Boomkin Debate: Crit or Haste?Follow

Ok, I normally raid as a resto druid but I finally got the chance to go boomkin for once in Gruuls and I cranked out over 1k dps and was 4th on the damage done (I love, LOVE 5-6k starfire crits). I generally have gone for the whole "stack a **** load of crit" and watch your tank get nervous as you near in on his threat levels.

Now, the real question I'm trying to get at here is what do you guys think is more beneficial towards boomkins. Stacking a high amount of crit or going for a crazy amount of haste, or both?

The few things I've noticed so far have been this. A high crit gives you an immediate .5 off of your next cast which basically acts as haste. So it's almost like having a Quagmirran's Eye proc on every critical spell you hit. So obviously more crits means less time spent casting and more time cranking out pew pew.

But with haste, you could essentially lower your cast time to 2 seconds on starfire and even more. The problem with this though is there isnt a whole lot of leather gear that will give you spell haste and you're going to rely a lot on having cloth items. Of course if you're with clothie dps it's just going to **** them off if you steal their gear.

I've personally been thinking that possibly getting both of the stats would be the most beneficial thing I could do. Having a haste rating of around 100-150 would lower your cast times by 7-10% which seems innocuous but its much better than you would think.

And one last question, does anyone know if balance druids have a haste cap like warriors?

at the moment, haste gear isn't available enough to allow a significant amount of spell haste in any reasonable amount of time. crit is everywhere, and nature's grace is a powerful effect. get the mystical diamond, quag's eye and that along with nature's grace is about as much "haste" as you could reasonably stack with real haste rating, and doesn't take up nearly so much item space.

to get 300 haste rating (if that is even possible?) would take you till long after wotlk got here. i say get crit after spell damage and wait till wotlk goes live to worry about haste. because itemization will allow it in the expansion.

Yes! its your good buddy hear. I recently resocketed all my gems with hast gems cauese I saw a moonkin come into a five man and crank out over 3000 dps. mind you he was wearing 5 outa 6 t6 with alot of haste gems and other haste items neck, rings ect. I norm run around 1100 damage with 27 to crit and put out like 900 to 1000 dps but when I went with the haste it droped my crit way too much around 22. My Starfire was hitting faster but for only like 3000 to 4000 compared to 4000 to 6000. I noticed the drop big time on the damage meters lucky to get 800 dps. So I went back to crit gems and my dps returned. I later talked to that same moonkin and he advized to stack crit until u get into T6 gear then go with haste. while with crit wrath trash and starfire bosses with curse of elements on them. When and if I get into T6 then haste and starfire everything norm you should be able to drop the reg caste of starfire to 2.5 before natures grace.

The more and more I've thought about it's starting to seem like crit would probably be the best bet for boomkin.

Micros your point about going oom is something I really didn't think about. I see a warlock utilizing haste and I sort've forgot he can lifetap back to full mana in no time.

So for now I will just stack more spell crit and someday maybe cap my spell hit rating who knows.

Thanks for all the input everyone it was much appreciated!