The Lightweave / Darkglow piece is something I honestly didn't take enough time to look at previously and only recently had begin to think about swapping it out. Clearly I should have spent some more time on that because, prior to swapping my idol out yesterday, honestly I probably could've put Lightweave in place of Darkglow and probably even still kept ESD in place of IED. If it made people happy, I could've also made every gem an SP gem as well to be fully consistent throughput and still without regen issues.

On the flip side, if it made folks happy, I could also make a simple swap of IED for ESD and be full consistent stat weighting. But, I don't believe you have to be 100% consistent stat weighting or 100% consistent throughput but can run a hybrid of the two -- at some point, you are fine-tune tweaking your setup one direction or the other. The way I described a few posts above was how I was running that hybrid setup. The only thing I really regret about it is not looking at Lightweave sooner.

That said, with the recent addition of Flaring Growth idol to my setup, at least until I can get Solace, I have a sneaking hunch that I'm probably going to have to take a look at adding in some regen to my gemming if I want to keep both throughput trinkets in place of regen trinkets. I haven't run a raid since I got it, so I'm not sure how it's going to go. But based on my calculations, losing the Rubber Ducky is about a ~150 mp5 hit or so given a sustained cast rate of around 25 Rejuvs per minute (which is what I've seen average on the parses of the most RJ heavy fights).

Due to this hit, I am going to have an IED pre-cut in my bags for the next raid as IED replacing ESD the first change I will make if I find I do need a significant regen boost. But, once I get Solace and/or other T9.5 gear evens out any regen hiccup from using Flaring Growth, I can very much see putting Lightweave/IED combo as you've described it in. Then, perhaps with double Solace (25 normal and 25 heroic versions) making any regen issues a thing of the past, I can see dropping IED for ESD again as well.

In my opinion, it will be a minor buff to crit for trees but not much more (so maybe 0.2 instead of 0.15 in stat value). Unless you gear in a really unusual manner, you're still not gonna get a whole lot of listed crit. This set bonus really needs a talent or glyph to make it shine. As it stands, even with around 500 crit rating from gear (which would be very high for us), this set bonus is still FAR worse than that of the tier 8 set. Only the increase in other stats make tier 9 worth taking. Personally, I don't plan to transition to tier 9 until I have 4 pieces of iLevel 258 tier 9.

More to the point on T9 crit - I'm terrible at game maths, but it feels like breaking 4 t8 bonus is going to take a lot of itemisation/much higher ilvl gear to equal the gain of the set bonus. I've seen the proc accounting for 10% of my healing on random WWS logs.

Any thoughts on when, or more accurately which group of ilvl (232, 245, 258) t9 it'll take to drop 4/5 t8?

I doubt many of you haven't ended up using the 4T8 heal as a means to snipe heal where it isn't needed ie a raid member just took 4k random damage and you just RJ them instead of leaving it or using Nourish for example.

Just going by the meter results for the healing done from 4T8 is misleading due to the above and also the fact you will often have just cut off a RJ tick by having the initial heal early (so you heal at 0 and 3 instead of 3 and 6) and while sometimes that is useful many times it is not. We could even test this now that we get overheal results in the combat log.

If a lot of your healing is sniping (defined as ''healing something which would have been healed anyways very quickly'') it means either your healers are uncoordinated, or you are bringing too many healers for the encounter, or both. When healers are pressed for HPS, the 4t8 fully counts for increasing this HPS (and is less likely to overheal than a hot crit if you are intelligent about where you place new Rejuvs). When healers are not pressed for HPS, it doesn't matter what you wear.

If it's HPS you're after, 4t9 offers just as much HPS as 4t8. We're seeing the initial signs of scaling with crit which will hopefully turn out into permanent changes to the class - yes, there are better solutions than making hot ticks crit, but it's a start.

Saying you're undecided about T9 bonuses and then saying you'll switch when you get the 4th item...duh. The 2t9 is rubbish.

It is really annoying that we shouldn't break our 4pT8 until 4pT9. I got a trophy today and have 32 badges, but I guess I will buy one of the rings-they are big upgrade for me. We go from have 2 bonuses that are good to maybe a 4pT9 that might be decent. They should have at least given us a 2pT9 that was decent to help with the transition. I guess I could get the gloves, but the ring seems better.

Well at least they put up a good idol and some rings to give us some upgrades before the 4pT9.

No one idol is ideal for every fight. If you aren't switching them in and out based on your past experiences with the fight you probably aren't doing yourself any favors. The new idol is great for fights like mimiron or yogg and just a bad idea for fights like freya or xt. (all hardmodes of course.) Part of being a healer is to compensate for the unforeseeable. If you are going in with pure thoroughput you aren't going to be able to compensate for possible mistakes / bad rng you aren't any better than a meter padder.

Overall, I am happy to have 2 idols to choose between, and as for the tier bonus I am not as excited for critting hots as I thought I would be. I think they will be great on paper and not so great in play. I haven't decided when I will drop T8, but I don't think it will be for a good while.

Well, is 4tp really worth wearing? Sure, it will bring you some additional HPS, but with ~50% OH most of the additional crit is wasted anyway. Instead you could wear full Ulduar / Coliseum hardmode loot (nonset pieces) an get lots of SP (and better stats weighting since you can choose excatly what pieces of gear you want to wear).

Maybe I'm just bad, but I don't really see any massive benefit to 4t8 like everyone else, and I'm looking forward to 4t9..

Except for a select few fights: IC, Thorim... and probably mimi but we haven't done that hard mode yet..

I usually already have a rejuv ticking when someone takes damage, so with the exception of those fights where everyone is constantly taking massive damage, the initial tick is just wasted. I think the rejuv crits are going to be more throughput in more situations.

Personally, even if you aren't having any mana problems, I would still say take spirit+haste over haste+crit items. At least until you hit the 4-piece T9 bonus, crit doesn't mean too much to most resto druids. I don't know what kinda gear you have with your druid, but offhand, I would guess your trinkets and idol are efficiency models. With the new flaring growth idol and two throughput trinkets, it would be tough to make it through IC hard mode or heartbreaker without mana problems (especially since the replenishment nerf).

Of course this is just a guess without knowing anything about your druid. If I knew the character's name and server, I might be able to give more specific advice.