Although I'm healing outside of 25-man content, I've reached the conclusion that saving my on-use trinkets to counter burst is ineffectual. I do have my [Warp-Scarab Brooch] activated in my NS macro, but all too often I find that I finish fights without ever using the trinket. As a result, I recently incorporated the Scarab into my regular healing macros, which already contained totem swaps and Lower City Prayerbook activation. As a result, the scarab gets used very shortly after its cooldown elapses. I revert back to manual activation for some encounters - fights with predictable, periodic increases in healing load like Hex Lord Malacrass - but for ordinary use I've found that auto-activation is infinitely more consistent.

[Vial of the Sunwell] seems much better suited to burst countering, to be honest.

How do you switch to manual activation from macro-ing it in?

I find that macroing the trinket to a spell you frequently cast allows you to make sure you use the trinket every time the cooldown is available. This method ensure virtually 100% uptime for the trinket. However, the downside is the trinket may not be available at a specific point in an encounter where additional +healing is useful. However, I just can't remember to click a trinket every two minutes on top of remembering to refresh my totems, my water shield, the Earth Shield, etc.

For shaman, I recommend linking +healing trinkets to the casting of Earth Shield or the dropping of Healing Stream.

Hi Chandra, I just thought I'd chime in with a few words considering I also play a Holy Priest in raids. Our guild is currently just beginning MH/BT. Not being a theorycrafter or having a ton of math skills I can't show the math, but Bangle in all occasions seems to better suit a priest than Essence. Burst +heal is entirely too situational for a priest considering our heavy reliance on the 5sr, the return on bangle combined with the earring and and inner-focus isn't really beatable until the trinket from Illidan. It is however, dependant on your spec, playstyle, and healing assignments.

[Essence of the Martyr] still has the most +heal readily available. (yes, yes Illidan trinket... but key word is readily/easily available).

It's amazing for prayer of mending, since prayer of mending has a wicked total coefficient. I always use mine on the opening pull to prayer of mend the main tank, then renew the main tank and all other off-tanks. It's absolutely exceptional in Hyjal, where you can pretty much use it at the start of every "pull". Obviously, I don't generally use it for bosses, but in my opinion its one of the best trash trinkets.

For me, I walk around with several trinkets and swap as needed:
[Memento of Tyrande] - It's almost always on, only exceptions is if I do Insignia + Alchemist Stone for Archimonde.
[Earring of Soulful Meditation] - Any fight where I am guranteed an innervate, where I have a lot of downtime or when I want balanced bonus between Alchemist Stone and Essence of the Martyr.
[Alchemist's Stone] - Any fight where I am absolutely chain potting (Illidari Council)
[Essence of the Martyr] - To boost my +heal, so pretty much every trash fight in the game.
[Fetish of the Sand Reaver] - Heroics with random pug tanks
[Eye of Gruul] - Anytime I am specced CoH (so, Bloodboil)
[Insignia of the Alliance] - Rage Winterchill, Archimonde (actually, I use the 2 minute one, I just can't think of the name)

Very well said, having a trinket collection like that and swapping based on what you're doing is always the best way. The new PVP trinket is Medallion of the Alliance.

This is correct, the new Necklaces follow the shoulder enchants, so if you are Exalted with Scryer's you will get some amount of mp5, melee crit, expertise, or spell crit (depending on the flavor of necklace you are wearing).


BTW, the new healing trinket now has a 2 minute cooldown (it was too good for itemlevel 115).

There are times you simply know you won't need to heal much, and using that trinket on those times is a waste. For example on vashj with macroing you could end up clicking the trinket on the last heal after your side got forked lightning, instead of just waiting until the next forked lightning so it affects more heal. On morogrim you could save it for when healers are graved. On najentus you could use it when you want to top the raid off for shield popping.

Just about any fight has certain periods that require some more healing than others and/or has "downtimes" when you don't need to heal anything at all. Macroing the use trinket will cause you to waste it a lot on those situations, while actually remembering you have a cooldown and use it will not waste it nearly as much.

When manually using it, the more efficiency is an issue over bust healing, the more you should try using it as often as its up (but still not waste it on downtimes etc). If efficiency is a non-issue you shouldn't worry about it and save it for your NS and/or when multiple people take burst damage due to messing up or due to bad luck so you can save them from dying with your higher HPS.

Spiritual Healing does indeed affect it, fully charged it heals for 2200.

The Patch 2.4 thread has reported that the cooldown on [Vial of the Sunwell] had its cooldown increased to 2 minutes (was initially 1 minute on the PTR).

2.4 PTR and Patch Notes Post #1295

This change makes me much less excited about the trinket (at least for PVE), especially since its passive bonus is 15 mp5. There are much better trinkets for mana regen. If I could pick it up for free, I would take it but I doubt I would spend DKP on it with this longer cooldown.

I believe it drops from heroic Magister's Terrace so I plan on picking it up to play with it but I doubt it would replace any of my raiding trinkets. Get on the ptr and lets find out!

