Ahhh. The current regen available to high end healing Priests never ceases to amaze me. heh.

Having spent the past couple of hours doing a fair amount of theorycrafting on my gear, how the change will affect me and what kind of gear I would want in the future (fairly obvious, but I was curious about the sort of regeneration levels I would end up at), it is obviously a rather massive buff, which makes me feel that mana management in current content will end up being nearly trivial. If it were to be true, it has some obvious implications:
-Spirit heavy gear becoming massively powerful compared to the current situation, the same applying to gems. Of course the theorycraft machine needs to be set loose on items, but seems like a good chance that previously unpopular items will suddenly become highly sought after.
-Regeneration will go up to levels previously unheard of; I wonder if Sunwell might require this regeneration, but it sounds like a massive nerf of current content in the aspect of mana management (Currently on Vashj with our guild, so not been able to see what T6 content is like when it comes to mana)

That said, I have some sparks of doubt. Call me a cynic, but I have had times in the past where things looked very promising for a Holy Priest and didn't quite turn out that way. So I am kind of arriving at the point of wondering whether or not a change of this magnitude is intended or not, even if some signs point in this direction:
-Blizzard saying in the past that they have the intention to increase the use of Spirit, and apparently not being done with the meditation buff.
-Patch 2.4 seems in part an effort by Blizzard to making current content more accesssible and beatable for those who aren't there yet, so we don't get the same issue as Naxxrammas just before TBC.
-It would explain the relative absence of MP5 on Sunwell gear.

On the other hand, I got this voice in the back of my head saying that it might be too good to be true, in part because the degree with which mana management is made easier (or in other words, the amount of mana healers have available) is of a rather big magnitude, while the focus in the wording of the patch notes was on Intellect influencing Spirit regeneration. One thing which struck me is one option which might all of a sudden erase this rather nice regeneration boost (or at least, the major part of it):
-As it is, the reverse engineered formula appears to be Regen = Spirit * SQRT(Int)/21.45
-What if this was instead intended to be Regen = "Spirit Regen"* SQRT(Int)/21.45, turning the total formula into ((Spirit/4)*12.5)*2.5*SQRT(Int)/21.45

I seriously hope I am wrong in this, since it would be a rather nice buff if it stays in this form; it just has me wonder however if a communication error made sombody at Blizzard plug our total Spirit into the formula with the Intellect modifier, rather than the regeneration we get from it. (Which would basically mean similar levels of regeneration roughly, with a modifier giving some bonus to people with high Intellect) I suppose if that were the case we will know soon enough, so fingers crossed till we know for sure, and again hoping I am just wrong and overly cynical in this . =P

I hope these changes go through, but I'm doubtful they will.

My thought about priests is that if you were willing to forsake the flexibility (and armor...) of other healer classes, you would essentially be the strongest healer, while the oppositive has proven true so far. The only reason I shine right now in Tier 6 content is because it's designed around our 41 point Holy talent. I had basically given up on priests as the best healer and more of a jack of all trades, master of none healer. This change should put us more where we should be in relative terms with the other healing classes.

So assuming this goes live, gearing and gemming is getting a huge change. We could really use an epic purple spirit/healing gem as opposed to healing and mp5 (which I now use, mostly for lack if spinels). I guess I could change to 10 spirits in my blue sockets if we don't get a new cut, while continuing to use luminious pyrestones for yellow and spinels for red if they ever do something to make them more accessable. The spirit change will probably also allow us to make good use of spell haste as well since it seems like the sunwell loot is all spirit/haste as opposed to the spell haste/mana regen tradeoff that currently exists on gear. Being able to further downrank and keeping our hps up is pretty nice.

I agree that we should not get our hopes up for this one, seems way too overpowered with current formula and high end gear. I expect it being tuned down greatly, or even removed completely to be reintroduced in WotLK in more balanced form.

I'm not even actually sure do I want to see this going live with it's current form. I have for some time thought that the game will be broken if we are able chaincast without interruptions max rank greater heal for the duration of the fight. If you add to these fully buffed regen numbers that people have on these boards simply a shadow priest regen and possibly chainpotting (you are very likely willing to do this on Sunwell progress raids), you are closing to this point very fast even with having some spell haste gear. Well, not end of the world (of Warcraft) if this goes through in this form, more reason for me to stack +healing, the "too much mana" concept get's a new meaning.

