In all honesty, at higher levels of play, 5/5 GoTEM and maxed haste (whatever it is.. 368?) is fine. There's really not a whole lot of talents in resto or balance worth taking a point out of GoTEM for. Make sense? Like, if there was some clear cut obvious place to put a point and it would make some massive difference, I would care. But it just doesn't matter that much. If you look at my spec, where would I put the point? Nourish is at best, like 5-10% of my total healing. That's why I dumped Nature's Grace, because I just don't direct heal enough for it to be worthwhile.

So if Rejuv/WG are like 90% or more of my effective HPS and all I care about is a 1 second GCD, it's kind of silly to stack haste. Trying to gain 150 more haste to drop 1 talent point is a little extreme I think. I'd rather just have more crit (Living Seed), lots more spellpower or stats. Sure, at some point you'll just hit 510 naturally through some of the best Ulduar gear. But I'm getting the impression that some players are going out of their way to wear questionable gear, just to get to 510 so they can spec 4/5 GoTEM. I'm just not sure that's really a worthwhile endeavor.

Here, I'll play a little game with talents to show what I mean. Here are the common talents most resto Druids take.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That leaves me with 7 talent points or 8 if I specc'd 4/5 GoTEM. Let's take it a step further and just take more talents common to higher end Druid builds.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now I still have 5/5 GoTEM with 2 talent points left, or 3 if I specc'd GoTEM. I submit that with those 2 remaining points, I'm just going to put them in Empowered Touch. They are in Imp Tranquility now, but those points will swap come 3.2. Now after all of that, let's say I take a point out of GoTEM. What am I going to do, spec 1/3 Brambles? Is trying to get 510 haste worth 1/3 Brambles? Or 1/3 Nature's Grace? Again, I know I'm sort of appealing to Druids who spec for hard modes, but I think this applies across the board. I just don't see a reason to go out of your way to get enough haste for 4/5 GoTEM. Look for more spellpower, stats and crit probably in that order if you can. If your haste reaches 510 at some point by accident, great. But don't wear odd mis-matched gear just to make 4/5 GoTEM work.

The argument is that it well...doesn't matter. Resto druids have essentially reached a point where we're basically min-maxing on the head of a pin. The marginal value of haste/crit or talent points beyond the 'core' talents are low enough that they'll nearly never make a meaningful impact in reality. I'll actually take it further than Vazu: if you're primarily using instant casts, even soft capping out haste is meaningless. A simple 200 haste (assuming full raid buffs) gives you somewhere in the 1.04-1.05 GCD range. How many druids can honestly say they're managing to hit a button the split instant their GCD is up each time to take advantage of that extra 0.04-0.05 seconds?

Better is a relative term, and we've reached the point where the benefits gained from exact min-maxing of gear/spec do not outweigh spending that time improving playstyle.

Moonkin keep making this argument too, but it's a bad one. If your reflexes/timing are such that you hit the next spell X seconds after the GCD ends, then haste is the difference between (1.00 + X) and (1.05 + X) effective cast time. It's just as valuable if X is greater than 0.05.

No negative argueing this time, I promise.

I agree. All I'm implying is that at some point a resto Druid has to ask himself. Would my raid really benefit if I could cast Nourish .2-.3 seconds faster? How many times have I saved a tank in my raid when that little extra time made a big difference? Wait, why am I direct healing the tank at all? This again goes back to theory vs. reality. The reality is that while math supports haste as a throughput stat, you actually have to cast something with a casting time for that to apply. Spreadsheets are no substitute for experience. If I literally never help tank heal (and I don't with anything but HOTs), why does having crazy fast Nourish casts matter? I donno. I guess again it comes down to your raid and what your guild needs from you. I won't imply people are wrong for stacking haste. But I guess I just think that in the end, it doesn't make that big of a difference right now.

If I have to cast Nourish, it's almost always because a tank healer died or I'm healing someone with damage debuff like Napalm on Mim or Slag Pot on Ignis, etc etc. But literally not one single time have I ever thought "Damn.. if I only had more haste that Nourish would have prevented so-and-so from dying." Sadly I think some guilded healers help cover for medicore players by doing things like casting spells which don't benefit the raid. Nourish can't proc Revitalize, etc. Just from an efficiency standpoint, my role is to raid heal. Haste doesn't help me do that much better right now unless something goes wrong with one of our direct healers. When that situation does arise, we usually adjust our strategy, not have resto Druids stack haste to make up for poor play. I donno. I just don't buy that haste is this super amazing stat for us in practice.

I don't think anybody is saying that haste is some super amazing stat. once you are soft-capped. I think the point is that you have to take some stat. and haste seems like the best choice.

