Retribution Paladins and Haste

Retribution Paladins and Haste is current as of Patch 4.0.6, Patch 4.1 and Cataclysm.

Alright everyone, let’s take a look at Haste and see how it affects Retribution Paladins.  I know many of you are scrambling to try and understand the mechanics of this and how it affects our cooldowns and DPS as of Patch 4.0.6.

Here is what Haste basically does:

  • Increases how often our weapon swings by reducing the weapon speed.
  • Speeds up our DoTs, including Seal of Truth (Censure), making the damage tick faster.
  • Lowers our cooldowns on attacks and abilities, allowing for more attacks, which equals more damage.

Haste and Crusader Strike

The chaos about Haste in the aftermath of Patch 4.0.6 derives from how it affects Crusader Strike, and the ability to get mopre Templar’s Verdicts.  To put this in the simplest terms, Crusader Strike is the heart of our damaging attacks, as it is the best source for generating Holy Power (100% chance).  Templar’s Verdict is our strongest damaging attack, and it costs Holy Power to use.  In order to maximize DPS, Templar’s Verdict should only be used when we have 3 stacks of Holy Power.

So, basically, Ret Paladins want as many Crusader Strikes to hit as quickly as possible, allowing for more Templar’s Verdict uses.

  • quicker Crusader Strikes = more Crusader Strikes = more Templar’s Verdicts = Higher DPS

HOWEVER, with Patch 4.0.6 and the way our other abilities and attacks function, haste does not provide the value that Mastery and Critical Strike does.  The logic above would hold true if we were able to get Crusader Strike down to a 3 second cooldown.  But even in end-Cataclysm gear, the amount of Haste needed probably still will not be reached.  Simply put, no matter how much Haste you stack, you won’t be able to get Crusader Strike down to its optimal 3 second cooldown.

I have written a quick post on why Haste is our lowest priority stat, trying to simplify the reasoning as much as possible:

Haste Summary

So, for the TLDR version of this post:

  • Current stat values are:  Str > Hit > Exp > Mastery > Crit > Haste
  • Reforge away from Haste to your most needed stat, wherever possible.
  • Do not gem haste.

Note: As always, when patches get released and content changes, there’s always a possibilty stat values could change.  Mechanics for our class seem to morph every patch or two, so check back often to see if Haste has gained or dropped further in priority!

Comments

  1. Khor says:

    It has changed. Haste cap can’t be reached with current gear. Still absorbing info on this subject, but it shouldn’t be possible to cap, possibly never throughout the entire expansion…

  2. Jd says:

    So I’m a converted holy paladin new to the ret side of things. However, last night we defeated the first new raid boss of cat a in 10 man. I was consistently third in dos but outgear the two hunters who were beating me. So, I started looking for problems….

    One of those issues is my haste.

    I am hit and expertise capped. So, do I reforge haste or do I reforge crit/mastery?

    In that raid I had reforged haste every opportunity and had reached haste of 1888. However, elitist jerks has the soft hast cap for rets at 1015. So, While maintaining my hit exp caps, reforged haste into crit and mastery. Please give me your thoughts as I wan t improve fr tonight as we venture into blacking descent…

    Here is my worry…

    At 1888 haste
    88 target dummy – 11k dps
    5 man heroic bosses – 13k dps
    10 man raid – 12-16 k dps
    25 man raid. ?? Dps

    At 1018 haste
    88 target dummy 9.9k dps
    5 man heroic 10 k dps
    10 man raid??
    25 mman aid.

    My worry is that m dps went down instead of up… I know they say in raid you’ll have much more h ate because of uffs, but am I doing hat right?

    Jdstormfist..

    ~Sen from my Apple iPad~

  3. Khor says:

    @ JD – From what I understand, Haste is no longer soft capped at 1015 haste. In fact, I think it’s not going to be possible to bring our Crusader Strike cooldown to 3 seconds with any form of Cata gear. I am leaning towards stat priorities going crit > haste > mastery

  4. Adam says:

    Well guys ATM i dont follow exactly the guide you give as So here are my stats :

    Mastery : 12.20 %
    Haste : 11.7 % 1500 haste rating
    EXP + HIT cap
    Crit : 10.2%

    and my dps
    Dummy HC start 20 k and after 4 min i am on 16 k Stady DPS
    Raid 25 man i am always top (if i dont die from agrro:)) Start with 23-27 k and in most stady fights i go 20-21 k end of fight . On non stady fight For example Atramedes i was on 17.5 k at the end of fight .

    This is my char you can check
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormscale/adamos/advanced

  5. novio says:

    im finding similar outcomes as JD….

    i had about 1300 haste rating. about 11% mastery and Hurricane on my weapon. Plea note my ilvl is 339, so im not even raiding yet.

    I was able to peak at just over 14k on boss dummy.
    Read this post as well as elitist jerks, stating the same thing…..so reforged all extra haste I could onto mastery. ( now haste rating of 800+ )….siting on 13% now (about 1k mastery rating)…

    I have lost close to 2k dps on boss dummy, cant even reach 13k.

    I know a dummy isnt the best way to test the new possibility of dps rating…..but this worries me a lot.
    I also switched to avalanche instead of hurricane on weapon.

    I’m just not seeing haste as being the worst stat. Im considering reforging and enchanting everything back to haste prio.

