Wickler

First off, I looked all over for Meta Gem discussions and couldn't find anything, so I like to start one, aiming more towards healers.

There are two choices that stand out as a healer for metagems.

Bracing Earthstorm Diamond - +26 Healing Spells & 2% Reduced Threat
Requires more Yellow gems than Blue gems
Requires more Red gems than Blue gems

Insightful Earthstorm Diamond - +12 Intellect & Chance to restore mana on spellcast
Requires at least 5 Red gems
Requires at least 5 Yellow gems
Requires at least 5 Blue gems

These are the first two and I was preparing myself to be using the Insighful Earthstorm Diamond. I'm taking more of a mana regen approach, since if threat is an issue, fade will take care of it, and the requirements on the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond means less blue gems then the other ones. Blue is all the mana/stam type of gems and as a priest, I value this the most, so I do not want the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond.

Before I put in the Insightful in, I went over the other meta gems and I saw a possiblity of 5 choices for healers.

Destructive Skyfire Diamond - +14 Spell Crit Rating and 1% Spell Reflect
Requires at least 5 Red gems

Mystical Skyfire Diamond - 5% on spellcast - next spell cast in half time
Requires more Blue gems than Yellow gems

Powerful Earthstorm Diamond - +18 Stamina & 5% Stun Resist
Requires at least 5 Blue gems

The Powerful Earthstorm Diamond is in there as mainly for a Priest that is struggling with their HP being really low and letting them focus on getting more mp5 related gems. Destructive Skyfire Diamond is more for Paladins and Healers focusing on critical builds. But the main Meta gem that I'm looking at to challenge my choice of using Insightful Earthstorm Diamond, is the Mystical Skyfire Diamond.

From what I have gathered info on the Mystical Skyfire Diamond that isn't given is that it has an 18 second cooldown on the Proc, and the buff that you get is a 6 second buff to use it.

Now for some questions that maybe some other people know about the Mystical Skyfire Diamond, since I did find some rumors that I haven't been able to track down, mainly to do with instant cast spells. Does instant cast spells take the buff when it active, and does instant cast spells proc the use?

How I see this to be very useful for a priest is that we are casting so many spells, and being able to swap in a lowered rank Gheal when this proc is up. This enables you to cast a much more mana efficient heal in less time, (Gheal + Proc) over a standard Flash Heal, and allows caster to use more gems that would benefit them the most.

So what it boils down for me is Insightful Earthstorm Diamond vs Mystical Skyfire Diamond for me as a priest. I don't have much background on these and maybe just trying them is the best way to go, but any thoughts or advice would be helpful. My main focus is mana regen and making the Mystical Skyfire Diamond work as a mana restoring gem is what I'm trying to do.

 

• Igniter

The 300 mana off insightful is nice, as well as the int is always appreciated. The gem requirements are high, but you can easily swap in some kara socketed items (at least as a shaman)

 

Chosimu

I specifically noticed that the focus proc on the Mystical Skyfire Diamond does not have a cooldown, its procced back to back for me before. Instant cast spells can cause it to proc but they cannot consume the proc when it happens. It doesn't however proc while doing nothing like the Bangle of Endless Blessings does.

I chose to use this over Bracing Earthstorm Diamond at first because at the time, the requirements are much much easier to meet than those for the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond, not to mention most healers prefer using Royal Nightseyes over just about any other type of gem. For a druid at least the proc is extremely useful as it essentially gives you a 5k flash heal, it also procs alot more than you might expect at first glance.

Edit: the focus buff also only lasts 4 seconds.

 

Nitz

As a healer (paladins are a special case if they chose a critical hit oriented gear) you have the choice in not so many gems: Royal Nightseye, Dazzling Talasite, Luminous Noble Topaz, Teardrop Living Ruby, Brilliant Dawnstone, Sparkling Star of Elune and the Lustrous Star of Elune. I think you can easily notice how Royal Nightseye vastly surpass all of the other ones. The 2% reduced threat would really shines for DPS, I never found myself in such a situation where this reduction would have helped/saved me (basically I never draw aggro with the proper talents, unless the tank had not this 3 seconds to Mangle/Slam the mob and I get a 6k+ heal landed without overhealing). 26 healing sure is nice but you have to sacrifice way too much healing power or mana regeneration in order to get this small bonus.

Ark, I didn't talk at all about Insightful Earthstone Diamond.

