[Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond] should also be considered for meta gem.

54 spirit provides more regen than 54 int (without the output), and assuming a decent level of spirit is about the same 30-40 mp5 the IED typically provides.

Due to the rather low spell coefficients of resto shaman spells, the 3% increased crit output beats out 54 int if my math is correct.
Required crit % to beat out 54 int : (54 int * coefficient)/(average hit*1.53 - average hit*1.5)

Unless my math is wrong (quite possible), and assuming over 10% crit, Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond provides both more mana and higher output than the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond or the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. The meta requirements are not hard to meet either.

I agree that the IED does typically provide more mana than the ESD. I disagree with Jessamy's earlier meta gem post linked for the Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond (to give him credit, that post was pre-Cata and assumptions like "I'll assume that 1 point of spirit provides 0.5 mp5 in combat at level 85" are quite a bit off as they are closer to 1:0.6 depending on your spirit). The reason increased crit output performed so poorly back in WTLK was because larger crits just meant larger overhealing. That is no longer the case at all with most of my spells in a raid environment producing under 10% overhealing. Overhealing has dropped significantly, so you can't use the old HEP value for increased crit. A rough guess using the old 35 HEP and adjusting 50% overhealing to 10% overhealing would put the cata hep of 3% increased crit around 63, likely a bit higher since crits were more likely to overheal than non-crits.

I don't think it's fair to look strictly at the mana returned. The int from both also gives you a larger starting mana pool, which means you have a different amount of effective mana from each.

21*15 = 315 mana pool from the Insightful

54*15 = 810 mana pool from the Ember, plus another 2k from it's % bonus

That means you're looking at an *effective mana* of:
4313 + 315 = 4628 for the Insightful
1012 + 810 + 2000 = 3822 for the Ember

I'd also be interested to see how the regen from Spirit changes, since each gem gives you a different amount of Int, but I couldn't find an updated regen formula.

Ah, yeah, I didn't think to count the additional mana at the start of the fight, so that's a good point. Also, I realized I'd forgotten the spirit regen and just edited my post to add that after the fact. It's about 5 mp5 for IED and 13 mp5 for ESS, based on my current int (~4700) and spirit (~1900). I used the formula currently on wowpedia. If that's out of date then I don't know how accurate my numbers are.

The wowpedia values are correct. If you want to compare them to your in game character sheet or armory just remember to add your base regen to the spirit regen, for shaman it is 1170 mp5.

Comparing these metas fairly depends on how long the fight lasts. I used my stats of ~4800 Int, 2000 Spirit to compare these. Assuming a 6 minute fight Insightful Earthsiege is worth about 14 mp5 more than Ember Shadowspirit. For longer fights this gap increases as the initial larger mana pool is worth less. That said I am considering switching to Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond. In the same scenario as above it is worth about 3 mp5 more than Ember, or 11 less than Insightful Earthsiege and has the added bonuses of working well with my current healing strategy of Tidal Waves + HS. A small bonus will also be the static spirit increase for mana tide in 4.0.6.

You must also take into consideration how many times you refill the gained mana from Ember Shadowspirit Diamond - Item - World of Warcraft As you can than use it when you go back under 100% mana. Granted not all fights will you top your mana pool off but there are some which favor TC regen via lb's. 25n Nefarian is a good example for me as I generally approach 100% mana coming off the lava pillars using lb on the adds (with no damage modifier) and keep HR and stoneclaw down.

I've been having trouble finding data on resto shaman haste numbers concentrated in one place, so I ended up making this spreadsheet that calculates the cast time, # of ticks, time between ticks, and adjusted duration of resto shaman spells based on your current haste. It also allows you to toggle wrath of air, or the goblin racial buff. Anyway, it's nothing too fancy, just something I made for my own use, but here's a link to it in case somebody else might find it useful. I've checked it against most of the already existing data out there, and it agrees with the tables I've seen to within 1 point of haste, which can possibly just be due to rounding issues either on my side or theirs. As always, add an extra point or two in game to make sure unless you've verified the results you want directly.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...kWUJiRlE&hl=en

Edit: When I made the spreadsheet read-only, I assumed that people would be able to manipulate it but not save it, but it turns out that isn't the case, so if you want to tweak the values you'll probably have to login and create a personal copy of the spreadsheet, or download it from google spreadsheets in whatever format you can use on your local box.

