The number is closer to 1400 when Spirit starts to beat out Int for a pure regeneration stat (when factoring in Innervate). My numbers above are at a 6 minute fight, an 8 minute one will devalue Int slightly as an Mp5 stat. At 1300 the overall benefits granted by spirit are about even (depending on how much value you place on Spell Power), with Spirit turning into the better stat to stack @ 1400 or so. But until you reach 1300/1400 spirit and Int, Stacking Int is the way to go to combat any mana problems.

Stop posting dumb and incorrect stuff. Spirit scales only with intellect so having 1400 or 1800 or 1000 spirit will have no effect on how much mana additional spirit gives. Intellect scales with spirit and negatively with itself.

Mana per 1 point:

Intellect

Spi\Int	1200	1300	1400
1600	65.619743430052	64.498473713937	63.499545832644
1700	67.40685239443	66.215503321058	65.154142447185
1800	69.193961358809	67.932532928179	66.808739061725

Spirit

Spi\Int	1200	1300	1400
1600	49.335734256551	51.350260280279	53.288683480377
1700	49.335734256551	51.350260280279	53.288683480377
1800	49.335734256551	51.350260280279	53.288683480377

Assumptions in the calculations; kings, living spirit, imp. motw, replenishment, one non-glyphed innervate, 8m fight.

Lets see some figures. Taking the 1300/1700 as an example, int is worth 0.69mp5, which spirit is worth 0.535. 1 point of spirit also gives 0.193 SP. Now, most druids will agree that 1 SP > 1 int.
So, converting to Int-equiv-points, 1 int is worth 1. Spirit is worth 0.535/0.69 + 0.193 or 0.97.
Question is how much you value SP compared to mana regen. By giving a bit of an extra weight to SP Spirit surpasses Int.
Regardless, I wouldn't call the SP gains stupid or negligable.

The only place the spirit vs intellect choice will matter is sockets. Getting spirit gear is obvious due to how the itemization formula works and getting haste/crit/hit/mp5 which is what you'd get if you didn't pick spirit gear is even worse. Lets say you have 10 sockets and you want some spellpower and regen from those sockets. You go with either 2x runed + 8x luminous or 10x purified.

2x runed + 8x luminous would give you 19*2+9*8=110 spellpower and 8*8*66.2155=4237.792 mana.
10x purified would give you 9*10+80*1.02*1.10*1.15*0.15=105.4836 spellpower and 8*10*51.3503=4108 mana.

Socket bonuses might drive the result some other way but that's why everyone rolled JC.

It still stands that Int and Spirit are pretty close to each other if you factor in the SP you gain from Spirit. If you talk about a specific usage like gemming, the fact that they are pretty close together with the common socket bonus for yellow/blue sockets which is SP is that gemming for socket bonus via the SP/int and the SP/spirit gems is probably the best course of action.
Another place where Int and Spirit contend is the trinket slots. Ideally they both lose to SP, but we don't have a 2nd Illustrations just yet...

Your basic argument is flawed. You have assumed large differences (400-600) between the values for Spirit and Int, this will skew your results. Since the amount of spirit is based off the Sqrt(Int), obviously that number (int) also needs to be higher to get the most out of your mana regeneration. Since most gear has a fairly even spread of both stats, assuming that the numbers will be closer together will yield more realistic results. As you stated, most of our choices actual revolve around what gems we chose.

Also, Spirit in general gets a higher multiplier. Kings and Living Spirit affect Spirit, while Int is only impacted by Kings. In The mana regeneration formula:

5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * 0.003345)

Now Lets add our buffs

5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int * 1.1) * (Spirit * 1.1 * 1.15) * 0.003345)
or
5 * (0.001 + sqrt(1.1 * Int) * (1.265 *Spirit) * 0.003345)

For those of you who don't consider yourself great with mathematics lets look at how some numbers compare
1000 Int = sqrt(1.1 * 1000) = 33.16
1000 Spirit - (1000 * 1.265) = 1265

1500 Int = sqrt(1.1 * 1500) = 40.62
1500 Spirit = 1500 * 1.265 = 1897

Now obviously Spirit gives us more RAW numbers. However, since this is a mana regeneration formula, and spirit and intellect are related, a better indicator of actual performance would be to check which value gives us the greatest percentage increase.

Int (40.62/33.16) = 1.2249
Spirit (1897/1265) = 1.499

So as we can see, in terms of the mana regeneration formula, adding spirit to gear will lead to a higher return rate than adding a point of intellect. Now it just becomes a matter of time and gear until spirit becomes the better gear to stack.

