I guess I should have been a little more specific. I think it's a good thing that you can equip both and I hope it stays that way. Only that stacking mp5 buff (if you wear both = 272 mp5) seems to be way over the budget for trinkets with that much spellpower on them. I was always a priest that focused more on regen, but already the nonheroic version was such a noticeable increase in regen that I'm seriously thinking about socketing everything with spellpower/haste. And we're not even in Icecrown, yet, so regen stats will increase even more in future as we acquire higher level gear.

There are actually two questions here. The "extreme" levels of int needed to make Ember beat out Insightful for best regen gem are, as tedv said, very extreme and will never be attained (maybe next expansion, but then there will likely be a new insightful gem that gives more mana). But that's not the same as when you should switch. Because Ember gives spell power instead of int as the passive bonus, the question of when you should switch depends on the relative value you put on throughtput versus regen. Using my own formula, the switch becomes right at a much more attainable level of about 2420 int (though I use Ember already anyway because I have a mental disorder); that's at a 0.85:1 spellpower:mp5 weighting, and factoring in that Ember lets you avoid using a blue gem. I tried switching to a 2:1 spellpower:mp5 weighting (used by some on these boards, I understand) and the best metagem was Revitalizing at any level of Int, since it has the best throughput boost ability.

How does the regen from Solace of the Fallen stack up against Talisman of Resurgence?

Here is my napkin math, please correct if needed.

Assuming a raid buffed spirit of 1k, then the base regen =
[0.016725 * 1000 * SqRt(1500 +162)*.5] - [0.016725 * 1000* SQRT(1500)*.5]

331.24 - 323.88 = 7.36 the difference with Talisman - w/o Talisman

Using the Replenish formula, = 0.15(162)= 24.3

Rapture procs = 0.1045(162)= 16.92
Mana pool regen = 0.2461(162)= 39.86

This comes out to 88.42 mp5

without the shadowfiend and over 100 mp/5 with it.

With a full stack Solace gives 128 mp/5 (144 for the heroic one).

Solace is clearly vastly superior to the Talisman.



EDITED FOR THE RECALCULATION AS POSTED BELOW. REEDITED BASED ON MY STUPIDITY ON SQRT VALUES.

*Edit - My math is wrong, see Kashir's post below*

If you take into account that the intellect is scaled by Blessing of Kings and Mental Strength, it really is 128*1.1*1.15 = 162 intellect. That changes the overall number to around 190mp5, if one uses the numbers from the first post of this thread.

By the way, I think that replenishment formula needs to be updated. Replenishment is now 1% of max mana over 5 seconds, so for 1 intellect it is:

(1 int = 15 mana)
(15 mana)(1%) = 0.15 mp5

Edit: Double post weirdness. Oops.

Whoa, math alert.

You can't just calculate the sqrt(int_bonus) and call it a day. if we assume base 1500 Int, sqrt(1500) + sqrt(162) != sqrt(1662)

You need to take your base int (without Talisman of Resurgance), calculate the int regen multiplier. Then take your total int (with Talisman of Resurgance), calculate the int regen multiplier, then take the difference between the two.

For example: I have about 1500 int raid buffed (and I'll use your 1000 spirit, just to directly compare the figures).

Without talisman: sqrt(1500) = 38.7298
With talisman: sqrt(1662) = 40.7776

Spirit regen bonus from adding +162 Int
spirit regen = 0.016725 * 1000 * (40.7776 - 38.7298) * 0.5
spirit regen = 17.04 mp5 in-combat regen value

If I use my actual spirit (about 1400 raid buffed), the total regen for the trinket is:

+ 23.85 mp5 (spirit regen)
+ 24.3 mp5 (Replenishment)
+ 39.87 mp5 (base mana, 5 minute fight)
+ 16.93 mp5 (Rapture)
+ 18 mp5 (Shadowfiend used on cooldown; will vary greatly depending on encounter)

It's going to vary a little depending on your gear (Int / Spi levels) and greatly depending on the encounter, but for a reasonably geared Priest the Talisman is worth somewhere around ~120 mp5 in pure regen terms.

Or, as a quick and not very accurate rule of thumb, 1 int (pre-multipliers) ~= 1 mp5.

// Edit: Went back and changed the numbers for base mana to the OP calculations for a 5 minute fight, added rapture.

