Originally Posted by
Themos
It's remarkable how differing the views on this subject are, I guess YMMV?
I found the exact opposite to be true. I did 25 mans in TBC, WotLK, and t11 in Cataclysm we raided very competitively. Especially for focusing on healing melee, Haste was a priority stat for me, always. It was a very spammy type of environment, so I was almost always GCD locking myself, and as such Haste was a true HPS stat.
In FL 10 man however, I have found that not to be the case. FL10H man requires a lot more smart healing, and the choice of which spell you use has a lot of impact as there's only 2 or 3 of you doing the healing. I have enough gaps in my heals that I am not GCD hard locking myself often enough. I've tried Haste, that's how my gear was going into FLs when 4.2 hit b/c it was how I was rolling in 25 man in t11, and I found that my RAAAAAWR aoe healing style did *not* work well at all. So I adapted. At first, I just messed around with my healing style, and I reforging into Mastery came later that first month.
It made healing much easier. The mana efficiency was better, and EoL is a very nice throughput secondary. It effects EVERYTHING I cast, save for Renew of course, but Renew is so ass this expact, that I couldn't care less. As long as you don't have some tard healers that you play with that compete against you instead of working with you to tackle the content, it's so much better, imo.
I've see loads of Haste/Mastery threads, and the underlying theme and complaint about Holy that I've seen is that on 10man the mana efficiency isn't there, but the ones complaining about it are the ones that are stacking Haste. Is it a coincidence? I can't help but this it isn't. I can't help but conclude, that for 10 man, stick to Mastery and widdle in as much Haste as you need to give you the breathing room you need to cast what you want (700 haste rating and 2/3 Darkness was enough for me).