Alright, alright, so maybe I have a teeny tiny obsession with debating crit and haste. But can you blame me? You usually have to choose one at the expense of another, so I'm always curious and fascinated by what people choose for their healers and why. I've gone from crit obsessed to haste obsessed to somewhere in-between and back again, never able to be completely decisive about it. I dislike crit on principle, but.... Surge of Light is all shiny and I am drawn in like Bella to a shirtless sparkly sunlit Edward. *sparkle!!*

Therefore, I've been poring through all my favorite resto druid blogs reading about thoughts on the upcoming changes in 3.3 for druids in regards to haste. I warn you ahead of time that I am by no means an expert on Druids, and I'm almost positive that my Druid readers are going to have to set me right on a lot of my thoughts... but that is exactly the sort of feedback I'm hoping to get!

ETA: If you are looking for some interesting blog posts that resto druids have been posting lately on the topic, I recommend some Rolling Hots, Dreambound, some tricksy maths from Forrestump, and Restokin has some really helpful PTR testing - for the record, the way I understand it, Haste will both decrease the time between ticks on HoTs, AS WELL AS the total time the HoT ticks - therefore, with the Rapid Rejuvenation Glyph, you will not be getting MORE ticks to your HoTs, just faster ones. If this is wrong, please correct me!

Haste vs Crit for Druids

One of the things that has always confused me is the lack of viability for Haste and Crit for Druids. Before anyone rips me apart for saying that (be gentle, I'm not a druid myself!), I don't mean that these stats are useless for Druids, but merely that they seem to be a lot less useful for Druids than they are for other healing classes. As a Holy Priest, I can completely justify stacking either one sky high, though if I were to crunch the numbers, I may come up with good reasons to put a soft cap on either one. Since a lot of Druid heals are quickie casts, if not instant, then Haste really only seemed to matter up until GCD cap. And, since HoTs can't crit (unless you've got the T9 4piece set bonus, of course), Crit seemed kinda blah as well.

Ever since the changes to Shadowform for Priests, allowing DoTs to crit while in Shadowform, I've been wondering why HoTs can't crit while in Tree form. I see Druids on the whole, more than any other healing class, stack spellpower at the expense of haste and crit, because for other healers, those two latter stats seem stronger (I'm somewhat guessing here, I'll have to ask Codi over at MoarHPS to come over and beat me over the head with her calculator in order to have any maths to back any of this theorizing up). I'm sure some balancing would be necessary if HoTs were allowed to crit, but at the same time, that would mean Druids would stack more crit than they currently do, which would inevitably mean less spellpower as well.

Broadening the Niche? Should HoTs come closer to burst healing?

Another thing that intrigues me is that it seems as though the developers don't know how to get Druids to use crit and haste, and they are trying different things, and using different tools to test it - but with the same spell, Rejuvenation. First they try tinkering with a set bonus to see if Druids would be too OP with critting HoTs, and now it looks like they will try something similar with a glyph in 3.3.

I'm not impressed with the glyph, myself. I can see why many think it's very exciting, but to me, it's a bit similar in theory to Glyph of Renew - which I've always found stupid. If I wanted more healing in a shorter period of time, i.e. more burst... why wouldn't I just cast Flash Heal? The faster HoTs tick, the less time they are buffering... I'm not sure if that really IS a great thing.

Between the T9 set bonus for Druids, and the upcoming Glyph addition, I suspect that Blizz still hasn't figured out for sure how they want to handle some of the stat streamlining they are bringing in in Cataclysm. It feels like they are using the posterkids for HoTs as a way to test out how different stats might work with HoTs. I don't think this is a bad thing, for the record - I just found it interesting enough to bring it up. I suspect that if the changes work well for Druids, without breaking class balance, we may see all HoTs and DoTs for all classes being affected by both crit and haste in Cataclysm - or at least, with certain talents.

I'm still not sure if I like that or not... by speeding up the effect of HoTs and DoTs, it just brings them closer to being burst healing or burst damage in the first place, and eventually (taken to the extreme), it may completely degrade and diminish the niche, power, and value of *-over time effects.

BUT - Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much. What say you?

Okay I spent an hour trying to write up a post about finding a balance between haste and crit. It didn’t work for me. My every effort at theorycrafting ended with LOLWUT. Here, I’ll cop out and give you the skinny from ElitistJerks about stats for priests:

Holy: “Rough goals for the start of Ulduar.25 are to have 2800 spellpower, 26-28% crit, and 12% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR fully raid-buffed”

Disc: “Rough goals for the start of Ulduar.25 are to have 2500 spellpower, 35% crit, and 8% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR fully raid-buffed.”

Look at all that work I did. Now that THAT’S done, let’s talk about something really fun. Let’s go beyond the stat streamlining Blizz will be bringing us in Cataclysm and talk a bit about Path of the Titans… and I’m gonna get all fun and creative.

