Comments on: For the Resto Shaman: Settling the Crit vs Haste Discussion

By: JeffieDecourcey

JeffieDecourcey — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:22:18 +0000

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By: JamesFalks

JamesFalks — Thu, 26 May 2011 04:51:26 +0000

Hi, I've just subscribed here and I have a problem. On occasion when I push the back link within my internet browser I will be instantly redirected towards the page I have just come from. Is this meant to happen? Thanks

By: Boúnmy

Boúnmy — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:02:46 +0000

I’ve decided to go with haste and it works out very well for me but because I raid heal at such a massive amount I tend to go OOM. I find myself more focused on managing my Mana then heals but it doesn’t distract me from healing.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Saurfang&cn=Bo%C3%BAnmy

My current shaman thats raiding 10/25ICC

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:52:42 +0000

I find personally like most here having 2 sets of gear is needed. I have 2k+ heals without totems and have 34% crit in one set and 15% haste in another set with 25% crit still. I use haste gear on trash pulls in nax and in Malygos because honestly your spamming CH most of the time. Taking .5 seconds off your chain heal pays for itself in only 4 cast, you will double a crit based shammy in heals with that kind of haste, chain pulling trash for say 5 min straight you will get out an avg of 15 to 20 ch that the crit based shammy couldn’t get out. Thats A LOT of heals. However in fights where chain heal is only used every 5 sec or so in rotation, or on say Kel fight in Nax. Everyone should be spread out except your melee. CH will not be used often here. I have found i get almost double the mana back in my crit gear while spamming riptide and LHW than i do with the same rotation in haste gear. So Basically what I am saying is what everyone else here is. For group heals and chain heal spammage HASTE ALL DAY! For single target riptide, LHW, and HW spammage your crit gear is where to be. Decide from that what gear you should put on for what encounter.

By: Shamrox

Shamrox — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:23:22 +0000

Ideally , a raiding resto shaman should have goals set in mind with their play style. However for most shaman, there is an established baseline that you should shoot for. Number crunching in the Theorycraft Thinktank has come up with a fairly solid and provable optimal level of crit/haste balancing. The minimum level of crit(not counting the talented healing/lightning % crit chance) should be at 20.0%. Additionally , the level of haste recommended is approximately 10.0. ( I’ve found that 8% works just as well). Once the minimum has been established, A shaman should exceed no more than 27% crit , because at this point the amount of gain has hit the level of diminishing returns in a raid environment(ele shaman talent, etc). At this time the shaman should focus on raising thier haste higher so as to be able to reactively heal in a raid environment. I understand well that each playstyle is different but this is just a recommendation from seeing the article. I agree with the author and his study between the two aspects and just wish to lend some concrete numbers for resto shaman to work with. Happy Healing!

By: Hagu

Hagu — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:47:45 +0000

Can u mix & match? My shaman is not my main (crit vs haste is easy for my Pally to choose) so my gear will be a lot more what’s available than a strategy. Gems are the main discretionary item. So would some haste and some crit work? OR is haste non-linear ( iirc there is a hunter buid were u need to get 3 shots in the window and 2.99 is same ass 2.01 and after that GCD means extra haste is wasted – extra haste has little value until u hit one haste amount then it is huge then it is of even less value past that. )

Thanks for the very informative article. Now I know I need to keep two gear sets.

By: Mekias

Mekias — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:31:46 +0000

I like to have a combination of Haste & Crit. In the current content I don’t see much of a need to min/max gear sets. Maybe it’s also because even as a “raid healer”, I tend to single target heal a decent amount. Haste has the highest potential Heal Per Second (HPS) but Crit combines added HPS, mana efficiency, and mana regen. A hasted shaman will probably outheal a critted shaman but the critted shaman will have a lot more mana left if something goes bad.

By: Evenka

Evenka — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:11:10 +0000

As others have mentioned, the key here seems to be maintaining two sets of gear, one for haste and one for crit. I’ve found that the best way to do this is to get your hands on all five Tier 7 pieces and the two ilvl 226 items from Malygos 25. That way, you get to keep your set bonus and can swap in the appropriate offset piece as required. The T7 helm, shoulders, chest and legs plus Winter Spectacle Gauntlets make an excellent starting point for a haste set while the helm, shoulders, gloves and legs together with Tunic of the Artifact Guardian form the core of any crit set.

As I gem heavily for Intellect, I find mana regen to be completely trivial so long as Replenishment is present in the raid. This means I can use quite a few pieces of ‘Elemental’ gear which are itemised with both crit and haste, boosting both my haste and crit for both sets (I should also note that I keep a third ‘regen’ set for 10-man raids where I sometimes lack Replenishment. Sarth 3D 10-man without it is by far the most challenging fight to heal in the game at the moment). I’m not sure if this will be viable in the long term if Blizzard’s promise/threat that healers will have to worry about mana regen again in the future rings true but for now, at least, it significantly boosts my healing power.

One thing that I do think is worth mentioning is that since Patch 3.08, Chain Heal’s contribution to total raid healing has risen significantly in the aftermath of the CoH/WG nerf. As such, AoE healing is slowly becoming our niche again after a couple of months of dominance by priests and druids. Assuming this trend continues into Ulduar, it makes sense to focus most on the area where we contribute most and gear appropriately. This means raid healing and stacking haste. Crit, of course, remains very valuable but the fact remains that every other healing class in the game are better single target healers than we are. Play to your strengths and all that.

If Replenishment continues to exist in its current form (which I doubt, as it just trivialises mana regen right now) and if Ulduar gear provides enough Intellect to reach a mana pool of in the region of 26k raid buffed WITHOUT taking sockets into account (this seems to be a magic number of sorts for replenishment regen) then I can see a return to gemming and enchanting for haste at the expense of all else. Personally I’d like to see us remain viable single-target and raid healers as I’ve enjoyed being liberated from the Sunwell sterotype of ” just spam chain heal” but I guess time will tell in this case.

My armory profile is http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silvermoon&n=Evenka for anyone interested, currently logged out in haste gear although as you can see, it does sport a couple of crit pieces (hai2u necklace).

By: Totemlol

Totemlol — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:55:38 +0000

I think the main argument was haste buffs vs mana buffs that a crit + imp water shield is giving.

But has anyone really had any mana issues yet? I think I may be going back to full haste again.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bleeding+Hollow&n=Totemlol

By: Brennah

Brennah — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:43:56 +0000

Thanks for another great post Lodur. (:

IMHO, I’d choose haste over crit, because there is no guarantee that a spell will crit, but there it is guaranteed that you have a certain percent of haste, and therefore your spells will go that much faster.

Both for sure will shine in different situations though.

- <3 Bren.

PS: Hooray fellow zul’jin healers.
PPS: Game time is out for now, I’ll still do graphic for ta though. drop me an e-mail @ breethang@yahoo.com