Haste vs Mastery sweet spot (Resto)

[Whydrood]

Ok, so I've been playing around with my druids stats lately and I've come to a few conclusions, but I need help figuring out the rest - and the guides stickied above aren't much help (the resto guide links to a post about 4.3 cata resto healing).

I run 10m and I, along with my priest friend, are expected to 2 heal pretty much every fight. So far this has been possible as we are progressing through normal pretty rapidly after figuring out that its probably best to 3 heal Megaera and a couple other bosses with our raid comp. So I am trying to find the best way to improve my heals.

If I go 3043 haste, I can gain 9.3% mastery and get 33% buffed mastery.
If I stay at 6659 haste (so I get the most out of Incarnation and SoTF) I will remain at about 26% mastery (buffed).

What's confusing me the most about these 2 options is that I see druids with higher ilvls getting the 3043 haste cap, dumping the rest into crit and mastery, and still coming out with ~26% mastery buffed (~20% unbuffed) - so I wonder where does the rest of the item budget go? Is there something I am missing here?

Any help would be appreciated.

[manamonster]

I always go for the 3043 haste breakpoint and just dump the rest in to mastery & crit & spi (if I need spirit since most of my gear is moonkin gear). Works well for me.

[Migraine]

It's much easier to compare unbuffed numbers, in all likelihood they are putting that budget into spirit, either that or they are putting it in int by ways of gemming.

Unbuffed I have:
32% mastery
3043 haste
10k spirit

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...orous/advanced

I wouldn't go with the 2nd haste point until its unavoidable through gear level the stats you lose for that haste aren't worth it.

[Lostep]

its pretty simple dumping another 3500 stats into haste to get 1 extra Wild Growth tick is an awful idea even more so because you are in a 10 man. Harmony is a direct output increase. I am even geming int/mastery and spirit/mastery now no pures not saying its the best but mastery is pretty powerful for resto.

I am currently at a 520 ilvl

11,034 spirit
21,727 intellect
3043 haste
856 crit
8,296 mastery which is 27.28%

[Aerna]

The only reason why you would want to have more than 3043 haste is if you have too much haste and can't reforge back to 3043.

[Deleted]

Unbuffed I have:

24000 intellect
8000 spirit
3400 haste
20% crit
21% mastery

This is with 520 ilvl, mostly moonkin gear/gemming (int, int/crit and int/spirit).

Enough for me to 2-heal all normal fights and manage Jin'rohk, Tortos and Ji'kun HC, so it seems to work out.

[Deleted]

At ilvl 524 I'm at:

22.2k Int
11.6k Spi
3044 Haste
12.1% Crit
28.35% Mastery

I decided early on in the tier to not go past the 3043 breakpoint, and just focus on mastery. The amount of raw healing you lose out on just for an extra tick of WG is too much to justify it, considering WG is at best 20% of my healing output. Luckily the gear from ToT seems to supplement this, with solid mastery items in almost every slot. Crit is worse than mastery but I won't ignore it if the item is an ilvl upgrade (like the Jin'Rokh cloak and bracers). I gem Mastery over Int because at a 2:1 conversion rate it's simply more healing.

Currently considering dropping some spirit for mastery, especially after having received the legendary gem. The amount of mana it saves is staggering.

[Whydrood]

Well I decided to test this out in LFR, the biggest difference I see between the 2 builds is that I don't need to rely on my regen (trinket/innervate) as much as I did with the haste build - which is a welcome change, however I don't feel my heals are substantially stronger. I am going to stick with this build for now until I can test it out in a 10 man setting next week. Thanks for the advice.

[Lleaff]

the actual difference in overall healing between the mastery and haste build is technically fairly minimal. People fixate on the few % difference in HPS in a no-overheal scenario (which rarely happens) and consider it dumb to gear/gem any other way.

The reality of the matter is that dependent on the fight, your own play style, reaction speed, classes you heal alongside etc. either build could work better for you. Use both and see what your most comfortable with. I've healed with both builds and can say they both feel fine, i've even dropped down to 7k'ish spirit once to reach the next cap while keeping mastery and just relied heavily on SoTF wild growth during the quick spikes to do a large amount of my heals when they are actually needed.

[Deleted]

at 520ilvl and 2 healing everything with a disc priest im running with

unbuffed
20.9k int
19.5% mastery
14.7k spirit
14.6% crit
3043 cap haste

atm I feel there isnt much gain going for the higher haste cap especially with 2 healing. I even have too much spirit for 2 healing 12/12 normal mode. but going into 2 healing hcs now ill be staying how I am to begin with and see how much strain it is. and definately when I get the meta gem spirit will be able to be reforged into quite a bit more mastery. but with the 4set there is more gain I feel staying at the 3043 haste cap and going for mastery and depending on playstyle. spirit as well...hope this helps atall

eu draenor - sintam

[devildjz]

It is Depend what Kind of Setup you are running if your setup provides u enough Mana CD then u can avoid some of Spirit and go for other stat like mastery or crit atm haste i good at 3043 and reaching higher break point didnt worth that much the thing you mention there that soem druids have higher gear but 26% of mastery and 3043 Haste cap they are focusing on spirit cuase mostly there setup dont have enough mana CD to handle they GEM for pure spirit also but in my opinion atm Haste 3043 is good enough for druid dont go second haste until ur near to that break point that haste break point didnt worth that much to sacrifice mastery

[Skagasm]

This isn't a hard comparison -- assuming all your Haste is being taken from Mastery.

You lose 7.5% additive healing to gain 12.5% Healing on Wild Growth and Swiftmend's AoE. Haste's benefits outside of breakpoints are severely limited for Resto because our primary filler is Rejuv which has a 1 sec GCD baseline. There are some benefits in reducing the GCD/cast time of WG, SM/RG, but they're very limited. If you're not doing something close to 50% of your healing with Wild Growth and Swiftmend's AoE, which is basically impossible if you're playing well and doing challenging content, there's no good reason to go for the 6660 breakpoint.

If you have an excess of Haste that makes it difficult to reforge down to 3045 and an overabundance of Spirit it could be reasonable to reach for the breakpoint, but it's generally better advice to just stack all the Mastery/Spirit you can muster.