I just got my new Pendant of the Violet Eye and I'm not a real math person. What do you guys think is the most efficient way to use this this trinket, let alone is it a good trinket? Is it worth sacrificing a Mindtap or a Rejuv Gem? I play a priest so the way I've used it so far is to basically to pop it and spam rank 1 renew. I can get the buff up to about 12 stacks which is (14mp5 x 12stacks)=168mp5 at the last tick before it wears out.

Let's assume for the sake of it that you're a perfect 0 lag person and can get the maximum out of it.

At 5 seconds, you've got 3 stacks: 42 mana/5 = 42 mana total

At 10 seconds, you've got 6 stacks: 84 mana/5 = 126 mana total

At 15 seconds, you've got 10 stacks: 140 mana/5 = 266 mana total

At 20 seconds, 13 stacks: 182 mana/5 = 448 mana total.

448 mana every 2 minutes = the equivalent of a passive 18.67 mana/5 trinket.

In reality land, I agree that 12 is the maximum you'll really get, landing the 10th stack before the 15 second tick is not humanly possible, so cut that down to 420 mana total and the equivalent of a 17.5 mana/5 trinket, which is barely better than a shard of the scale.

And if you don't actually have a reason to spam 12 spells in 20 seconds, and you're wasting mana to do so, etc etc fishcakes.

It's probably going to be better than a mindtap, though.

It occurs to me that it would be a pretty decent regen trinket for an elemental shaman using the totem of lightning/rank 1 bolt/big clearcast tactic when OOM (lots of quick spells, no interruption of the 5 second rule). Burn like crazy for 1 minute 40, pop trinket and go regen for 20 seconds, repeat. But only if you didn't have a better trinket than shard of the scale to begin with.

If you're intent on spamming, Lesser Heal rank 1 would be better, due to actually doing something past the first application.

Spamming is only beneficial if you aren't going to be exiting the 5SR anyway, however. Each spell application will give you a 14mp5 buff for 4 ticks, for a total of 56 mana. That means each spam of a 30 mana spell gives you a 26 mana gain, which is less than even one tick out of 5SR. Just make sure you pop a spell close to the end of the buff to sustain the mp5 stack for another 20 seconds. (EDIT: Assuming my assumptions about the mechanics are correct, this part is actually wrong. The value of spamming low ranks is higher than I originally wrote here. I'll get back to it later)

If we assume that during a typical fairly hectic 20 second period you will cast 7 spells (5 greater heals of some size, a renew and a PoM), the effect will grant you roughly this much mana:
7*14 = 98 mp5
98 mp5 * 4 = 392.
That's 392 mana after the buff. If we assume that the spells are evenly distrubuted through the 20 seconds, we can assume that the average mp5 during the buff period is half that, meaning 196 mana.
So from one activation of the trinket in a above average hectic situation, it will give you 588 mana. One activation every 2 minutes turns that into 24.5 mana per 5 seconds. The actual return will drift around that number.

This means that it's a great trinket for hectic fights, but for slower controlled fights where you are less likely to be semi-spamming a heal of some kind (like most 5-mans), it will drop to about the level of a Shard of the Scale.

I wouldn't replace your Rejuv gem with it outside of special fights (like oldschool low-rank spamming on tank'n'spank 25-man encounters), but I would definitely replace the mindtap if you're still using it.

EDIT: Unless I'm wrong RK, you are ignoring the regen during the first 20 seconds, leading you to underestimate the trinket. My calcs assume that every update to the buff doesn't reset the timer before you get a mana tick.

Hm, by my math it results in a different amount of mana. The effect expires 20 seconds after use, and there's a 1.5 second global cooldown, and each use gives you an additional stack. So the first stack will be in effect for 18.5 seconds. The next stack lasts for 17 seconds, and so on. And each stack gives you 14mana/5, or an average of 2.8mana/sec. If you're spamming constantly, that gives you, per use:

18.5 seconds + 17.0 + 15.5 + 14.0 + 12.5 + 11.0 + 9.5 + 8.0 + 6.5 + 5.0 + 3.5 + 2.0 + 0.5 seconds of 2.8mana/sec. Which is 345.8 mana total, every 2 minutes (or 120 seconds), so it averages to 14.4 mana/5 under absolutely optimal conditions.

