[Healer] Meta Gem Selection

From my own viewpoint Royal Nighteyes are arguably the best gem and you have probably lost more in +healing because of being unable to use many blues ,then you would have if you went for another meta gem and used royal nightseyes wherever possible.

In my opinion, the best gem currently available in-game is the royal nightseye (blue/red socket). If it's a yellow socket I tend to put in a gleaming dawnstone. The odd time I'll use a Luminous Noble Topaz, however that's only if I have one laying around taking up inventory space.

I would just put Teardrop Living Rubies (+18 healing) to every socket slot and one bastard Luminous Noble Topaz (+9 healing & 4 int) somewhere for the meta gem requirements. In this setup, the best place to put Luminous Noble Topaz into is the helmet, which contains the meta gem.

Reason to this? Max +healing of course! The changes in alchemy have resulted in Super Mana Potions being very cheap, so chain chugging those when needed is not really a problem.

You can get mp5 and spellcrit from various items easily, but when you can put as much as 3 Teardrop Living Rubies on an item, that gives you already 54 +healing, and that is alot.

In raiding gear I'm running with unbuffed 1909 +healing, 19.84% holy spellcrit and 113 mp5, and I'll be satisfied if I can keep my mp5 at around 100 while having +healing and spellcrit going up with gear upgrades.

I see a solution here to the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond requirements problem, with Dazzling Talasites and so on. I would just like to ask: If you're trying to use a meta gem that gives more +healing, why would you use other gems that don't give +healing at all (not taking into account talents such as Holy Guidance now)? There's plenty of other caster/healer gems around to play with, that aren't about going for max +healing, that allow you to have more balanced gem setup, such as Mystical Skyfire Diamond and Insightful Earthstorm Diamond.

Edit: The above explanation about Teardrop Living Rubies of course depends on the socket bonus. For example, if an item had a red and a yellow socket, and socket bonus was +7 healing, I'd go with a Teardrop Living Ruby and a Luminous Noble Topaz, obviously. Some common sense won't hurt me!

As far as the metagem choice for healing goes: i've had Destructive Skyfire Diamond and Powerful Earthstorm Diamond socketed in the past, but with the new metagem requirements introduced in patch 2.1 i decided to switch to a Insightful Earthstorm Diamond in my Tier4 headpiece, and i haven't regret it.

After having a look at our WWS charts for post-2.1 kills it turned out to be somewhere in between 9 and 17 mp/5 for me, not counting the extra benefits you get from the static +12 intellect.

For regular gems, as it has been mentioned above, Royal Nightseye > all, the best yellow gem is Iridescent Fire Opal (for obvious reasons), unfortunately its Unique-Equipped, and also somewhat tricky to aquire.

I couldn't agree more, i'm still baffled by the amount of people who always socket their gems according to slot colors (especially tanks and healers). There is no reason at all to match colors unless you're going for the socket bonus (which, in the majority of the cases, provides less of a benefit than just going for the most beneficial gem colors in the first place) or if you're trying to meet a metagem requirement (while at the same time also unlocking a socket bonus on a specific piece).