Aside from the gains Int gives to the mana regen formula (Which we have just proven scales worse than Spirit), all of the other methods of gaining mana by Int result in static values. Replenishment, Mana Tide, and even the amount of mana 1 point of Int gives are all set values, which do not scale with anything. Simply, 1 point of int = X mp5. Since these values do not change, it becomes a numbers game of when, not if, spirit will finally overtake int as our top regen stat.

When Wrath came out, there was no argument from me that Int was the only regeneration statistic to stack. Currently I will also say that it is still the best regeneration statistic available to us. But, as guilds start clearing Ulduar, this line will become more and more fuzzy, to a point where they will be about even. My current projections have Int being worth .59 mp5, while spirit being worth .50, (assuming equal spirit and Int Values) although I have done this without a complete gearing list. Once you factor in that 1 point of spirit on gear = 1.265 spirit on you = .1875 Spell power...then the choice becomes one of personal preference. I at this point would chose spirit, but if someone felt that their mana regeneration was still lacking, the difference between the two wouldn’t be big enough for me to tell them that they were wrong.

Also, don't assume everyone changed to JC simply because you did. I'd suspect that Resto Druids with JC as a profession make up much less of the population that you suspect.

Are you assuming a 100% uptime on Replenish? An better value for replenish is closer to 80%, and thats a conservative reduction. I've seen it much lower. I'd be interested to see how that changes your calculations.

Edit:
Please dont take my posts as combatitve. The table you provided is actually pretty useful. A 100% uptime for replenishment is simply to high. Even on a patchwerk type fight, with 4 characters providing it (Survival Hunter x2, Shadow Priest, Ret Paladin) replenishement is much closer to 80% than 100% in my own experiance. This number dips down even further as fights become more complicated.

I would like to see your formula's used if I could, but baring some minor tweaks, this is a very nice chart. I would also recommend converting total mp5 gained into mp5 per stat point, but thats just my personal preferance.

As an aside, using the values from the chart you’ve just provided for us (without taking into account the reduced values Int should receive due to a reduction in the replenishment calculations.)

At 1100 Int/1100 Spirit:
2x Runed, 8x Luminous
19 x 2 + 9 x 8 = 110 SP
8 x 8 = 64 x 57.56 = 3683 Mana

10x Luminous
9 x 10 = 90 Spell Power
8 x 10 x 57.56 = 4604 mana

10x Purified
9 x 10 + 8 x 10 x 1.02 x 1.1 x 1.15 x .15 = 105.58 SP
8 x 10 x 47.24 = 3779 Mana

At 1200 Int/1200 Spirit:
2x Runed, 8x Luminous
19 x 2 + 9 x 8 = 110 SP
8 x 8 = 64 x 58.47 = 3742 Mana

10x Luminous
9 x 10 = 90 Spell Power
8 x 10 x 58.47 = 4677 mana

10x Purified
9 x 10 + 8 x 10 x 1.02 x 1.1 x 1.15 x .15 = 105.58 SP
8 x 10 x 49.34 = 3947 Mana

At 1300 Int/1300 Spirit:
2x Runed, 8x Luminous
19 x 2 + 9 x 8 = 110 SP
8 x 8 = 64 x 59.35 = 3798 Mana

10x Luminous
9 x 10 = 90 Spell Power
8 x 10 x 59.35 = 4748 mana

10x Purified
9 x 10 + 8 x 10 x 1.02 x 1.1 x 1.15 x .15 = 105.58 SP
8 x 10 x 51.35 = 4108 Mana

At 1400 Int/1400 Spirit:
2x Runed, 8x Luminous
19 x 2 + 9 x 8 = 110 SP
8 x 8 = 64 x 60.19 = 3852 Mana

10x Luminous
9 x 10 = 90 Spell Power
8 x 10 x 60.19 = 4815 mana

10x Purified
9 x 10 + 8 x 10 x 1.02 x 1.1 x 1.15 x .15 = 105.58 SP
8 x 10 x 53.29 = 4263.2 Mana

Obviously from these values we can see that using ‘10x Purified’ is a better choice than ‘2x Runed, 8x Luminous’. Depending on your personal choice however, it would seem that ‘10x Luminous’ has the greatest overall benefit. I should remake these values when you rechart using a more correct multiplier for Replenishment. As, this would stand to change the values again.