In a more typical case when you're casting every 3 seconds, that means you get per use:

17 seconds + 14 + 11 + 8 + 5 + 2 seconds, or 159.6 mana total, every 120 seconds, or 6.65 mana/5. So...pretty mediocre.

Elerion: I freely admit I'm theorcrafting it and don't have the item to test with- are you saying that the buff lasts for 20 seconds AFTER the stack fades? If so, that does massively increase the power of the trinket (you could easily break 1000 mana every activation without being optimal, and 500 mana a minute or over 40 mana/5 is a hell of a trinket). It would also be the only trinket I know of that works like that.

Melador: Again, if you've actually seen it in action then that's something, but the way you're describing it would be like no other trinket in the game. One trinket causing 10+ separate buffs on someone?

My math assumes that the buff stacks up and that at the 5, 10, 15 and 20 second marks you gain mana equivalent to whatever the stack currently says. After the 20 second tick, it fades off.

Heh, at first I was suprised at the usage of a thread for a single trinket.....then I looked at the trinket.

Some pretty interesting synergy possible with [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle], though for anything not a shaman/paladin I'd question if that'd beat much of anything else.

I really like the idea of the shaman totem as well, that's very interesting.

Oh, and melador, it does not give you a global cooldown to use trinkets- you can't activate them midway through a cast, but you -can- hit them and only loose about .3 or .4 (I think it does a server-check like the dispell check, or it might be my UI, but hitting them simultaniously does not seem to be a viable option).

Actually, gonna mess with macros very shortly, see what I can get them to do with that- maybe I can bind them.

Edit:
Contrary to my impression earlier, it does decidedly work to macro stuff together like this. You do have to use /stopcasting but it makes a very handy macro which you can then spam (the server-side return of 'stop that macro right now' happens post inital cast).

For example:
/Use Bladefist's Breadth
/stopcasting
/Cast Stormstrike

Will work, but if you pull the /stopcasting it will bomb out. Good macro for this sort of thing I think. For me, I'd use:

/use Pendant of the Violet Eye
/stopcasting
/Cast Lesser Healing Wave

and spam that nonstop till the effect was off.

No, it's not 10 separate buffs, but you can think of each stack of the buff independently. In my example, the first stack lasts for 18.5 seconds, the second stack lasts for 17.0 seconds, etc.

Ah, you're right. So the "perfectly best case" would then have an additional 20-second-long stack to it, putting it at 401.8 total mana or 16.7 mana/5, which just baaaarely beats out Shard of the Scale. Under any real conditions it would surely fall short.

We haven't had the trinket drop yet, so I'm just theorycrafting off the wording of the trinket. This is how I would expect it to work according to the wording:

For 20 seconds after activation, you get a token trinket buff, allowing you to accumulate the manaregen buff.
On the first spellcast, you get a buff that says TRINKETMANAREGEN(1), with a 20 second duration. Each subsequent spellcast will act like stacking bossdebuffs (Huhuran, Fankriss, Firemaw, etc), increasing the stack by one and resetting the duration.

This means that if you spam Greater Heal in a no-lag situation, you would after the trinket buff has expired have a buff that says TRINKETMANAREGEN(8) with 20 second duration. For the first 20 seconds, you would on average have had half that.

That was the basis for my calculation above. I may be wrong about the mechanics, but I still think this is the most likely mechanic.

This sounds reasonable, but if the stack is resetting would any of the mana ticks actually make it through? Or would it behave like a constantly reset Renew where none of the ticks go through until you let it sit for 3 seconds? Of course, I believe MP/5 was added to the 2 second mana ticks in some bizarre mathematical equation so perhaps you would only need at worst a two second gap to get ticks out of it. That's a far more reasonable gap if you're using slightly larger spells.

If you check the Thottbot spell description it uses you will see it doesn't matter that the buff timer keeps being reset. It changes directly the total amount of MP5 you have unlike a Blessing of Wisdom spell which adds an energize effect every 5 seconds.

Enlightenment
Blessing of Wisdom

Right, the real question then is, does the stacking 14/mana5 buff immediately disappear when the 20-second duration of the trinket's usage expires, or does it last for 20 seconds from the last stack application?