I have a question. I'm a GH specced disc priest, and my gear tends to favor haste. My healing style is pretty much shield/GH/PoH spam whenever penance and PoM are off cooldown. So far in ToC and Ulduar (cleared ToC reg, all keepers down in Uld), I'm ALWAYS at the top of the healing meters. I'm not counting the twins fight, which screwed up mitigation meters for a while (not sure if it still does). Every blog/forum that I've looked at has said that disc priests should NEVER be at the top of the healing meters. Is this true? have any other disc priests been finding themselves at the tops of their meters?

Depends on the fight and what you are assigned to do, hence why healing meters is next to useless in measuring healer skill. For what it's worth, disc priests assigned to mass raid shielding on fights w/ massive raid damage should always come out on the top 3 (at least on WoL). Disc priests are never on top of the recount meters because it doesn't display PWS and DA absorbs (unless you have the GuessedAbsorbs plugin, even then it's in a complete separate tab). Since most idiots only look at recount, they think disc priests should never be on the top.

PWS spam performs impressively on healing metres because it's very consistent HPS. As long as there's raid-wide damage flying around (and in WotLK raiding, that means every other fight), every PWS you cast "heals" for about 7k.

Other healers have much higher potential HPS, but there's only so much damage to be healed.

In general, the more damage there is flying around, the worse Disc will perform (on the metres) relative to other healers. That's not to say that the spec becomes worse; rather that it's value as a health buffer becomes more important than it's value as raw healing.

On the stupid meters topic...

If a boss output during a fight is say 40k raid damage per second (including tanks), you as disc are passively healing 1200 hps due to renewed hope effect!
That is not covered by any meter. I don't think anyone thinks about it either otherwise there should be a disc in every 25 man with substantial damage done by boss.

Just for the record, it doesn't stack with Blessing of Sanctuary.

It also assumes you have a 3rd paladin in your raid and that one of them is 20 points deep into Prot, not having sanctuary is actually fairly common.

Maintankadin • View topic - Sanctuary confirmed to not stack with Renewed Hope

But it doesn't matter really often you get buff situations where sanctuary isn't ideal on certain classes so renewed hope is a gap filler besides its not worth speccing out of.

Disc will never be on top of 'pure' healing but if you play shields right then you should top heal+absorb meters on a majority of fights so long as you understand the mechanics of the fight. Do bare in mind it is still not entirely accurate but its a decent estimation.

I just need someone to answer a simple question.

I am currently disc, I am rocking int gems and as my gear progress' I was wondering is mp5 more valuable compared to int and int/spirit?

I mean is like Dazzling eye of zul better than those other gems I posted?

I am fairly new to disc, I have my other priest who is shadow and that is alot different gemmin than a healing priest

someone let me know

No, Int is still the best regen stat for disc, never worse than mp5.

Hi,
I'm a new poster here on the forum, been lurking mostly so far.
I have a slight dilemma when it comes to what piece of gear I should pick from the two crafted ToC items (Bracers and Chest). I'm a Disc priest and my current gear choice / gemming is heavily focused on burst at the moment.

I've been following the ongoing haste discussion closely but I can't really decide on which of the following to pick.

Bracers:
[Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers]
vs
[Royal Moonshroud Bracers]

Chest:
[Merlin's Robe]
vs
[Royal Moonshroud Robe]

Basically, it's either Haste or Spirit from these two items, and I have a really hard time deciding which would be better for me. I'm currently sitting at 417 haste rating (12.72%) which is above the "magic" ~11% for raid softcap. Even if losing out on haste on these two particular items I'll gain more haste as I get more T9.25 setpieces so remaining at or, close to the haste softcap will not be a problem.

The question is really, is it worth stacking more haste or should I take a more regenbased approach on these two items and go with the spi?

My role in raids are, as for most here, dependant on encounter and raidsetup. I find myself mostly tank + raidsupporthealing alot lately though. I don't have manaproblems for now, but I've yet to face ToC hardmodes where I understand way more healing is required.

So, which of the following approach would you guys take concerning these two items in particular and why? Any help is appreciated

Thanks,
Stowned

I'm actually facing exactly the same situation as sten666. Haste vs spirit on the bracers and chests.

Despite what my theory crafting says I am actually leaning towards the spirit versions for four reasons:

1) I have started thinking of 3.3 where they are planning on making some changes to stats (dropping spell power, etc). I'm getting the impression haste will stay the same but that with MP5 going there will be changes to spirit based regen. I'm erring on the side of caution and starting to take a little more of it just in case.

2) Once a discipline priest gets near 20% haste (including talents) the value of more decreases due to Borrowed Time and raid buffs bringing you close the to 50% haste a good chunk of the time

3) I also sometimes spec Holy and I have a shadow off-spec. For both I prefer more spirit over more haste.

