"If the quickness of the mind and the fluency of the tongue are too punctilious and sharp, moderate them in your activity and rest." Xun Zi

Welcome to today's Way of the Totem. Today's topic is going to be about haste. To start today I have a nice cut and paste from elitist jerks I've removed the stuff about level 70

"Spell Haste

Wearing gear with spell haste can be beneficial any time you're not going OOM in a fight. By wearing gear with spell haste, we can cast spells faster, boosting our overall healing done for a fight – and potentially have heals landing faster to prevent deaths.

In most raids, you will have a total of 8% haste before gear: 5% from Wrath of Air Totem
3% from Improved Moonkin aura (balance druids) or Swift Retribution (retribution paladin)

1% haste means you will cast 1 additional spell in the time it would normally take to cast 100 spells. You do NOT cast 1% faster.

1% Spell Haste = 32.78 Haste Rating at Level 80

Haste Need to Reduce Chain Heal Cast Time at Level 80
2.4 seconds = 137 haste rating
2.3 seconds = 286 haste rating
2.2 seconds = 447 haste rating
2.1 seconds = 625 haste rating
2.0 seconds = 820 haste rating
1.9 seconds = 1036 haste rating

Spell Haste is calculated after talents. So if Healing Wave is 3.0 seconds normally and talents reduce it to 2.5 seconds, then 10% haste (157 haste rating) would reduce the cast time to 2.275 seconds.




Spell Haste reduces the global cooldown to as little as 1 second. No amount of haste including Bloodlust/Heroism will lower the global cooldown below 1 second. This can be proven using the following UI hook and spamming an instant spell with no cooldown inside and outside of Bloodlust/Heroism:

/run hooksecurefunc("CooldownFrame_SetTimer", function(_, start, duration, enable) if start > 0 and enable > 0 then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(duration) end end)"

"But Lodur, What does all this mean?"

Well my friends, in short, Haste can be a very useful tool when balanced properly with your other stats. In order to make sure you get the most out of what haste you have, you need to make sure your mana pool is nice and big, coming from BC to wrath you probably have somewhere between 10-12k mana. If you have been collecting gear from rewards you will easily have around 15k mana. This is actually a really good spot for you to start building haste if you want to. Keep in mind that the faster you are putting out those heals, the faster that mana pool moves towards zero.


I've decided to explore the haste route personally after last weeks Naxx runs, and I'll tell you why. Fights like Grobbulus and Thaddius in which I'm running around like a mad shaman and need to get quick, efficient heals out there. Now chain heal is still the most efficient heal we have, with a glyphed Lesser Healing Wave comming in a close second. Right now I have only a few items with haste.

trinket: Spark of Life

75 haste and the MP5 effect is very nice. It procs pretty frequently. The proc lasts for 15 seconds Which doesn't seem like a lot, but that's 3 "ticks of MP5" It is an UP TO proc which means its maximum is 175 mp5 but it can range anywhere from 1 to the cap of the item. Honestly I have yet to see it proc for less then 160 mp5, which isn't anything to scoff at. People say it has an internal cool down, but as of last night I was riding the buff out for pretty much all of heroic Gundrak so either it's broken or people just aren't very lucky with procs. The proc rate is roughly 10% For resto shamans this is nice... because it has a chance to proc off every person affected by chain heal. So when Chain Heal is glyphed, you have 4 targets to affect, you have a 40% chance to proc the effect. That is very good and makes this trinket very nice for us for a bit, at least until 25 man stuff. This item drops from Halls of Stone from the last boss on heroic. Well worth trying for and picking up IMO.

Second haste Item is Avenging Combat Leggings This is a 10 man naxx drop yes, but easily obtained It comes packing 63 haste raiting while still having a very decent amount of + heal, very good stats, and on top of that two Gem slots right up our alley. If you are a resto shaman and these drop, I HIGHLY suggest grabbing them. These will last you quite a while.

Another item I picked up is actually a cloth one Handgrips of Turmoil So, 44 haste, 68 spell power, 14 mp5 AND a gem slot with good stats..... SEXY!. Now you'll be competing with clothies for it, who honestly will be drooling over it as much as you will, but you should try for it anyways. I personally like these better then the mail spell power ones that drop from 10 man Naxx.

I also have two rings I'm using for haste. I'm still using Blessed Band of Karabor and combining it with Solitaire of Reflecting Beams There are spell power haste rings strewn all about the instances and quest rewards, find them isn't hard so just keep your eyes out. They tend to carry with them decent int and decent stam.

Lastly I put the little speed enchant on my cloak

That puts me at 269 haste raiting or 8.17% Combine that with Wrath of Air totem for another 5% and it's 13.17%, that doesn't include the potential haste from a boomkin and a ret pally, which brings up another 8% putting us at right around the 1.9s - 2.0s chain heal cast mark. (What I like to call the chain heal sweet spot)


Lastly lets talk about practical application of these items and the haste effect. Lets take arguably the roughest Heroic run currently, Halls of Stone. The Brann Bronzebeard event and the Last Boss We did the run first when I had only 30 haste from the Blessed Band. The Brann event was quite taxing and honestly we wiped many times. It was a fight that you just simply have to move to not die, no way around it. When I stopped moving I died everytime. When I stopped to queue up a chain heal (heavy ranged group they were all running together) I died, even lesser healing wave when it was done casting at 1.4 s I would have been hit multiple times. Eventually we cleared the encounter (after several wipes) and moved on to the last boss. Now he's not hard and you really don't have to move, it just requires a lot of fast healing. Your tank will take spikes in damage and needs to be topped off. Lesser healing wave just wasn't fast enough. After several wipes we also got this boss down. The next night we came back. I had my haste gear on and gemmed and enchanted. The Brann event went incredibly smooth, no wipes only one death. Lesser healing wave started clocking in at under 1 second cast times. Rolling Rip Tide and Lesser Healing Wave kept everyone topped off and alive (except a silly mage who stood in a laser beam ) And the last boss went so smooth I hardly registered the event began.

NOTICABLE difference here. I will update this post after comparable runs of heroics with haste and non haste gear.