 

Anedris

I'm using a powerful earthstorm diamond at the moment but once I get enough stamina on my gear not to need it I'll probably go to mystical skyfire. I would prefer the mana proc but not only would I need more socketed gear to activate the insightful but I would also have to socket it with a bunch of non-optimal gems (i.e., not royal nightseyes). The mana proc would have to be significant to make it worthwhile for me.

On which note have the approximate proc rates of the insightful earthstorm diamond and the mystical skyfire diamond been figured out? And does the insightful proc have any sort of cooldown? (I believe the mana proc is 300 mana but correct me if I'm wrong on that figure.)

 

Xelopheris

Here's the thing about the Mystical Skyfire diamond. You NEVER put a pure blue gem in your healing gear, EVER. Here's how rare gem mechanics work:

Each stat has a certain amount for it's base color. Stam has 12 points when it's on it's own blue, +Healing has 18 on Red, int has 8 on yellow. Mana per 5 has 3 on blue.

When a hybrid gem is used, it gets exactly half from each color. So an orange gem could have +9 healing and +4 int on it. But here's the kicker -- since three doesn't divide easily into two, and they didn't want it to be a very minimal item, the mana/5 on a hybrid blue gem is 2. You're actually one and a half the itemization.

Now as far as my part, I'm a feral druid, so I tend to like Dazzling Talasites since I can get a 20% bonus on my int, so in every blue slot on my healing gear, I have a dazzling talasite. To get that Meta Gem to work, I'd have to replace some of my dazzling talasites with straight up 3mp5 gems.

Now in the same sense, that makes the requirements for the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond very easy to meet. You can equally divide your blue gem slots to be Purple and Green, and as a result you just need one Red and one Yellow and voila.

 

Boevis

I think that's a rather Shaman statement, than a healer statement. A HT spec druid is going to prefer the Luminous Noble Topaz over the Royal Nightseye, and most Healers are going to view the Teardrop Living Ruby as either superior or at least equal to the Royal Nightseye.

Yellow gems, admittedly are pretty terrible for a priest, and looking at the Incarnate and Hallowed sets, you'd be hard pressed to pull off the Bracing Earthstorm.

Having to take 5 Yellow's to get the Insightful Earthstorm is going to set you back a potential 10 MP5 or 45 Healing to gain 32 int (32 int ~ 10 MP5 in a 4 minute fight, int is superior in shorter fights but worse in longer) At a 2% chance to gain 300 mana, it's going to be about 2.5 MP5 equivalent (50 casts in 2 minutes sounds fair) All in all, a pretty solid gem, but not really spectacular.

 

Nitz

For a HT specced druid, this gem gives 10 healing (+1 healing from Lunar Guidance), 0.4 mp5 (0.44 with BoK), and 60 mana points. I don't think this one stands the comparison with the Royal Nightseye. The Teardrop Living Ruby is a very good gem until the point where you have stacked enough +healing (1300~1400 as a shaman is a pretty sufficient amount), and started to look away for mana regeneration. To meet the yellow requirement of the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond however I fully agree on the Luminous Noble Topaz, it prevents stacking 15 gems in your gear, which is kind of hard to attain.

PS: Saying "that's a rather Shaman statement" to a fairly new shaman is a good way to earn his respect !

 

Boevis

+1 Healing, and more overall mana in a 3.5 minute or shorter fight. Yes, I will take that over the Nightseye, every time because I values +Healing more than mana regen (I am an Alchemist after all)

 

• aya

For me the choice between Meta's comes down to seeing how much it's worth giving up in order to fill up some requirements. In this I consider myself lucky to be a paladin. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't slap in +8 spellcrit gems in Yellow sockets for at least somewhat decent benefits.

I've been contemplating on the sacrifices needed for Insightful Earthstorm Diamond, trying to make the best I can with the slots I've been given. With "normal" 2-slot (one meta) helmet, 3-slot chest, 3-slot pants and 2-slot shoulders, it's rather obvious I can't put whatever I please to get in five of each color.

The big "problem" here is that the meta itself eats one slot on the helmet, leaving me with only 9 slots of color-gems. If it was 10 slots, I could just put in five Royal Nighteyes (red&blue) and five Gleaming Dawnstones (yellow). As it stands, I need to push in some Green and/or Orange gems to get my Insightful Earthstorm working.

