Simply put how many people are planning on scrapping T5 completely and gearing themselves in full T6? After looking at the stats, dropping the T6 legs in favor of T5 seems like a no-brainer but what about the rest? I assumed that most of us would keep the 2 piece T5 but not having it yet I'm curious as to what the rest of you think.

Also, if you're keeping 2 pieces of T5 which pieces would you ideally keep?

Personally, after taking a look at the values after gems and breaking down spirit to healing and mp5 I decided that keeping the T5 legs and gloves would be ideal, though legs and cowl would make sense too.

Why take t6 legs when you can get the ones from archimonde.

I've been having this same problem as well, decided when to break up my t5 2 piece bonus. Its a very tough decision.

In the end I think I'm leaning towards the helm and the shoulders actually, for some reason.
*drool*

Heh, that's why I asked this =) When doing my math I used a spreadsheet of just the tier sets and completely left Archimonde's pants out.

The way I see it those favoring mp5 will keep the gloves and the cowl as they're the least mp5 upgrade, while those favoring healing will keep the shoulders and the chest.

Why'd you choose shoulders and helm?

Kind of really enjoying bloodboil's robes. I don't know, I should probably do more research and planning, pretty much as the only holy priest in my guild I have almost every healing drop up to mother shaz so far heh.

Don't listen to me, I have no idea what I'm doing. I started out going for spirit then switched to mp5, now back to spirit and mp5 in combination. I guess its good to have 2 sets depending on the fight. Its unfortunate the t5 2piece bonus is so godly.

I think my reasoning was that the gloves from RoS were awesome and I am already using bloodboil robes and archimondes pants. Therefore the only logical 2 pieces left to use are the helm and the shoulders. Pretty bad reasoning imho.
damn haha.

The only two pieces of T5 I ever got were helm and pants, I intend to use them past Illidan.

I believe it was Sunchips on this board that threw out the idea of stacking +healing with 2p T5 and down ranking like crazy. Ive been trying this for the last couple weeks and its works out very good. Its also always nice to improve circle of healing which is a very powerful spell in Black Temple so far.

We were unbelievable unlucky with priest/warrior/druid tier5 tokens and that limited options a lot, especially when we skipped both tk/ssc several times while pushing for Illidan. We also geared main tank as a priority, and usually had only 1 holy priest in tier5 content raids. This resulted that it was really difficult to even get 2xtier5 bonus, I actually still had tier3 shoulders/chest when we killed Illidan. Now I finally have 2xtier5 bonus from gloves and shoulders, and I plan to keep them for a long time. With the set bonus manaregen lost a lot of value in my eyes, though I focused on +healing upgrades already before getting it.

Downranking to greater heal rank 1/2 allows you to pretty much chaincast without losing any noticable amount of mana, and since most of the time tanks will have Amplify Magic, the amount healed is quite a lot. For example my greater heal rank 1 heals around ~3300 when amplified, with a cost of 213-313 mana depending on the set bonus proc. Add a tree druid buff and it get's a bit ridiculous. Of course downranking is situational and best used when multiple healers heal a single tank, but since no point staying full mana anyways, you have an option to increase HPS a lot easily. I also use gh rank 4 a lot, almost 5k heal after amplify has often the same effect than gh rank 7 would have had.

I would recommend planning the gearing a bit in advance, but priests currently on tier5 content should remember that most guilds reduce the amount of tier5 content after getting to bt/hyjal. So if you can, take 2-3 tier5 pieces for those slots that you plan to keep a long time, and then start focusing on getting tier6 level ones.

Just to clarify, despite the massive +heal stacking, I don't rely on the downranked spells as much as one would think. When you get farther in BT/hyjal there tends to be a shift from mana intensive to HPS intensive. It becomes a serious issue of healing fast enough. This is more or less resolved simply by bringing an additional healer to a raid; the difference on Archimonde, for example, with 9 healers instead of 7 is incredibly noticable.

That said I'm staying with +heal stacking as it allows me to be able to put out massive HPS, while still having the option to draw back to efficient lower rank heals (I use gheal 1, 3, and 7 about equally).





