Haste in 5.4

I feel a little bit like I should find a way to work a Treebeard quote into the start of this post about haste, but then I realized that the movie really did Treebeard a disservice and those who have not read the books would likely not fully appreciate the significance or humor behind such a quote regarding tress and haste. As such, I have left out the intellectual quotes section from the beginning of this post and have instead replaced it with this somewhat awkward musing about how I was going to do something I found funny, but suspected had limited audience appeal.

Honestly, at this point, I should probably just let the quote fly and move on from it. But that’s not really my style!

*ahem* Let’s talk about trees that don’t involve JRR Tolkien, shall we?

I have been receiving quite a few questions on the topic of Haste lately. Those questions, in addition to something I’ve been quietly observing, have lead me to the conclusion that the topic of resto druids and haste seems to be a little bit confusing. So I thought I’d toss together a quick post that will hopefully offer some clarification on how we, as druids – not Treebeard – want to view haste this tier.

Haste vs. Mastery

There are currently two gearing options for this tier, which subsequently mean that there are two definitive haste breakpoints that you want to be looking at as you are gearing in SoO. 3043 or13163. Those are the options. There really aren’t any in betweens of note, which means any haste over 3043 that does not reach 13163 is essentially wasted itemization. This means that you are going to want to evaluate the gear you have available to you and make a decision on which of these two haste breakpoints is going to work best for you.

I’m sure that the question on everyone’s mind is: “Beru, what I really want to know is which one is better“.

Well, the truth of the matter is that they are fairly comparable and the higher of the two breakpoints is going to be highly gear dependant to reach. This means that there isn’t necessarily a cut and dry answer! Which breakpoint you opt to reach is going to be solely dependent on you! Let’s see if we can break it down a little bit!

The Mastery Build

For this build you will want to aim for 3043 haste. This will be the build for you if you are at lower gear levels – it will be very challenging, if not impossible, to achieve the higher breakpoint unless you are in heroic T15 gear or have a good amount of T16 gear. The stats are just not available on the gear before that point to make the switch.

But don’t worry! Because it’s fine! A mastery build still performs very strongly!

The first thing I want to reiterate is that if you are opting for this build, you want to be at 3043 haste. Do not try for a 6k breakpoint, do not try for an 8k breakpoint. If you can’t reach 13k, your breakpoint is going to be 3043.

Once you’ve reached the requisite amount of haste, you are going to want to reforge any excess stat (crit/haste) into mastery. You will want as many of your pieces as possible to have mastery on them. So, if possible, reforge mastery onto any piece that is lacking it! You will want to use artful, zen and fractured gems to complement this build – you should never need to utilize haste gems in this build, outside of maybe popping in a reckless to do some creative reforging.

 

The Haste Build

For this build you will want to aim for 13163 haste. You will want to consider this build once you have enough haste gear, plus higher secondary stats that make reforging over to this breakpoint feasible. You will likely not reach this point until you have acquired a good amount of T16 gear (or are already in higher level T15 gear). For this build, any gear that does not have inherent haste on it will require you to select a stat to reforge into haste. You can opt for Mastery, Crit or Spirit – but don’t gut your spirit past a point your are comfortable with regen.

You have a few tools to help bump your haste up if you opt for this build. You can utilize quick gems (+320 haste), Reckless gems (+160 haste) or Energized gems (+160 haste). When gemming, try to keep your socket bonuses as much as possible and if you have to, break break a weaker +60 one rather than a stronger +120 one. You can also pick up some extra haste on your gloves utilizing the greater haste enchant. However, do not forego Pandaren’s Step for the haste enchant – the run speed is too valuable for the minimal amount of haste you would be gaining.

Once you’ve reached the proper amount of haste, you will want to dump any extra stats that you haven’t converted to haste into mastery.

Just to Recap!

You will want to choose between either the 3043 and the 13163 haste breakpoints in 5.4. There is no breakpoint that is worth gearing for in between those two – so if you cannot reach the higher breakpoint gear for the lower one until you have the gear necessary for the other! If you opt for the lower one convert all extra stats to mastery. If you are using the higher one, you will likely be strapped for haste until you can acquire some of the haste rich pieces in SoO and will likely need to reforge and gem for haste!

Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!