I'm also really confused by one of the notes in the Patch notes:

Does this mean that:
1) Silent Resolve did not affect these talents and now it will
or
2) Silent Resolve ONLY affects these talents, and no longer prevents PW:S, Renew, Prayer of Mending, Blessed Recovery, Blessed Resilience, and Pain Suppression from being dispelled?

Can someone on the PTR test this out?

I really think blizzard should let this change go through while at the same time increasing the cooldown on mana potions to 10 minutes or more to compensate. The only truely broken thing would be the new regen model coupled with chain potting so I hope they nerf the latter and not the former.

Unfortunately, I doubt they'll modify the mana potion cooldown just to "fix" holy priests, given that so many classes use those potions, and changing any cooldown is a huge procedure.

I have my suspicions, as someone said above, that someone at Blizzard screwed up the code for this int->spirit conversion. If you check out the thread devoted to theorycrafting the formula, you'll note that I began the analysis with a basic assumption that they had left the FORMULA the same, but modified the coefficient (which would have made a lot more sense, and caused a lot less net *gain*). Instead, they completely scrapped the formula and moved to a new one. And the amount of regen available to us now is absolutely sickening in its scope. If this goes live, in current form, the QQing from our paladin brothers and sisters will be absolutely, 100% justified. It will completely imbalance the game.

Unfortunately, if they want to keep this formula as it currently stands, it will be near-impossible to "Fix" to a reasonable amount of gain, since there currently exists the problem that for sub-300 intellect, you *lose* regen from your spirit. The lower the coefficient, the higher the amount of intellect you would need to keep par with 2.3.2 levels of regeneration. This is why the model I suggested at first made more sense, because it gave you absolute control over the point of inflection, and allowed you to determine the rate of change.

Wait and I see, I guess. I'm making no sweeping decisions about gear/gems/enchants until after I see what version of this change goes live. I actually hope it isn't the current one, because I'd rather not be broken, gem/enchant my gear, and then have them knee-jerk revoke the change, leaving me out in the cold.

This is a bit frustrating because I currently had been considering picking up [Leggings of Eternity] but with these changes it is quite possible that [Breeches of Absolution] will edge them out.

I could see them rolling back these changes because they gave us too much regen.

I could also see them saying that the entire reason they made these changes was so we pick up some spell haste gear.

I could also see the devs saying that they are changing the paradigm for priest class and they do want us to be the best at direct heals.

However, one very nice change has been that tier 6 is now a 8 pieces. Set no need to sacrifice two piece tier 5 for four pieces tier 6 bonus now.

P.S: I am wondering if paladins also share this new Mana regen model.

Haven't seen any theorycrafting on Paladins myself yet, but seems if they do, changes would be of low impact to them:
-They are built to spam and typically won't see much OO5SR time.
-They are mostly geared for Int rather than Spirit obviously (as well as crit and mp5), so their spirit return will rise a bit, but they likely don't have enough spirit to see a major change, nor do they have a Meditation talent.
-Paladin gear is rather low on Spirit, which is still needed to get the regen, even if Int affects it.

Yep, this very nice buff for us. Even without the new regen formula, allowing to have both set bonuses at the same time makes us even better MT healers than we are currently. 4xTier6 also buffs 2xtier5 so that bigger percentage of your heals will proc the bonus.

EDIT: Deleted Post.

I didn't like my analysis.

Which 2 piece of the Tier 5 would you keep to get the bonus along with 4 piece Tier 6 bonus?

Based on the equivalent healing weighting that I used, I would keep the Cowl and the Shoulders. However, these equivalent values may be way off with the new changes to the mana regen mechanic. (1 healing = 0.9 int = 1.57 spirit = 1 stam = 3.99 mp5).

Also, I used to be tailoring and JC. I dropped tailoring to pick up enchanting for the ring enchants once the PMC gears were outdated. I was waiting to see if there are any rings that is better than Band of the Eternal Restorer and Coral Band of the Revived before I drop enchanting to pick up leatherworking for the drums. I didn't see any better healing rings, but I do see the BoP tailoring robe that looks to be quite good. Now I am wondering if I should pick up tailoring again to get the robe then drop tailoring for leatherworking.

Posting some notes from the calculations I've done as I work toward a gear spreadsheet that reflects these changes.

