I didn't bother with the spaulders as it's such a minor upgrade to the set piece, but I guess it should be there since I did that with the other set pieces as well. I'll update that one.

About the necklace, it has crit on it and if you want crit you are better off using the Life-Binder's Locket. The Chains of Adoration I mentioned since it's the best neck with haste on it, so if you want haste rather than crit you are better off using that neck.

Edit: also, my list should not considered to be final at all, but it's a quick list of possible candidates of best in slot categorized by preferences (crit, haste, set, regen). Of course there are a lot of other "solid" items but if I mention them all then people will still ask "so which one is better?". If an item isn't on the list it doesn't mean it's a crappy item, it means that the item that IS on my list (probably) is better.

I disagree somewhat with this. You stated that the reason you didn't put the neck on the list is because you felt that there was another "crit" neck that was better, but by doing so, you are completely disregarding the other stats on the neck, namely spirit. While I may concede that in 3.1 the there is a good chance that the life binder's locket may be a superior item, while spirit is still very valued stat for a resto druid, I find the glittering chamber a better neck (which I am sure is also open to debate). I have both necks, and it is my current preference to wear the latter.

I guess my concern now is that you are focusing a potential "best in slot" list on haste vs. crit, which I know has been 80% of the discussion in this thread, but in doing so, it appears that you have lost at least some perspective in the value of other stats (which is also illustrated by your lack of mentioning the Malygos shoulders). I think that perhaps too much emphasis may have been put on crit/haste, mainly because there was a large amount of dicussion on those stats, even though most people pre-emptively stated in those discussionsthat both stats do fairly little for resto druids but we were being forced to opt for one or the other.

While your list will constantly be changing, and people perhaps shouldn't use it as the end all, be all for a gear resource and should make sure their brains are functioning; those that come to these forums looking for a list to guide them in the right direction will take your list as a difinitive source. While I do agree you don't want it to be a monster list, because that defeats the purpose, I do think that it should factor in items based on overall itemization not just "set", "crit", "haste". Just something to keep in mind.

So you are seriously arguing that (if you put a luminous gem in the locket), the glittering necklace is better than the Life-binder's Locket because of the spirit?

Let's compare them:

Glittering Necklace has: 5 stamina, 38 spirit, 2 crit rating
Life-binder's Locket has: 22 int, 16 mp5 and 2 spellpower (retracted the spellpower from the spirit already)

Last time I checked, 22 int and 16 mp5 give FAR MORE mana back than 38 spirit does. I really don't see why you would ever want to use the Glittering Necklace above the Life-binder's Locket, unless you go anal over a bit of sta and crit which are both worthless stats for a druid. Maybe you are the one who lost perspective into other stats (aka intellect), not me.

I did not mean to make you defensive, and that was not my intent. I just think that you focusing on strange stats to rate potential loot. I applaud you for taking the time and effort to put such a resource together as many people, including myself, do not have the time (or patience) to do so. And I feel that overall it is a good resource.

My comment with regard to perspective on other stats was specifically in regard to your heavy prioritization in your list based on haste/crit (which I felt I was clear on in my previous post, but must not have been). I have highlighted a part of your last comment that I find interesting. If you state that crit is a worthless stat for a druid, why are you placing "crit" gear on your list and prioritizing gear based on "crit"? Why did your original response to my query as to why you left off our best spirit based neck from your list state that you did so because the lifebinder's locket was a better "crit" neck? This is where my concern with your list and the priotization of items arises.

I have conceded that the life binder's locket was a solid neck, and that I may even consider wearing it post 3.1. I also concede that intellect is a powerful stat for a resto druid as well. Hell, I would even go one step further and perhaps concede that I am flat out dead wrong in wearing not wearing it. I don't think either neck is a poor choice, and I do think that people could find justification for using either item.