As for the T5 vs. T6, T6 dominates overall in that it has a balance of all 5 stats on it. I would definitely go for 4 pieces, if not all 5, simply because its better rounded gear.

As for which pieces, I would say the gloves shoulders and chest are the best upgrades, the helm is a decent upgrade, and the legs seemed to me as a minor upgrade; you gain a few stats, 15 or so +healing and lose 4 or 5 mp5.

For people who have T5 helm+ legs, chest + legs, or helm+chest, you'll be sitting well through BT; the shoulders are also good as there are very little upgrades until t6 (Mother Shahraz), which is almost always well after Hyjal is already cleared.


Edit:

This is ultimately what I wanted to say about T5 vs T6.

I would agree, head and legs are the 2 pieces I am planning to keep or atleast to swap out of my gear last. I haven't really compared the overall stats of a full t6 with 3 t6 + 2 t5, but if I decide to keep my bonus those 2 parts will be the keepers. Actually it's quite convinient that these 2 parts can be used togheter with the full primal mooncloth set untill t6 becomes fully available.

I'll probably keep two peices of t5 when and if I get it. The mana return for overheals is awsome for overhealing. IMHO

I have a spreadsheet with all of the healing 'upgrades' through the whole game. In terms of t5 vs t6, the least amount of stat point sacrificed to retain the two piece bonus is by using the t5 helm and shoulders or gloves. Here is the helm:

Item Name STA INT SPI Healing MP5
Cowl of the Avatar 40 32 31 103 12
Cowl of Absolution 36 32 33 126 12
Difference -4 0 2 23 0

Now, granted, the stats are assuming BT gems of the 5 int, 2mp5 and a 4 mp5 gem. Adjust as you see fit, but you can see that the difference is very small between the two.

The other slot is shoulders:

Item Name STA INT SPI Healing MP5
Mantle of the Avatar 26 26 20 106 14
Mantle of Absolution 30 30 19 93 22
Difference 4 4 -1 -13 8

This is with 4 mp5 gems and scryer exalted shoulder enchant.

The glove choices:

Item Name STA INT SPI Healing MP5
Gloves of the Avatar 26 27 29 77 6
Gloves of Unfailing Faith 25 33 0 84 18
Gloves of Absolution 39 31 27 86 10
Difference 1/-13 -6/-4 29/2 -7/-9 -12/-4

So depending on what your heal style is and your healing role in the raids, you can hopefully make the choices here. I myself will be keeping t5 helm and shoulders around for this purpose when I attain them as it seems to be the two pieces with the least amount of difference in terms of stats.

Hmm, can't get it to retain my spacing...hopefully that is readable enough.

I picked up the T5 helm and T5 shoulders also for this purpose. They are by far, the lone pieces that are big enough upgrades from T4 gear / kharazan stuff that warrant taking, as well as high enough stat-wise to carry me through BT and Hyjal.

At the very least, the leggings of eternity seem to be a bigger upgrade for me, and would be my "offset" piece over the T6 leggings. The leggings of eternity with 16mp5, 3 blue gem sockets (with a +9 healing set bonus), and more +healing than T6 far outweigh the T6 pants in sheer itemization. If you were bummed because of the lack of spirit in the leggings of eternity, you could socket 3 +10 spirit gems, have +30 spirit, and make the leggings of eternity completely blow the T6 pants out of the water for sheer regeneration purposes. Eitherway, the archimonde pants are where it's at.

The t6 pants for priests have a yellow gem socket. Meh.

This may be a sidetrack but I feel it goes along with the equipment discussion.

I'm curious to find out exactly how priests are trying to gear themselves or as I call it, what 'equipment spec' they want to go for, why they choose that spec, and what their healing style and role is.

I myself have always gone with a very heavy mana regeneration spec since my healing style is that of a stop gap raid healer. I stablize the target via a shield and a renew, quick flash heal, or a pom. Then I move on to the next target. Because I use such inefficient heals and a lot of pw: shields, being able to regenerate quite a bit is vital to healing as I do. Fully raid buffed I get up to 313 mp5 while casting and about 1675-1700 healing. By end game (if I get everything I want) I expect to increase this to about 369 mp5 with about 2100 to healing with slight differences if I decide to use the two t5 pieces I mentioned earlier.