Last Edit:

I had a ton of free time on my hands (and a pad of paper) so I worked out some more values. Assuming an 8 minute fight, 80% replenishment uptime, and 1 non glyphed innervate, Blessing of Kings, Living Spirit, Improved Mark of the Wild, and no time spend outside the 5sr. 1 Point of Int provides .17375 mp5 due to mana gained, and .1668 mp5 due to replenishment. At 1000/1000, spirit is much worse than int (.532117 mp5 compared to .341215, a differance of .091381 mp5 and a 20.7% differance). We expected this. At 1300/1300 Int is still better, (.55898 vs. .50251) but the difference is cut in half to .05644, or an 11.2% increase. I plotted the changes for all 'reasonable' levels of gear (all the way up to 1600, and i might argue that this is still to high) and arrived at .58285 vs .55748, with int still providing .0253 more mp5, a 4.5% increase. I have to tip my hat to you and say that you are correct in this matter. I looked at far to few data points, and my estimate was wrong. For all foreseeable gear level that could possibly come out in Wrath (barring any major changes on Blizzard part) int will be a better (albiet slightly in some cases) mana regen stat. A better overall stat? Thats open for debate still.

Ok, so I'm not that good at handling all these equations and all, and I'm having a great deal of trouble trying to decipher what exactly everyone is talking about here. Please excuse my following questions if you find them n00by.

First, I'm confused with the Spi and Int scaling. You mean to say that Spi works better if you have more or less Int, and vice versa? And on that same note, we're talking about insane numbers here like "If you had 1800 Spi and 1900 Int" but are these numbers even realistic?

Second, from what I gather, we've decided here that Int is generally more desirable because of the regen we get when replenishment is active. Without crunching any numbers, Spi gives us constant regen and a bonus to SP, whereas Int gives us more mana and situational regen. So I still don't understand why Spi isn't looked at more favorably since (at least in my eyes) druids are designed more for regen than other healing classes who require a large pool of mana. We don't need a huge pool because of our Spi powered regen.

I'd be happy to answer. Yes, we have been throwing out some insane number recently. This is likely unwarranted, but it was an attempt to see exactly when/where Spirit would overtake int.

Blizzard has stated they've designed current content around raiding with replenishment, and with a proper raid setup, it can have a very high uptime. Replenishment however only gives a portion of the total benefit of Int (Roughly 1/3rd), with the other 2/3rds coming from the increased mana pool and the Mana regen formula itself (which are passive). Even without Replenishment, Spirit is only slightly better than Int @ 1000 spirit/Int, Replenishment makes Int roughly 20% better than spirit in terms of regen at 1k. Depending on your healing setup, there are other ways to regen that are based only on Int as well. A shamans mana tide is based purely off Int, as well as a druids Revitalize (although the latter can be largely neglected). Most would agree that the sheer difference between the amount of regen that Int can provide @ the 1000/1000 gear range out weighs the amount of Spell Power gained through Spirit. Now, this argument becomes more convoluted with higher gear levels as A) The difference in mana gained shrinks as Spirit starts to catch up to Int, and B) Mana regen becomes less of an issue, as we have more of it.

Since Spirit and Int have a direct relationship to each other, a point in either spirit or Int make both more valuable. The formula blizzard uses to calculate mana regen:

Non Casting Spirit/Int based mana Regen = 5 * (0.001 + Sqrt(Int) * Spirit * 0.003345)

I won't get bogged down in a super technical discussion about this, just some basic math. Sqrt (int) stands for 'The square root of Spirit'. The only two variables (things that can change in this equation) involved are Int and Spirit. Lets trim all the constants out and boil this problem down to its basics:

Mana Regen = Sqrt(Int) * Spirit

Lets assume I have 9 spirit and 9 Int

Mana Regen = Sqrt(9) * 9 (Square root of 9 is 3)
Mana Regen = 3 * 9 = 27

Lets see what happens when we add 7 to each stat separately (increasing each value to 16)

Mana Regen = Sqrt(16) * 9 = 4 * 9 = 36 (Adding 7 to Int, leaving Spirit alone)
Mana Regen = Sqrt(9) * 16 = 3 * 16 = 48 (Adding 7 to Spirit, leaving Int alone)

As you can see, both have value, and increase how much mana you will get from your Mana regen formula. Spirit will give more value, but it is also based off the amount of Int You have. If you had 1000 Spirit and 1 Int, your regen would be 1000. If you had 4 int and 997 Spirit (same total amount of stats), you'd have 1994 total mana regen. Its generally accepted that bringing them up together is a better way to go. The actual formula gives different values obviously, but the basic princible still applies. Int's variety of benefits gives it a head start against spirit, and that head start is sizeable.