I'm taking 650 int and 650 spirit as my baseline, since that is approximately a full T6 raid buffed priest. It is impossible to say definitively any longer if a particular item is "better" than another, because items with int/spirit only out pace items with mp5 as your int/spirit increase. Needless to say, here are some notes if you are sitting around the 650/650 mark fully raid buffed. Everything here is taken from a regeneration perspective. Only passingly considering stam/healing/haste.

• Blessing of Kings now gives more mana regeneration than Blessing of Wisdom (out of combat it's ~100 mp5 more, in combat you only lose 1 or 2 mp5, so net gain if you spend really any time out of the fsr).
  
• [Boots of the Divine Light] > [Archbishop's Slippers] > [Two-toed Sandals] (used to be almost entirely reversed, Two-toed were on top).
  
• [Staff of Immaculate Recovery] is the top regeneration staff. You still have to sacrifice considerable +healing to equip it.
  
• [Naaru-Blessed Life Rod] > [Luminescent Rod of the Naaru] for regeneration (was > for healing/stam before)
  
• The Vashj ring and to a lesser extent the Karazhan exalted rep ring are considerably buffed due to having int/spi.
  
• [Gloves of Absolution] > [Gloves of Unfailing Faith] for regeneration
  
• [Leggings of Eternity] > [Breeches of Absolution] still if you socket them with spirit gems.
  
• [Earring of Soulful Meditation] has become unbelievably good, giving 107 mp5 while casting at 650 int/spi.
  
• [Vestments of Absolution] > [Garments of Temperance] from a regeneration perspective.

I think there is a chance that the changes will remain because the desirability of items now follows the item level much more closely.

It also fits with the new itemization philosophy of more haste/less MP5 on items. With this new regen formula, going OOM will be difficult to accomplish when casting unhasted spells at level 70, but who knows what kind of regen demands we will have when we are level 80 with 2 second GH10s and a 1.2 sec cooldown?

When the new itemizations were disclosed a few weeks ago, this and other forums were filled with posts from holy priests concluding that spell haste was underbudgeted and not worth it. The thinking was that under Blizz's itemization you had to give up too much regen for haste--but that was under the old way of calculating regen. So all those conclusions may need to be revisited now.

Will you be posting it?

With the scaling changes it's not easy to eyeball items and I don't want to update my current (lacking) spreadsheet.

I've been trying out a hodgepodge of gems ever since 2.3 - partially due to what I could afford, partially due to the meditation buff, partially due to keeping my meta socket working. Should I regem now?

My stats are:

Int 508
Spi 402

363/165 regen

Good point, I had completely forgotten about that.

Whether or not the change comes through the way it is currently, one of my trinket slots is reserverd for the [Earring of Soulful Meditation]. It is very nice already right now, but with the Spirit reworking, it would gain another big buff.

With some different SSC gear (I expect our guild to be about starting BT/MH shortly before the patch hits), being [Ethereum Life-Staff],[Coral Band of the Revived], [Belt of the Long Road] and [Gloves of the Avatar], as well as regemming Purified Shadow Pearls instead of Royal Nightseyes, it would be pretty easy to end up at 600 Int and 620 Spirit raidbuffed. (from what I read, T6 equivalently geared priests will be higher than that obviously, more around 650/650)

600 Int and 620 Spirit gives a regeneration of 708/212 from just Spirit (obviously MP5 raidbuffs and gear would add to this). Activating the Earring would boost those numbers to 1051/315, in other words an increase of 343/103. With 10 ticks during its duration, that would mean an extra mana return of 412-1372 mana each activation, depending on OO5SR time. (Which tends to be quite high, since activations will often occur on Clearcast Procs combined with Inner Focus. Let's for instance assume that you stay outside of the 5SR for 10 seconds, making the return 892 mana; this translates to 37 mp5). In comparison the current returns would be 263-875 mana on an activation.

My other slot is currently mostly alternating between the [Rejuvenating Gem] and [Eye of Gruul], depending on my amount of CoH using for the fight. I also have an [Alchemist's Stone] for those fights where I chain potions (Which aside from the time we did Karathress with 7 healers, one of which was sick, is not something I need to do in SSC.), as well as the [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] and [Bangle of Endless Blessings]. I used the Blue Dragon card for a long time, but replaced it with the Earring while favoring the Rejuvenating Gem after the Meditation buff meant an implicit buff to the Blue Dragon trinket.

