Personally, I believe offset gloves might be our best in slot, but have not done extensive testing of stat comparisons because wowhead profiler is a pain to work with.

At the very least it will be a few stats off but give extra haste leeway for t13 when it comes out. Ill make some profiles on wowhead and post them in a bit.


Scratch that, wowheads profiler is terrible to work with and wont update stats after changing reforges enchants gems etc.

Really, all our secondary stats are closer in value then they ever have been... and with reforging, I don't even see "which piece for offset" as the huge question it used to be.

Does it really matter whether you are reforging spirit on or off, as long as you have about the right amount(not much to spare at the end of the fight, but not ooming)?

2032(sow) or 2005 haste is much easier with a bit of FL gear, and so you don't need to reforge EVERYTHING to haste. In fact since most of FL gear seems to have haste, you'll be reforging it off.

Crit and mastery are damn near tied, I maintain Harmony SHOULD have 100% uptime, but if you are still getting the hang of it, then they are probably tied or crit ahead.

So actually, if you have enough haste and mana, then crit and mastery are your best stats. But feel free to reforge the crit into spirit just in case. Or get offset gloves with spirit and maybe end up reforging it off. Doesn't honestly make much difference.

Keep in mind, there is a difference between the "BIS" list, and the gear you wear now. The BIS is what you hope to start the next tier with. Its what you farm when you are done with progression. At that point with full Heroic FL gear, you will have significantly higher intellect, which of course scales up your regen.

Might you need more spirit as you farm that gear? Sure. But I guarantee, unless they decide to nerf mana or something, that in BIS gear spirit will be your worst stat.

So mathematically, crit/mastery gear will be best for throughput. However, looking ahead to next tier I want haste on as much gear as possible, and I'll reforge down to 2005/2032. So I'll be able to get my 6th RJ breakpoint early in progression next tier.

I covered some of this here: http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110354-...a/#post1955245 of course, but really, between how close in value the stats are, and reforging, it simply doesn't matter as much as it used to.

CRIT
A couple people have said they don't like crit because of how "unpredictable" it is.

We aren't paladins.

80-90% of your healing is small tics, from hots, tranq, efflo. Is anyone noticing when a hot crits? Don't think so, we have like 6-10 heals+ going off per second. You can expect each hot to crit at least once, so it really just averages in as a nice throughput buff, right about 1% per 1% crit as should be expected.

As to "nearing the crit cap with NB".... No you aren't. Get back to me on that when you have 40% crit.

Never said I was. My statement was that "crit . . . is inherently unpredictable unless you're close to capping RG with NB" - which is true by definition.

I guess I'm overall more wary of the thought that mana will be in such good shape heading into heroic T12 that we can disregard spirit. That's why I confined my last post to discussion of 378s: until 391s are available, I suspect that I'll want to err on the side of mana (see related: the whole furor vs. genesis debate). Sure, spirit is a lot worse that intellect - no argument there - but it's something that helps your pool going into encounters that you're not really sure of on Live. Until the day comes that I'm comfortable knowing for a fact that I have enough spirit, I'll take the offset piece that has haste/spirit and shed the haste if I'm over the breakpoint. Gearing up with full 391s will be a different story.

As for the crit vs. mastery discussion, I'd prefer to take 1% extra that affects all my spells and that I know will be 1% extra over RNG. Remember that crit won't affect Efflo (listed in your last post) or Living Seed, whereas mastery will. It's kind of like your original thought of going without Naturalist and instead opting for a heavy NB+LS build: a fun idea, but probably doesn't work out as well as you want it to in certain circumstances because of the inherent RNG.

So it appears will be stuck with a 378 belt in this tier? Wowhead shows 391 belt upgrade from the rep but there doesn't appear to be any way to obtain it. Or am I missing something?

You seem to have forgotten all of the Sinestra loot that will be BiS for a while.

Shard of Woe will be BiS even considering 391 trinkets. Cloak and boots will remain BiS until hardmode loot, and the cloak may be one of the last items I drop depending on what haste items I acquire.


Throughput wise the gloves are good. If you don't need the haste (And I'm talking absolute BiS set), you could use resto tier gloves (crit/mastery for throughput) and another item such as moonkin helm which is haste/mastery (again throughput).


That would be at an extreme BiS list, but I do know if I can pick the haste up elsewhere I intend to get resto tier gloves for my 2pc, and adjust based on that.

There's no int version of this item, its agi only.

Yeh, I disagree with "T12 Set (ignore the hands they suck worse than drops from raid)"

When comparing the crafting glove setup to the raid helm setup, before reforging the trade is 177 spirit ----> 177 crit, and 24 mastery ----> 20 haste. For many druids this trade-of will not be frowned upon at all, you gain some extra haste and trade a bit of regen for through-put. Haste is not as easy as it seems to stack (especially with some of the funky rings etc.), and that 20 haste (which will grow with heroic gear) in our 4pc set will help when moving forward.

When comparing it with the raid drop cindersilk instead of the LW gloves, it is 206 spirit ----> 177 crit, and 24 mastery ----> 55 haste. You also lose a better socket bonus, so that's 10 intellect right there. And moving into HM's, you only have this choice. This is quite a bit of extra haste, and with the socket bonus, I really see the tier glove and raid helm setup as superior.