Leaving the gems from Heroic instances aside (farming heroic for a single drop from single boss can get frustrating fast...), are there any reasonably good Green/Orange gems for a paladin to heal with? Dazzling Talasite (+4 Intellect / 2 Mana every 5 sec, Green) and Luminous Noble Topaz (+9 Healing / +4 Intellect, Orange) both seem reasonable, but not quite Royal Nightseye.
If only there were blue versions of Rune Covered Chrysoprase (+5 Spell Critical Rating / 2 Mana every 5 sec) out there...


Cutting out from my ponderings to the point:
With "the best" (yet to be decided) Green/Orange gems, how much do I end up giving up for Insightful as opposed to, say, Destructive Skyfire?

 

Cryect

Where are these 3.5 minute or shorter fights in raiding though? (well besides Karazhan I should say)

 

Xelopheris

Boevis has his 40mp5 trinket while chugging pots eh?

Either way, a druid that's healing without a deep resto spec (i.e. feral druid (1/46/14) or balance/resto (33/0/28)) has talents that scale with Intellect (Dreamstate and Heart of the Wild). Most of my gems are yellow off-cuts because of this.

 

Wickler

A big problem is that you can put a Royal Nightseye and Dazzling Talasite in the Red / Yellow slots as well, so you are actually sacrificing a lot more MP5 to gain an extra -2% to threat. Being a Druid, you have innervate for yourself so MP5 isn't much of a concern as much threat generated, leaving ya to not exactly use the most of the Blue Socket. Being a priest, you have fade for yourself so threat isn't much of a concern as trying to regen more mana.

Putting Royal Nightseye in every Red/Blue Socket and then Dazzling Talasite in the Yellow sockets will give the most Mp5 that someone can achieve. (Biggest Problem for a Priest is regen ATM.)

Add in Mystical Skyfire Diamond can bring a different approach to save mana using a Gheal when it procs instead of a flash heal when in a patch heal raid position. And then it could be helpful at the same time when MT healing and chaining Gheals + PoM + Renew. It's not exactly the best for Tank Healing, but it can be useful.

One thing I would like to point out is that I do not find the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond that useful at all. I tried it out today, and you do have to give up using MP5 potential sockets in order to gain the "Regen" Meta gem if you do not have a good amount of Sockets to use. I have 8 Sockets so that means I must use 2 Orange Gems in order to use the Insightful Earthstorm gem, which is a potential -4 mp5, while gaining 8 Intellect. According to Boevis:

The Insightful gem is not a good gem to use if you are barely making the socket requirements since you are forced to use 2 Orange Gems at 8 Sockets, 1 Orange at 9 Sockets and then 0 at 10 Sockets.

 

Xelopheris

1. MP5 is still valuable. It means I can go longer without having to use an innervate, or possible give it to a priest instead.

2. As far as "using the blue socket", re-read my post. The 'blue' portion of a blue hybrid healing gem is essentially overloaded with a free 0.5mp5. Using two Royal Nightseyes is better than a Teardrop Living Ruby and a Lustrous Star of Elune.

3. Fade and -2% threat are not comparable. -2% threat is over a long duration, and will not make much of a difference at the beginning of a fight. Fade is really only useful at the beginning of a fight when you land a nice big crit heal and the mob with onyl one sunder and a demo shout runs up to you.

Infact, most of the stuff you said supports what I'm saying. By never going with a straight Lustrous Star of Elune and going with Royal Nightseye and Dazzling Talasite instead will give you more stat points.

 

Wickler

1) I never said it wasn't valuable. All I was stating is that is not as a huge priority for a druid to get more regen over intellect or healing then a priest because druids do have innverate they control.

2) I totally agree with that, I said using the Blue/Red Sockets with all Royal Nightseyes would be the optimal thing, and then Yellows with the Talasites. I don't know where I said that Blue Socket == Lustrous Star of Elune. Ah I worded it wrong: You wouldn't be using the Yellow and Red Sockets to the max potential of mana regen because you wouldn't use the Blue/Red or Blue/Yellow gem in those slots if you were to decide to use the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond.

3) Ya fade and -2% threat are not comparable as it was been, but it is still a Temp Aggro dump leaving tank to get that mob off the priest and Taunt/Get more aggro then the Priest. Druids don't exactly have that instant temp dump of aggro and that 10 second window that a tank can get that mob off the healer when they pull aggro because of healing.

Sorry for wording my opinions wrong, still kinda nervious posting here.

