He meant the 11Healing/5Int one. I'll agree with you, tho. 11Healing/5Spi would be <3.

Speaking of which, how many of you guys 1) run with ~150mp5 while casting (or less), 2) do you feel that you don't need more than that as long as you get some time outside the rule, and 3) how much mp5 while NOT casting do you feel would be a good number to shoot for before Vashj/KT?

I've pretty much permanently bagged my PMC now that I got my T4 robes/shoulders + Belt of the Long Road, but the 30ish mp5 while casting hit I took seems a bit steep. I'm loving the extra stam and spirit, however. I'm potting more than before, but with all the armaments/nethergon energy I've collected, it doesn't feel that bad.

There is a 11heal/5spi gem from heroic Botanica, I picked it up a couple days ago. That may be what he meant. I actually think it's probably just an oversight that there's no craftable version of it yet. There could stand to be a bigger variety of healing gems in general actually; the lack of a +heal/stam option really hurts, and a +heal/crit gem would be nice for pallies (and wouldn't even be terrible for priests who need yellow to unlock a meta). There are unique-equipped versions of both of these from heroics, plus the Nightbane quest reward gem, but no JC designs for them.

Edit: oops, my mistake. I just looked at the Botanica gem in my bank, it's 9heal/5spi. ^^

edit: I shouldn't do math at 7 am, my initial calculations were so off it aint funny. Delete this crap =/

Personally, I would not run with less than ~200 mp5 unbuffed--but a lot of this is down to preference. I think the 200 mp5/2000 +healing is a good figure to shoot for as you approach the middle-high end of the gear spectrum.

Although, honestly, you really shoudn't be replacing PMC with T4. PMC already stacks up competitively with T5, and T4 just really doesn't compare very well. IMO, the PMC pieces beat the T4 pieces in terms of base stats even without the setbonus, and the setbonus just makes it more dramatic.

The only cases I can see for getting rid of PMC are:
1) Tier 6
2) Swapping to Stamina pieces in BT/Hyjal (it's not honestly needed in SSC/TK)
3) Boredom

Honestly, the PMC Robe is very uber, the shoulders and belt stack up rather well against their T5 counterparts, and the setbonus is extremely powerful. It's a good set of items.

For trash fights (undisciplined raid, sadly) and some encounters below that (just beginning SSC), I like to have about 10K HP raidbuffed, which is difficult to achieve with PMC + Whitemend + Kara stuff.

So the option is to replace some items with HP-oriented stuff where it hurts the least in terms of healing efficiency.

One thing I recently did is create a second PMC belt (works only for the belt) and put two +12 stamina gems in. That's a small, but decent HP buff without losing the PMC bonus. The downside is that you have to do the swapping manually as Outfitter doesn't grasp the difference between the two PMC belts.

The PMC belt with Stamina gems is a workable option, which I've suggested in the old Priest massive thread when it came up. I'd also continue to suggest that for Stamina fights, the T4 helm with Solid Star/Powerful Earthstorm is a very good option, as the blue socket bonus allows you to get 7 healing very easily while also getting +12 Stamina. This allows you to have +58 Stam on your helm without gimping your stats in any major way. (It is still 82 healing/6 mp5/23 spirit even with the Solid Star.)

Although it may be nice to have stamina, it is really not hard to function with the PMC pieces. Almost every other "ideal" item for a Priest at that gear level has Stamina on it--other than the Jade Ring of the Everliving, which can be subbed for the Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer for Stamina in a pinch--which really means you aren't that poorly off. I have cleared the whole of T5 content while using 3-piece PMC and have not experienced any abnormally high early deaths when compared to, for instance, the non-tailoring Priest in the guild.

I do understand why people feel inclined to replace PMC, but realistically I just don't see much of a reason to do it until you get into BT/Hyjal. People tend to give up a large chunk of healing/regen ability due to feeling that they "should" replace PMC, when realistically hanging onto it is not only viable, but probably preferable if it isn't causing you major death issues.

Realistically, though, you will actually save your life more with proper training of self-shielding/PoMing, keeping Inner Fire up 100% of the time, and active use of Binding Heal. Most Priests tend to think of slapping on Stamina gear as what will keep them alive, when Priests a plethora of tools that will help them stay alive a lot more efficiently than a couple hunderd HP on a piece of gear.

Consider, on a fight where you know you could take damage at any time, a self-PoM will give you an additional ~1.8k virtual health--provided you don't get one-shot, which you shouldn't--which is worth 180 Stamina. This is a tactic I see many Priests forget to use. Letting Inner Fire fade can make the difference between taking an 8k charge and a 6.4k charge. Shielding adds another ~1.8k buffer.