Path of the Titans Brainstorming

The long and the short is this – Blizzard will be redesigning talent trees to be more “fun”, i.e. focusing on bringing you fun spells like Guardian Spirit and Pain Suppression. Path of the Titans will work with the new secondary profession, Archaeology, and will be how you get all those little bonuses, like +3% damage, +5% crit, etc etc etc,

I want to see the crit vs haste debate take a whole new meaning with this change to talent trees. Whether it be via Path of the Titans or the talent tree, I want to see two different paths for healers of all classes. One path for haste, one for crit. Maybe you can choose to balance between the two, or maybe you would pick one over the other.

For instance, for the Poker Player Priest, we have the crit path. Do you like high risk, high reward situations? Then stack crit, and with this chosen direction, you get special bonuses based on crit. Are you more of a Conservative Caster, and prefer predictable, steady bonuses and improvements to your casting style? Stack haste, and take the haste path.

Not so long ago for Priests, Serendipity was completely different, and actually gave you a percentage of mana back when you overhealed. Overhealing is a problem for every healer, though less so for Druids. However, even if your heal isn’t marked as overheal, if you spend your mana, and the heal you cast, or the hot, gives less healing than was intended, it’s a problem. I think this is a great opportunity for some interesting procs.

The Poker Player Priest versus the Conservative Caster

Let’s say you’re a Poker Player Priest (stacking crit), and your heal crits, and overheals your target. I’d love to see some fun procs based on this – whether it be a return of some mana (only on overheals that are crits), or perhaps a short term boost to your crit rating. Or, if you overheal due to a crit, the target gets a damage absorbing shield that absorbs the amount for which they were overhealed. Everytime you crit, you could get a stacking buff that will increase your crit rating by a small amount, up to, say, 5 stacks. Or everytime you crit you have a chance to proc some regen mechanic, like with Holy Concentration. For raid buffs, maybe everytime you crit you could proc a raid buff for a few seconds that would increase crit rating by 5%.


For the Conservative Caster (stacking haste), we could have a serendipity like effect with a smaller boost each stack, but more stacks. So, 5 casts of Flash Heal could give you an instant Greater Heal, or maybe just a very speedy Greater Heal. An overheal could either return some of your mana to you, or give you a small haste boost to your next cast. There could be some ability or proc called “Just in the Nick of Time”, and if you get a heal off on someone who is at less than 5% health, that target gets a double heal, or a HoT effect, a shield effect, a decrease in threat, or maybe all heals on that target are boosted by a certain percentage. For raid buffs, everytime you peel off a Greater Heal of a Prayer of Healing, the entire raid could receive a 10% haste buff.

I use holy priests as an example here, but the same theory could apply for all healers, and really all casters. I really hope that Blizzard gets creative with the new talent trees and Path of the Titans, because I see room for lots of fun stuff in the direction they are heading. I am also pleading for a resolution to the crit vs haste debate.

For everyone who is NOT a holy paladin, remember back in the days when you would roll your eyes at critical strike rating on gear? "Oh just give it to the mages, blech." While it was always a matter of personal preference, it took Blizzard a long time to figure out how to make crit worth anything to healers.

The philosophy against crit to which I always adhered before Wrath, was that while a crit heal may be nice, fancy, and powerful, you cannot rely on it. Often many healing crits just get into the realm of overheals, at which point, it's worthless. Not a "waste" necessarily, because it did not cost you anything to get that extra BOOM in your heal, but rather pointless. Except in some situations, you do not get to decide when your heal will crit. A notable exception would be for Holy Pallies with Divine Favor.

If you knew when your heal were going to crit, it would be very different. Maybe I would use a crit Flash Heal over a more expensive, longer casting Greater Heal. But, because I cannot predict when a crit will happen, I cannot afford to only use a flash heal and some crossed fingers to heal up the tank when she's taking a lot of damage. The problem with critical heals is that you cannot rely on them, and therefore when you are healing, you must work on the assumption that you will get no critical heals in order to be safe. Better safe than wipe.

But Blizzard wants us to use crit, and changed our talent trees. Most notably, IMO, for priests was the change in Surge of Light. It used to be that Surge of Light would only give you a free Smite proc, but now they've added flash heal, which makes it incredibly useful. Free and instant cast? I'll take some of that. Even more recently, the changes in Holy Concentration. I preferred the old version that gave us mana back when we overhealed (which in turn made crits less worthless - if you crit and overheal, you got mana back), but regardless, the point still stands. Crit is now worth it. Everything is crit happy. Even our HoT, Renew, can now crit. I stack crit like crazy now.

Yet, I still can't help thinking that the original philosophy remains applicable. If I were to look at the healing done over an entire night, sure, it seems that crit heals are a substantial part of my throughput. But in the heat of the moment, you still can't rely on it. If I pop a glyphed Circle of Healing, I'm almost guaranteed at least one crit, and therefore one free flash heal. But almost guaranteed is still not an actual guarantee. I'm not going to be one of those QQing forum posters that whines all about how OBVIOUSLY no one at Blizz playes a healer class. However, I do wonder how much the developers understand that fundamental philosophy.

Long story short? Crit is nice and fancy, but is still not reliable. Designing a class spec based around a dependence on crit is therefore just asking for trouble.

The hullabaloo about the potential Illumination nerf is a perfect example of that. This post has already gone on too long (even for me), so I will summarize the Illumination nerf arguments, and my thoughts about it, in a later post.