Hard to tell from just the item description.

Good question. Does this work like Badge of the Swarmguard? i.e. does the mp5 buff not have a duration, and the "proc" buff removes it when it fades?

Edit: Looking at the Enlightenment buff you get itself, it looks as if it fades as soon as this version does, similar to Badge of the Swarmguard.

Point.

All the more reason to consider that it might well be strongest for shaman (and even moreso if totems count as spells, which they should since they get treated as spells for silence and spell-lock abilities).

What difference do spell haste effects matter when the global cooldown limits you to spells every 1.5 seconds if you were really trying to max it

I picked it up on our first shade kill, was interested to see how it worked, and.... it's in my bank now. It doesn't compare to most of the better healer-oriented trinkets from end-game 60, and which ironically enough have held their weight with the ones i've seen at 70.

I think if there was a grace period after the initial stacking process it'd be interesting, i'd use it for renew stacking and flash spamming. Also i've noticed it procs on wanding, which is probably an oversight.

Spell haste effects seem to reduce the global cooldown as well. Preliminary testing with Scarab of the Infinite Cycle seems to allow me to cast 4 flash heals in 5 seconds when it procs, and there's no "spell is not ready yet" message or noticable pauses when spamming.

This item is bugged pretty badly, especially for paladins (or it got a huge buff I just hadn't heard about). Holy Shock, Holy Light, and Flash of Light all give double procs of the trinket effect as seen in this screenshot: http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=violetvt2.jpg Other paladin spells like consecration, cleanse, divine shield, etc all only give a single stack of the buff. I imagine it has something to do with the Illumination talent counting as 2 spells; I'll check if I respec to a build without it sometime. Spells such as Stoneform, Find Minerals, Sense Undead, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination all also proc the trinket, but only give a single stack as seen here: http://img96.imageshack.us/my.php?image=violet2rr0.jpg Non-combat pets and mounts do not proc the effect (spamming a non-combat pet to get 20 stacks instantly would've been awesome). The maximum attainable stack is 20, as is listed in the spell data at http://thottbot.com/?sp=35095 . I also verified this in game by landing 11 heals in the duration with double procs on a Scarab of the Infinite Cycle haste proc, and the final heal did not increase the stack above 20. In practice, I usually hit 18 stacks by the end of the effect, or 20 if I get a Scarab of the Infinite Cycle proc or throw in a Holy Shock or Hammer of Justice or Cleanse or something between Flash of Lights.

The mana regen gained by the trinket is actual mp/5. That is, it increases the amount of mana gained on each 2 second tick that you normally recieve and is displayed in your mana regen in the character sheet. It does NOT work like blessing of wisdom. The mana regen buff fades the second the duration expires. I ran through one of my combat logs to see how much mana this gives over a long period of time, and my results were as follows:

04:57:15.671 You gain Enlightenment.
04:57:17.281 You gain Enlightenment.
04:57:17.671 You gain Enlightenment (3).
04:57:18.187 You gain Enlightenment (4).
04:57:20.500 You gain Enlightenment (6).
04:57:20.890 You gain Spell Haste. <--- Scarab of the Infinite Cycle proc
04:57:22.125 You gain Enlightenment (8).
04:57:23.734 You gain Enlightenment (10).
04:57:25.421 You gain Enlightenment (12).
04:57:26.609 Spell Haste fades from you.
04:57:27.031 You gain Enlightenment (14).
04:57:29.046 You gain Enlightenment (16).
04:57:31.031 You gain Enlightenment (18).
04:57:32.953 You gain Enlightenment (20).
04:57:35.671 Enlightenment fades from you.
04:57:35.687 Enlightenment fades from you.

We'll assume that mana ticked up when the trinket was clicked, and each 2 seconds thereafter, so :15.671, :17.671, :19.671, etc. The stack quantities at each of these times were 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 20. That means the mana gained from the proc would be ( 14 mana / 5 sec ) * 2 seconds * ( 3 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 12 + 14 + 16 + 18 + 20 + 20 ) = 677.6 mana. Cooldown is 2 minutes so that's 677.6 / 120 seconds * 5 seconds = 28.233 mp/5 assuming you used the trinket exactly every 2 minutes and got a haste proc every time. It ends up about 24 mp/5 without the scarab proc and an 18 stack.

