Hi everyone,
Nothing gamebreaking here so feel free to move along if this isnt your cup o' tea.

In the spirit of our classic EF>all rants, I've been taking a look at healer neckpieces that are available to me and trying pin down a min-max best item. (difficult to do as a healer, I know). Before I get to the meat of the question, allow me to outline my gear and role:

I am a proponent of HW and Chain Heal. I rarely use LHW. I usually use Rank1, 5 and 10 of HW and Rank 1 of Chain Heal. I am generally on a single target (think Vek'nilash), rather than spot healing. I am 38 resto skipping -5% mana cost for Imp. Reinc and Ancestral Fort. I have full Earthfury, full Ten Storms and Augur staff, as well as a set of misc. items. Depending on my set, I go from 66mp5 +491 healing to 110mp5 +526 healing to 75mp5 +575 healing.

I pose this question as I am currently in a position to look for upgrades to my neck slot and I'm trying to decide whether I am just beating a dead horse. I currently use Pendant of the Fallen Dragon http://www.thottbot.com/?i=40742 , is there a point to upgrade into any of the following necks?:

Forgotten Names http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53885 (+6 int,+18 spirit, -2 mp5, -9 stamina, )
Wavefront http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52236 (-6 int, , -1 mp5, -4 stamina, +24 healing)
Angelista's http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52757 (+2 int, , -3 mp5, +3 stamina, +31 healing)
Shifting Sands http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52741 (-12int, , -3 mp5, -9 stamina, +46 healing)
Necropsy http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53914 (-1 int,+10 spriit, -9 mp5, +1 stamina, +51 Healing)
Fallen God http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53394 (-12int, , -3 mp5, +2 stamina, +57 Healing)

I notice there is a large ~10% improvement I can make in +healing moving into something like Fallen God. +18 spirit improvement on Forgotten Names. Or I can normalize with Necropsy or Angelista's. I just wonder if there is any tangible improvement to be had for someone in my roll (derank floor, single target, no HoT) or would the DKP be better served in other places. I really feel like its a ~1-2% wash on all but Fallen God, and (without hands-on on Patchwerk) whether more +healing is really necessary. Open my eyes.

Angelistas, in my opinion, is the best neck piece for a Shaman. It is well rounded and does not lend itself to any one particular style of healing.

Many of the other choices are either too focused (Vael Neck or Ossirian head neck) and lend themselves too much to either burst or steady healing. Also the necks that spend a lot of budget on spirit are a poor fit for a shaman.

Healing Way really scales your +healing exceptionally well, and if you are using HW5 a whole lot I'd probably lean towards picking up more +healing at the expense of a few MP/5. If you use a lot more Chain Heal then MP/5 becomes more important. There's no reason you can't get something like Necropsy and bag it out for the PotFD in situations where you'll be using Chain Heal more.

Could someone with good knowledge of the mechanics of Chain Heal please post how it's affected by +heal, with and without 3-piece TS? I remember reading a post that said CH used +heal with 141% efficiency, and I'd like to see how that number is calculated, if true. It makes +heal really great for Chain Heal spam situations.

Hurts my brain that you skipped AH....

Anyway, since you -have- a high mana high sustain neckpiece, I'd go in completely the other direction and stack on +healing. Keeping both pieces as swap is going to serve you a lot better (imo) than one or the other exclusively. Certain fights promote downranking, others promote spamming/decursing, and swapping a few pieces (which it sounds like you're already a big fan of) is very helpful to that end.

Personally, I'd go for Shifting Sands (depending upon your guild's dkp system, that this might be 'free') or C'thun's neck. Angelista's is very nice, but being you already have a very good neck you'll be swapping in/out I'd value either of those a hair higher.

Just my opinion though, sounds like you're significantly ahead of me progress-wise so take it with a grain of salt.

Edit:
Chain heal gets 71% from the first jump, 35.5% on the 2nd, and 17.75% on jump #3. That totals up to 124.25%, but if you wear 3 piece TS it goes down by 37.5% instead of 50% per jump, leading to a total of 143.1%.

If you were curious how that math came about.

Flubber said He didn't skip the armor bonus ;).


Yes, a strong +healing neck is the way to go.

I believe the initial hit has a slightly lower coefficient for calculating +heal than a normal 2.5 second heal, but if it doesn't, you recieve 71.4% + 35.7% + 17.8% = ~ 125% of your +healing over the whole spell. Having the 3 piece Ten Storms bonus moves it to 71% + 46% + 30% (2nd and 3rd jumps improve to 65% of the previous hit instead of 50%), which is about 145% of your total +healing bonus. Of course the trick is that you have to have 3 targets who need healing for it to be that awesome...

Well if you didn't, you wouldn't be using Chain Heal.

I think Angelista's is the best all around neck for general use. Even point allocation among four different useful stats makes for a really good necklace.

I use angelista's, upgrading from jin'do's eye. I'll gladly sacrifice 12 healing for some more mana and more int/stam

And as far as I know, it gets 125% bonus from +heal, but its easy to test so....

In TBC something like Angelista's would be the more logical choice. For right now, Fallen God has everything you want, nothing you don't.