  6. Gingivitsist says:

    From what I’m seeing, the people who are not geared in complete 346/359 gear will want to stack crit and haste because mastery scales with Strength/AP as well and at 333/346 or even lower you don’t have as much Strength/AP. Once you start getting more gear/higher AP, mastery will become better stats then crit and haste. 333 and lower ilvl: Crit>Haste>Mastery. 346 and higher ilvl: Mastery>Crit>Haste.

  7. Tim says:

    Here is the way I see it; at 11% haste with spell haste totem (yes spell haste from a shaman totem decreased the CD on CS, I just now tested it) I pushed about 3.5sec GCD for CS (hurricane got it to 3.33) which means I would need about 2500 haste to push it to a 3sec cd (which we wont be hitting), nearly impossible granted but haste still seems to be a good stat here’s why

    Here’s a standard opening rotation

    CS – Judgment – Holy Wrath – CS, Now here’s where the gain comes in, every thing is on CD but the remaining CD on CS is only 2 seconds after GCD, so now I have only 2 seconds of dead time in my rotation instead of 3 seconds, further more, the haste has given more melee attacks increasing the odds of getting an instance exorcism giving increased odds of only having .5 sec wasted, a bit much to wrap ones head around so here’s 2 rotations (assuming worse case scenario of no procs) and not using other CD’s that are only sometimes used

    With 1100 haste/shaman totem (or however much it takes to hit exactly 3.5 CD)

    CS – Judgment – Holy Wrath – CS – (2 seconds dead time) – CS – Inquisition – CS,

    Here we already have 2 seconds of time not spent hurting things, if lucky something will proc and take up 1.5 seconds in there, or we could even see 2 procs which would change the whole rotation (on average, you will usually get 1 proc though) and with the decreased CD we got 3 charges of holy power 9.5 seconds

    Now here is no haste

    CS – Judgment – Holy Wrath – CS – (3 seconds dead time) – CS – inquisition
    Now here we have 3 seconds of wasted time and we don’t get 3 holy power until 10.5 seconds in and have 3 seconds wasted time, thus haste provided holy power faster again there’s good odds (but not as good) of salvaging 1.5 seconds with a proc

    We can further see the affects of haste on procs with some simple math, melee strikes have a 20% chance or proc exorcism, thus every 3.8 (we will just assume that’s your weapon speed for arguements sake); 11% haste brings you to about 3.4 seconds, so having an extra attack every 9.5 seconds, or once per my haste driven rotation means that you have an additional 20% chance of having less deadtime due to exorcism, so with all your procs your almost guaranteed to only waste .5 seconds, whereas without haste your looking at about 70% chance

    A lot of these numbers are estimated somewhat (1AM atm, not doing that much math this late)
    but in the end it seems like haste increase your odds of getting exorcism by about 20% (which hits very hard), increases damage from dots(which isn’t much granted), more white damage, more CS, and faster generation of Holy Power it adds up a lot, Ive heard that the ideal cap is at about 1100 haste, haven’t had time to figure out if that’s right or not, but it may well be adding everything in.

    These are all done with some rough math as it were, its quite late, will figure out rest later zzz

  8. Kelamor says:

    Hello everyone,

    My name is Kelamor you can armory me on Deathwing – US – Horde. I currently follow the stat priority Str>hit>exp>Mastery>crit>haste. Now my theory on this is, think about how often you spend standing still wailing on a boss or mob…… Most of the current encounters require you to run ALOT this negates the need for alot of white damage. Hastes main function does exactly that, makes more white damage.
    I am currently pulling around 20k on Nefarian….. and in heroics i absolutely decimate competition. AOE still needs some work fortunately with the new change to DS comming with the next patch this sholuld be fixed… however on most 5man bosses i pull between 20-27k ….. on bosses with a damage buff such as final boss in HoO… i pull almost 40k…. The objjective is to make your strikes hit as hard as possible (NOT as fast as possible) cause you are prolly gonna be running to kill an add or to avoid that fire anyway.

  9. Cornbeef says:

    Hi im Cornbeef off Kilrogg i have about 5%+ haste roughly 700+, i have no idea why blizzard has haste on the retribution set because apparently you can only get crusader strike cooldown to 3 seconds so having like 1k+ haste is pointless because if you spec right you can get judgement of the pure what gives you 9% haste for 1 minuet when using judgement so add 9% to 5% plus raid buffs, another annoying thing about retribution paladins is reforging, most gear i have is expertise and getting the hit cap can take a little hard work, i was thinking about getting the tier 11 legs but it shows haste what i don’t need what is a bummer, another thing im going to mention is there is no problem with my dps i do about 16-18k sustained dps without heroic epic gear my item lvl is around 359 (361 with pvp gear in bag), but in most boss fights i can do over 23k dps as you can see from the above comments people are doing high dps in raids stacking str, then reforging mastery and crit so do this forget about haste the most you need really is about 5% but this is entirely up to you.

  10. Cornbeef says:

    Oh and i forgot to mention i know haste can give you quicker ticks on seal of truth, exorcism (with glyph) and your white hits will hit faster, problem is you dont need over the top with haste as you get buff from judgement of the pure and so on raid buffs from other classes……

  11. steve says:

    i had 20% mastery at on point before firelands gear and i was pullin 23k plus 10man but i think the new gear doesnt give u much chance to stack in like we could

  12. derk says:

    the thing that i done is get the trinket that falls off of council in bot that gives strength and chance for 1900 haste that sets me with a 3.5 second cd on crusader stike. and i got my dps in 5 man heroics from 12kdps to 16k with one trinket. 10 mans up to 19k

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