Holy priest haste vs other stats

[kaylun]

Why do I need a lot of haste as a holy priest?
My most used spells are instant cast, those being prayer of mending, circle of healing, and renew, in that order. Especially in 25 man raids where im useing coh every cooldown almost. I get that I need a little for single target healing and reducing gcd, but I'd much rather have crit over haste anyday, it procs so many things for us.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...unner&n=Kaylun

theres my armory. I use the cloak with mp5 for healing.

[gash46]

Depends on your playstyle. I was mainly disc, but for some hardmodes, and then for fun, I took a holy offspec for more burst. So my main heals are flash heal, PoM, PoH, GH and CoH. I let druids do the hot rolling. I use flash heal from time to time when things are calm, then use GH when it's useful, or PoH, rolling PoM regularly off a tank or a dps with aggro. So haste is great to get that really fast 20k heal out in the fastest time, a fast group heal, and the second one I cast is much faster (like on Mimiron hardmode, a priest with plenty of haste is good).

The other style, boosting renew and your other instants, requires a certain amount of haste to reduce the global cooldown to a minimum, but I can't tell you what that is haven't read into it much.

[Kelesti]

It's not just haste, it's Spellpower primary, Haste as a secondary.

Crit doesn't increase your thoroughput. It's a burst stat that can't be counted on, unless you require regen. RNG is Random, afterall. The thing is, as a raid healer, your "go to" spell is often Prayer of Healing. Having this spell hit harder does very little, having it hit faster so you can already move onto another target is better.

Haste on instant is meh (it helps, but nowhere near SP on those). But for Prayer, you really really don't need crit/sp to make it hit harder. >.>

[kaylun]

I dont think you read my post, I use circle waaay more often than prayer of healing and renews and flash heals in between the cooldowns. Prayer of healing is nice but circle is so much better because its a smarter heal that heals a raid and not just a party. I dont have to be looking at the raid and deciding on which group needs healing more. If theres an all tank group then yeah prayer of healing is definetly a preferred spell.

And with a glyph coh heals 6 targets.

[Azyoulike]

I dont think you read my post, I use circle waaay more often than prayer of healing and renews and flash heals in between the cooldowns. P
And with a glyph coh heals 6 targets.

So what? Until you're at the haste soft-cap it increases the throughput of instants just as much as anything else. There's a common misconception that haste is better for longer cast spells. It's not, it just stays good for them for longer.

[Kelesti]

There's a common misconception that haste is better for longer cast spells. It's not, it just stays good for them for longer.

The noticable benefit of haste amps up more on longer cast (for example 3 second) spells much longer than an instant or 1.5 second cast.

[Worshaka]

The noticable benefit of haste amps up more on longer cast (for example 3 second) spells much longer than an instant or 1.5 second cast.

Or in other words... 50% haste on a 1.5 or instant spell is worth 0.5 seconds where as on a 3 second spell its worth 1 second... so in terms of reaction time, lag, all the things that matter in practicality, you get more benefit from the longer spells because the raw amount of time saved is what the player can use rather than the % or ratio difference (which is obviously the same).

If you're gemming/gearing for throughput a balance of SP & haste is a good thing, i wouldn't just choose one of those stats and go crazy.

[Verzerrung]

I dont have to be looking at the raid and deciding on which group needs healing more.

Then you are not really doing your job are you? Your providing mediocre support for the other raid healer carrying you.

Next time you see them you should probably kiss their ass a bit.

[Azyoulike]

The noticable benefit of haste amps up more on longer cast (for example 3 second) spells much longer than an instant or 1.5 second cast.

Yes, but going from 0->10% haste will increase the amount of instants you cast per minute by 10% just as it will increase the number of 3second cast spells per minute by 10%.

Unless your latency is evil, haste is just as good for instants as for long cast times.

[nehh]

The key is to balance your stats.

If you have aquired good gear
- haste stacking till ~780 because of gcd
- rest into spell and regen like spell/spirit gems

Works fine for me and i do use instant 99% of the time

[DaruneAlbane]

Then you are not really doing your job are you? Your providing mediocre support for the other raid healer carrying you.

Next time you see them you should probably kiss their ass a bit.

OMG i agree with you here .. the priest is not doing his job as a raid healer and the other healers are carrying him

[Doctavice]

I would change that meta from the 2% int to the chance to restore mana on spellcast, this could easily close the gap and allow you to gem more for thoroughput than regen as you seem to be now. I would definitley reccomend gearing primarily for haste (if you arent having mana issues) until around 400 and then try to balance your stats a bit.

Once you are out of the woods and regen doesnt seem to be an issue for you gem haste til around 12% then go pure spellpower. Just because alot of our spells are instant or low cast time (serendipityx3) doesnt make haste a bad stat, it will still reduce the GCD and allow you to get more spells off in a given period of time which will generally return the higher HPS than even spellpower.