Where I guess I am having a problem is that so much emphasis has been put on items based on haste/crit, which just about everyone in this thread (including yourself!) have stated are basically wasted itemization for resto druid gear. Let me go one step further to try and clarify my point. Would you honestly wear the Chains of Adoration over the Glittering Chamber if presented the option of just those two necks? I would guess probably not. Yet you have the Chains of Adoration on your list as the only other option (as far as your list is concerned) to the life binder's locket...because it offers haste! /boggle

I am not saying that your list is bad, or that you are not doing a good job, I think you are doing great! I am just requesting that items of equal quality and value are supplied so that people who venture here looking for information can use your list and have a comprehensive selection of items to tailor to their personal preference/playstyle.

Granted...we will probably all be having this same discussion as soon as 3.1 hits and the list will be completely changing as a result of the mana changes and new gear, so maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill!

Don't get so worked up over spirit since even in 3.1 which was a buff to spirit regen (since it now boosts innervate as compared to before) intellect still gives more mana point per point then spirit. While 38 spirit probably beats 22 intellect it does not beat 22 int and 16 mp5. With that said I do agree with Earen that the glittering neck should be listed since it beats adoration due to a higer spellpower value.

How much mana one point of each stat will give you:

Length		Spi	Int	Mp5
1m		16	28	12
2m		20	33	24
3m		24	38	36
4m		28	43	48
5m		33	48	60
6m		37	53	72
7m		41	58	84
8m		45	63	96
9m		49	68	108
10m		53	73	120
11m		57	78	132
12m		62	83	144

(table is assuming 1 innervate and 1062/1473 int/spi.)

The reason I put it up like this is because almost *every* item has: stamina, intellect, spirit, spellpower and either crit, mp5 or haste on it. Both haste and crit are not very useful to a druid (as is mp5 as it's more expensive in terms of item budget) as they only affect a minor part of the druid healing arsenal. To illustrate, my last 3-drakes kill not even 20% of my healing was from direct healing. Yes, I did overstate it a bit since it's not *completely* worthless, but it's not like we have a choice between imba spellpower+spirit item or crappy itemized haste/crit item. Almost all items you have to choose between either crappy stat A or crappy stat B and some people like crit more, others like haste more, which is the whole reason I've put the list like this.

Now necklaces, rings and trinkets are often a bit different since they don't a have a big item budget, so the amount of stats on those slots is fewer. Almost every decent resto necklace in the game has either spirit or mp5 on them for regen, not both. Just because the glittering necklace has spirit on it, doesn't make it better than the locket, as I already pointed out. Come to think of it, the int on the locket even gives more crit than the extra crit rating does on the glittering necklace. So the *ONLY* thing you are gaining from the glittering necklace is 5 stamina, but you're losing out on 2 spellpower and quite a bunch of manaregen.

I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh my previous post, but I'm getting tired of people that a) second-guess something as irrelevant as a quick list that prevents new people coming to these forums asking "whott is best itam??" and b) try to prove I'm wrong without "doing the math" first.

And for the record, yes, I would use Chains of Adoration (in fact I still am) as we're very low on shamans in our guild and I'd rather have a bit more haste to lower my gcd whenever he isn't around. The loss of mana regen from the spirit isn't all that big (if there even is any), as there is quite a bunch of intellect on that necklace, in contrast to the glittering necklace.

Edit: I still do not believe it should be listed, since Chains of Adoration is an alternative if you are seeking *haste* and not the "2nd best in slot". If you don't want/need the haste, the best-in-slot is Life-Binder's Locket.

Awesome, thanks for the screenshot Vrakk!

+10 Stamina
+9 Intellect
+4 Spirit
+18 Haste Rating
+14 Spell Power

I apologize if this is discussed elsewhere, but I am rerolling my resto druid as horde and have the opportunity to reevaluate my professions from an itemization/min/maxing standpoint. What would be the optimum profs for a resto druid? My alliance one is LW/enchanting so I had the fur lining and the ring chants. I'm guessing JC is better than either and maybe Alch?

