The haste cap.Follow

Posit: discipline priests should never gem or enchant for haste (except for haste to cloak, as it is the only viable cloak enchant), and should generally avoid it on gear.

Reasoning: discipline priests frequently find themselves in situations where they are haste capped, rendering additional haste wasted.

To expound:

Haste reduces the global cooldown (GCD) from a nominal 1.5 seconds to a minimum of 1 second. This means instant-cast spells cap haste at 33%. Past that point, only spells with a significant cast time (Penance, GHeal, and Prayer of Healing, along with Hymns) benefit from additional haste. Thus you can say that haste is "soft-capped" at 33%.

33% sounds like a lot, but isn't. Borrowed Time is the key.

Borrowed Time grants 25% haste to your next spell or for five seconds. The funny thing is, instant-casts and Penance do not consume the haste effect. So long as you don't cast Flash, GHeal, PoHealing, or a Hymn, the haste effect lasts the full duration. For a discipline priest in high-end raiding, you spend much of your time casting Shield, Renew, PoMending, and Penance, with Flash and the rare Prayer thrown in (possibly GHeal in 10-mans). Thus, you maintain very high Borrowed Time uptime.

Sure, the first Shield will not have a hasted global cooldown, but so long as you keep casting Shield, you'll maintain the haste.

For a very high amount of time in-combat, Borrowed Time will be active. Therefore, you maintain 25% haste. Then toss in Enlightenment, which is 6% flat haste. That puts you at 31%. That means your gear must contribute a measly 2% haste to cap your instants.

Priest t8 and t9 sets contain more than 2% haste. Therefore, no haste is needed from gems or enchants, or from supplemental pieces of gear like rings or bracers.

I except the 23 haste to cloak enchant. The only other caster cloak enchant is Wisdom; since threat is a non-issue, if you get the enchant you're paying an exorbitant cost for 10 spirit. That's dumb. So get 23 haste.

Additional haste past 2% isn't a complete waste. It'll affect longer cast times, the first shield, and any shield cast after a Flash or PoHealing. It's just far less effective than you would hope. (Side note: it's not even great for Penance. Penance's first tick is instant; only the second and third ticks benefit from haste.)

I'm not totally happy with crit at the moment, either. I find myself using Renew more, which can't crit; plus the Shields I'm spamming can't themselves crit. When Cataclysm rolls we need talents to let Renew and Shield crit. But that's for another day.

I was never wild about haste, as it improves throughput but not efficiency, while crit and spellpower do both. But this realization makes me ever-more-firmly against haste as a discipline priest stat.

By the way, ignore all this as a holy priest. Holy priests get a lot of benefit from haste, and they only need enough crit to keep Holy Conc rolling and Surge of Light available, so haste is a splendid secondary stat for them.

I disagree a bit. From my perspective things are a lot smoother when you have 1 gcd over 1.5



I don't know about hardmode raiding but I've used renew about 5 times in toc so far, mostly during impale or faction champs...with druids out of control right now it seems like you will get sniped, I'd rather toss a shield on someone.

You will get enough haste from gear it doesn't really become an issue. You don't need to go out of your way for haste it comes to you. I use my borrowed time for either a greater heal (like almost never), PoH (in 25 man like almost never), but most of the time it gets used on a flash.. 0.75 is fun, but not game breaking or anything.


1.7 penance ftw...haste is a nice stat, but like you said its not something you want to go out of your way and lose spellpower/crit for



Every raiding priest should have tailoring. It's really that much better than any other profession.

Or in just a few words:
Haste is a nice to have stat, it never hurts getting it but you don't want to gear/gem/enchant for it.

Why? I personally went Tailor but more for the "feel". I keep things "in class" (Mage = Chanter, Pally = BSmith/JC, Priest = Tailor, Hunter = Skinner/LW)

Does the 400mp on cast chance REALLY outdo JC and BSmith?

The mana return has a 60 second ICD, and a procrate of 35%.
So we can estimate that it procs every 65 seconds.
400 mana per 65 seconds = 30.769... Mp5.

The spellpower proc gives 295 spellpower for 15 seconds on a ~50% procrate and a 45 second ICD.
We'll assume it procs roughly every 50 seconds, which gives you 295 spellpower for 15 out of every 50 seconds.
That gives it a 30% uptime so on average it is 295x0.3= 88.5 spellpower.


I'm not sure on the itemvalue of spellpower and Mp5, but if you know you can substract the itemvalue of the +23 haste cloak enchant and then compare it to how much itemvalue wortg of stats other professions give.

I'm not talking about how important it is but more how much it is worth in itemvalue.
It's best shown by gems, where it's 20 agility, 23 spellpower or 30 stamina.
I was just too lazy to go figure it all out, but I'll do now.


Cloak enchant: 23 haste.
In itemvalue, 1 haste = 1.15 spellpower = 0.5 Mp5
So 23 haste is worth 26.45 SP or 11.5 Mp5

Since those are the amounts you'd get if there was a cloak enchant of those stats we'll deduct that from the amount the embroidery gives.

That leaves us with 42.05 SP or 19.73Mp5, which is in fact weaker than your average other profession will give you.
The simple conclusion is thus not that Tailoring is so strong, it's that the normal cloak enchant is just that weak.

Edit: Professions generally give 2 gems worth of stats, jewelcrafting is the exception as it gives a little more than that because of the 3 gems.

Edited, Oct 1st 2009 3:24am by Aethien

That raises a question for me, how do tailors handle getting 130 spellpen? :3