In order to maintain 100% uptime for Necromantic Focus, you need to keep the Flame Shock debuff on an enemy target. Assuming an Elemental Precision build (so you never miss), that's 1.3 to 1.4 seconds of lost time you're not healing every 18 seconds. That's equivalent to about 1.3/18 negative haste, or a loss of 900 to 1000 haste rating, for a gain of 480 mastery rating.

So for a healer it's a situational trinket at best, and in most cases barely better than an empty trinket slot. At the same time it's a BiS contender for many caster dps classes.

For experienced FI or FI/TC healers keeping flame shock on a target is a given as we shock whenever it is up, right before a GHW, or before a HR. Less experienced healers or those who want more leeway can swap out the WS glyph for the flame shock glyph for the 50% to duration.

Necromantic Focus will be amazing for FI Tank healers or HR spammers, likely the best trinket in their slot for throughput.

Even though you were warned for this post I feel like you deserve some guidance. My advice to you is to simply read the talents. Regardless of BOTE, Earthliving still has a chance to proc on any health level. It's only guaranteed to proc on targets with less than 35% health. Again (as I have stated before) you only spec into BOTE if you expect your ally's health level you be consistently below 35%. This usually does not happen in a 10 man setting, and only happens in a 25 man setting on progression fights. Simply stated, your results are purely RNG on a fight that involves heavy movement. I urge you to compare your results from this week to prior weeks, or even future weeks. You will find that if you spec into BOTE, you may not NECESSARILY get increased mileage from EL out of BOTE.

Curious how other Shaman are finding the Crit change. After reforging my gear for mastery > haste > spi as secondary stats for Sinestra, im not so sold on Spi, and the change to Crit lead me to reforge Haste > Crit > Spi for our 10man run. We had a rocky start with offspecs etc but managed a few kills without replenishment and with a full raid did quite well (like everyone else I guess).

I found on intense aoe healing fights TC was invaluable as you can often sneak enough LBs off between keeping healing rain down and a chain heal or 2 and riptides to stay mana buoyant even with my pretty low Spirit.

Interested in other views on how people have been experimenting with our secondary stats. Do any 10man Resto Shaman use heavy mastery and hows that going for you?

Spirit stacking was already out of favor in late 4.1 if with spirit stacking you mean putting 40 spirit gems in every socket and turning yourself into a mindless Mana Tide slave. The nerf to Mana Tide just settled the thing completely. Mana Tide still is a very strong cooldown, but it's not worth crippling yourself for.

That being said, spirit continues to be one of the best stats around, especially considering the healing requirements of Firelands. The fights I've done until now required between 35k and 50k HPS overall, and that's more than most T11 hardmodes.

Been playing with a heavy mastery setup as of late and while it does have its benefits on AOE intensive fights, I find myself being drawn back to haste as a prefered stat. I have not completely made up my mind yet and of course hard modes will dictate my next course of action, but I will say that a haste build with TC is a nice option for 10man Rag reg. How does the rest of the community feel on the subject in regards to a 10man architecture?

Crit is doing a lot for me at the moment. I would say I'm still more of a mastery stacker, but I've balanced out some with crit, and finding myself with extra mana to burn. I may even start reforging a bit of my spirit into crit (say, over the 2200 spirit mark).

As far as haste goes, I think I'm going to hold out for my next haste break point, and then take another look.

I've also experimented with the Unleashed Lightning glyph, and I'm not too impressed. Maybe I'm just used to not having it, but I generally find better things to cast while on the move (riptide rolling etc).

My two cents,
So far my experience of Firelands is limited to killing the 10-man versions of Shannox, Lord Rhyolith and Beth'Tilac. Mostly on Rhyolith and Beth'Tilac I've noticed big changes on my personal playstyle. With the Resurgence change, I seem to be able to pretty much spam CH over the raid, and still keep a decent mana pool. With Healing Rain returning no mana from crits, it feels like an expensive heal. I only use it now if I know the entire raid will stack, and will not be moving out of the area. CH is my go-to spell.

I raid with two holy paladins, and on pure HPS I trail behind. Not by much, but still there is a difference. Then again my mana holds out much better then theirs. The balancing of MTT (400% -> 200%) has taken its toll, and I'm relying even more on TC now then before. I don't have the courage to try out a "normal" healing spec anymore. TC is too good for me. I have not tested the new LiBo-glyph, but I believe we already have a tough choice of prime glyphs as is.

As for gearing, for the next reset I will be going for a close to minimum amount of haste, aiming for about 13% haste buffed. After that, keeping around 2800 spirit with DMC and Jar, the rest will be balancing out crit and mastery. Previously I've been stacking mastery, and definitely see the benefits of that, but the changes to crit do bring it up to par with mastery on my personal scales.

But I'd love to hear others thoughts and first impressions of Firelands and 4.2. I simply love the fact that there are no formulas or absolute truths about the gearing. The balance of Shaman stats is good, but overall I'd say Shamans are still somewhat of a support healer, the jack-of-all-trades, ace of nothing healer.

I was checking trinkets options on askmrrobot.com. It seemed odd that [Eye of Blazing Power] ranks 14, under every other epic trinkets of Cataclysm.

Are throughput trinkets that much worse than mana regen ones regardless of iLvl?

What I've been noticing is not many shamans are having mana issues. And given a very good 2pc T12 bonus, will throughput trinkets make a comeback?

As I have understood askmrrobot.com, it only sets points to items according to the scale factors. Since that healing proc is not something you can give a scale factor for, it will simply ignore it. Common sense then again will tell you that the trinket is something worth killing for.

The Power Torrent vs. Heartsong issue is a separate argument. When discussing how to gem and gear, you're talking about affecting your pre-combat intellect and therefore mana pool. This is not true with weapon procs. Power Torrent does not provide as much mana return as Heartsong when it procs, and as the throughput boost is uncontrollable and much more likely to be wasted, the more reliable and more significant mana return of Heartsong is preferable.