So, in the end, the difference between someone who forgets PoM/Shield/Inner Fire can be upwards of 5.2k damage on a single charge from something like a Sporebat. It is certainly non-trivial and far more important than a couple pieces of gear. Tossing out a Binding Heal on your assigned target can bring that up to the 7.5-8k range--which is actually the entire damage that just "eating" the hit would do! (This is not to insinuate that you personally forget to do these things, but more as a general note as I see many Priests that fail to consider their own surviability/well-being in raid situations.)

I feel that this kind of "survival training" is really, really important for Priests as they get into and progress in T5+ content. It is often overlooked, however it really makes the difference between life or death. Priests have many tools for preventing their own deaths (especially if they are Human/Dwarf with Desperate Prayer) but often fail to develop the habits of actually using them.

Don't be afraid to PoM/Shield yourself (especially PoM...it is a wonderful tool, and will still jump from you to someone else low-HP nearby--making it extremely handy) often. Keep Inner Fire up 100% of the time. Binding Heal whenever you have taken any damage of note. These things often -will- keep you alive!

I wouldn't worry "too much" about Stam on Morogrim, so long as you can survive a single Watery Grave, you should be ok. (Would recommend at least 7k buffed HP to be on the safe side, but mid 6k is managable if you must.) A tactic I can recommend here to generally preserve your healing team is for all the Priests to Binding Heal a Paladin or Druid healer directly after the Earthquake. This should get your entire healing team topped off very quickly, and out of any risk caused by Earthquake -> Watery Grave transitions.

Watery Grave is 4.6-5.4k damage, Earthquake is an average of 3.7k. If you have ~7k buffed HP, Earthquake will take you down to ~3.3k HP, and a single Binding Heal should get you in the clear for Watery Grave damage. (You can give yourself a wider margin by being a little higher than 7k, having PoM pre-cast on yourself prior to the Earthquake timer, or simply casting two Binding Heals instead of one. I typically go Binding Heal on Healer, Binding Heal on Mage, Fade, return to GH spamming.)

Another plan involves cross-Binding Heals + a single CoH on a healer group, which should be enough to top all the healers/squishy classes off fairly quickly. Binding Heal is very good for this as it produces lower threat in a threat sensitive situation with the Murlocs. You can probably see a trend here in my last couple posts, being: abuse Binding Heal as much as possible whenever you are damaged. It is fast, fairly mana-efficient, and low threat.

As for your specific question, neck, helm, and rings are generally all I swap. Trinkets can also work if you are desperate, as you can stack a rather huge amount of Stamina in a single trinket slot with either the Netherwing Badge or simply a Violet Badge.

I'm mostly replacing PMC due to boredom and hating how it looks. <_<;;

2000/200while casting is sounds good, but I'm interested in ooc regen as well. I spend a lot of time outside the rule cancel-casting.

Anyway, on Tidewalker I have like 9900 HP raid buffed + food, but there's a priest in my guild who does it with PMC+WM... he's just ridiculously squishy and he has to go out of his way to keep himself alive.

Please correct me if I err, but I was under the impression that 2 piece t5 was a decent reason to toss the PMC set bonus. However, recognizing that having both is better still, I had a different thought. With the Meditation change, would stacking spirit and retaining PMC compete with a normal MP5 focused or even MP5 balanced gear set up even into BT/Hyjal?

[Mantle of Absolution], [Vestments of Absolution], and [Belt of Divine Guidance] provide a gain of 32 spirit (6 MP5 while casting if math is right), 3 blue sockets and a loss of 9mp5, as well as a decent boost in Stamina, Intellect and Healing when replacing PMC. Even if generous gemming and casting situations(re: lots of out of five second casting) are considered, the loss of 15-25 MP5 from the PMC set bonus(assuming mass spirit stacking) does not seem to be made up for, or at the least, is only compensated for as a trade of MP5 for healing/stam/int. Anyone have thoughts regarding this? Am I reading into this too much looking for another 3 piece Transcendence scenario?

Honestly, for me, the most mana intensive fights are Vashj phase 3 and Najentus. I run with about 162 mp5 and 2200 +heal.

My mp5 use to be much higher about a month ago when I was running with only abou 1700-1800 healing, but I realized my mana was getting better and decided to sacrifice it all. And for now, the only fight I ever have a chance of going to 0 mana on is Najentus.

Are you using shadow priests and/or restoration shamans? Also, when you're grouped with shamans, are they using Strength of Earth (trust me, it makes a difference). Also, if you're ever grouped with a warrior, make sure to time their battleshouts (I ended up with a warrior on Najentus).

I am usually the only holy priest in my raids and I tend to get priority on shadow priests or restoration shamans IF I need one. We usually run 7 healers for Vashj, 6 healers for Kael'thas, 8 healers for Najentus. (Come to think of it... we run 8 healers for everything else in Hyjal and Black Temple, albeit, we are only 4/5 + 3/9).