The thing is, I've armoried a lot of the holy priests in the higher end guilds (Just going through top ranks on wowjutsu) and what I noticed that almost every priest has an extremely high spirit and healing, but rather low mp5. Are people using a much different healing rotation that allows a better use of the five second rule to take advantage of that high spirit?

With the way we have our healing setup, we only go with seven healers (Two to three holy paladins, one to two restoration druids, one or two restoration shamans, and myself as the lone holy priest), and we very rarely go with more due to our raid preferring having the additional dps. Are other raids running with more healers usually (barring specific fights)? If so, perhaps I need to make some adjustments to raid composition and go through what kind of gear and gems I should be trying to attain.

I may move this to the holy priest theorycrafting thread.

One good way to answer whether you should keep 2-piece T5 indefinitely is to play normally for a few weeks with WWS or a similar mod running, then go back and look through your combat logs to see how much mana you get returned from Efficiency while using your normal style of healing. Of course it will vary from fight to fight, but you can still get an idea of, on average, how much mp5 it is equivalent to given your play style and typical raid roles.

I did this for myself and a few other priests I know and found that 2-piece T5 can vary from 10-50 mp5 equivalent depending on the player and encounter. If you fall on the low end of that consistently, it will be worth upgrading to T6 equivalent, while if you fall toward the middle or high end you should probably stick with 2-piece T5 from a min/max perspective.

The other half of the argument is that 2-piece T5 allows you to completely change your play style to that of a Paladin, basically MT spamming or playing whack-a-mole and still remaining efficient. So you're well served to keep two pieces in your inventory for situations where that's appropriate, even if you decide to upgrade your "default" healing set to T6 equivalent.

Edit: I'll also add, somewhat OT, that I'm starting to lean toward Sunchips' camp in favoring +healing and, to a lesser degree, stamina. I don't mean choosing significantly lower ilvl gear to heavily stack those stats, just gemming and choosing between Tier and equivalent off-Tier pieces accordingly. Given how much of our mana regen comes from things like consumables, shadow fiend and innervate, it's my opinion that our natural mana regen from gear is a weak thing to focus on.

I'd prefer the leggings of eternity because it simply outshines the T6 pants in every way (stats / mp5 / healing). I generally stack a well rounded amount for stats. I prefer spirit over mp5, and itemize healing less than both of those. I'm the COH patch healer for my guild, so healing doesn't have a major affect on COH. The regeneration I would get from my gear allows me to maintain COH patch long enough to stabilize the raid (and take mana naps between the patching).

We're in hyjal now, and it seems from armory of other priests in guilds that are just a bit higher (taken down bosses in hyjal or BT) than mine that my stats are very comparable to any patch raid healer.

I find that more often then not I'm not doing a ton of single target healing anymore. While the T5 bonus is really great for when you are doing a lot of that, I would say the best option would be to hang on to 2 pieces when you are upgrading your gear and switch it in based on what your assignment is for that fight. I'd also have to say I prefer leggings of eternity as well, but Archimonde apparently hates us. Haven't seen a single healer item drop from him yet. -.-

The plus healing on your mantle of absolution is too low, looks to me as if you forgot to add the healing from scryer enchant to it maybe? I calculated the differance between tier 5/6 a while ago. These stats asume that you follow the socket collors and use 22heal, 2m/5s 11heal and 5int 11heal gems. Leggings of Eternity instead of t6 legs of course.

Legs
8sta
2int
-27spi
37heal
8mana/5s

Head
-4sta
-1int
2spi
23heal

Hands
13sta
4int
-2spi
20heal
2mana/5s

Shoulders
4sta
4int
-1spi
9heal
8mana/5s

Chest
12sta
7int
-3spi
14heal
8mana/5s

Head clearly offers the smallest upgrade in stats, hard to argue with that. For second piece I'd just go with personal preference and what drops your guild happens to get, the differances ain't exactly huge.

I find the T5 2-set bonus to be worth, on average, around 35 mp5 for me on most boss encounters. Some can be substantially higher, especially if I'm chain-casting. (For instance, a fight like Solarian gets insane value from the bonus.)

