Little confused about your point here? Yes I understand the mess up on the intellect calculation that is my fault. You would need the 1050 intellect that you stated, however I find it very hard to get to this point (unless it is based off raid buffs) that would provided the same amount of mana that the IED does.

Calculations:
Goal = 1050 Int

With Mark, Dalaran Intellect, and Kings
(844 Int + 51 Mark + 60 Dalaran Int)*1.10 Kings = 1050
So you would need above 844 Int to gain more from the ESD(raid buffed).

Intellect provides critical chance for druids and slightly effects our mana regen but not as much as in comparison to other classes, "In addition Intellect provides regeneration through abilities available to hunters, paladins, and shadow priests via Replenish (different from druid replenishment)." (MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Gearing up for End Game healing guide: 3.03)

So although it does provide some help to our mana regen it doesn’t provide as much as the meta would provide. Your example of casting 55 spells per min, were you proving my point? It is hard to tell with the way you worded it. With 55 spells per minute you would be gaining back approximately 1650 mana or 137.5 MP5. From this data even that harder fight that you mentioned would pay a greater return on this Meta.

Tris thank you for the short and sweet point that there is no mp5 trinket that can match the mana given back from the IED. To make that cross over point at 43 mp5 you would have to only cast 17 times in a minute. If you are only using 17 spells in one minute you are not healing properly.

I see what you are getting at.

Your saying the IED proportional to the ESD will always be better. Cause if you are in a low level fight then you are not going to need the mana return, however you wont need the spell power either. If you are in a high level fight you are going to need the mana return a lot more then you are going to need the small 25 spell upgrade. Therefore the IED wins again.

So the point stands true that the best meta for resto druids is the IED.

The perfect shifting gem is probably better than the balanced twilight opal for feral dps.

You're right, of course. I'm pretty sure I had this initially, but then I got all messed up when editing my post and changed to Mana. I edited the post above to reflect the correct stats.

In this case, it makes the choice even easier because you are choosing between [at least] 75MP5 or 23 Spell Power. Given the gear choices, it really is no contest.

Well Vazu think of the possible Encounter in Ulduar where there is Heavy Raid dmg, and you must spread out, so that Chainheal wont work, nor Glyphed HL maybe for Melee. So you as a heal druid need to hot 15 Targets with Rejuvenation/Regrowth because this Dmg ticks all 3 Sec, and RJ/RG heal a lot more than a Lifebloom as a Raidheal, also you need to hot both Tanks who are getting dmg to buffer them for the normal healing they get. CoH and WG have 6 Sec CD.

Well for this Encounter you need those 75 Mp5 (which are more Realistic 140Mp5) , even if you could melee for OoC proccs.

Just Try to spend mana on every GCD and dont run OoM. Then if this happens you dont need the IED. If in your Raid you dont cast something on every GCD you got to many healer with you. To many healer and tanks do slow down the Raid. Maybe Run Naxxramas with 2 Tanks and 3 Healer, with no break between Trash and Bosses. If you dont need the IED then, post again.

Well what do i write this post, you Wear 2 Regen Trinkets :S. No Comment.

And IED does not Scale with Items yes, but it scales with Boss difficulty, if you use more Spells -> more Regen.

Even if you got 9'000 (Nine Thousand) Intellect, and I am sure you wont have that much raidbuffed, with full Icecrown gear. The IED gives more Regen, if you factor the 25 SP as 25MP5 than the ESD

but ok if you got 9k Int you really dont need Mp5, and the Mp5 provided for your Spirit Regen will be much more than it is at 1300 Int, just wanted to show. ESD doesnt scale that hard.

And maybe your not but it think Norfair and Me hope Ulduar gets challenging.

There's always "possible" circumstances where IED would be better than the ESD meta. The fact remains that ESD scales with gear and IED doesn't. If a situation in Ulduar presents itself where I'm really hurting for regen, I'll consider my options. But I personally wouldn't gem for "possible" situations when ESD is better all-around. It's much easier to swap in a better regen trinket for a fight in Ulduar like you're describing than it is to use a substandard meta for everything else. Also, consider that your situation assumes that a person is literally spamming HOTs everytime their GCD is up to take advantage of the proc. That means no Nourish, Regrowth, Healing Touch or anything else that requires a casting time.

What if you have to move and your attention is drawn someplace else for a moment? What happens if you're silenced or otherwise unable to cast? Do you see where I'm going with this? I don't think a gem that relies on how many spells someone can spam/minute is a good idea. Not unless the proc is a lot better than IED's is. I'd rather have a constant 25 spellpower and 2% more Intellect. That's more constant + healing, a larger mana pool and assuming Replenishment, more regen in most of the best gear from T7 25-mans. Mana just isn't an issue right now either. I can't even remember the last time I had to Innervate myself.

Again, I really believe IED will diminish even further in value once people start wearing T8.

You are saying you dont need the regen of IED at all in any situation given, but acually in the Armory wearing 2 regentrinkets, you told us you dont need regen, so why would you ever in any given situation in the current content use 2 regentrinkets?

