I don't feel comfortable blindly following formulas, since a lot of them have changed in TBC. I looked at your armory profile and based on my calculations (on your gear) I came up with different numbers. Have a look and tell me:


1) You have 385 spirit
2) Armory says that your in-combat regen is 154.
3) You have 107 mp5 from gear.
4) Therefore your in-combat regen from Spirit alone is 154 - 107 = 47mp5
5) In other words, you are getting 47mp5 from Spirit (with 15% meditation).
6) So, 1mp5 = 385/47 = ~8.2 Spirit.

The ingame character menu also calculates at 100% FSR, which isn't really that useful except maybe for comparison purposes.

I consider my regen "good enough" when I can actually not notice my potion timer coming off cooldown while still burst healing effectively, and topping the effective healing meters. After getting the T5 2-piece bonus, this is about 70% of fights for me now, though I know once we get past Kael and head into Hyjal/BT territory everything will change.

I know this isn't so mathtastic a formula as these forums like, but in choosing gear, I first look for something with BOTH spirit AND mp5. If I can only have one or the other, though, I choose spirit. I don't gem for spirit though just because the 9h/2mp5 gem is op Also, wtb decent yellow-slot gems that don't have int on them, ugh...

That would be the right model to use if spirit did not contribute to +healing and I did not regen any mana out of FSR. There is another thread pertaining to such stat comparisons where I and a few others comes up with different models: [Priest] Healing Gear and Optimal Stat Weighting

Edit: I haven't updated my post in that thread with the 30% Meditation buff (projected for 2.3) but the new value for spirit would be 17.4 .

Mana per tick (= per 2 sec) from spirit is <spirit>/4+X. X is an unknown number for me. But according to what I counted it's below 10 for lvl 70 priests.

SO, +mp5 from spirit is:
(=<spirit>/4*2,5). In plain english: your spirit divided by 4 is mana per tick. That's mp2. Multiply that by 5 and you get mp10 and divide by 2 and you have mp5.

That's while NOT casting.

While casting, it's:
where 0,15 is % from meditation. So with 30% it's:
<spirit>/4*2,5*0,30

That's mana gained from spirit. In addition to that, 25%-35% of spirit goes to +healing. 25% with spiritual guidance only and 35% with improved spirit and spiritual guidance.

So you gain , or *0,35. With those models it's fairly easy to count yourself what's the good balance of spirit for you.

Guess I will do some work to update my OP in that thread with the Meditation change and mess with my own formulas a bit also.

(I had also been meaning to make some updates in calculate some value for crit, despite its irregularity. I was still finding it lacking not to have any factor for it, since very similar items "should" get pushed one way or the other by a heavy crit differencial.)

My new values bump spirit up from 1.3 to 1.5477, or 2.07 spirit per Mp5... however, it should be noted, that I give spirit value from +healing, not just the straight regen value. My formula being: (0.25 * Healing Value) + (5SR Regeneration * Mp5 Value) + ((0.625 - 5SR Regeneration) * OO5SR% * Mp5 Value)

I've always gone with [Elixir of Major Mageblood] and [Elixir of Healing Power] for 16MP5/+50 heal.

I suppose you could go for [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] and [Elixir of Mastery] for +45 spirit, which at my calculations at 75% FSR ends up at +15.5MP5/+18Heal.

Huh, that combo was actually better than I thought, but still.. it does use more expensive mats for the Elixir of Mastery.

I think getting that much spirit is "unresonable" in that you are sacrificing so many other stats that it just isn't worth it.

Spirit is a nice stat, I like it quite a bit. On the other hand, I rarely go for pure +Spirit gear. Balanced stats are really important for a Priest--perhaps moreso than any other healer--and stacking one stat is really putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Right now, my unbuffed Spirit is somewhere in the 400 range (probably a bit higher in my armory profile, since I think I logged in my stamina gear), which I find to be quite suitable for healthy amounts of OO5SR regen.

My statistical goal was always ~200 mp5, ~2000 healing, and ~450 spirit with Imp. DS up. Since hitting those figures, I've felt my regen vs. healing ratio has been extremely solid, and I don't really have large mana issues. I doubt "stacking" spirit would result in something better than having a balanced healing/mp5/spirit pool.

(For consumables, I tend to use Draenic Wisdom + Healing Power)

Of course it's _possible_ to have that much spirit (level 70 greens of spirit ftw!) but not without neglecting other stats like stamina/intellect/mp5. My point was that it's not very useful to say hey wow look how overpowered spirit regen will be when you have X spirit, when the majority of (Kara-geared) priests will be running around with Y spirit where Y << X.

My own priest, who I consider to be heavily biased towards spirit, is still 40 spirit short of your "easily obtained" figure (armory link here if you are interested).