Like any setbonus, it's pretty simple.. find out the converted value to you, and compare. For me, 35 mp5 would be worth keeping two pieces. If your healing style doesn't afford that large of a bonus from it, then the value obviously might be different.

Stats, after all, are the only reason to choose pieces of gear...so, it's simply a valuation issue. Unless something dramatically changes in my healing style, though, I doubt I will be swapping the setbonus out too soon--and, even if I do, I'll still be keeping the pieces in my bags for certain encounters.

The general consensus and what I've decided myself is that if you want to retain 2pc T5 your ideal gear will be T5 Head+Gloves, T6 Chest+Shoulders and Leggings of Eternity.

I think that 2pc T5 probably outweighs any stat upgrades you'd get forgoing it. It would only be beneficial to drop it on fights such as Gurtogg or RoS where you mainly cast Poh or CoH.

t5 2 piece is situational. If you aren't going out of mana, then its useless.

I tend to agree that gear is situational. For example someone mentioned RoS as a place to drop t5... but I prefer to put more on for RoS Essence of Desire Essence of Anger.

Currently thats rank 10 renew I think for desire I'll probably downrank to 7-8, and the CoH priest needs to CoH more Vs Anger, but by and large I am able to keep a larger number of people, and maintain a higher HPS because of having 3 additional seconds before renew fades. Which is at least 1 renew more or a PoM. The other priest was maintaining whats looks to be about 6 renews. I was averaging about 7 with an 8th mixed in.

Or if you prefer I had 100 ticks of renew successfully heal, and he had 60 ticks of renew healing. Granted some of that might be because of PoMs toping people off or what have you, and some might be because I'm simply better than him, but the difference is still very significant even after factoring that in.

I'm not saying thats the only way to kill RoS, but assuming you're stacking dps groups for higher DPS, and you're the iDS priest, you can't really rely on PoH. That said of course for bloodboil or some such where I am with the people taking a ton of dmg 2 pc t6 obviously wins out over renews.

Ultimately for general use 4 pc t6 > 2pc t5, but since you'll have "beaten" the current content by the time you obtain 4 pc t6 you can still use 2 pc t5 and 2-3 pc of absolution if you feel you prefer the stats of t6, but want the gheal bonus.

The way I feel about set bonuses is... they term the order in which you should try to obtain the higher tier gear.

For example, at the minute I only have 2 pieces of T5, Shoulders and Hands. My guild has like 5-6 warlocks and its not uncommon for us to be raiding with 4-5 warlocks per a night, additionally we have 1 other holy priest, 2 shadow priests and 3-4 paladins. On any given night we easily have 10 people vying for the loot tokens. So while I would certainly like T6 Hands, I am going to forego bidding on them until later, giving the warlocks/paladins a chance to duke it out, and I am going to go after T6 Head first (while planning to get Leggings of Eternity, so, no T6 legs).

I actually just finished working the details out on this for myself. I've been chewing through our WWS values for the last few months to figure out roughly how valuable each stat really is to me. I'm finding that I weight the standard healing stats along the following lines:

+healing = 1, +m/5 = 6, +spirit = 2.15, +int = 1, +sta = 0.75, +haste = 0.25

Using these values, you can basically calculate the overall value of any given piece of gear. Now, using that, let's calculate the upgrade values for the T5 vs. T6 pieces.

Gloves: +41.5 points
Shoulders: +61.9 points
Pants: +1.8 points (but T5->Leggings of Eternity is 45 points)
Hat: +22.3 points
Chest: +71.6 points

OK, so here's the question. Is it worth breaking the T5 bonus to go to the 4piece T6 bonus? For me, the T5 set bonus is coming out to be ~25mp5 over the duration of a fight (this is less for AoE healing fights like Naj'entus, etc. due to using Gheal less than PoH or CoH). The T6 bonus would, at most, be the equivalent of ~+20 healing (maybe more if you use GHeal exclusively, but that's based on what I'm seeing as a mix in WWS). So, T5 set=300 points. T6 set=20 points.

So, what set is worth the most points? At this point, it's just math.

T5 hat, T5 gloves, T6 shoulders, T6 chest, Leggings of Eternity.

Obviously, if you change the underlying numbers, the end result will change, but this gives a base of comparison.