Well i really dont get what you want to say us, that you are a SP Meta freak and prefer
25SP + 3 Int(at 1208 INT) (current Gear, you got now) + 2* Regentrinket
over IED + SP Trinkets with some Proccs you may need or may not.

The 2 Regen trinkets are each about 75-90 Mp5 thats about the same like IED gives you. Now you take IED and change one Trinket for a Spellpower one then you come to: 25SP+3Int > 100 SP. so you Trade 3Int or with Ulduar gear maybe 7Int to 75 SP.

I agree, using the notion, 'scales with gear' is unqualified and doesn't make your argument valid.

Let's compare t4-6 since we only have one tier of current gear.

t4: 142 Int (base)
t5: 151 Int (+9) [6% increase over t4]
t6: 178 Int (+27) [15% increase over t5]

If we assume a base Int pool of 1,000 which is a bit unrealistic, it will help illustrate the difference better. I will assume the same increase in percentage over t7 gear to project values for t8 and t9. For this example, I will use the Valorous set.

Projection:

t7: 333 Int
t8: 353 Int [6% increase over t7]
t9: 406 Int [15% increase over t8]

This would give the following estimated values for the +2% Intellect

t7: 1333 Int = +27 Int (26.66)
t8: 1353 Int = +27 Int (27.05)
t9: 1406 Int = +28 Int (28.12)

As you can see, [Ember Skyflare Diamond] does indeed scale with gear, to the tune of less than one point of Int per tier level [as estimated].

Increasing int from 333 to 353 isn't a 94% increase, it's a 6% increase, but that's purely semantics.

IED gives +21 Int, in order for ESD to match the int gain you would need 21/.02 = 1050 int before Kings. For every 45.5 int higher than 1050, ESD gains +1 int, for every 45.5 int lower, it loses.

The proc is actually 5% chance to restore 600 mana which works out to be 100 mp5 if you cast every 1.5 seconds, 75 mp5 casting every 2 seconds, or 50 mp5 casting every 3 seconds. Considering the HoT nature of druids (and the everpresent haste on gear) it's going to trend toward the upper values. In comparison, 25 spell power is fairly weak when you take into account what trinkets you could swap out, 100 spell power trinkets are easy to find ([Darkmoon Card: Illusion]) and the best ones easily exceed 100 [Illustration of the Dragon Soul], while the best mana regen trinkets are likely [Soul of the Dead] or one of the 3 high Spirit ones.

On the IED vs ESD discussion, it comes down to a simple choice between an extraordinary amount of mana regen vs. a decent amount of spellpower. Yes the mana regen of the IED is very high compaired to other ways to regenerate mana. In comparison the spellpower from the ESD is a fraction of what you get from a normal gear slot. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to go for the IED. If you could choose between an extraordinary amount of stamina (let's say 1000 STA) or a decent amount of spellpower (25 SP), would you go for the STA as well just because it's a larger-than-normal amount you can get? Maybe smaller bits of stats you really need are still better than large chunks of stats which are nice but you don't really need?

In my personal opinion, as long as I don't run completely OOM during a fight after having exhausted my innervate and a mana potion, I don't value mana regen nearly as high as spellpower. As long as my mana is fine, I prefer to focus all my gear stats, enchants and gems on increasing my raw healing throughput and not increasing my mana regen. Let's face it, the current game content is so easy that on the majority of the boss encounters currently available I don't even use my innervate. And I can probably count the times I used a runic mana potion on one hand as well. So for now I just prefer to maximize my healing ability.

We'll still have to see what the future will bring. If in Ulduar fights will become so intense that you need a whole lot more mana regen from gear, then I will be one of the first to replace my ESD by an IED. But for now I really don't see the need for it. If I just focus on getting a STA/INT/SPI/SP/<insert 5th stat here, I prefer haste> item for all my gear slots then my mana regen is fine as it is.

I don't claim any PvP skills. I don't have a good PvP model, but I do have a model. My lootranking for PvP (Moonkin) is approximately

Spell = 1.0
Stam = 0.8
MP5 = 0.7
Haste = 0.6
Int = Spirit = 0.5
Resil = Crit = 0.4
Armor (Caster form, gets the 4.7 multiplier for Moonkin) = 0.14

I think you can find very lively debate, with people making arguments for very different rankings. With my (unrounded) numbers, I rank 12 stam very slightly below 9.5 spell, so there tend to be two almost-equal choices for each slot.

With my numbers, top rare gems would be

Blue (also when slot color doesn't matter): 24 Stam (Solid) > 9 Spell + 12 Stam (Glowing)
Red: 19 Spell (Runed) > 9 Spell + 12 Stam
Yellow: 8 Haste + 12 Stam (Forceful) > 8 Haste + 9 Spell (Reckless)

The difference in value between my first and second picks is less than 1 +spell.

I know some Moonkin really hate haste for PvP, because it makes timing Cyclone+SF more difficult. Some really like to stack crit (go go RNG).