I was only able to get up to a 12 stack (like others earlier in the thread) spamming Sense Undead or Find Minerals. Results for that were as follows:

06:36:07.328 You gain Enlightenment.
06:36:07.906 You gain Enlightenment.
06:36:09.437 You gain Enlightenment (2).
06:36:11.531 You gain Enlightenment (3).
06:36:12.625 You gain Enlightenment (4).
06:36:14.656 You gain Enlightenment (5).
06:36:15.968 You gain Enlightenment (6).
06:36:17.578 You gain Enlightenment (7).
06:36:19.625 You gain Enlightenment (8).
06:36:21.593 You gain Enlightenment (9).
06:36:23.015 You gain Enlightenment (10).
06:36:24.406 You gain Enlightenment (11).
06:36:26.218 You gain Enlightenment (12).
06:36:27.203 Enlightenment fades from you.
06:36:27.203 Enlightenment fades from you.

Using the same assumptions as above, my stacks at each tick were 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. So 14 / 5 * 2 * ( 1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 10 + 11 + 12 ) = 369.6 mana. 369.6 / 120 * 5 = 15.4 mp/5, again assuming you use it exactly every 2 minutes and reach the maximum stack value.

By comparison, Warmth of Forgiveness, an ilvl 85 epic from naxxramas is 10 mp/5 + 500 mana per 3 minutes on a clicky Use: effect. Thats 23.88 mp/5 for an ilvl 85 level 60 trinket. Pendant of the Violet Eye is a level 70 ilvl 100 epic that gives 28.233 mp/5 while bugged, used perfectly with a chance haste proc (more like 20 mp/5 realistically due to hitting 18 stacks max without a proc and it being pretty much impossible to use it EXACTLY every 2 minutes unlike Warmth of Forgiveness), and is harder to use optimally. I don't think I even need to bring up Mindtap Talisman for comparison. It's absolute garbage currently for a non-paladin at 15.4 mp/5 when used perfectly, assuming this is a paladin-only bug.

Pendant of the Violet Eye should have the double stack bug fixed, make find minerals etc not proc it, and be buffed like crazy. It should either be around 30 mp/5 from each stack instead of 14 mp/5 or it should remain 14 mp/5 and have a passive ~12-15 mp/5 or an equivalent amount of spelldmg/healing/int/stam/whatever in addition to the Use: effect. Or make the stack remain active after the buff fades long enough for it to actually be useful. On a side note, with the bugged double procs, it's pretty awesome with a Scarab of the Infinite Cycle proc plus heroism from the shaman I group with normally.

Paladin mechanics in regards to on spell cast procs are a bit wacky anyway from what I've noticed with the Bangle of Endless Blessings, specifically it can also proc when someone else heals me (That is, it gets triggered by Spiritual Attunement), and it can also proc when I'm refreshing a Judgement through meleeing. It might be interesting to test how that works with the Pendant of the Violet Eye as well.

Think all current level 70 epic healing trinkets are bad.
Eye of Gruul, Pendant and the Opera Event one are all pretty bad compared to the old level 60 trinkets and several blue level 70 ones.
The best healing (manareg) trinket at the moment is the blue jewelcrafting one (revered shatar).

Tested that and spiritual attunement does not proc the effect. That was one of my first thoughts when trying to think of ways to exploit this to its fullest (VE from the shadow priest in my normal 5man would have resulted in a pretty much instant 20 stack).

edit: Just tested and judgements refreshed by meleeing do not proc the effect either. Judgement does proc it (single stack). Actually holy shock when used as a nuke still gives a 2 stack, so maybe it isn't (or maybe still is) caused by something with the illumination mechanic since crit holy shocks used offensively do not return mana from illumination. Hammer of Wrath is a single proc.

Was finally able to transfer to PTR to test this trinket and it is currently unchanged and still broken. It also gave me the opportunity to test it without any talent points spent (no illumination) and it still gives double procs on paladin heals so it's obviously not caused by the talent.

Indeed, overall it seems horribly weak, I don't think blizzard tested this one.