4) In my stats linked by Grouikette haste is a little over valued. Recent discussions in the EJ forums have me thinking that the mana cost of additional spells needs to be deducted from the haste value. This brings its weighting down to something more like 0.6. Due to the work involved I won't be changing my 3.2 stat weights but this will be in 3.3. Making this change still has the bejeweled and merlin's pieces in front of the royal moonshroud ones, but by a much lesser margin.

The major attributes / itemisation revamp is coming for Cataclysm, not 3.3; at which point, our current gear will be mostly obselete anyway.

For the robe / bracer selection, you need to consider your role in the raid. If you regularly tank heal, crit is a great stat and haste is great if you use GH regularly. If you're generally on raid PWS spam duty, both crit and haste are very poor, while additional mana regen is always welcome even though spirit is decidely non-optimal.

Don't assume all you need is 11% haste. Its true that around 11% is the number that FH is a 1.0 sec cast with Borrowed Time, but it is not optimal to be overdoing how much shields you throw around just to get BT procs.

Let's say unbuffed, your FH cast is 1.3 secs, which is around the ballpark if you're at 417 haste rating (should be 1.2 or lower raid buffed). Even with a BT proc, you have to wait the 1 sec GCD before you can cast your hastened FH. So even though BT brings your FH cast to 1 second, you basically are waiting about 2 seconds before you can complete that FH cast between the time you Shield a raid member and then cast FH (1 sec global from PW:S + 1 sec FH cast). For that reason, imo I find it silly when people say "after 11%, haste is a waste for Disc." Haste is still a valuable stat, and can be argued even more valuable then crit (depending on gear).

And it's hard to argue Haste vs Mana regen. You need them both. So you have to answer your own question really. If you think you're fine on mana regen, then go ahead and get the Wizard Bracers/Merlins Robe. If you think your throughput is fine, but are having trouble stretching your mana in longer fights, then pick up the pieces with Spirit. I currently am using both the reg and heroic versions of [Solace of the Fallen] for my trinkets, so I do not need any more raw mana regen and therefore would choose the options without Spirit. However, you may be different, so choose what's best for your setup.

It's true the discipline needs very little haste to get to the GCD cap while under the effects of Borrowed Time, and this makes your haste rating past a very small number irrelevant some of the time, but not all of the time. By parsing a log we can see exactly which spells were affected by Borrowed Time. In my own logs I see about 31% of Flash Heals, 56% of Power Word: Shields, and 46% of Prayers of Mending were affected by Borrowed Time. Of course it varies a lot from fight to fight but it is only practical to swap trinkets from fight to fight, most people are not going to have an entirely different gear set for each encounter. Given that haste will nearly always have full effect on Penance, PoH, Divine Hymn and Greater Heal (if you cast that), I found that it was having effect about 74% of the time and having no effect the remainder. Of course I did not parse out heroism or power infusion, which would both further discount the value of haste, though counting heroism may skew results because during heroism you usually don't have to worry about your throughput.

I think Borrowed Time makes haste weak enough that spell power is always a better choice for throughput, but when it comes to choosing between spirit and haste on a piece of gear, spirit is also a very weak stat, giving less than half the mana return of int. Instead of thinking of haste as worthless beyond the soft cap (which if you have all raid buffs is much less than people are saying here - haste buffs stack multiplicatively and you only need 154 haste rating to hit a 1 second GCD), it is better to think of haste as spectacular before the cap (which everyone will have), and mediocre after.

Been very conflicted as of late in terms of what exactly I should be gemming for. I'm a dual specced healer, as in I have both Holy and Disc. For me, Holy I just gem for pure Int as my output is good enough I think, but Disc I'm of two minds about. What I tend to do on a given night is largely dependent on what other healers log on, but for the most part I stay Discipline.


Now, I only currently have one set of gear for Discpline, 4 pieces of which use the tier8 for the tier 8 set bonus, figuring that's probably best until the 258 tier9 pieces, as the amount of spellpower you gain from the pieces themselves is at least closer to the loss of the 4 piece tier 8. However, I'm royally confused on what's best to gem for. My regen is perfectly fine, so probably no reason for int. Since my time can be spent either MT healing or raid healing, moving from fight to fight or night to night, I'm guessing Spellpower might be my best bet to gem for? I had figured crit might've been with DA procs, so not 100% sure on the reasoning. How much crit max should I be looking for as a Disc healer, unbuffed?

Go for SP. It's been answered over and over before

(As crit and haste do not affect your shield, in general SP is vastly superior)