Yes, Moonkin chest is better then Resto chest, and if you dont have access to other itens like

[Vestments of the Blind Denizen]
[Zodiac Leggings]

the t8 moonkin chest is the best option.

The Moonkin chest is easily the largest haste gain of those options though. Until some hard mode gear drops in other slots, I don't think there is a better option than the moonkin chest (assuming you need the haste at all). For me it's great, because we don't have a Ret or Moonkin in most raids.

Currently sitting at 17% haste unbuffed , which I believe is over what I need with Wrath of Air totem, but covers me perfectly if I get out of range or the shaman dies, etc.

Yes - but that assumes that you get your hands on 4 other pieces that are preferably ilvl 226 (which means you'll have to roll on gloves, shoulders and legs). You can get the chest for emblems. I got 541 haste without the moonkin chest. Our rogues and mages want the gloves tokens so I'm generally passing on those.

Allinone briefly mentioned the upcoming 25% buff to MP5 items in the Healing Discussion thread, but it's probably beneficial to discuss it more in depth in this thread.

The items of note that this buff will impact are some of your offset pieces (neck, cloak, rings):

Neck:
[Charm of Meticulous Timing]
[Freya's Choker of Warding]
[Life-Binder's Locket]

Cloak:
[Shroud of Alteration]

Rings:
[Fire Orchid Signet]
[Starshine Circle]
[Starshine Signet]


---


The question is, how will this affect your gearing preferences? Will you always value the comparable spirit items in those slots higher because of the SP you gain from the spirit, or has this changed your way of thinking about spirit vs. mp5?

Also note that this 25% buff is coming alongside the buff to Empowered Touch, so depending on your speccing preferences, you may be aiming for ~540 haste so you can go 4/5 GotE and gain an extra point to buff your Nourish/HT.

I looked at the two loot rankings (pre/post changes) to reflect how we view items now, and how we'll view items when 3.2 hits.

Current Loot Rankings
3.2 Adjusted Loot Rankings

A few items jockey position.

Neck (Current):
[Sapphire Amulet of Renewal]
[Charm of Meticulous Timing]
[Watchful Eye]
[Freya's Choker of Warding]
[Evoker's Charm]

Neck (3.2 Changes)
[Charm of Meticulous Timing]
[Sapphire Amulet of Renewal]
[Watchful Eye]
[Freya's Choker of Warding]
[Pendant of the Somber Witness]

Cloak (Current):
[Sunglimmer Cloak]
[Drape of the Sullen Goddess]
[Sunglimmer Drape]
[Shroud of Alteration]
[Shawl of Haunted Memories]

Cloak (3.2):
[Sunglimmer Cloak]
[Drape of the Sullen Goddess]
[Shroud of Alteration]
[Sunglimmer Drape]
[Shawl of Haunted Memories]

Rings (Current):
[Conductive Seal]
[Starshine Circle]
[Fire Orchid Signet]
[Signet of Soft Lament]
[Starshine Signet]

Rings (3.2)
[Conductive Seal]
[Starshine Circle]
[Fire Orchid Signet]
[Sanity's Bond]
[Starshine Signet]

As you can see, only a few items in the top 5 for each catagory actually change places. To a large degree our gearing will remain unchanged. For Gem selections, our current suggested choices, [Runed Scarlet Ruby], [Luminous Monarch Topaz], [Purified Twilight Opal], will remain the same. Purified will still beat out the SP/mp5 gem, it just wont beat it by such a wide margin.

On a different note, it might be getting closer to the time where we do start weighting SP more favorably against mp5 (I currently still use a 1 - .8 ratio). Many druids do not have a problem with regeneration in current content. A 1 mp5 - .9 or 1.0 might be more reasonable in the upcoming expansion and the gearing upgrades it would bring. This will further tip the scales to favoring spirit over mp5. All this is speculation of course.

Blizzard is also nerfing Int slightly (through Replenishment changes) but as I posted on the PvE healing discussion board, this doesn't matter nearly as much to us as it would a Paladin or Resto Shaman, Replenishment only accounts for roughly 1/3 of the value that Int provides. (The other two thirds are an increased mana pool and Ints contributions to our Spirit based regen), but this is getting off of the topic at hand. I've already factored in the changes in int to the listing above.

Do you mean for Watchful Eye to be in the list as it's a Hit neck piece?

The watchful eye linked there is actually an offhand. I'm sure he means the identically-named neckpiece that drops off of Iron Council 10-man hard mode.

[Watchful Eye]

Ok as a druid I know the situation which to heal and with what spell. But when it come to stats I know the sp is above all but wat number does your haste have to be at to be benefical when casting a clutch nourish at times? My haste has always been above 300 now that I have my 5 piece t8/t8.5, I wanted to drop the shoulder and try to get the shoulders from H EOE the BIS before Ulduar patch. When I made the swap I lost a ton of haste but gain some crit. Now that being said I went a head and re gemmed all gems and got my MP5 to 600 with my haste at 355 but my sp fell to 2077 in cow form unbuffed. What should I do in this case it quite frustrating cause I wanna have the maximum out put but also having longevity of mana throughout the fight. I had no way to raise my haste at all other than using the prismatic gems i placed 2 in to get the number i have atm. Basiclly would having your haste under 250 as a resto druid be a bad thing and if so wat are the pro and cons?