Math around the worth of Spirit is almost not worth doing right now with Ghostcrawler putting out some pretty intent messages of making Innervate do a flat amount of mana regardless of Int or Spi (source). This will devastate the worth of Spirit to about a 30-40% nerf (uliko estimated) if/when it happens.

I'm not sure if its worthless just because of an intended post. They've intended to give us changes to our bear/cat models for a long time....although non cosmetic changes do seem to come more quickly.

But I think the nerf would be a bit closer to 22%. At 1300/1300 Spirit is worth nearly .50251 mp5 per point on gear. Innervate is worth .11347 of that, or 22.58% of the total. This value is the same for every other gear level.

[Boots of the Petrified Forest]

For a Ilvl 219, it gives too low Spell Power, probably bugged like [Headpiece of Reconciliation] was bugged. Hope that it will be fixed in the next minor patch.

I have question regarding the t7.5 set bonus. Is there a SP number I can shoot for as to when to drop the set bonus? I tend to use a Nourish heavy healing style, as I am usually a floater as far as healing goes, so losing that set bonus for a minor upgrade in ulduar seems rough. As it is I've passed on a number of relatively small upgrades due to the powerful effect of set bonus and nourish glyph.

I tend to do really well (usually first or second on healing meters) so I don't think I am doing too much wrong as far as healing goes, but just curious if there is any numbers on this.

Thanks

I think its a little early to say the sky is falling on spirit, if this change goes live. Spirit will still be a good stat with talents like Intensity, and Imp. ToL aura.

Hate to bust up all these numbers, but I've started a spreadsheet of all the gear with one of my guildmates. We're still working on it but hopefully it will be done in a few days.

Druid Gear

If you want to give a hand on whats there, or start a feral tab, send me a PM.

This is so that gear can easily accessible in Excel format for people to crunch even more numbers if they want, and it's also a handy sheet to alt-tab to if you want to check your options while you raid.

Enkoopa, you will need to make the spreadsheet public for anyone to view it. I went to take a peek at what you had, and was advised I didn't have access to veiw the sheet.

Also, will probably be completing the resto tab first.

Hey I was hoping I could bug you guys for some quick help. I'm putting together a Ulduar wish list and am debating which pieces of tier I want.

From what I gather the 4 piece now instantly heals for its periodic healing (the full 12 second duration???) amount plus still does its hot. I can't pass that set bonus off if it does and its disappointing because aside from the helm I prefer non tier pieces.

From what I've seen (I've been quickly skimming over stats at work) my 4 piece would consist of Helm, Chest, Legs and Shoulders while using the Handwraps of the vigilant as my gloves. They seem to provide the biggest bonus stats/sockets etc... I'm disappointed that I'm not seeing as much haste gear now and am concerned about the amount of crit I will be pulling over haste due to the tier gear alone. Do you guys agree with that 4 piece set? Or am I really far off and need some quick guidance here.

Any help would be great!

The currently best known (Algalon loot is still missing but..) offset piece to take is this chest because quite honestly it is perfectly itemized in almost every way for us. It also has the benefit of taking away one of the critical strike pieces in favor of haste whereas using the gloves would be a critical strike for critical strike trade.

I would concur with this. Using this loot rank link, Loot Rank for WotLK, It appears that the T8.5 gloves have the biggest gap in score from the best in slot gloves, compared to the rest of the tier gear.

Of course this all based upon proper weights, and i'm not sure if they are up to date or not.

I also am a bit concerned about the ample amounts of crit on our tier gear, but its not like losing some haste is going to break the class. With GotEM talents, haste isn't even that great of a stat, its just slightly better than crit.

Hmm... when I was looking at the PVE gear lists on MMO it didn't include that chest piece. Now its interesting. Both the chest and the gloves have a big gap in stats and benefits but I'm now leaning more towards the chest. I'm a big fan of haste even as a druid. I've always gone high haste so I could maintain larger hot rotations across the raid (ie: more regrowths before refreshing the next hot rotation).

Hmm I need to start using these loot ranks things T_T. I'm sitting around at work playing with the stats and calculating the differences and which would give the best bonus.

Like I said above tho I didn't see Vestments of the Blind Denizen and I am definitely leaning towards that now.

Yeah, you forgot the cloth.