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The Importance of Haste as a Resto Druid

Wrinklefingr writes:

I’ve been discussing something with a friend at work… how important haste is for a restro druid.   I can’t seem to find this information anywhere… I currently enchant and gem for Spellpower and spirit.   I don’t use nourish or rejuv alot, i stick to the hots and heal just fine in most situations.   I never seem top the heal charts tho, even with the highest “active” times.   My one clue is that I might need haste for some reason.

Thanks for writing in!  Haste is extremely important for a restoration druid, especially one like you that tends to blanket a raid with HoTs.  Related Articles: Haste as a Tree,  Resto & Haste

When you say you stick to HoTs I assume you mean you are casting rejuvenation on as many people as possible most of the time, in anticipation of incoming damage… or as it’s normally called “blanketing” the raid.  The one thing limiting how quickly those HoTs go out is your global cooldown (GCD) which is by default 1.5 seconds.  Using talents and haste it is possible for a druid to reach our “soft haste cap” of a 1 second GCD.  Your GCD can never be lower than 1 second.

So basically, if you have a 1 second GCD you can get out 15 instant-cast spells in 15 seconds.  If you are at the default GCD of 1.5 seconds, you can get out 10 spells.  15 heals > 10 heals.  This is why we want to have our GCD soft capped.

So how do you get soft capped?  First let’s look at talents.  I think it goes without saying that you want 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother.  I also strongly recommend that any tree that is not haste capped go down the balance tree far enough to get 3/3 Celestial Focus.  Related Article: Druid Spec & Talents

Then you stack haste via gear, gems, and enchants.  If you have a moonkin -or- a paladin running swift ret aura along with a shaman dropping wrath of air you need less haste.  Assuming these people are in your raid you need 735 haste with celestial focus talented, and 856 with it not talented.  [view full chart]

Although spell power and spirit are both awesome stats for a druid, I recommend the following focus:

Haste (until capped) > Spell Power > Spirit > M/5 > Intellect > Crit > other

Only swap the spirit and the spell power around if you for some reason have mana issues :)

Hope this helps!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Druid, Restoration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “The Importance of Haste as a Resto Druid”

  1. [...] your raid healing spec that you have gone down to celestial focus so I assume you are aware of the importance of haste for a resto druid.  That is a great start!  I also don’t see any flaws with your tank healing spec, although [...]

  2. I disagree with the importance of haste over spellpower. My perspective for this is 5 and 10 mans. Not everyone is constantly taking damage so not everyone needs HoTs. When you get that massive haste to get HoTs on everyone, how much of them will be wasted? This will be less true in 25 mans but more true in 10 mans. Even in our 10 man raid, I am not quite haste-capped due to lacking Wrath of Air totem but I am close enough. I still gem purely full spell power because I don’t need to be rolling HoTs on everyone. I am a much more aggressive healer in 10 man; I don’t simply roll HoTs and let other people get them back up, I am in charge with getting them back up myself!

    So whereas haste can improve your throughput for the group, spell power increases your throughput for a single target. Thusly, as a pure 10 man raiding resto druid, I view spell power just as important as haste. This doesn’t mean I’m necessarily going to wear a crit piece because it has higher spell power. But one must consider the combination of haste and spell power instead of just haste vs. spell power.

    That’s my take on it. You can get all the HoTs you want out on people but it doesn’t matter if they’re not taking damage. Aura fights (Blood-Queen) and other similar fights promote the gemming of haste but most other fights seem to promote the gemming of spell power, in my opinion.

    In 25 mans? If I wasn’t haste capped, I would probably focus more on getting haste capped, even gemming for it. But as for 10 mans, I am equally responsible in bursting people up and I prefer to stick to gemming spell power. Haste gear will all be mine; I’m more or less haste-capped through having every piece be haste with the Moonkin/Ret Pally aura. Now to just get that damn elusive Wrath of Air in a 10 man….

  3. I’m a main tank healer in my raid group. A general breakdown for my healing over the course of an ICC25 would be: 30% Rejuv, 25% Regrowth, 15% Lifebloom, 10% WG, 10% Nourish, 10% Other (Swiftmend, Living Seed, Abacus Proc, HT). I also heal Val with 90% of my healing on her being Nourish.

    My haste is 700 and as it creeps higher and higher, my crit is going down the drain. I’m worried about losing Living Seed procs as well as Nature’s Grace while spamming Nourish.