When it comes down to it, going with the helm as the OS piece is an easier set to obtain and upgrade (not needing a helm token of Rag.), has more haste as a set, and then more through-put for a slight reduction in regen. Hardly something that "sucks". I will look at the reforging some more, and might change this up later in the tier when things like boomkin gloves are a feasible option, but starting out the resto tier gloves look like the way to go, especially getting tier bonuses ASAP.

And yeh, Sinestra loot is missing, especially the shard.

I actually had the Shroud of Grief in my BIS, though that's for a haste preferred list(to get next breakpoint early in next tier). Its still the only cloak with a socket and haste, and mastery will be our best stat in our BIS.

[Shroud of Endless Grief] With a reckless gem, its 239 INT, and 153 Haste, 153 mastery.
[Flowing Flamewrath Cape]
[Wings of Flame]

As you can see, its actually fairly close because of that socket, for straight throughput one of the other 2 will be slightly better depending on if you want crit or spirit (betting crit by the time we are mostly 391), but make sure you save [Shroud of Endless Grief] ! You'll want that haste next tier unless a haste cloak happens to drop off an early boss.



@ Ultis, you are still talking about your average raid. You have all your healers, everything is fine and dandy, you can RJ or Nourish and it really doesn't make any difference because other healers and WG will catch it all up.

Worst case scenario, which is what a lot of progression kills seem to end up being, isn't so pretty. We've had kills which were high ranked for us that had half the raid dead and some dps kitty or plate are tanking the boss etc, and its super close. Then we had a H Chim wipe where he literally had 6000 hp when he reset, and we didn't kill it till the next night, costing us over 10 spots of rank.

This is why we gear for the worst case scenario, because nobody cares about your meter healing on farm, they care about whether or not you can save the raid when things turn ugly. RJ spam as filler is BY FAR our best hps, our best "burst". In every WCS I've ever been in, there was no "choice" as to let WG heal it up eventually and use something other then RJ. No, I'm spamming RJ like lives depend on it, because they do.

I get what you are saying, this discussion happened at the beginning of cata. But whether or not Mastery or another throughput stat might give you slightly more throughput, if things turn ugly and you run dry, mastery isn't buffing any heals, because you are sitting on your hands waiting for regen, while people die.

But, if you have enough mana for your longest/hardest fight, then we want throughput. We want some padding room though, because until you have full cleared all heroic content, fights always seem to get longer/harder then you expect. Yes that's healing properly. Not spamming RG, not spamming RJ when it isn't needed, its using LB as filler in ToL, using OoC's asap. I probably use RJ more then strictly needed on farm bosses, because I am purposely getting the feel for my mana, I need to know I'll have enough for the tougher bosses.

The last few times I healed H Al'Akir, I was competing with our new druid, so I was pushing it hard, other then some downtime in p1 while rng selected people out of my range to damage, I was pretty much in my max hps rotation most of the fight. I spent some time in p3 oom casting waiting 20 seconds for Innervate, but the point is I'm fairly close to having an ideal amount of mana. That's with a conc pot, a hymn for some of my innervates, and a mana tide. I'm holding that most of us will have enough mana to where we are dumping spirit in BIS, but if your raid routinely underheals content (jealous! way more fun to underheal in my opinion) then maybe you'll still want more.

Its an individual decision based off your raids needs, and there isn't a good formula to tell what that point is, other then experience.

The decision seems to be coming down to this, [Cowl of the Clicking Menace], and [Obsidian Arborweave Handwraps]; or [Cindersilk Gloves], and [Obsidian Arborweave Helm].

Several people have said to use the raid drop gloves "if you need haste". As you can see, whether you replace the helm or the gloves, you are gaining haste because neither of those tier items have haste. You are in fact, gaining more haste by replacing the helm.

It's not haste vs no haste, its actually spirit vs crit. (Which really they are pretty close now in value, I think spirit will be going down in value, but really with reforging they are so close it hardly matters.)

Perhaps more importantly, the choice is about convenience, as the helm token will drop off Rag, so using that for off pc might get you those sexy life saving double Swiftmends sooner.

I wonder what is the third best trinket after SoW and JoD. Here are the candidates:

[Rune of Zeth]
[Fiery Quintessence]
[Eye of Blazing Power]

remember that you can reforge the first ones if you don't need the spirit or the crit.

About the Eye, here are some facts from wowhead:

• It has a 45-second ICD.
• As a holy priest in full T12 gear (9130 SP), it heals for about 16k and crits for 32k.
• It procs off of HoT ticks, including Echo of Light.
• It has a 40-yard range measured from the target of the original heal (not the caster).
• The original heal can be on any unit, but the proc always affects a member of your party/raid.
• It can hit any raid member, not just party members as the tooltip says.
• It can hit pets.
• If there are no valid targets in range, the ICD is triggered but no heal occurs.

these are PTR-facts, it could be different live now.

The Eye seems to be a great trinket but I wonder if the value isn't that high if you're in a 10man-Raid with a lot of pets.

Why would you ignore the 4pc? It's perfectly good, and 2005 haste is easily attainable even with it. You have a bit of trouble maintaining 2005 haste at some point depending on which slots you upgrade first, but until you get 4t12, you can just abandon 2t11 anyway, since that one actually isn't very good.