And the stamina is WORTH IT! Trust me! Worth it! Sounds like you are on the cusp of entering BT. Stamina is pretty useful for Kael'thas and Vashj too, you can get unlucky chain lightning or get multishot. I'd say you better have 8k-9k for Kael'thas and Vashj, and for Najentus you should be 10-12k range (although Spell Warding can help).

Have you taken into account the Absolution bonus? And are you -actually- running out of mana? Regen is good, but its useless if you aren't going out of mana. (Granted, I've always told myself, I can stack regen and just play as a loose cannon spamming flash heals knowing I can regen it =p).

On a side note, I take issue with this whole 10:1 ratio on heal:mp5.

I don't understand why people think there needs to be a ratio. The cost of your spells aren't going up. So why would you need MORE mp5?? What am I missing? If anything, the more +heal the less mp5 you do need. (Btw, I love having those mega renew ticks... and not needing to cast as much). Someone explain this to me, please. I've been seeing it pop up more and more.

I have too, and I think what people mean when they say this is that 10:1 is where you'll generally be if you're balancing your gear between +heal and mp5, and the numbers will just get bigger as your gear gets better (e.g. in T4 content you might sit at 1700/170, in T5 you'll be at 2000/200, etc.). The problems with this rule are a) it implies that the more +heal you have, the more regen you need, which isn't accurate and b) it ignores OOC regen completely.

The T5 bonus, the upcoming Meditation buff, and the abundance of zone-specific mana pots (I have like 40 nethergon energy in my bags right now o_O) have changed my gearing priorities. I've stopped worrying so much about my mp5, and I've been trading it in for +heal when possible, as well as spirit and stamina. If I hadn't already broken my PMC set I'd do that now as well. I understand the arguments for why PMC is viable through T5, but I had my own reasons for ditching the set and I've been happy with the decision. I really think you can make it work either way.

Depends on what else you have, of course. But I use the Arena gloves and offhand all the time to make up for the lack of stamina on PMC. They don't have any mana regen, but the PMC makes up for that of course.

How much stamina do you really need for Tidewalker anyway? Or, maybe a better question, do you find yourself dying, and to what?

Asuming 10spi gems in the PMC set and 10spi+11heal/5int gems in t6 with 600 spirit in the primal mooncloth set, we're talking 113sta, 48int, 51spi, 27heal at a loss of 26.75 mana/5s. While int is a pretty worthless stat and easy to dismiss, 48 is a rather big amount. And 51 spirit will almost make up for it alone once 2.3 hits. Let's see what the differance will be over 10 min, 30% OO5SR.

Pre 2.3:
792 + 120 (0.3 (58.905 x 0.625) + 0.7 (58.905 x 0.625 x 0.15)) - 120 x 26.75 = -628

Post 2.3
792 + 120 (0.3 (58.905 x 0.625) + 0.7 (58.905 x 0.625 x 0.3)) - 120 x 26.75 = -164

I find it very hard to argue for 628 mana over 113 sta 48 healing. Post 2.3 It's actually a loss in mana if the fight is under 8.25 mins. And while not amazing, the tier 6 set bonuses doesn't exactly hurt either.

edit: The differance in mana/5s is all wrong, missed 1 mana/5s in the calcuation somewhere and forgot that PMC set bonus wont do a thing OO5SR. Would bring down the differance in mana/5s to 22.125. Post 2.3 calculation would look like
792 + 120 (0.3 (58.905 x 0.625) + 0.7 (58.905 x 0.625 x 0.3)) - 120 x 22.125 = 391
So eh, no reason what so ever to use PMC. It would take 20 minutes for PMC to provide as much mana as the tier 6 pieces.

Though I agree with almost everything you say, I'd like to add it depends on the actual encounter and your equipment level. For Gruul, for example, I very much like to have 10K raidbuffed. Even if you use PoMs, binding heals, inner fire, whatever, if you get a bad kick directly into a group, you are toast if all you have is 8K raidbuffed, even if everyone reacts properly. If you go there with 7 healers (or sometimes 6) and have to heal through >15 growths, that means a certain wipe. With 10K and self-shielding you stay alive.

One more thing: in a priest-heavy raid like ours, MT healing tends to be a bit more spiky than in a paladin-heavy raid. Sometimes I just don't dare wasting a GcD for refreshing an Inner Fire or casting a PoM since I know there will be trouble if "the big one" hits while I do so.

Because until you can get to a point where you are using zero mana on casting all the spells you need, regen is always going to play a useful part in healing. Fights get more healing intensive, not just in burst healing but in sustained throughput--requiring a balance of both in-combat regen, out-of-combat regen, and healing.