    What do you think? Haste still super important for those of us assigned to Main Tank healing 95% of the time?

  4. Archdruid Angela on February 17th, 2010 at 8:34 pm

    Bith – Implying that someone who rolls hots is not an aggressive raid healer seems a bit ignorant. I won’t even get into stats to focus on for 5 mans because I honestly don’t think anyone cares that much. For 10 mans, I would still say haste capping is a good thing. Being able to have 10 rejuves rolling while still full Hotting the tank is really handy. And no shit, if peoples health is low you get them back up… that doesn’t make you a “special” druid, its what I’d hope we all do.

    I’m not trying to be mean, and if you want to focus on spell power over haste, although I disagree you are welcome to that opinion. But please don’t try to tell people hotting the raid involves ignoring all the other stuff a healer is expected to do in a 10 man.

  5. Archdruid Angela on February 17th, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    Confier – If you are mostly focusing on the tanks I think that at some point the haste would become useless. For example, it does no good to have your nourish casting in under 1 second because you’ll still be limited by it’s global cooldown. For your type of healing I can understand why you may be more focused on crit. I’m not a tank healer myself, so I can’t say at exactly what point of haste you should change your focus, but I’m sure you’ll “feel” when it’s right! :) Good luck to you!

  6. I’ve worked with TreeCalcs and Rawr quite a bit. Stat weightings suggest that your advice is incorrect for 10-man druids, particularly if they take tank healing assignments. Haste is important but with a wider mix of spells, NG kicks in from Nourish crits and Lifebloom is soft capped well below the RJ cap. Our crit rate on Nourish is quite high, so it is somewhat unusual for a tank healer to need to crank out heals and not have a NG proc in the first couple casts. I’m finding that above 650ish haste (with CF, swift ret, no WoA) tools predict more benefit in single-target HPS from spellpower. For pure rejuv/WG spam, haste is marginally better since I’m below the soft cap, but not enough better to suggest I should gem for it and gimp my single target healing.

  7. This is just what I have been looking for. I had stoped playing for a month or two and when I did I was having the issue you detailed. Im am yet to try out adding more haste but from your post it makes sense. Anyway love your site, I look forward to reading your next post.

  8. Excellent guide to the haste discussion. Really helped me explain to less math / chart inclined people in the world where they want to sit and why. Thanks a bunch for it.

  9. Haste (until capped) > Spell Power > Spirit > M/5 > Intellect > Crit > other

    I see a lot of druids gemming Intel and Mp5 in 251/264 tear when they’re obviously not haste capped. Am I missing something?

  10. Archdruid Angela on March 8th, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    They’re doing it wrong :)

  11. haste is an important stat for a druid – less GCD, faster hots (rejuv glyph) , faster casts at any mom of the fight , regardless of the spell caster ( nourish / regr / HT ) . I find Haste as being a prio stat. Playing with @ 4 – 4.2k sp fully buffed in raids ( procs and stuff ) and the healing is great. u know.. none dies when u have a druid in raid :P

    regards, respect, peace,
    Prozah.

  12. bith wrote:”I disagree with the importance of haste over spellpower. My perspective for this is 5 and 10 mans. Not everyone is constantly taking damage so not everyone needs HoTs. When you get that massive haste to get HoTs on everyone, how much of them will be wasted?”

    i can understand you view on this and in fights where there’s no need for a blanket then you could say haste loses value. i keep a blanket up in every 10man i’m in, sometimes only melee classes but i try to keep rejuv’s running on all members of the group, simple reason: nourish hits hard and swiftmend without having to apply rejuv or regr on target. when it all goes perfect then yh i rock the charts on overhealing, when something goes bad than i’m ready to pick up and keep the group going. i try to gear for the worse i guess

    seed wrote:”I see a lot of druids gemming Intel and Mp5 in 251/264 tear when they’re obviously not haste capped. Am I missing something?”

    /w them and tell ‘m they’re messing up there gear set. the poor souls obviously need some advice

  13. OMG!!! Thank you soooo much!! You have a great site and chock full of useful, easy to understand info! This undercapped haste dru really appreciated it!

  14. Im currently at 856 haste exactly with 3.5k sp and around 1100 mp5 unbuffed would you say that is where i should be at 5964 gs ?

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