any significant way.
With WG having a CD and the unknown in Ulduar we might end up having to use direct heals for raid healing as HoTs will not cut it like they do on Sapphiron and such - who knows.



Don't forget about Haste though - just because your spells are cast faster, allowing you to put out better HPS per spell, this does not mean that you are spending more mana to do so.
If you only need to cast 10x RG then Haste will allow you do to do this much faster without any additional cost - if you are just going to spam (stupidly) RG for 20 seconds then Haste will end up costing you mana but you will also get a larger return of HPS from doing so (wether it is effective or not... another story).

Well, I'm aiming for about 400 haste rating. Because can't always count on having all buffs, especially in 10-mans :o But beyond that, it does seem more important to achieve consistent RG crits, than faster RG casts.

75% RG crit + Glyph + Living Seed is just mean ;o

100% crit? I like :o

With moonkin aura and a healthy Intel, you will need about 1500 crit rating to max out Regrowth. That's a ton of crit, but I suppose doable. And then Regrowth becomes incredibly potent.

I would just like some quick confirmation, since Wowhead seems to be a bit unclear on it, but judging by the iLevel 213 I assume that [Idol of Awakening] only drops in Naxx25, right?

Can someone with sufficient privileges create a new thread concerning Spell Rotations / Healing strategies?

My post count is too low and its bad enough I have to reply to an itemization thread with this crap, but I don't want to add questions about rotations along with it. I dunno, maybe you guys don't care and this is good enough of a place Let me know.

In general I would argue that those builds, while they will work, are not the most effective method of healing. By nature we are still a HoT based class, and considering how well HoTs scale, those builds will likely get outpaced (at the higher regen etc) levels.

The 1s HT build puts you below your GCD also, half second casts aren't really super helpful if you will have to spend the next (0.7s) doing nothing.

Did some rough calculations, and prior to Malygos this is the crit that's possible:

1600 intel (gear+buffs) ~10% crit
800 crit rating (gear/enchants/buffs) ~ 17 crit
Improved Regrowth/Natural Perfection (talents) 53%
Moonkin Aura 5%

Putting the total at 85% crit for Regrowth. About 40% for Nourish/Healing Touch :o This also doesn't require anything particularly special, except making sure all your gear has some crit rating on it. You should still end up getting plenty of haste and mana regen.

If you really prioritize crit, you can get about another 5% from gear/gems. Now, the fact that we can't reach 100% crit, to me at least, means it's not worth going all-out just yet. But once the Uldar raid comes out, that may very well be the way to go heading into Icecrown.

Hmm you're right, messed my math somewhere. It should be about 1200-1300 intel. Which is a couple percent crit less, but still high. Also this is only about prioritizing crit over haste; not prioritizing crit over anything else. Gems/enchants/gear should all still be spellpower based.

It doesn't seem like we can reach 100% RG crit with what's available. But even with "just" an 80% crit rate, that's nothing to scoff at. We're always using Regrowth. That + Regrowth glyph + living seed proc + Nature's Grace = very mean healing :o In short, standing by my original point. Would rather have 800 crit rating than 800 haste rating.

Edit: the more I think about it, the more it seems we don't need that much spirit. Guess it's nice to give your innervate to someone else. But why should we? Don't the classes which can most benefit from innervate already stack a bunch of spirit/intel? So shouldn't they be fine on their own, and we can save innervate for our own regeneration? If so, then it may be possible to stack crit, while sacrificing some spirit for haste. (to get to the soft cap) Then with replenishment and innervate, we should be able to make up the spirit loss.

Now I'm not considering totally devaluing spirit. Only itemizing no spirit on 3-4 pieces, and using intel/spellpower/haste/crit gear in those slots. Then stacking other gear intel/spirit/spellpower/crit. Does that seem doable? Stacking intel/spellpower/crit as much as possible, while dividing priority equally between spirit/haste. Almost a moonkin itemization, except we give up more haste for spirit.