Going too far in either direction will pigeon-hole your healing capabilities and make you weak on certain fight scenarios. Priests rely on being versatile...so, realistically, a nice balance of stats is usually going to be preferable.

Being able to chain-cast low-rank spells for long periods is always going to be a useful ability--however, that requires both resonable Mp5 and +Healing in adaquate quantities. Stacking spirit/+healing basically means you are stuck burst-GH7ing with OO5SR regen periods...which is not always possible.

Not to mention, even with pots and whatnot it is certainly not possible to sustain heavy GH7 spamming with only 150 Mp5. So, in a practical scenario, you aren't getting anywhere near the cap of usefulness of Mp5 at those levels.

Actually, the reason why myself (and others) use the 200 mp5/2000 healing figure -is- because it is fairly realistic at an eventual target figure.

Looking at the various middle to high end gear options available, a somewhat "optimal" configuration of items typically lands one in the 175-195 mp5 range, and 1800-2000 healing range quite naturally. Once you start putting some T5 pieces in the mix, 200 mp5/2000 healing generally becomes where you land without any specific effort. (I am at currently at 192 mp5/1975 +healing unbuffed, without actually attempting to specifically balance the stats other than eyeballing and using 9 heal/2mp5 gems in most slots.)

Without PMC, you'd be looking at a bit lower on the Mp5 side, as you take a pretty big regen hit without the setbonus when you're in the ~450 spirit range--although that won't be nearly such a big gap next patch.

Usually the only reason you would be off those figures is if you were really prioritizing one specific type of gemming over another, or if you were stacking only spirit-heavy items. I really do like spirit and have a fair bit (over 400 unbuffed) but I wouldn't specifically "stack" it, even with the meditation changes, simply due to the fact that I cannot always count on getting OO5SR--even though, on average, I can pull off some regen tricks. Sometimes you just have to spam.

Currently by *far* the best totem for a Shaman to drop to help with your Shadowfiend is Wrath of Air.

Yes, Strength of Earth can give maybe +15 to +25 dmg a hit (which is definitely nice) but Wrath of Air is bugged with Shadowfiends. The Shadowfiend gets 100% of the WoA totem's +dmg every attack. So with 10 attacks that's 1000% of that +101 (more with ele shaman) +dmg.

Or say roughly an extra 1010 damage (before crits, misses, misery, shadoweaving, imp. SB proc, shadowform etc).

That's 2520 extra mana if Wrath of Air is down.

I get an extra 100-150 mana return PER hit (non-crit and w/o raid debuffs) with just Battleshout while duoing with a warrior. So, I imagine raid debuffed it would be significantly better, I've never really gotten a chance to do the math. (I had ample testing for the duoing, but only really ever got battleshout in a fight once, so, hard to tell).

WoA is air and SoE is earth, just get both? also is it realistic to give the priest an "a" so he can move a warrior to his group to battleshout the shadowfiend or is the DPS loss of having the warrior outside of his group for a few seconds not worth the extra mana gained (if this trick even works)?

That's some of my point - it's not that "it's a good idea to have 2000heal/200mp5", it's that you just happened to get it when you picked your gear correctly. Which is another explanation why the 10 heal per 1 mp5 is total bull (if this wasn't understood already) - you don't look at your gear and by that decide what's best to have, you look at what stats are giving you and how much of one stat would be needed to make up for how much of the other stat, as in where is the equivalence point of mp5/+heal/spirit/int? This remains unanswered, and for a good reason - it's really hard to answer even for a specific fight.

"Gear benchmarks" presented in this thread are no way too low. However, "optimal" gear configuration is a VERY personal thing.

When starting T6 content I had less than 1700 +healing and around 150mp5 while casting.
Now, after 4 weeks of killing Illidian I have around 1800 to 1900 +healing (depending on what trinkets I wear) and ~150mp5. However, I have 8k hp, 10.1k mana and 406mp5 while not casting, unbuffed. This is "optimal" gear configuration for me.

+2000 healing and +230mp5 (while casting?) by end of T5 content seems like a real overkill, though. While the 10:1 rule is nice and all, it can in no way be applied as a general rule. It's one way, but definately not the only way. Me? I took +stats (spi/int/sta) into account and did just fine. Result? I started T6 content with 300 +healing and 80 +mp5 less than "recommendations". And now after a month of farming hyjal/bt I'm still lower. That, and I have worlds crappiest loot luck.

To be fair, I never even mentioned a ratio, I just answered a question saying "what stats should I be aiming/looking for."

In my other thread, I actually look into stat values a bit, and they aren't anywhere near 10:1 in terms of actual weighting as far as I can see.

Regardless, I feel from experience that ~190-200 mp5 unbuffed is a happy place to be in terms of longevity.