An upgrade to the Talasite Owl JC only trinket. This seems too good to be true.

Will mana be a problem though? I don't know with the change to spirit regen what will happen, time will tell I guess.

But ya very sexy.

My current preferred trinket combination for raiding is [Earring of Soulful Meditation] and [Alchemist's Stone] (not yet having had the chance to acquire the Memento). The 2.4 spirit changes buff both of these items - the Stone's passive stats are moderately more effective, and the on use ability of the Earring gets a huge buff. (Some quick PTR testing without any raid buffs boosted my out-of-casting regen from ~650 to 998 while the trinket was active).

However another of my trinkets also got a large potential boost: the old [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon]. With the increase in out-of-casting regen, the procs from Blue Dragon might rival the potion boosts from the Stone for effectiveness - especially combined with the Earring. I can really see situations where any combination of the 3 trinkets might be effective.

I've been looking at that trinket for a while, and I think the fights I would equip it for would be ones with a predictable silence (presumably the effect would still be usable). The only one I can think of offhand would be Nalorakk in ZA.

Thanks for the info. Can any druids or shaman confirm that [Vial of the Sunwell] also works with our talents on the PTR?

bleh you're right, people are saying it's a 10 yard cast which makes it pretty terrible for those fights.

edit: I am bad at forums and responded to a post on last page, edited to include what I was replying to.

I have my Essence macro'd with Swiftmend. I don't think I actually get the benefit on the Swiftmend (though I haven't bothered to check). The idea is, however, if I'm Swiftmending rather than just letting HOTs tick, there is probably some increased urgency which I may be able to stabilize more quickly with a little extra healing.

The new Redeemer's Alchemists Stone sure looks interesting for those alchemist healers that like straight +healing trinkets.

Due to spirit changes the +40% potions effect may not be that important for priests and druids but as a paladin I'm still using the old Alchemist's Stone on fights like Council. 40mp5 (if chain chugging) is hard to beat and now coupled with extremely high +healing makes this on par or even better overall than [Memento of Tyrande].

This is even better than the leaked (unconfirmed!) Glimmering Naaru Sliver as it translates to more mp5 and does not require cumbersome channeling.

Well as a priest/alchemist who only uses the alchemist stone on chain potting fights, the new trinket will become a semi-permanent equip for me, joining the earring. It's hard to argue with that much +heal and a de facto 40mp5 when potting. Especially when the competing trinkets -- for me at least -- all are of dubious merit (the scarab, the essence, the miscellaneous kara/gruul stuff).

From what I've gathered:

Alchemist stone is 40mp5 while chain potting.
Glimmering Silver is 31 mp5, but requires 8* seconds of channeling
Memento of Tyrande is 20-26 mp5 (theorethical max is 26 mp5, but I doubt anyone but maybe a coh priest is getting that)

One thing to note about the Glimmer, spell haste apparently affects it.

Pretty much the same here. I currently use [Earring of Soulful Meditation] permanently, with my other slot generally rotating between:
*[Eye of Gruul] for fights with high CoH usage
*[Alchemist's Stone] for fights where I need a considerable number of potions (which current things we do, that only means some ZA encounters)

For 2.4 I had also been doing some calculations on my trusty [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon], as with the Spirit buff, it will become quite powerful again, and some quick calculations indicated roughly 50 Mp5 from the trinket to be possible with high Spirit. That said, I still would use my Earring over it, and with the new Alchemist's Stone, it might not get any use after all. The +healing on the new trinket is just massive, and while it does not offer any regeneration unless you pot, I currently rarely need a lot of potions, regen is going to be buffed a lot in 2.4, and if I ever run low on mana, this trinket will help out a lot when I do actually pot. With the old version, I'd generally only use it when I anticipated chain potting, but 119 healing just seems too good to pass up.

Just thinking of what I'll end up using, my guess would be something like this:
*Redeemer's Alchemist Stone + [Earring of Soulful Meditation] for general use
*[Earring of Soulful Meditation] + [Eye of Gruul] for fights with considerable use of CoH but some chances at a regen break
*Redeemer's Alchemist Stone + [Eye of Gruul] for fights with heavy CoH usage and little chance for regen breaks, causing potential need for extensive potting.

Not 100% sure how well [Eye of Gruul] measures up in general to the others, but seems to me that a ~10% reduction in mana consumption in those heavy CoH usage situations probably makes it worth using in those cases, while not being worth it elsewhere.

Just kind of curious what the source of the recipe will be. Given its item level of 125 and use of Nether Vortex in its creation, it seems unlikely it is a pattern from the Sunwell (those items typically have higher item levels, and use either Sunwell materials or trivial materials - not that Vortex will be particularly hard to get in 2.4 of course). So makes me wonder if they are just trainer based, or require reputation with one of the factions. (Might be a good chance, considering the JC-only epic cuts from blue gems)