Sure, using select blues like the Hallowed hands over Kara equivalents, plugging Sparkling Stars of Elune into every socket, or using +9 spirit enchants would allow me to reach 570 spirit with ease, but I'm guessing there will be precious few priests who are prepared to compromise their other stats to that extent.

armory link

There you go. As you can see I have no items from 25 man content. I'm missing the better aldor enchants on pants and shoulders, missing 12 stamina on boots. That's 24+healing +17 stamin and +4 mp5 i'm missing. I have that cloak equipped as there are no epic spirit cloaks until kael'thas. I only got spirit enchant on chest. Got spellsurge on staff but you can go for 20 spirit enchant and that's it - 623 self buffed.

So supposing i get the enchants my stats are:
414 sta - 7351 hp
480 int - 9540 mana
603 spirit
1604 +healing
477mp5 outside
151 mp5 inside

Now you have to agree that I only nerf +healing. Nothing else. But that's kinda the point of regen gear right?
I can always switch to Prince hammer with Cenarion offhand and gain about 150 +healing. And think about what role you would gear like this for. Sure I got my +2k healing gear ready to go at all times.

But the Darkmoon Card Blue Dragon procs are the juice to this. With that kind of spirit in raids you get some really nice mana from the proc (just shy of 1k) and innervates kinda rock!

Apologies if I missed the answer to this question earlier in the thread, but..

At what point do you guys swap your PMC set for Tier items? I've been thinking that once
I get 2xT5 and [Belt of the Long Road] I'll swap. Does this sounds reasonable?
We're currently clearing SSC and all but Kael in TK weekly, so it shouldn't be too long
until I can do this.

.:crast:.

Remember that you don't have to have one gear for all fights either, if you keep dying or need more stamina in a fight get some stamina gear just for that fight.

I used the [Violet Badge] and some other stuff to be able to survive Hydross for example. If you PvP you can just swap in one (or more) PvP item(s) on trash (where regen is less important than survivability) or for fights like Hydross where you want at least 9k HP raidbuffed.

As for myself I've broken the PMC setbonus to get the T5 2-set bonus, but that's just because I only have two parts T5 and one of them is shoulders. Depending on your playstyle 2-set T5 > PMC, but once I get helm or gloves I'm switching back to the PMC shoulders. I think I calculated the PMC setbonus to be worth 14MP5 with my current gear, and if I go more spirit-heavy after 2.3 that'll just get better. So the gear I'm replacing PMC with will need to be at least that much better.

It is kinda sad in a way that they made the tailoring gear too good, I'm kinda hoping they don't make the same mistake in WotLK. It does sort of pigeonhole clothies into being tailors..

I'm thinking that if 2.3 meditation change goes live it will be sort of an indirect nerf to PMC. I'll be glad to change it. Tired of the PMC look. It's like they're cloning priests.

Not really; I mean of course the increase 15-20% is relatively bigger than the increase 30-35% but it is still the same increase. If anything when you get more spirit gear it gets better.

The 45 intellect and 15 stamina are also non-neglible. 1mp5 = 12 mana per a minute, 1 int is still 15 mana (more with kings/talents, but hmm, assuming you're running a 20/41 or 23/38 build : 1 int = 16.5 mana with kings).

Even so, depending on the fight, just saying 1 int = 16.5 mana is flawed. For me atleast, there are times when I can get a full mana-bar mid fight. Usually this is on a phase shift or via an innervate. I can currently generate more mana with innervate than I have a mana bar (switching to a 75 spirit weapon/spirit wand/activating trinket). Or say, phase switches from Vashj phase 1 to Vashj phase 2 I can enter phase 2 with full mana. Just keep that in mind.

You could, of course go with [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] + [Elixir of Healing Power], which would give you more +heal because of 35% of 30 spirit converting to +heal.

First, yes.. people often forget you can randomly swap in pieces as needed based on fights. As I noted on the previous page, personally I swap a Stam-socketed T4 helm and the Kara rep ring in as my two "stam" items, which easily puts me above 9k raid-buffed HP. It's hardly a sacrifice and no important set bonuses (T5 Gloves/Legs + PMC) are broken in the process. A stam-gemmed PMC belt is also a very easy option.

Second, you're correct that the T5 2-set is way better than the PMC set bonus. I get anywhere between 32 and 90 mp5 from the T5 2-set, depending on the situation. It's amazingly good. That said, it makes the most sense to go Legs/Gloves or Legs/Head for the setbonus, as you don't really have to give up much to do it. The Legs and Head are also the best (comparatively) T5 pieces, and usually the ones I'd recommend holding onto for the T5 bonus, even if you are starting to get T6-level loot.