With the new situation however:

[Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon]
Assuming 30% return due to PMC set being broken (which is the case for me), it is a 70% regeneration increase for 7.5 ticks. With the previously calculated regeneration of 708/212 from spirit, it would mean a return in mana of 1488 mana each proc. Assuming about 5 casts each 15 seconds (Which is fairly probable for the mana intensive situations I guess... if I am considerably lower than that, mana is not likely to be an issue anyways) or 20 casts a minute, that would have the trinket on average proc each 2.5 minutes. In that case returning an average of 49.6 MP5. Which isn't bad...

[Bangle of Endless Blessings]
Has both the proc and use function to account for. Assuming 1 proc a minute (due to the internal cooldown), it returns 0.15*708*3 = 319 mana per proc. Assuming the use function again is used with Clearcast/Inner Focus and assuming 10 seconds out of 5SR (which should be doable), the use function would be good for about 386 mana each 2 minutes. Combining the two would translate to about 43 MP5 under these assumptions.

I guess Blue Dragon might under these assumptions win out due to the incredibly high numbers which regen outside the 5 second rule will have, but it's clear that either will be nice if this change goes through.

Edit: Just realized I did not account for % buffs to Spirit such as Spirit of Redemption, Kings, etc., which would improve numbers even further in the Use functions of both the Bangle and Earring.

I keep seeing comments about there not being an epic gem with +healing / spirit. I have one socketed that I obtained from Bot. I believe it's called Imperial Tanzanite. It's +9 Healing / +5 Spirit.

Maybe you meant there should be more than just that one? But typically there is only one combination of +healing with something else anyway, like +heal / 2 mp5, or +heal / resil ... etc. etc.

They are referring to the absence of any Black Temple drop gem to be readily cut into an epic version of the [Purified Shadow Pearl]

In contrast, the other blue healing gems do have an epic counterpart:

[Royal Nightseye] -> [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst]

[Teardrop Living Ruby] -> [Teardrop Crimson Spinel]

There is of course the heroic gem which will no longer be Unique-Equipped (which is a nice thing, since I have two of those in my bank, ready to be used if this change comes through), but the BT gem which considering the other gems would have to be 11 +healing / 5 spirit (And be called Purified Shadowsong Amethyst) is missing. Which is a shame considering the amount of time it would take to put it in the game, but something I guess comes with being a healer. (Healing rewards from arena, gems buyable from honor, spirit shard rewards, etc. come to mind)

I'm curious what you guys think would be the optimal gem for a yellow socket in 2.4. I've been thinking about trying to farm a few [Seer's Chrysoprase] from Auchenai Crypts (if I can find anyone to go with, not exactly a popular instance). Any thoughts?

If they added 9 healing/4 spell haste yellow gems or epic equivalents that would be the yellow gem of choice for myself. As it is 8 spell haste or 11 healing/5 int are pretty much the only choices I'd seriously consider in 2.4 for a yellow socket.

the 4 int 5 spr gems is better than a 5 int 2mp5 gem at least but thats not saying much.

The Spirit change is obviously a big one in terms of how we look at gear should it stay this way on live. I guess time will tell as to if they keep it or not, but one can hope for now that they do. After updating some of my spreadsheets with the new potential numbers, I did notice a few interesting things in regard to itemization.

[Soul-Strider Boots] pretty much seem to be the best general boots from my point of view with the changes, socketed with 22 Healing/10 Spirit.

[Brooch of Nature's Mercy] becomes ridiculously powerful for a ZA drop, and arguably the best pure healing neck in the game.

[Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer] performs quite well now, while [Jade Ring of the Everliving] goes from being one of the best pure healing rings to almost garbage level, due to the lack of any Int or Spirit.

In a similar way, [Tears of Heaven] goes from being quite good to nearly useless, while [Voodoo Shaker] becomes arguably the 2nd best offhand in the game.

[Blue Diamond Witchwand] ends up possibly outpacing [Luminescent Rod of the Naaru] due to the increased value of Spirit.

All in all, I'm surprised at the boost Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire's get, as I never really liked them much before. Now, though, they seem to be around the same value as +22 Healing gems in most cases, and possibly better in others. It's quite a change. Healing/Mp5 gems can't really keep up, and could possibly even be outpaced by Healing/Int gems in terms of value when factoring both the regen and manapool over fight duration value of 5 Int vs. 2 Mp5.