Thanks

Buck

#1 Haste is extremely beneficial until the softcap of 359. At that point, with proper raid buffs, you are capped at a 1 second GCD. Past that haste is still a nice stat for things such as clutch nourishes as you put it, but SP is more beneficial. That said, do not gem for haste. The cons are obvious, slower GCD means slower rejuves and wild growths means less coverage of the raid in an average rotation and overall less throughput.

#2 That meta you are using is terrible. The 21 int / chance to restore mana on cast meta is by far superior. I do not know the exact number but between the MP5 gained from replenishment from the int, and the 600 mana you will get occasionally it becomes far superior in mana return (in my experience, druids benefit more from this meta than any other class, purely because we are constantly chain casting 1 second instant cast spells throughout an entire fight). I believe it adds up to something like 5000 mana back just from the mana restore.

#3 Are you having mana issues in fights? I'll assume from the initiative you took to regem in favor of MP5 that you are finding mana tight on some fights. Honestly the biggest thing I can say is don't worry about gearing/gemming for it, but instead get your hands on a Spark of Hope. The mana savings from a spark is insane, it really is. Extremely simple math suggest you save 8k+-10k+ mana on a fight from that trinket alone. At first I was only going to use it for certain fights when I got it, but I find that there is no other trinket I would rather fill the spot with. Two-healing 10 man hardmodes or five-healing 25m hardmodes, the extra mana you find yourself with is amazing to have. You may also want to change out your cloak with something like Shroud of Alteration.

Okay, so I have a question. I keep seeing all this stuff about "gear haste", "get haste capped" etc. Well, me and another druid in my guild decided to put something to the test. She built a set with haste, I built a set based on crit.

On IC hardmode, I usually end up doing between 7k-8.2k HPS according to Recount. Yes, I know Recount isn't accurate...the World of Logs parses are showing it as a barely over 6k HPS effectively. Her's are usually around 6.2-6.8k on Recount and about 4.8k-ish on World of Logs.

My Stats:

1012 Int
1273 Spirit
2148 bonus healing with no buffs in caster form (having to pull info from Armory since I'm at work)
19.09% crit
195/7.73% haste
725 MP5 OoC/386 IC
18.4k mana pool
18.4k health

Her stats

1038 Int
1208 Spirit
2143 bonus healing no buffs in caster form
14.83% crit
393/15.58% haste
672 MP5 OoC/347 IC
18.8k mana pool
18k health

______________________________________________

Now, we both have the 4 piece Conq bonus. She's not a bad healer at all, she's actually pretty good. But, I keep seeing all this "gear haste" crap, and I'm putting up higher numbers with less of it. And no, I'm not padding meters or spamming Nourish. I hate that spell TBH and only use it if I'm tank healing, otherwise my HoTs work just fine. Neither of us have mana issues, even on the hard modes. Even Vezax hard mode, I come out with ~90% mana when Animus spawns and am still 2 or 3 on the charts. <3 those OoC procs and mid-combat idol swapping

But anyways, so T9 4-piece is a chance for critting Rejuvs, and Nourish is getting a buff. Is this Blizzard trying to make us standing casters by trying to make a casting spell, something we're not necessarily used to (besides Regrowth of course), a little more interesting by buffing the hell out of it and upping what crit is for us? I'm thinking I should be gearing crit right now because of the T9 4-piece bonus. Haste just doesn't seem like an issue to me. I put out my numbers, and do just fine.

So, tl;dr - is haste really still worth it to break my back over, and why am I outhealing someone with 200 more haste than me we basically have the same raid healing assignments?

EDIT: yeah, yeah...I saw the Sticky but I still posted my stats because it's easier than clicking my armory under my username and tabbing back and forth :P

@Sicosis

Your post contains no 'constants'. Not to mention you have no WoL or WMO parses to investigate the reasoning between the EHPS. You and the other healer are too different people fighting an encounter that is like a snowflake... no two encounters are identical. Maybe the timing of your blooming LB's is better causing more heals rather then Overhealing, maybe you happen to have more rejuv's on the melee during static disruptions, maybe you are Swiftmending on more cooldowns or more effectively, maybe your WG consistently hit more targets on use, maybe a priests PoH was hitting more of your friends targets reducing the amount Rejuv heals. My point is that your 'test' has far too many variables to discuss.

Your friend, whether he/she does so or not, mathematically has the ability to cast more spells in the same period of time then you. This is not really debatable (besides latency differential). On IC Hard mode, something tells me you are not using very many critable spells anyways, so what your crit rating is at seems mostly negligable to me.

After the soft cap for your raid composition (or close to it at least), it would obviously be beneficial to have more crit with this set bonus.