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.

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

My friend and I are having a (sorta pointless) debate:
[Moonshadow Armguards] vs [Bracers of the Autumn Willow]
(Assuming t9 4set and haste soft cap w/o Autumn Willow)

My elementary school math said 42 crit is ~0.46% increase to RJ and 11 spellpower is ~0.2% increase. RJ is ~60% of our effective healing, so I figured overall the crit is worth ~0.276% throughput, while the 11 spellpower affects all of our healing (so it stays the same?). Is this math accurate? If so, then could it be said that 3 crit rating is worth about 1 spellpower (when wearing t9 4set)?

At first I thought this would be a dumb question (spellpower rules all right!), but it is a bit more intricate. I think we need to have more discussion about what the value of crit is with 4pc T9. Honestly, I'm struggling a little bit with how to plan to use my EPGP for upcoming drops.

At what ratio is crit valuable to spellpower?

At what point do we feel its "okay" to break T8 4pc, specifically?

What amount of crit is worth falling under the soft haste cap with 4pc t9?

What ILVL of T9 is worth investing in? Will you be mixing all levels of it to make a 4pc?

There is a lot of crit on the new gear, and haste, at least for me, is getting tricky to manage... My original plan was to upgrade all my non-tier pieces first, but I know I will have to start making my t9 at some point, and I can't control what drops...

I have done a small bit of research in terms of what gear to get. One thing to keep in mind about myself, is I am stubborn with leather. I hate wearing cloth, and taking it from other casters. With that being said, I would choose 258 over 245 for two reasons, the overall spellpower you get from it is nice for Wild Growth, Swiftmend, Lifebloom, and the more frequently used Nourish, and the extra Stam/Int/Spirit. Faction Champions is a good fight to have that extra stats on .

The rate at which I will recieve my teir gear is DEAD last, since our 4pc t8 is so powerful. Trophies don't go to resto druids in our guild. Well we can get one to replace our "5th" piece. The 232 gear is such a small upgrade from 8.5, that I believe it should only be used to complete 4pc t9 with one piece of 232, being gloves or shoulders (lowest stat values per slot). Restoration druids have a lot of math they can use to determine "best in slot", but it comes down to personal preference in the end. It is all in how you heal, what your healing assignment is.

It did make sense, and I understand where a lot of people are coming from. I am just going off by how much overhealing does with rejuve, and did you count that in your math? Look at the EHPS of the 4pc T8 and the EHPS of your 113 SP boosted Rejuve and its overhealing, and you would have to get this from 4 pieces of gear. Also, I am not talking 10 man's either, because healing rotation is completely different in 10 man raid enviroment. Typical fights like Twins, IC Hardmode, Firefighter (raid heavy damage) is where my guild utilizes my class most. 5xRejuve->WG melee 5xRejuve->WG melee. Thats my rotation, which allows up to and over 10k EHPS on these encounters (minus firefighter all the downtime).

The first hit of 4pc T8 is hardly every Overhealing. 90% EH according to my WMO's. How much would the 4th and 5th tick of rejuve be overhealing? It all depends on your raid comp too. If I was solo raid healing IC Hardmode, I would certainly go for that extra 113 spellpower and more, because chances are the 4th and 5th ticks of rejuve won't be overhealing. I mentioned that it has a lot to do with playstyle, and now I am adding raid composition. If your playstyle and raidcomp allows you to use different gear outside of 4pc t8, then more 232 gear would be viable.

(I apologize for typo's or mispelling, I didn't sleep last nite )

EDIT: PS. The trinkets from Heroic and regular stack. Blizzard counts "Heroic" (the green text) in the item name.

I admit I completely forgot to calculate the overhealing percentage into my numbers this morning.

Regarding 25man rotation, true, Rejuv/WG is the the go-to rotation to easily top 10k HPS in some fights in Ulduar. Just about the only fight I have ever stuck to that rotation the entire time was on IC Steelbreaker 25man. Everything else I end up mixing in various burst heals like Regrowth, Nourish and Swiftmend to various extents. Though that is my healing style, and if yours is more of a stick to your rotation style, then we are arguing apples and oranges.