As far as I remember, JC and LW are the greatest benefits.

I did a small comparison some time ago and reagarding those numbers I find here in this chaos it says:
LW: 37 SP gain
Tailor: 20 MP5 gain (since IIRC back enchants rly suck)
JC: 39 SP gain
Enchant: 38 SP gain

Since I already have Inscription I didn't compare that. Now I think I substracted that what I could recieve from not having the professions. In JC I didn't calculate Epic Gems, which would be wort thinking since the JC-Only Gems will then be less of a benefit.
Besides: Do they Epic Gems come with Ulduar or are they delayed further?

JC benefit depends on what meta gem you're using and how much you gem red. Lowest benefit is obviously red gemming everyhting already. Using the ESD this will give you 39 SP and three socket bonuses which most likely includes atleast one SP bonus. If you're using IED/TSD you'll get 59 SP and one socket bonus, probably not SP, at the cost of 8 int/spi. Once epic gems come into play this will drop to 27 SP and three socket bonuses for the ESD and 49 SP and one socket bonus for the IED/TSD but now at the cost of 10 int/spi. SP bonus and stat loss are higher if you don't red gem everything.

BS is 38 SP now and 46 once epic gems are in.

Min/max professions are JC and BS (or enchanting but only until epic gems.)

Now, I've skimmed most of this thread and have yet to see [Swarm Bindings] mentioned as being a top candidate for crit on bracers.

I've been favoring crit recently even though I'm not close to the haste cap. Mainly because of the Living Seed/Nature's Grace procs due to anticipation of our coming transition from less HoT-based healing. And the fact that Regrowth is getting a 25% crit nerf (some say 50% but I don't see anything regarding RG beyond Imp. RG talent being changed/nerfed) while Nourish is getting a 25% buff. Crit is also helping to bring out the usefulness of Swiftmend even more when it's critting for as much as my HT crits but for much less mana and instant cast.

However, it's reduced my trinket itemization since I've kept [The Egg of Mortal Essence] coupled with [Forethought Talisman]. But my trinket options are fairly limited right now (due to lack of raiding and drops) - [Darkmoon Card: Illusion], [Embrace of the Spider], [Soul of the Dead], and [Spirit-World Glass]. I was thinking of using soul of the dead in 3.1 due to the regen nerf and crits seemingly becoming more useful from nourish and the like. But it's hard to justify the spell power drop for the proc and crit rating. Any thoughts?

Madmike:
A MT healer will have to spamm the tank, depending on the fight, alot. Even if the tank gets a dodge/parry spree the MT healer still has to keep healing high, so their effective healing will be low and overhealing realtively high.

Healing is also about saving lives, just becouse you're high on meters doesn't mean you've saved many lives. Maybe you're just healing some light/timed aoe that could have been healed later on and ignored someone needing healing straightaway (boss "fixate"/dots/throws).

There's also the scenario of "fishing" meters:
Just use your fastest heals (flash/nourish/lesser healing wave) to heal any incomming damage fast but not staying on your task. Or healing over hots that could have safely taken care of the job and you could have healed the tank for example to make it "safer". This sort of fishing also causes others to gain more overheal and "makes you look better on meters"

On trinkets: I'd go with slapping on as much as spellpower as I can find almost, then if I find my mana is the main limiting factor for my healing I'd swap a trinket or two around. If it's a progress fight looking into if people are taking unnessecary(sp?) damage might be an idea, or if the raid dps is too low. Some dps mabye not flasking thus making the fight longer?
While spellpower has the ability to give both mileage&longetivity, if you can get away with "one hot less" by increasing your spellpower you save mana aswell.
I'd use Forethought+dakrmoon card or spider one.

I'm curious what 3.1 will do to crit. I have always come down crit on the crit vs haste debate. Not to rehash it except to say that I have a lot of crit on my current gear that I need to decide what to do with.

