This is a personal preference based on group layout within your raid (do you get tide) and the mana problems you either do or do not run into based on your gear and/or style of healing/healing assignments. This is not the only meta gem that resto druids should use. I personally use Ember Skyflare (25 spell power + 2% intellect) and have no significant mana problems or issues using it. The additional benefit is that it only requires red gems. I would not say everyone has to do it my way, but this is what works for me and is a viable option for others as well.

So the time has come to gear my druid, but I'm quite new with it. I've been doing some reading here, and figured that i should focus on Spellpower and Spirit mainly. I see many druids use a staff instead of a 1H + OH, is this just random, and the only reason they use a staff is because thats what's dropped for them, or does staffs simply have stats that benefit druids more, than a 1H + OH set would do? Should i rather start looking at staff as weapon alternatives, instead of 1H + OH?

Also, Lifebloom has been changed alot since I last played druid. It's a lot less mana efficent now, and to me it almost seems useless. Are there anyone that would mind explaining situations where using lifebloom could be useful?
(I know this is the itemization thread, and I do not expect my last question to be answered, but its a quite simple question, so thought someone probably would take their time to reply to it aswell.)

Best regards

You should use whatever combination of items gives you the best stats. Usually this will be a 1h+OH for maximum spellpower, which is our best stat.

This, and as you said, the reason some of us use a staff is because it's the best thing that's dropped for us at this point.

Alright, thanks. I've been doing abit research now (some wowhead surfing), and to me it looks like that the staffs have the same amount of SP as the 1H alternatives of the same itemlevel. So with an offhand aswell, would that be around 80 extra SP. But it also seems to me that the staves give a high amount of spirit.

Soo, basicly - if I pick a staff will i most likely have more spirit than with a 1H+OH set, but less spellpower, haste and crit.

Am I mistaken?

Hi, I was wondering since we're going to change to t9 at some point. How much crit/haste on gear should we be going for, I may have over looked it. Right now I have about 10.85% crit and 562 haste. I am unsure to pick up more crit items and drop some haste while staying in the haste cap. I keep seeing all these items with crit on them wondering if I should be picking them up. I may be over thinking how much crit we really need.

Except when mana regen isnt a problem, ember skyflare is much better >.>

You and Carebare are correct, but she is (the first and only Druid I have seen) using ESD properly. You are not. I already explained it in this post.

EDIT: Explained further in this post.

What do you mean by using it "properly"? I literally have not found a raid situation where mana regen is a problem, thus I gem for the most spellpower possible considering haste softcap (which I am currently way over atm) and grabbing spellpower bonuses where applicable.

I don't see the point gemming a meta purely for regen when my regen is currently fine.

Edit: Nevermind, I re-read the linked post, I see what you're getting at

TBH, I've always thought about just scrapping all the spellpower bonuses in my gear and going all reds. I very much agree with Arythorn's methodology of a fine balance between the two, and as of now I feel my regen is good enough where IED isn't so much needed, but I still come close to running oom on longer fights.

Now, if we could ever get a Solace to drop, I'd be more keen to switching my spi/sp gems for pure spellpower >.>

It is not a personal preference. A personal preference is gemming to get socket bonuses when you have to use a luminous/purified to get a spell power gem socket. Insightful is at least 3 times the effective item budget that Ember is. Also, if you changed your gem in your pants to yellow you would get more overall stats as well (7 spell power is worth picking up in a socket bonus for almost any gear level we can achieve, as you lose 4 spell power for 10 spirit, but 10 spirit is worth 2 spell power, so really you lose 2 spell power for the regen of 10 spirit). Getting the yellow however you would have to change the gem in your belt, which I admit would be an ever so slight loss (6 spell power for 10 intellect). The fact that you'd lose a grand total of 33 spell power is swamped by the fact that you'd gain more mana than that mana tide you're taking up that could go to someone who could put it into more throughput (priests or dps).

Eventually our gear will reach a level that we simply can't use the mana and then Ember will become greater than Insightful. However, that time is not now.

I would disagree. Our priests that need tide get tide. Our DPS gets innervates on nearly every fight where a healer doesn't need one instead (we typically have at least 3 druids in the raid). There are very few fights that I am still using my innervate on myself at all, and on most of those our DPS is fine without one or a DPS druid can get them. Getting tide means my innervate is nearly 100% free to the raid as its needed. Again, this is why I still maintain it's a personal preference based on how your specific raid operates. Please understand that I am not saying you are wrong and that I am right -- simply that this works for me and may also work for others. I don't think it's nearly as black and white as you make it out to be.

