Haste

Since maxing out leatherworking (finally!) and discovering the addictive awesomeness of Bloodlust + Drums of Battle, I've become more interested in adding haste to my healing gear. My healing numbers go through the roof when I use the Bloodlust + Drums of Battle combination, so I know it's extraordinarily useful.

Haste is one of those stats that has always confused me though. When I was a baby resto shaman, mp5 was the stat I lived for. Once my gear grew up a little, +healing became more important. Now that we're on the verge of Sunwell Plateau, it's time to think about haste.

Most of what I've read suggests that shaman should maintain two sets of gear - one regularly balanced healing set and one haste set. Unfortunately, I don't have an opportunity to do that. Which leaves me with the other suggestion I've come across - put Quick Lionseyes in yellow sockets.

There is one other important consideration though. A haste resto shaman is dependent on having a shadow priest because they sacrifice other mana conserving stats for haste. Our shadow priests are not that consistent so I don't know if we'll have a shadow priest at all for any given raid. Not only that, but there's already fights over who gets the shadow priests when they do show up to raids.

I think I need to discuss this with the other healing officers and see what they think. If I start adding haste to my healing gear, I will need a shadow priest if they're available. I need to make sure that they are willing to allow that before regemming my gear.

Basically, I'm looking at trading 44 +healing and +20 intellect for 40 haste, which will bring my haste rating up to 68 and reduce my chain heal cast time to 2.4 seconds. I think it's a fair trade-off.