While it may seem obvious I would also reccomend getting your hands on a solace because it will give you alot more flexibility in your gemming/gearing.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...th&n=Doctavice

[Zeuq]

As others have touched on, the reason Haste is good is really two fold. First, obviously, it helps with getting your longer casts, mostly PoH, to land faster and it helps with getting more GCDs. But mostly, it's just because Crit isn't very good after a certain point. The throughput on Crit is not dependable, so it doesn't change your spell selection. Does it crit? great, maybe it'll make it so another healer doesn't have to come by and top them off, otherwise if it's already topping them off, it doesn't mean anything.

As for what it procs, it procs Inspiration, SoL, and HC. Inspiration isn't something to really be concerned about unless you're tank healing, so it's nice when it procs, but otherwise... meh. Holy Concentration is great, but the contribution of Crit to it's uptime has heavy diminishing returns after around 25-30%; besides, once you reach a point where mana isn't much of an issue, stacking more crit for more HC uptime doesn't count for much. Finally, SoL will proc more, but with so many multi-target heals going off, it procs enough after around 25-30% Crit that more procs are pretty much wasted.

So, as you can see, getting more crit will continue to proc stuff, but one of them is generally meh, one of them is purely for regen with diminishing returns, and one is useful, but also has some effect of diminishing returns. Meanwhile, Haste scales linearly with your throughput, and is an amazing throughput stat in the right situation. So, yes, Crit is good when you still need more of those procs, but eventually the diminishing returns on those procs is outweighed by the throughput offered by Haste. And, as you probably can tell, IME, that point is around 25-30% raid buffed; you may need a different amount depending on how you gear.

[kaylun]

Then you are not really doing your job are you? Your providing mediocre support for the other raid healer carrying you.

Next time you see them you should probably kiss their ass a bit.

Its not like I dont do that, its that holy spells and talents allow for an easier approach and automatic healing ie better prayer of mending, circle of healing.

god any chance to jump on someone in forums you take huh?

[syanid]

Its not like I dont do that, its that holy spells and talents allow for an easier approach and automatic healing ie better prayer of mending, circle of healing.

god any chance to jump on someone in forums you take huh?

You shouldn't really pay attention to Fryr, he's just another forum troll with absolutely wrong specs, gems, metagems and close to no achievements or hard modes done.

As for the whole haste debate, I personally don't like it but I don't avoid it. Others mentioned stats balance and given their examples. When you hit certain crit / regen / sp point, you might want some more haste for lower gcd so you can have more spells rolling out.

That again depends on you, your raid and what seems to be the thing missing in order to improve your contribution.

[Kelesti]

Its not like I dont do that, its that holy spells and talents allow for an easier approach and automatic healing ie better prayer of mending, circle of healing.

god any chance to jump on someone in forums you take huh?

Except unless you're running with something retarded like 9 healers, all you're spamming is Mending and Circle because

[*]I use circle waaay more often than prayer of healing... [*]Prayer of healing is nice but circle is so much better because its a smarter heal that heals a raid and not just a party.[*]I dont have to be looking at the raid and deciding on which group needs healing more. [*]If theres an all tank group then yeah prayer of healing is definetly a preferred spell.[*]And with a glyph coh heals 6 targets.

... yeah, I'd have to say 9 healers, or you're letting yourself be carried.

[zoowks]

agree with kelesti.
stop worrying about haste and learn to be a holy priest.
you're lazy and bad if you don't want to look at groups and see who is low.
most often its raid damage to either whole raid, range, or melee. in which case your raid should be split in groups of ranged/melee separately so your POH is most effective. POH is amazing. use it. let druids be the main hot people.

[eroedice]

You are not a druid. Your instants are more of a proactive healing strategy. At least in my opinion. My rotation consists of PoM'g the tank, throwing a renew once it jumps and checking the rest of the raid. We are AOE healers and as such, we should use our aoe heals- NOT JUST INSTANTS! CoH was given a 6 sec CD because lazy priests were spamming it in BC raids and not utilizing every spell they have. Do you ever use Divine hymn? It is a very good aoe heal for the WHOLE raid especially when there is constant moving. And since Blizz nerfed our PoH, Divine Hymn can fill that gap. Serendipity is beneficial for the reduction in casting times for PoH and GH.

Be a smarter Holy priest.. not just an instant one. If all you do is throw instants, other healers are carrying you and you are not beneficial to a raid at all. CoH will NEVER do the job PoH will do- especially since PoH is no longer party restricted.

The only haste I have is from my gear. I gem for sp and spirit as needed to keep it at it's level since we have 3 talents based on spirit.

Holy priests have so many healing spells because we have to be smart enough to know when to use each one. Sometimes a GH is better than 2 FH. Sometimes because of cast time, 2 FH are better. use your judgement but keep in mind Holy priests are mainly suited for AOE healing and not single target.

[eroedice]

Heh.. forgot to mention Eroedice is my mage. Aeltheia is my priest on Fizzcrank.

[wooper4000]

It was mentioned earlier of a soft cap for haste. I recently joined a raiding guild and I believe I know my priest fairly well but was told I needed more haste. I never stacked it and was running with 430 haste from gear. I am now at 604 with gems and enchants. Its nice to cast a FH in 1.28 but is it necessary? Feed back welcome please.