 

levk

41 holy paladins basically get triple scaling on int (divine intellect, illumination, holy guidance), while royal nightseyes are still clearly the gems of choice, going to dazzling or luminous is worth it for activating insightful given you have enough sockets to activate the damn thing in the first place. There should be a healer shield or a mainhand mace with sockets.

e:

Trying to get back on topic, I don't see any good healer meta gems other than insightful, none that would make the tier 4 helmet better than my purple judgement helmet anyway. So I'm not really bothered to take it (t4 helm) until I actually activate insightful.

 

• frmorrison

An instant cast spell will only eat the buff if it orginally was not instant (such as Corruption or NS spells). Instant spells can proc the buff.

I think the best one is Insightful, but the requirements are hard to meet.

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.

 

◊ Kurisu

Personally I go Stam + stun resist. The stam is VERY nice on Tier 4 pieces but also lets it be usable in PVP. Stun resist has always been wierd in PVE because an odd number of things have a stun component, look at Second Wind as a good example.

 

Coriolis

People have pretty much all gone over it, unless you have threat issues (and with a good tank I can't imagine you would), the Insightful gem should be best - if you can satisfy the gem requirements. If wowhead is correct the chance to proc is apparently 2% and restores 300 mana, so the mana regen from it is:

mana/5 gained= 5secs/(Time between spellcasts) *.02*300=30/(Time between spellcasts)

So if you're casting a spell every 1.5 secs, 20 mana/5, if every 2.5 secs, 12 mana/5, so on and so forth. I think for most priests/shammies it would come out to 7-4 mana/5 depending on how much you downrank and spam heal, more then that for pallies or druids if they are spamming hots. The 26 healing is nice but the requirements for that gem are even worse then the insightful (you can satisfy them but mixed mana/5+healing or int gems are best for most people), and it arguably doesn't make up for the int and the manaregen put together.

 

sulliwan

I have 18 stam and 5% stun resist on my healing helmet because no matter how I tried to set up the 10 gems in my healing gear, it would have always meant a far greater loss of healing capability from using the gems to meet requirements for either Bracing or Insightful Earthstorm Diamond than I would have gained from the meta.
The easiest way to get requirements for Bracing is probably using 1 Luminous Noble Topaz and Teardrop Living ruby in all other sockets, but for my gear that would have meant losing pretty much all the socketbonuses which add up for more than the gain from the meta is.
The requirements for healing gems are totally ridiculous, with the exception of maybe paladins, I don't see any healer using yellow gems in their healing gear. And even for paladins, I'm pretty sure Royal Nightseye or Teardrop Living Ruby is a superior choice over Gleaming Dawnstone or Luminous Noble Topaz.

 

levk

You have 10 sockets and you couldn't work out how to activate insightful preserving all the socket bonuses?! I'm kind of stumped, can you give me which color sockets you have and the order of color preference for gems (green, orange, purple included)?

e: royal (heal/mp5) = purple, limunous (heal/int) = orange, dazzling (int/mp5) = green, heal = red, int = yellow, blue = mp5

 

sulliwan

0 yellows, 8 blues, 2 reds in the gear I have planned(as in, should have within a month or less). Also, since I am missing 2 pieces of that, it makes it a bit more complicated even :P
The only way I see it possible is to use Dazzling Talasite in 3 blue slots and Luminous Noble Topaz in the reds, but the tradeoff from just using Royal Nightseye in all those 5 slots doesn't seem worth it. (20 int, 6/mana 5sec, 18 healing vs 45 healing, 10 mana/5sec, the regen would be made up with the Insightful proc but intellect is just...well...bad, I would rather have the extra stamina from Powerful Earthstorm and have a bit more flexibility with upgrading my gear after that)

 

levk

20 int is 300 mana, you'll need to be in combat for 375 seconds = 6 minutes 15 seconds before the 4 mp5 will provide you with more mana.

12 int alone from insightful will take that past 10 minutes and I don't see any encounters taking that long. And the proc is at least 10 mp5.

You're right though, insightful does lock you into gear to a large extent, especially now, but the way I'm seeing it, it's worth it.

 

Boevis

I know this is mostly a discussion about the mana regen aspect of meta gems, but why does everyone discount the +healing. +27 healing is rather significant, by my spreadsheets +5 healing is roughly equal to 1 MP5 as far as healing output. And looking at mana costs, the ability to down rank right now is rather nice.

 

Cryect

Lady Vashj from what I've seen of the fight is much longer than 10 minutes. Most fights though in SSC are in the 8 to 10 minute range in time length.