NG change seems like a big crit nerf. The proc is much less likely to get used up in a normal rotation unless you deliberately go out of your way to use it. About the nicest thing I can say about it is that nourish chain-casting, which was already starting to look like a pretty viable tactic, now looks even more useful. You can potentially get 3 hasted nourishes in one proc now instead of one, for a combined .9 sec reduction instead of .5sec. (I'm really not sure how haste would increase or decrease the relative benefit of this change when you figure in the GCD clipping currently). The probability of refreshing the proc at 20% crit would be 70% after 2 casts, 83% after a third. Still not quite as good as RG filler is now, but we were probably not going be using it as filler anyways.

Another thing that's struck me is the benefit of crit blooms now. A triple stack will bloom crit for about 15k + 5k living seed. The potential for tanking healing with high crit using strategic blooms and nourish filler seems formidable.

Formidable, yes. Useful and controllable? That's another thread and subject to a lot of debate at the moment. I'm slowly, ever so slowly testing out phasing lifebloom, letting it bloom, and keeping rejuv up and using nourish. With my current gear and crit, it isn't bad with swiftmend in the mix but yeah, this discussion goes elsewhere.

Bloom does not trigger Living Seed (Living Seed - Spell - World of Warcraft).

The old version of RG scaled better with critical strike than with haste and Nourish used to scale better with haste than critical strike.
Regarding how things change in 3.1 you need to account for the new Nature's Grace and if you intend to take it. If you remove the talent then the most likely guess is that critical strike will end up just being near worthless. With the combined chance of RG/NR being around 45%~ fully raid buffed you will not likely ever be able to push either to the point of it being a more reliable chance of happening either.

Quite honestly I would say with how things are in 3.1 you should just keep avoiding critical strike (and NGrace) and use those parts of the item budget on haste rating and MP5 but it is not really worth spending the effort to theorycraft it all out in the middle of so many "interesting" changes to confirm it yet.

Actually if you're spamming nourish then haste is capped at 15.58% which is easily attainable, assuming WoA and ret/moonkin. Yes, healing is rarely constant spam, but it does tend to be a series of bursts followed by idle moments. For that crit might prove better than haste. Yes going from 40% to 45% crit might not be a big deal but haste just won't cut it past a certain point for anything besides regrowth.

Hey, i'm not usually one of these people to just ask this sort of question, But with Ulduar just around the corner I have been worrying that perhaps my gear/gem choices arent so good anymore?

Would anyone kindly take a look at my gear on the armory link? And perhaps steer me in the right direction?

EDIT: I just purchased the [Band of Channeled Magic]. So it might not display on my armory.

[deleted: Playered beat me to it]

I'm not sure where you are getting this idea. If you have WoA and Ret Aura/Moonkin and no CF, you would need 38.7% Haste to cap Nourish and it's GCD since they are one in the same on duration. And if you were referring to the GCD of LB, Rejuv, and WG with GotEM, assuming WoA and Ret/Moonkin your soft cap is 10.95%.

I meant under the influence of the new NG. If you spam nourish then the uptime of the buff should be very high since you need 3 non-crits for it to fade. In this scenario haste is capped at the figure I posted.
I then apply this to non-constant spam situations. Lets take maylgos P1 where your raid-healing strategy will likely be WG followed by a few nourishes. Once you get an NG proc haste beyond the soft cap is wasted. This is a common healing pattern - see Thaddius, KT aoe bolts, Anub spikes.
My conclusion is that for nourish-heavy fights crit seems like the stat to stack, not haste (if it's one or the other, of course).

I may be overlooking your logic. Keep in mind NG procing will only allow the heal to land faster, you still have to wait for the same GCD until you can cast the next spell. Many people don't realize this since they are only watching the cast bar and not the GCD indicators and thus it 'feels' like they are casting faster. Regardless, the increased crit will increase the landing value of your heals on average.

It is not that I completely disagree with the arguement of Crit stacking over Haste (I have yet to decide), only that your reasoning lacks the ability for me to use it as an influence to do so.