It'd sure be nice if it was a bit more clear cut as far as how to move out of 4T8 and into the T9 gear without feeling like we need to wait for the 245 or even 258 ilvl gear. The 3.2.2 nerf helps, but not when figuring out how to drop only one or two pieces instead of all four at once. :/

I haven't done all of the math on T9 4 pc (I think it's going to take real world application to really bear out the value anyway) but pre-nerf T8 4 pc adds 10-12% total real, measured, effective throughput in current content that scales upward with spell power. Given that there are druids still wearing 4 pc T8 and sporting more than 2500 sp -- I'm going to go with not 100, not even 200 sp would have made up this difference pre-nerf. Post-nerf, it bears further inspection but I'm still leaning toward 4-pc iLVL 258 before breaking T8.

EDIT: Some quick inspection shows me I'm on the right track here:

Average per-piece upgrade in spell power from iLVL 226 to iLVL 245 is about 21 sp. Times 4 pieces = 84 sp

Average per-piece upgrade in spell power from iLVL 226 to iLVL 258 is about 39 sp. Times 4 pieces = 156 sp

Source:

Conqueror's Nightsong Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft
Triumphant Malfurion's Garb - Item Set - World of Warcraft
Totally Triumphant Malfurion's Garb - Item Set - World of Warcraft

Even factoring in 50% nerf, I don't see the additional 78 sp of 4 pieces of iLVL 245 on it's own making up for the throughput of T8 4pc. Not sure what the realistic additional throughput will be from 4-pc T9 crit bonus. Maybe we get close to equal throughput of 4 pieces of T8 226 gear using 245 4 pc spell power increase PLUS 4 pc crit bonus working in conjunction. I really still think it's going to take the extra 156 sp AND 4 pc crit bonus of iLVL 258 to net us a throughput increase.

This is definitely very quick napkin math though so I'm very interested in hearing more back-and-forth on this discussion. It'll be interesting to see some parses of 4 pc T9 bonus value in current content. Don't know if this is a 1% or 5% or insert % here throughput gain -- that's the real unknown wild card in these calculations and it could make even 4 pc 245 a contender to break 4 pc 226.

I hadn't really revisited 4 pc T8 bonus value since validating the 10-12% number across many Ulduar and Ulduar hard mode parses. That said, your statement gave me some incentive to look at the past couple weeks of ToTC 25. My parses aren't agreeing with your assertion of lowered value of T8 4 pc bonus even on Normal mode. Weds of this week on 25 man Normal and Northrend Beasts Heroic mode progression pulls, 4 pc T8 netted me this per fight:

NRB 25 Normal: 12.9% effective throughput (sadly had my duck equipped from a hard mode Vezax pull prior night. Switched in throughput idol on all future encounters on this night though)
LJ 25 Normal: 20.5% (yeah, that one is shocking to me, even)
FC 25 Normal: 20.7% (again shocking but true)
Twins 25 Normal: 12.7%
Anub 25 Normal: 12.2%

NRB 25 Heroic best attempt: 11.3%
No further heroic attempts yet.

Based on the surprisingly high values of some of these, I looked at last week to double-check and see if these numbers were exceptions and found:

NBR 25N: 14.2%
LJ 25N: 20.1%
FC 25N: 21.2%
Twins 25N: 12.3%
Anub 25N: 13.4%

Similar values are also showing in prior weeks for the bosses that were available those weeks. If TotC follows Ulduar, I would expect Heroic/Hard Modes of these fights to show as much or more value.

In 10-man, I have a bit more success in heroic TotC encounters and have the following values by comparison (I fully realize 10 man content is not an indicator of 25-man performance but these values might be of interest for those that run 10s primarily):

NRB 10N: 12.8%
LJ 10N: 12.0%
FC 10N: 9.6%
Twins 10N: 12.2%
Anub 10N: No values. Haven't attended for this yet.

NRB 10H: 9.8%
LJ 10H: 16.7%
FC 10H best attempt: 12.9%
Twins 10H: no attempts yet
Anub 10H: no attempts yet


I know I might not believe me either if I saw someone post 20+% numbers so all values can be verified at my World of Logs page if you are so inclined:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I'd be very interested to see if my numbers are way out of whack compared to what you or others are seeing but based on this, I'm seeing an increased value of T8 4 pc bonus in TotC, not a decreased value. All good conversation at any rate.