With the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother in patch 3.3 the haste landscape has changed a bit. This post covers the changes to haste needed to achieve your much loved 1.0 second global cooldown again!

How does haste scale with your cast time?

Haste increases the speed you cast your spells (lowers the casttime) with and lowers your global cooldown (gcd). The global cooldown cannot be lowered under 1 second. However the lowering of your casttime is not limited. There is no such thing and a haste cap, you can have infinite haste untill your spell is instant, which is unreachable. Your haste stat can influenced by gear (including gems and enchants), talents or aura’s (buffs, elixirs, totems etc). The only talent that can lower your gcd or spellcast time through haste is Gift of the Earthmother and Celestial Focus. Another talent that lowers you casttime is Naturalist, but it only affects Healing Touch and not through haste.
Is haste a stat a druid should look at? Yes, but only when you feel you have other stats like Spellpower, Spirit, Intellect and MP5 are sorted.

Formula of haste

Haste_needed = Casttime/ (1+Casttime_wanted/100)

- haste_needed is the x% of cast speed increase
- casttime is the casttime of the spell
- 1% increased spell cast = 32,79 haste rating
- global cooldown is 1,5 seconds, which can be lowered to a minimum of 1 second.

Global Cooldown

The Global Cooldown (or gcd) is the time you have to wait in between spellcasts before you can cast another spell. Lowering the gcd would give you the ability to cast more spells in the same amount of time and thus more healing. If you use the formula above to calculate how much haste you need to lower the gcd to 1,0 second, you will need 50% increased speed or 1640 haste. It might be reachable, but at a huge cost of other attributes which are more important.

You can get the gcd of your instant healing spells down to 1 second. How? Through Gift of the Earthmother, Celestial Focus, possible raid buffs such as Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura (3% haste) and Wrath of Air Totem (5% haste) and haste from gear. How much haste does a druid need with or without these talents and buffs? These haste numbers will give you a gcd of 1 second on Rejuvenation and Wild Growth:

As you might have noticed Gift of the Earthmother treats Lifebloom differently. For Lifebloom it gets 10% from total haste and 10% extra haste (so 20% total). This means you need less haste to get a gcd of 1 second for Lifebloom.

Haste and casttime

Haste increases the speed of your spellcast. A nice stack of haste gives your druid more spells to cast in the same amount of time. Which means more healing output. If you look at the formula you will see that the longer the casttime the easier it is to lower your casttime. This is because haste is based on a percentage and not on a absolute value. As you can imagine 5% of a 3 second Healing Touch cast is higher the 5% of the 1,5 second Nourish cast. This also means you need more haste to get the same absolute amount of your spellcast (0,1 sec of healing touch 3 sec cast means 114 haste, on the 1,5 nourish cast it means 234 haste).

Now tell me, you voted yes or no for Celestial Focus in the last poll, still sticking with your choice? I am curious!

I like to know how you feel about crit vs. haste. Haste makes us cast faster and spend more mana. Crit makes us heal more and spend less mana. Which to choose?

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OH and do tell my why via a comment please!

Attributes

Your druid will want to have a lot of the following attributes on gear:

1. Spellpower: it will strengthen your healing spells. How much it will strengthen your healing spells differs from spell to spell;
2. Spirit: Spirit increases your mana regeneration and your health regen, plus gives your +15% of your spirit to healing in Tree of Life form;
3. Intellect: Intellect increases your mana pool (15 manapoints per 1 intellect), mana regeneration and spell critical hit;
4. MP5: Mana regeneration is the mana you regenerate in 5 seconds while not casting or while casting;
5. Stamina: Stamina increases your health points.

Other stats that are interesting to Trees are:
- haste : reducing your global cooldown (1,5 seconds before you can cast another spell it is an inverse spell cast time, you will only notice it on instant spells) or spellcast duration
- spell crit :  it gives you a chance on a ± 50% higher heal.
Which stat should you go for? Choose one until it is satisfactory for you, then focus on the other.  But it will be very hard to profit from both.

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I have updated the Druid Resto Mega Guide with a list of gems. Here is my list for gems in your druidly sockets! I have listed only the blue gems, epic gems are not in the game yet. There are more gems listed here then I would advise you to take. But not everyone has the same preferences and might miss some stats for their task at hand, so I decided to incorporate them.

Red
Made from the gem Scarlet Ruby:
Runed Scarlet Ruby – 19 spellpower

Orange
Made from the gem Monarch Topaz:
Luminous Monarch Topaz – 9 spellpower and 8 intellect
Reckless Monarch Topaz – 9 spellpower and 8 haste rating
Potent Monarch Topaz - 9 spellpower and 8 critical strike rating

Yellow
Made from the gem Autumn’s Glow:
Brilliant Autumn’s Glow – 16 intellect

Green
Made from the gem Forest Emerald. There are no green gems with spellpower. But that does not mean you cannot fit any:
Dazzling Forest Emerald – 8 intellect and 6 mana per 5 seconds
Intricate Forest Emerald - 8 haste rating and 8 spirit
Seer’s Forest Emerald – 8 spirit and 8 intellect
Timeless Forest Emerald - 12 stamina and 8 intellect

Blue
Made from the gem Sky Sapphire:
Sparkling Sky Sapphire – 16 spirit,
Solid Sky Sapphire – 24 stamina
Lustrous Sky Sapphire – 6 mana per 5 seconds

Purple
Made from the gem Twilight Opal
Royal Twilight Opal – 9 spellpower and 3 mana per 5 seconds
Purified Twilight Opal – 9 spellpower and 8 spirit (not in the game yet!)
Glowing Twilight Opal – 9 spellpower and 12 stamina.

What choice should you make? I think that you should put Runed Scarlet Ruby in your red sockets spellpowerrrrrr! Purified Twilight Opal in your blue sockets for the spellpower and always needing spirit (or get Royal Twilight Opal) .  Luminous Monarch Topaz lacking intellect in your yellow sockets. The other gems are nice, but only if you think you lack a certain stat (remember: Spellpower, Spirit,  Intellect, Stamina, Haste, Crit)

Meta gems

Meta gems are made by alchemists and are far less expensive then in the TBC. The two meta gems are Earthsiege Diamond and Skyflare Diamond. A meta gems requires a combination of normal gems to work. The combination gems (purple, green and orange) counts for the color the meta needs. The gems for restoration druids are:

Bracing Earthsiege Diamond – 24 spellpower and 2% reduced threat, requires 2 blue gems and 1 red gem.
Ember Skyflare Diamond – 24 spellpower and 2% intellect, requires 3 red gems.

Forlorn Skyflare Diamond – 24 spellpower and 10% reduced silence period, requires 2 yellow gems and 1 blue gem.
Trenchant Earthshatter Diamond - 24 spellpower and 10% reduced stun period, requires 1 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue gem.

The last two gems can also be bought for 15 Stone Keepers Shard in Wintergrasp but with 5 spellpower less.

I do not have any threat problems, so I suggest you take Ember Skyflare Diamond.

A short message: I have updated the Resto Mega Guide with more Glyphs and Enchants!

In the guide I try to help you with your choosing of talents. I have listed gear, glyphs and enchants to help you out. Let me know what you think of the guide, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Cheers and good luck in Azeroth,

Raaff

P.S. Could someone cast a cure disease? *Sniff Sneeze*