Discussion on Haste for Resto

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f207/60212-too-much-haste-resto-shammy.html

An interesting thread discussing Haste vs. SP vs. Crit vs. Mp5 as it relates to resto shaman gear choices, and more importantly, epic gem choices.

I am of the mindset that haste (up to 1036 rating or ~30%) is the best stat to stack for overall raid performance and throughput. Your only other consideration should be for Mp5, and even then, only if you're constantly going OOM and causing wipes. Your best option is to find the best mana regen trinkets you can get so that you can mostly ignore Mp5 in almost all other slots. With raid buffs, Mana Spring/Tide Totems, water shield, replenishment, and an emergency Mana Pot or Innervate on longer fights, you should be fine.

SP vs. Haste
Only two stats reliably boost your throughput: SP and Haste. Every piece of gear besides your trinkets is going to have a fair amount of SP on it. The same cannot be said for Haste, which is partly why I gem for it. I think that certain epeen tard players want to be able to spam "ZOMG 3500+ Heals Shammy LF Hardest Raid Content!!!" in chat. While that works for a mage (Arty!), you have to factor in the concept of Overhealing as a Healer. A DPS class cannot Overkill until the boss is dead. This happens once every 5-10 minutes on boss fights, and thus deserves no consideration for PvE. This concept is ironically in part why a lot of PvP casters DO stack haste - less overkill, more effective damage to multiple targets amongst other benefits.

So as a healer, since most spells have some component of overhealing, SP is going to contribute heavily to your overhealing, but not necessarily as much to your effective healing. I prefer the healing style of being proactive, and keeping the raid topped off with small quick heals, rather than relying on my Spell Power to bail me out when I fall behind due to slower cast times or poor reaction time. Especially as a class with only one fairly weak HoT, and almost all direct healing spells, haste just makes sense.

I'm sure that there are certain situations where spellpower is better. Maybe pure tank healing - where you need spams just to keep them alive is one possibility. Even then, there is probably a minimum value of SP that you have to reach to overtake the benefits of haste. You then have to consider how often you're going to be assigned to heal the main tank as a Shammy. With Kyndness and Bubble making every major raid, I'm really not too worried about this in the near future.

One last note - I typically choose Crit over Mp5. Crit is a hybrid throughput/regen stat for shammies. Stacking Haste and crit has a lot of synergy with the Improved Water Shield talent. Crit can also benefit your chain heal as much as spellpower since each link can crit, and it's a diminishing smart heal. I would never, ever gem for crit or seek to stack it on my gear since it is unreliable. However I think it gives a greater benefit, per item point allotted than Mp5. Blizzard attempted to correct this by boosting Mp5 on ALL items in the game not too long ago, and probably will have to again soon since Resto shammies basically roll Ele/Dps caster nowadays.

Being a JC I have to +34 haste gems and one of the SP gems. The only reason I have the SP is to meet a socket requirement. All of my yellow sockets have haste gems in them. If they are tier 9 quality or higher they have epic gems and if lower they have the blue gems in them. I am a lot like you norm in that I do not worry much about spell power in my gear. If I have the option to pick up more haste, MP5, or crit at the cost of spell power I will. If I have a red socket I put spell power in it, yellow are always haste, right now for blue gems I have been putting spell power with mp5 on it but that could easily be changed to haste.

In the past I have tried different combinations of gems and gear to see what is best. I have tried all int/crit gems for a crit based build. I have tried all spell power to get it as high as possible. finally I tried all haste. The spell power build was terrible because I basically had slow heals that were only slightly higher than normal. In the course of a boss fight I went oom and could not do much. With a total mana/crit build I could last a little longer but I still had slow casts and lower than normal heals. I was critting a lot, but overall other healers were simply casting faster and beating me to the heal. Finally when I tried the haste build I saw much more improvement. I had faster cast times, that made up the spell power and crit that I lost. In the end I came up with this Haste > Crit > MP5 > Spell power.

This is how I typically try to gem and look for when I gear up. MP5 is extremely important for resto shamans, but I learned quickly in wrath that it is impossible for us to get to a number that actually keeps our mana up. If it was up in the 1,000's we wouldn't need mana pots or our mana spring/mana tide totems. If I have enough mana to res someone at the end of a boss fight I am happy, but it would be a complete waste for us to gem totally for MP5.

We have the same style of healing in that I am a proactive healer. If someone is down 1000 hit points I will heal them in the hopes they take more damage and it gets healed instantly. I like my raid members to have full health as much as possible. This is why I hate anub in TOC. That fight drives me nuts. As for main tank healing, unless it is a 10 man we should not be doing it because it wastes our purpose as a healer. Can we do it? Sure we all have before. Is it feesible? Not at all. We truly are better suited for "raid" heals or quick spot heals with rip tide and lesser healing waves. If I have to heal the tank it is inevitable that I will have to cast a normal healing wave at some point and me casting that is the fast track to going oom in about 20 seconds.

All-in-all norm I think we are on the same page and have the same play style. I think we have since we healed together in BC

Hopefully this helps out some other people that are thinking of going resto.

i need more SPELL POWER!, but i roll a priest

Hairtie stacks spirit/agil

what a noob.