Holy Haste Vs Mastery 10 man

[Guthric]

So with the changes to DH in 4.3 i'm deciding to go back Holy from Disc. I've been noticing on most of the gear is split with spirit haste and mastery haste, with little crit. Now what i did before i switched to disc, in 4.1, was i got my spell cast time down to 2.2 seconds, 1290 haste rating, and then went into mastery. Now with the massive amounts of mastery and haste we can get compared to 4.1 when i played holy has anything changed? Should i stick with what i was doing? Again in the title i mentioned i was in a 10 man guild that usually downs HM's prenerfs. Thanks all!

[Ashleycakez]

Yeah do what you were doing imo. That's what I've done during Firelands and it worked well for me. I might bump up the Haste a bit more come DS and new gear but for now I feel comfortable with my current setup.

[garethrogue]

what's going on? Aren't we supposed to be at 12.5% for the extra renew tick?

[Deleted]

what's going on? Aren't we supposed to be at 12.5% for the extra renew tick?

because renew is your go-to spell for holy and the spell you most rely on for the majority of your healing?


in all seriousness I would go with as much haste as you can 'afford'. Afford meaning until you start seeing mana issues, at that point go with mastery.
mastery will give you more Healing per mana, haste might not even give more healing per second (compared to mastery) but I find being able to land spells faster to save lives the most important part of being a healer.

[Irielle]

Just curious but isnt the general rule for 10m Holy to stack haste? I know in my case I'm 90% of the time disc, but in the event I switch holy I would not gear for mastery. (then again I do heal alongside a resto druid for 3-heal fights).

[Themos]

Just curious but isnt the general rule for 10m Holy to stack haste? I know in my case I'm 90% of the time disc, but in the event I switch holy I would not gear for mastery. (then again I do heal alongside a resto druid for 3-heal fights).

I ended up leaning more on Mastery during FLs and found it to be better than Haste on 10H due to the better mana efficiency. I've never had an issue with a heal not landing fast enough. Haste is wonderful for 25 man, b/c you can spam more PoHs quicker. But on 10, you aren't using PoH nearly as much so it's not as beneficial, imo. I've spend most of my time in Serenity and I find Mastery to extremely potent and EoL makes managing my mana pool cake. I can toss out the Flash Heals when the need arises and it doesn't *hurt*.

Going into the next tier, my stats will inflate. I'll gain some haste, mastery and of course int/spi. I'd have to see the encounters first hand before deciding for sure which way to reforge my secondary stats. But going in, I'm keeping everything as is, my armory stats below (buffless):

2/3 Darkness
711 Critical Strike rating
985 Haste rating
1713 Mastery rating
2610 Spirit + 400 Tsunami Deck => 3010 Spirit
9022 Spell Power

Power Torrent on staff
Heroic Jaws of Defeat


I'll be breaking my t12 4-set once I get 2-set from t13. The 4-set has been rubbish for me.

[Ultima]

Holy 10: Haste
Holy 25: Mastery

That's the fast and loose rule. As Themos has pointed out, that's not always the case. It's affected by your play style, something which makes Holy a great spec in terms of balance of stats. It will be amazing to play in 4.3 with the addition of a raid CD.

[Irielle]

@Themos

I would think the exact opposite. In 10m you don't have the luxury of other healers picking up your slack. (Yes, I have healed both, and this is not a 10/25 debate or anything silly). In 25's I found I was not as....rushed? if thats the right word, and favored mastery.

[Ashleycakez]

I would think the exact opposite. In 10m you don't have the luxury of other healers picking up your slack. (Yes, I have healed both, and this is not a 10/25 debate or anything silly). In 25's I found I was not as....rushed? if thats the right word, and favored mastery.

I raid 10 man (very limited 25 man experience in Cata). I healed T11 content with heavy Mastery (really only ~515 Haste) and I felt fine. Its with my work on H Rhyo (pre-nerf) when I felt like my 600something Haste rating was not cutting it for p2 damage. I increased my Haste to ~1300 and only saw about a 1-3% drop in healing done by EoL when comparing fights from before and after the change. Otherwise, I felt fine running with low Haste until that point and I probably could have continued with it but I felt like I was in super panic mode for Rhyo and that quicker heals would save my raiders more than my EoL ticks. I didn't personally feel a strain on my mana from doubling my Haste. Its really a "what feels right to me" sort of thing regarding Haste and Mastery.

[Themos]

@Themos

I would think the exact opposite. In 10m you don't have the luxury of other healers picking up your slack. (Yes, I have healed both, and this is not a 10/25 debate or anything silly). In 25's I found I was not as....rushed? if thats the right word, and favored mastery.

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).

[Guthric]

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).

i noticed this as well but in the opposite. I was in a 25 man guild and i was stacking mastery as holy. Most of the fights we were using 5 healers, but usually 2 or three of them didn't pull their slack. With a dying guild and broken down leadership i decided to take matters into my own hands. I looked at how i could improve instead of looking at the slackers. I changed from a VERY heavy mastery build to a heavy haste build, healing along side a druid and pally it made the most sense. With the haste i was able to heal everyone up faster and then have my druid counterpart use his full HoT potential. The reason i asked this question is because now that i switched to a new 10 man guild a PoH and CoH spam won't do it. I was still wondering this because i will be two healing with another shaman or paladin, that will be on the tanks. I was thinking mastery and now this thread affirms my beliefs.

[Themos]

I was raid healing as Holy in 25 man last tier, and I stacked and preferred Haste over Mastery. Going into 10 man, I found that faster wasn't necessarily better. You have to be a lot smarter with your heals and less RAAAAWR HPS SPAMN that is Holy in 25 man. And since youre relying on a lot more single target heals, mana considerations need to be taken into acocunt b/c single target spells are lower HPM. Couple that with more accountability, you can't rely on others to pick up your slack and Mastery makes more sense.

And more importantly, I tried both. And I found things much nicer, easier, and more robust with Mastery of Haste.
Mana becomes a very minor issue, and you're able to do what you need to do when you need to do it with minimal worry.