Not sure what's the status on hardmode discussions, but in general, at least the first 3 are quite similar to their normal-mode counterparts. This makes rejuv less dominant than it was in Ulduar, where in nearly every encounter, the entire raid was being blased with AoE at pretty consistent and/or short intervals. It feels like rejuv-blanketing isn't as strong as it used to be, simply on the merits of the encounters themselves. This pushes throughput (=SP) even stronger compared to regen, so gemming with ember might be more viable. Having to maintain a full-red set and a more balanced set, however, will likely deem this option unrealistic, unless you are always comfortable with full SP.
Bhalu - about your trinket, do you use it specifically for Anub? Personally I'm not too fond of SP procs/uses but it seems like for that particular fight it will be beneficial. [Talisman of Resurgence] is also an interesting option for that fight if you can spare the badges.

I slept on it, and I still don't get your argument. You're saying that you SHOULD take the Mana Tide so that you can gem Ember Skyflare which gives about 33 more spell power, i.e. 1% throughput, and that's the biggest benefit to the raid? I'm sorry, but it's complete nonsense, there is always someone who will get more out of mana tide than a druid, we're basically the lowest mana class that actually has to think about it (excluded ret palas and enhan shammies since they have very good ways to get mana back easily). Only hunters get less than us but they can turn that directly into quite a bit more dps (by using viper less). So we should be giving mana tide to someone who can get more than 1% throughput out of it. If you took absolutely no regen from raid i.e. you've got 70%+ uptime on rejuv for rogues/kittys and you've got a high uptime on WG on them, AND you take no innervates, mana tides or anything to up your mana AND you're outhealing the druids that do need those mana regens (since if your mana regen is that much higher, then your spellpower has to be), THEN you can think about dropping Insightful for Ember, otherwise you're just doing it wrong.

Hey guys. Can someone tell me this. Is the T8 bonus (4 pcs) better than T9 bonus(4pcs). I'm comfortable with my T8 4pcs bonus. I need opinion by someone who have T9 4pcs set bonus. Thanks.

BTW:Sorry for my low english.

I just got my Pants of the Soothing Touch the other day and I am wondering whether anyone has fonnd a better off set piece to use instead of Tier 9. I dont like how much crit all the gear has because its 80%-20% crit-haste not leaving you with much flexibility if you are already running with say rings with crit on or a belt.

[Robes of the Shattered Fellowship] and [Flowing Robes of Ascent] (and non-heroic versions) both have haste over the crit that the T9 chest has.

What are the opinions on bis weapons right now?

Heroic version of [Suffering's End] or [Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings] paired with [Mystifying Charm] will be BiS. Speaking of offhands, [Chalice of Benedictus] is sadly better than any OH pre-ToC. The number of items with +hit on them in ToC10 is ridiculous.

As I see it, [Relentless Gladiator's Salvation] with [Chalice of Searing Light] is a better option if regen is still an issue at all.

One other thing. I saw the question being raised a few pages back but no answer still. Have anyone tried to equip both the 245 and 258 Solace or know someone else who has...and what the result was? Without knowing the answer to this, I have been unsure whether to go after the 245. "Fortunately" our guild hasn't had a single 245 Solace drop in 6 weeks so the first one we see may be the 258 when we handle Jaraxxus on Thursday.

Back on page 27 post # 662 I posted a list. It is the alliance version, but easily converts to horde. Same stats different names. The only thing is that Wowhead still does not have Clemency on their site.

And to OnyxShadow's question. Yes you can have both the lvl 245 and 258 items equipped. My guild master informed us of this yesterday.. I'm not sure if it was from a blue post or if someone tried it. Now, this also might be changed in the future, but I hope not.

Personally, the gear I'm working towards getting will put me at 370 haste, and will otherwise be very crit heavy. The 4pc t9 bonus simply makes crit a decent stat again, and haste never did THAT much for us past the softcap, it was always a personal preference thing.

On a side note, the 4pc bonus got me thinking that resto druids will become THE class to give Focus Magic to once we get the set bonus, assuming a rejuv crit counts as a straight up crit. Thoughts?

At this point in the game, on fights that are SUPER healing intensive, sure. But it is better of on another DPS. They crit enough to have an almost 100% uptime. Might change though