Originally Posted by
tibbee
Then, you are being selfish and detrimental to your raid, especially if you raid 25M and basically saying that you only care about your personal throughput. It's close to being the equivalent to double dotting heads that aren't being focused on Megaera or Protectors that aren't being focused on Protectors of the Endless.
1. The extra mana that the entire raid gains from Mana Tide means that the ENTIRE RAID gains more per itemization point from Spirit than you would ever be able to make up in personal throughput gains that you think you can get from Haste/Crit/Mastery
2. Resto Shaman are significantly behind all other healing specs this tier in almost all fights and all raid sizes by a magnitude of 20-35%. It is inherently stupid and selfish to make gearing decisions that buff your personal throughput and reduce the potential throughput of other healing specs that are 30% stronger. It doesn't matter whether they are balanced around it; the indisputable fact is that every healer can do more throughput with more mana, and you are reducing the total throughput of your raid by going to a low Spirit build.
3. It isn't like that extra Spirit/mana is wasted for the Resto Shaman either. You just need to adjust your playstyle to account for having higher regen, which means more aggressively pushing Healing Surge/Greater Healing Wave/Chain Heal casts (between HST/ULE-HR/RT of course). You can be more aggressive, replace more Healing Wave/LB/stand around doing nothing casts with higher throughput casts and can be less conservative with overheal. It requires an adjustment, but if you manage to the regen that you have, you are likely to do as much or more output than someone with a low Spirit build would do.
4. I strongly challenge the idea that Haste is highly valuable outside of breakpoints. The reality is, haste is nearly completely wasted and a terrible throughput stat if 5% haste doesn't mean you are casting 5% more spells. If your mana regen holds you back and forces you to cast less or cast HW in place of GHW/HS/CH, that haste is completely wasted and would be better used as Crit/Mastery/Spirit. Also, I don't think single target heals are that large of a source of overheal. Even fully reforged out of haste, you are at a 1.4-1.5 second cast on GHW/HW with Tidal Waves up. That is already faster than the cast time single target direct heals of any other healer. I don't generally have high overheal on GHW/HS/CH; almost all of my overheal comes from Healing Rain/Riptide HoT/Earthliving, which are relatively uncontrollable sources.