Do you prefer haste or master as holy?

[Kelesti]

The 12.5% thing is stupid; surprised Kel or Spiritus hasn't said something yet.

I've been trying to avoid slamming my face into my desk, avoiding this topic. I didn't want another concussion.

The haste "soft cap" for renew is the most retarded thing i've ever heard.

We have a winner!

Mastery and silly "12.5% haste cap" is for 25man, Haste is for 10man. At least, that's what I've gathered.

I go all haste, I like fast casts.

All haste works wonders in 25s too. As does Haste/Mastery hybrid, where you're giving up spirit to get there.

[angael]

Mostly mastery with some haste from items.

[-Ethos-]

Im a Haste addict.

Currently, ive taken enough Haste to hit a flat 2 second cast on PoH/Heal with spriest aura, and have just balanced the rest out with Mastery.

That, and the Shamans in our 25 mans snipe heal like crazy then complain how quick they go oom, so to make cry that little bit more i stack more Haste and snipe them back.

[allele]

My 25man guild is in heroic modes so stacking haste has been more beneficial for me personally. After analyzing logs I saw my mastery was just doing more overheal than anything. I did mastery stacking during normal modes and the passive healing was great. But with hard modes, sometimes the few miliseconds is vital to landing a heal making haste valued more than mastery.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

I go 12.5% haste, rest mastery.
not because haste is OP until 12.5 and useless above or anthing like that, I dont want to argue :-)
its just preferance. I like having the additional tick on renew, divine hymn and manahymn, but also the casttime reduction the 12.5% haste provide.
but in the end, I cant see a pure haste stacking gear selection, because I just prefer to increase my heals (hpm) rather than to cast my heals faster (hps).

and no, Echo of Light is NOT "mostly overheal". no not at all. it normally has similar overheal % as rest of heal, ie 20%, can be higher, depending on fight, but never goes above 50% overheal, if you and your mates heal reasonably.
I'm luky, I heal with Hpally, hschamy (10man), which means, that my partners ae heal is mostly peroidical (radiance, healing rain), so its quite easy to estimate the needed heal and I wont overheal with PoH and its hots (glpyh+eol)

and for tankheal, I find EoL golden. Tanks take periodical damage, and eol does periodical heal, and given its 1sec tick time, it will allways heal between 2 boss hits. it also makes your overhealing spells still do effective heal, so it actually often has the oposite effect, than to "only land in overheal"
if your at full mana, you can build up a decent eol hot by just heal spamming the tank.

I just like our mastery :-D

[Uggorthaholy]

I get to 7.5% haste self buffed (2 points in darkness, so 5.5% from gear)
I then stack mastery.

I have 3 pieces (T11 pants, VP ring, BoE crafted spirit belt) that are above 346, the rest 346. I have 7.6% haste and 16.8 mastery, which equates to I think 20% healing over 6 seconds - makes your PoH have a huge hot component at the end - when you crit a tank with a 40k Gheal it's an extra 8k at the end (just shy of a regular heal for 0 mana)

I LOVE mastery.

[dalliah1]

Well I tried reforging everything to haste, just about to do heroic Valiona. Hopefully my mastery isn't too low, at 17% at the moment.

[Deleted]

haste and mastery is 20% preference, 40% comp and 40% fight mechanics (or something like that). for example, fights like chimaeron favor haste, especially on 25 man, since the quicker you get out those 3-5 PoH to bring your raiders back above 10K HP, the better. of course, there are other healers on 25 man, but you need to bring out 250K healing before the next caustic acid goes out.
mastery also has its uses. on cho'gall, the constant damage aura in phase 2 can be mitigated well by mastery, since HoT effects counter such aura's nicely (i remember druids being great for fights like BQL, sindy or sapph).

comp is a bit trickier, and also is up for debate. you could say that mastery is better for with a holy paladin than with a resto druid, since the resto druid hots will already do wonders, but you can also say that the holy paladin would snipe your heals.

[Aceso Jenkins]

and no, Echo of Light is NOT "mostly overheal". no not at all. it normally has similar overheal % as rest of heal, ie 20%, can be higher, depending on fight, but never goes above 50% overheal, if you and your mates heal reasonably.

I bolded what I found to be key. The problem with many people is they are still stuck in Wrath mode where everyone needs to be topped immediately. I personally like to heal people to ~85-90% and let EoL tick away. It keeps the OH down and as long as your guild mates know that, and it saves their mana as well. However, as most people know, some like to be on top of the meters so they will keep spending mana anyways!

To answer the OP's question, I prefer haste. As much as EoL is 'free healing' or 'increases heals per mana' I find that landing a heal to save a life is more important. There have been several times in Heroics where people's healing addons show people as dead, but sometimes you snipe the heal just in time and someone is still in the game. (maybe it's a bug with their Grid) Anyways, I am at ~21% haste raid-buffed, approximately 14.8% self-buffed and we raid 10 man heroics (just starting) and I heal with a Shaman and Druid.

[mookspal]

When i was holy I stacked haste and reforged out of mastery. I also tried hitting the softcap in haste then reforging all to mastery. With my play style(not saying its the same as yours), stacking haste was noticeably better for myself in terms of healing output. I only run 10 mans so i have no experience in 25 man raid situations tho.

[Tyleiran]

Going all haste or all mastery is not the best way to do things. When I played holy (had worse gear though) I would do about 14.5-15 mastery and the rest haste. When you start hitting the harder heroic raids you are going to need efficiency as much as throughput since most of these fights are long endurance fights with large bursts of damage.

In the end what you need to do depends on the fight you are doing, the role you are playing and who your other healers are. If you have 2 shamans than by all means load up on haste. Personally I like to be able to sustain what I am doing without having to ask for a Spriest hymn or innvervate twice a fight.

[Tyraeus]

Haste being as Shadow is my current mainspec, so I share alot of the gear.

[Prod]

I'll be honest, I use a 12.5% haste minimum for Renew because I'm often the raid healer as holy and I stay in Sanctuary Chakra so I want that Renew to be at least a little bit more efficient. However, I do carry some haste gears with me (currently on normal, Hyjal belt vs belt of depths and t11 healing legs vs t11 shadow legs) so that when I do get in encounters where I find myself not casting my heals fast enough, I can simply use my Haste gears as opposed to my Mastery gears.

As a personal rule, I stack haste until I am comfortable with how fast my heals are going out then go mastery all the way.