The wowpedia formula (which is also listed in the EJ combat ratings thread) is:
(0.001 + SPI * sqrt(INT) * 0.003345) * 5 = 0.005 + SPI * sqrt(INT) * 0.003345 * 5 = 0.005 + SPI * sqrt(INT) * 0.016725

The formula from the sheet you linked is:
SPI * sqrt(INT) * 3 * 0.005575 = SPI * sqrt(INT) * 0.016725


So the only difference between the two formulas is the summand of 0.005 and that is negligible.

So I have a question, from what I've been reading you're currently supposed to stop at about 3k self buffed IC regen, as far as spirit stacking goes. I was jw whether or not you should now try to stack spirit higher due to the MT change to have it be more beneficial to the raid, or just ignore it and stack stats like you normally would.

EDIT: I can't spell

It all depends on your raidsetup/composition and type of fight.

On 10 man your personal output is far more important than on 25 man. So there is no need to turn yourself in a mana battery there.

On 25 man your personal output has less impact on the total healing done. So it would be beneficial (now that MT is raidwide) to have a little bit more spirit on you than you have now. Each 250 spirit you have will translate to +1000 spirit for the 5-6 other healers. Of course this depends on the other healers in the raid (e.g. Is there another Resto shaman who can pop MT?) and if the extra regeneration is really needed (e.g. Not a mana intensive fight or other regeneration mechanics like Omnotron Power Generators).

I think it would be overkill to fully stack spirit in every slot that you can, severely crippling your personal output. So personally I will try to making little changes, like having a piece of spare +spirit gear in my bags and equip it when the fight requires it, and timing +spirit procs/trinkets properly with MT. Another (costly) option is just to go reforge whenever there is a mana intensive fight.
On a side note, if you do plan on turning yourself in mana battery, you might want to switch your WS glyph with the ELW.

Been doing some math on 4.0.6 and spirit... Assuming I'll have roughly 2500 spirit (I'm a bit lower atm, but can do some regemming), this means Mana Tide will grant an average increase of 911 spirit (10000*16.4/180 = 911,111). Compare that to the current double spirit proc gain and you'll come up 1k spirit short ((1710+1926+2500)*3.5*16.4/180 = 1956,7022). Even adding in the trinkets in the first situation (without manatide bonus ofc), they average out to (1710+1926)*16.4/180 = ~331 spirit.

I'm barely getting by in heroic 10m as it is... are we forced to go hybrid elementals and nuke with Telluric Currents to keep up - even though that's not really an alternative, due to the constant healing requirements of Heroic encounters - until we can gather ~700 more spirit? Or is resto simply doomed for 10m heroics post-4.0.6 in it's current state?

edit: Revised some of the math.

Let's get my personal bias out of the way here: Reaching the haste breakpoint of 916 is not very useful.

While there's a lot of good information on the haste breakpoints for getting extra ticks on RT, EL, and HR, I've seen nothing on how reaching these points would effect HPS. Here's my attempt.

I've taken a 10man Atramedes fight as an example, chosen at random.

5:24 fight
RT cast 33 times (30.4% over-healing)
EL procs 43 times (44.6% over-healing)
HR cast 14 times, reaching an average of 5 raiders each cast (42.4% over-healing)

Having 0 haste would have resulted in a 284 HPS loss (3.2%) in this example.

Of course, every fight is different, but bear in mind that HOTs are highly susceptible to turn into over-healing.
Now I just need to figure out HPS differences if haste had been reforged to crit or mastery.

Edit: another example, Magmaw 10m
3:55 fight
RT cast 18 times (12.5% over-healing)
EL procs 34 times (24.7% over-healing)
HR cast 8 times, reaching an average of 7 raiders each cast (36.9% over-healing)

Having 0 haste would have resulted in a 441 HPS loss (3.7%) in this example.