Are you really just casting in a rhythm with no feedback when your haste value changes? I don't know how you cast instants, but I keep a very prominent GCD bar right next to my cast bar, and cast instants in roughly the same way that I cast other spells: watch the bar fill and time the next press with the end of it. I see no reason that I wouldn't get the full value of any incremental haste change.

When the haste value of my gear changes noticably I relearn my rhythm, yes. My argument is that there's a point where the reaction time between the bar filling and the speed with which you can push your button is such that the marginal benefit of haste goes to 0, and that it's before you're haste capped.

Natural human reaction time says that waiting for the bar to fill, then reacting to that and pressing the button is an effective haste loss (I've never heard of a voluntary reaction occuring that fast anyway) and so you're better off hitting a rhythm; how tight you can tune that rhythm is impacted by haste, but are you telling me you can notice the difference between 1.00 seconds and 1.01 seconds, or even 1.02 seconds well enough to hit a button in that difference consistently? That would be incredibly impressive, but I know I cannot.

E: I think we're arguing pointless stuff over an offhand comment I made.

1. If you are good on haste, Spirit is a fine stat. Not just for the spellpower, but rolling lifeblooms are still extremely effective, but the mana burden hurts.

2. Quartz has an option for a GCD cooldown. But in my experience, mashing the button is the only way to approximate the 1sec GCD in spite of lag.

All things being equal, in a battle between haste/crit/and spirit, spirit does win out, especially if you are past the haste cap. As noted, not only will spirit be the only throughput stat out of the 3 that directly helps your HoTs, the extra mana regen isnt a bad thing either.

In very few places do we have a spirit/haste/crit decision that makes sense. Off the top of my head the cloak enchant is the only one that actually comes to mind. Doing a direct comparrison between the two isnt very fair. Haste vs Crit however are often see competing for the same item budget on gear, which is why spirit isnt a major player in this conversation. After raid buffs a point of spirit will give you just under .2 SP which is nice, but it will take nearly 5 points of spirit to give you 1 spell power.

That being said, for all the reasons meantioned...there are some benefits to stacking haste. Faster cast times, even on the occasional cast direct healing spell just make healing easier. Some times in a 10 man group you may have trouble finding the right raid buffs, or perhaps something has gone wrong, and your shaman, Ret paladin, or moonkin has died. In any of these scenarios stacking extra haste past 359 will now have benefit, but the extra crit will not.

I'm not a pessimist, but these things do happen. I'm not saying that we should gear around our Ret paladins standing in the fire, but raid deaths are a real scenario, one that could rob you of a haste buff.

Let's not forget that not all spells you cast will be healing spells. In some fights (Yogg-Saron) a significant portion will be abolish poisons and decurses both of which are really only affected by haste. You'll probably also engage in doing some damage which (mana permitting) favors haste. On a similar note: you won't always be in range to that retribution paladin or moonkin for aura even when they aren't dead.

I think this post and others in the recent discussion on the value of the changes to Empowered Touch and the value of haste over the soft cap place undue value on maximizing HPS with not enough regard to the pivotal role of the healer, namely keeping the raid, and yourself, alive.

The theorycrafted HPS of nourish is clearly buffed by the change Empowered Touch, but I anticipate skipping that talent post 3.2 essentially because of how bad nourish is in comparison to other HoT's and the relative value of Improved Barkskin for mitigating AoE damage and reducing personal healing needed. The emprical value of nourish in a 25 man hardmode setting is nearly insignificant, accounting for an average of less than 5% of my healing, sometimes dipping into the sub 2% range. The total effective healing values of the four piece tier 8 bonus on rejuvination and often even of swiftmend eclipse the EHPS of Nourish.

That said, the on demand damage mitigation of barkskin is hugely useful in reducing healing load on yourself and other raid healers, and the increased damage reduction provided by 2/2 Improved Barkskin more than makes up for any potential HPS buff to nourish provided by the change to Empowered Touch in my opinion. On XT hard, Steelbreaker last, Freya x3, Firefighter, Hodir, Yogg, Algalon, and various other easier fights a well timed barkskin can be the difference between life and death, and although I do not have any mathematical values available, my gut tells me that the additional 10% mitigation, when you need it most, is more valuable than the buff to nourish through Empowered Touch.

This is the spec I have found to be the most successful for healing hardmodes in a 25 man setting, and barring additional patch notes I intend to use it going into 3.2:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It focuses on all the necessary buffs to HoTs while skipping all the direct heal talents aside from Nature's Bounty. It also includes both 3/3 Revitalize and 2/2 Improved Barkskin. Keep in mind that at lower gear levels 5/5 GoTEM is mandatory, I would probably remove one point from Nature's Grace to pick that up. Also, bear in mind that for 10 man hardmodes the value of direct heals is increased and points in the new Empowered Touch and possibly Tranquil Spirit will be more beneficial in that setting.