To be honest, I understand the sentiment of wanting to drop the PMC set for 2pc T5 + Belt of the Long Road. I fucking hated Prophecy the first time around. :/

That said, it'll be a bit before my guild is killing Leo or FLK, but VR is just a matter of time. I can easily see myself respeccing to FSW and just wearing T4 robes + T5 shoulders + T5 gloves/legs + Belt of the Long Road, if only so I don't have to look like I've been stuck in MC for the last year. >_< With the change to spirit next patch, the PMC bonus will not be as important, and the added stam, spirit and int from the tier gear will be kinda nice.

It'll look nicer perhaps, and with a bit more stamina but at least in my opinion much worse regen. If that's a price you're willing to pay then by all means.

T4 Robe+T5 Shoulder+Belt of Long Road = 69 sta, 76 int, 73 spi, 0 mp5, 238 heal, 7 sockets
PMC Robe+Shoulder+Belt = 48 int, 46 spi, 25 mp5, 294 heal, 4 sockets

Difference: +69 sta, +28 int, +27 spi, -25 mp5, -56 heal, +3 sockets

If we for example for simplicities sake socket the tier stuff with all +3 MP5 and the PMC with all +12 Sta then we end up at: +12 sta, +28 int, +27 spi, -4 mp5, -56 heal.

Hmm.. okay, I'll grant that that's pretty equal, if you don't count the set bonus. If we count the setbonus at say 15MP5 then at least in my book that heavily favours PMC. I'd recommend a better chest than T4 before you swap, or maybe just keep only the PMC chest. The shoulders are the most prominent part anyway.

With my ultra-conservative healing style, I doubt I'd really need the extra regen. <_<;;

I dunno, I'll probably get both and try them before I make any sweeping generalizations about which is better. D:

I broke PMC when I got the T5 shoulders, and I already had the mats for Belt of the Long Road in the bank so I made that at the same time. I was going to stick with the PMC robe until we got to Kael, but when I heard about the Meditation change I decided to grab a T4 robe. I'm going to get a pretty decent chunk of extra mp5 with 2.3, but I'll still need stamina just as much as I do now. Overall, after banking PMC and based on how I socketed the new items, I lost about 30mp5, but I gained 63 stam and 27 spirit, with +heal staying about the same. The 27 spirit offsets some of the mp5 loss, and 2.3 will offset the rest (and then some). And mp5 just wasn't a stat I really felt like I was in desperate need of, since it's very easy to compensate for with consumables.

But I freely admit that I'm not a huge fan of sets. I don't like that feeling of being "locked in" to certain gear because of a set bonus. PMC wasn't too bad because it was only three pieces, but it still bothered me. It served me well through T4 content but I was perfectly happy retiring it.

In the end though I don't think it matters all that much. You can make it work just fine either way. I certainly understand the decision to stick with PMC until T6 even though I didn't do that myself.

Although I briefly mentioned it before, I'd note that the T4 head is really a good piece to stack some stamina on if you are looking for an alternative solution to stamina gear.

Especially presuming that one is aiming to replace the Whitemend Pants with T5 Legs (a large single-piece upgrade) the head makes for a nice free slot for swapping until you can get your hands on a T5 Helm--which has decent stam on it anyhow.

Presuming you socket with 3x Royal Nightseye, the Whitemend is 106 healing and 17 mp5. Presuming you socket the Light-Collar of the Incarnate with Powerful Earthstorm/Solid Star, it is 82 healing, 6 mp5, and 25 spirit.

The net loss is 17 healing and 8 mp5, with a gain of 7 mp5 OO5SR. After next patch, it will only be a loss of 5.6 mp5.

The gain, however, is 43 Stamina...which is quite substantial. Considering that next patch you'll only be looking at 5.6 mp6/17 healing loss (and 7 mp5 OO5SR gain) for 43 Stamina, I think it's really a better option that swapping a setbonus worth 12-13 mp5 for only 26 stamina in the T5 shoulders, for instance.

I pretty much just swap the T4 helm and Violet Signet in and can easily get above the 9k raid buffed mark. I find this to be more than sufficient for Vashj/Al'ar/Solarian types of HP fights, with minimal stat loss in the process.

In practice, though, how likely are you to wear your regen gear over your normal gear? Sorry if it sounds like I'm harping on this point, but the fact that it is possible to get that level of spirit (and I see you used many +8 spirit gems to get there, which is quite unusual in my experience) doesn't make it practical or typical, and doesn't change the fact that you have to make a (significant) +healing and (less significant) mp5 tradeoff.

It would be like arguing that mages will get too much regeneration from their 2.3 meditation changes based on the assumption that they always use a spirit staff + wand, rather than just swapping them in for Evocation or special regen phases (Tin-man kiting, Gruul shatters etc).

This argument is flawed because mages stack damage/crit for most fights as spirit-stacking compromises their dps; the analagous argument for priests is similarly flawed because (most) priests don't stack spirit (to that extent) for most fights either, as it will impact their hps (and yes, mages are a much more extreme example as they get so little from spirit compared to priests, but I hope the analogy serves to get my point across).