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This is a guest post from Lodur, a Resto Shaman who set up an experiment to determine what is better: Haste or Crit. The experiment consisted of two relatively equally geared Resto Shamans with slight variances in haste and crit thrown into a full clear Heroic Naxxramas.
Round 1
Lodur from Zul'jin here again. Today I'd like to talk a little bit on the topic of Crit versus Haste. This has been a hotly debated topic among the shaman community since patch 3.0 dropped on us giving us all kinds of goodies. Specs have been proposed and gear has been compared using every measuring stick imaginable. The arguments are all over the Internet, and you can find them on all sorts of forums and websites. Right now though I'd like to take a look at some key points for each camp that have recently been brought up in my guild's Shaman Class forums.
Pro Crit:
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Bigger heals = less heals needed
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Allows for increased rate in procs in key talents such as Improved Water Shield,and Ancestral Awakening.
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Takes full advantage of the fix to Earth Shield which now has a crit change equal to the caster and not the recipient of the shield
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Allows for Increased performance of preventative healing
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Allows for greater single target healing efficiency
Pro Haste:
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Allows for lower casting time for Chain Heal which is a shamans most efficient heal (5.23 heal per mana)
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Allows for a greater number of spell casts which will allow key talents such as, Ancestral Awakening, Tidal Waves, and Healing Way to proc more often on more targets
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Allows for Increased performance in "twitch" or reactive healing
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Allows for greater group healing efficiency, while giving the passive regen of a Glyphed Water Shield time to restore mana.
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Allows for quicker application of Earth Living Weapon so as to proc to more targets
To further understand these points we can look at the talents and abilities so you can begin to see where each is coming from.
Talents / abilities Described:
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Ancestral Awakening: When you critically heal with your Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave or Riptide you summon an Ancestral spirit to aid you, instantly healing the lowest percentage health friendly party or raid target within 40 yards for 30% of the amount healed. This may not seem like much but this adds up over time. It normally clocks in at around 1% of your total healing output.
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Improved Water Shield: You have a 100% chance to instantly consume a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Riptide spells, and a 60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Lesser Healing Wave spell. This is helpful with mana regen especially if your find your MP5 or raid replenishment lacking.
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Healing Way:Your Healing Wave spells have a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 18% for 15 sec. This turns your 15,000 Healing Wave crit into something that creeps up to around 20,000 and with the change to the talent applying the full bonus on once cast of Healing Wave, it has found it's way into many rotation.
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Earthliving:Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by 150 and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional 652 over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes. 20% meaning 1 out of every 5 heals will land a hot on a target. Using a Glyphed Chain Heal means 4 targets per heal. A 652 HoT doesn't seem like much but it adds up over time.
Practical Application:
Someone once said me to "Lodur, I hear what you're saying but I need to see the numbers." So after a lengthy discussion with another shaman in our guild we decided to give it a go. I would continue to stack haste (Hello, My name's Lodur, and I'm a haste junkie) and they (I wont use their name simply because I don't exactly have their permission to post their toon details on the interwebs and I'm respectful like that) would stack crit and change spec and see what numbers we got.
All numbers are without totems or self buffs, and not including Earthliving Weapon. These also do not take into account trinkets like Egg of Mortal Essence . Both of us were present for all four wings of Naxx and we were both tasked with Raid / OT healing at the same time in order to keep things as consistent as possible.
(And before anyone says quality of player or anything silly like that it should be noted that me and Shaman 2 are consistently within a stones throw of eachother every raid and both have been doing this for a long time!)
Let's look at what some numbers produce, looking at builds and stats first. All gear is at the item level of i200 and i213. This is without totems, weapon buffs, food or raid buffs. Both shamans used the same Glyphs for the run. Glyph of Chain heal, Glyph of Water Mastery, Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave and Glyph of Water Shield
The Stats
| Lodur | Shaman 2 | |
| Spec | Spec here (Excludes Improved Water Shield in favor of Healing Way) | Spec here (Inclusion of Thundering Strikes over Enhancing Totems ) |
| Intellect | 1010 | 983 |
| Haste | 419 (14%) | 262 (8%) |
| Crit | 19% | 31% |
| Spellpower | 1952 | 1936 |
As you can see the stats are fairly close, differing mainly in their haste and crit rating. So lets take a look and see what the end result of the run was number wise.
The Results
| Lodur | Shaman 2 | |
| Total Healing | 5328335 | 5089956 |
| Water Shield | 60813 | 64400 |
| Earthliving | 444686 | 311665 |
| Ancestral Awakening | 75251 | 67245 |
| Average Crit | 24% | 34% |
| Overhealing | 40% | 40% |
Wow. Pretty close there! Now that's overall for the entire raid night. So as everything averages out at the end they wind up being pretty similar. We can break this down a bit further and look at some of the individual fights to look for strenghts and weaknesses for each. Lets pull out two boss kills here.
Maxxena:
Lodur: Total Healing Done: 68,068
Shaman 2: Total Healing Done: 123,953
Damn, got almost doubled on that fight! The strong single target heals allowed for Shaman 2 to top off tanks and webbed people in one gulp causing my quicker heals to move on over into overhealing.
Heigan the Unclean:
Lodur: Total Healing Done: 222,257
Shaman 2: Total Healing Done: 109,780
Haste won that round! The faster group heals and lesser healing waves allowed for me to top people off quicker while diseases were cleansed.
The trade off between bosses carries on from there with Crit winning on Loatheb and Haste winning on Patchwerk. The two have fights where they will always shine slightly brighter then the other, but overall they perform to roughly the same output.
The Conclusion
It is, in the opinion of this shaman, so close that the difference really boils down to playstyle.
Both ways work! If you have a preference roll with it. Gearing for both is very easy. There's haste on just about everything and what mail spell power pieces don't have haste normally have a ton of crit (yes I know it can be argued that its elemental gear but it still works for healing all the same).
There will always be fights that are slightly tougher for your then if you had more haste rather then a ton of crit, but thats true about everything in the game. The synergy between the two is also noticeable. Fights where a hastened Healing Wave can keep Healing Way up so that the crit spec can land a huge, huge heal will always be there.
Well that's it for round one of haste vs crit. Round 2 will be after 3.1 drops and Ulduar is available. Until next time, happy healing.
Image courtesy of Aurik
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For the Resto Shaman: Settling the Crit vs Haste Discussion
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