Maybe thats the formula from wowwiki but I use real items and there are some haste items with haste rating and almost no +heal loose. At least blizzard doesn't follow this formula.

Haste Rating has also another benefit, it allows me to use downranked chain heals much better. My staple heals are CH2 and CH4 and you can get very good HPS with hasted CH2 "spam". And downranked CH can safe alot of mana, more than you can get with mp5 items.

My first items with haste rating come from Zul Aman. I was a little bit disappointed about them, because they had no MP5. But most of them are serious upgrades to my old karazhan loots. So I used them and learned to love them. Mana was an issue sometimes at the beginning (pre 2.3), but this was forgotten with the watershield and mana spring totem change. Currently, I'm at 134 MP5 and its enough for everything after I add an flask, buff food and brilliant mana oil and some mana potions. There is no need for an shadow priest and I'm often in an pure meleegroup to support them.

You will learn to love spellhaste if you use it. Other way its pure theory and you can do the math yourself if you really need them.

Heal and Haste values do change as you increase one or the other. The more haste you have, the more frequently the +heal effects come into play, while on the other hand, the more heal you have the more the "end result" of haste is.

Also, I use a 1.42 modifier on CH (1+1.5+1.75)/3 to account for the times where you hit 1, 2 and 3 people with the spell. Increases heal/haste values over regen.

1. Actually, blizzard does use it. Every point of any "rating" is equivalent to one point of one of the base attributes (except Stamina) for determining item level.
2. You use real items, eh? I use fake items. Pay no attention to my armory. >_>

That perspective is highly subjective. It has some merits, to be sure, but I would argue the following:
Premise 1: In what situations would you downrank to CH 2-3? If you answered "only when people need a tiny bit of healing", you would be correct. You never downrank if there are significant holes in the health bars of your raid. When everyone is close to top off, then tossing out downranked heals is more efficient.
Premise 2: During the middle of the fight, you cannot change most of your gear. That means, no change in haste rating mid-fight (except possibly to swap in [Dark Blessing].)
Premise 3: Extremely fast, efficient heals pad the healing meter, because you "get there first" and other healers overheal.
Premise 4: If you spam max rank heals with spell haste, you will drain your mana pool very quickly.
Conclusion: The only time you would want to wear haste explicitly for the purpose of spamming downranked heals is when you want to pad your healing meter, because you don't anticipate the raid being severely damaged. Otherwise, spell haste (stacked with +Healing) is helpful only for extremely short encounters.

That's what I mean. Take increased haste as an example. While your actual +Healing does not change, the value (and by that I mean the "worth") of that +Healing DOES change. However, the amount of that change (and the resulting value of +Heal) is dependent upon the rest of the heal/haste you have on. So, combining those two correctly is not mathematically possible without accounting for everything you have on, like you would for elemental.

Valid point, but I still argue that that involves arbitration. >_> Keep in mind that Ranking is purely for the purpose of sorting. If someone wants to stack heal/haste, it's very easy to pick out exactly which pieces they will need.

A point equivalent system is not optional for evaluating gear. It is an absolute nescessity. If you cannot agree on a point equivalence system, for a certain situation at least, you will never agree on which items to use. And since one is always better than the other (or else the other would be better), there *IS* a point equivalence system you could figure out.

Such a system would obviously depend on a lot of factors people are not willing to take into account your gear, your party/raid buffs, your raid composition and how the fight you're up to works. Not taking those into account will lead to a faulty point system or to just not being able to agree on one, and thus not be able to agree on what items to use.

Most people just ignore that fact and go with their fell and what they think is possibly better and do fine, and for a good reason - healing has lots of leeway. You almost always have mana left at the end of the fight if done right. You could almost always skip some heals and the raid would still live. If it wasn't like that fights would be impossible if you're just short of that 1-2 items or lag for 1 second. Of course the level of leeway vaires between fights, gear setups and party/raid compositions, a lot, but there's always some kind of leeway. Often people would claim that their gear choices are "good" or "fine" simply because it worked and they went through the fight with mana left and nobody dead and even topped the healing meters. But reality is that this doesn't mean you picked the right gear - it just means your gear was "good enough". It doesn't mean it was "good", or at least doesn't mean it was "the best".

If you do take everything into account:

Figure out what raid/party buffs you'll be running with and how long the fight will be (ignoring parts that are insignificant for healing, such as kael phase 1).

Use these values with your gear to figure out how much healing you could do if you ended up needing to use all your mana. I assume you can always go oom if you spam max rank spells and therefore you can always do more healing with more mana IF (and that's a big IF) people actually need that healing and your HPS is high enough to provide it before they die or get healed by someone else.

Use these values to figure out how much your max reliable burst is increased. When people are dying they don't care how much mana you had left, they care how much healing you can do on them in a short amount of time, and they don't care if you get lucky burst now if the next time they take damage you get unlucky and they die - so luck-based healing factors need not apply here. "use" trinkets may be applied (or partially applied) depending on the fight mechanics. Having that +300 healing on your NS may be only every 3 minutes but it could just as well save the raid, realiably, but not often - so its usefullness is dependant on the actual fight.

Decide what you actually want (how valueable is HPS to you? How valueable is the amount of healing you can do using all your mana? How much would you give up of 1 in order to get more of the other?). Then you could actually build some stat equivalence system that will actually pick the gear that is best for the fight. Doing any less than what I said here will just lead to some random point system that is quite meaningless most of the time unless its used by some people too lazy to do everything and have no clue what stats to pick, so averaging out or even guessing all those effects for them is better than just letting them pick gear that would be useless in all situations.


short version
Can you compare items without a stat equivalence system? No. Can you make a stat equivalence system that will always be true? Definitely not. Can you make one that will be good enough for people that have no clue? Probably, but you should probably at least put some thought into all the factors above if you actaully try to come up with such a system. Doing silly things like ignoring HPS and only calculating HPM and total mana and multiplying the 2, or ignoring efficiency and calculating HPS, or worse, taking blizzard's itemization values and assuming they provide a good balance (!!) is not a good idea.

Okay, I'm going to unleash my inner debater here. Your tone was rudely assertive and vitriolic, so I'm going to lay into you really hard, I hope you don't mind. Let's start with this: your post has absolutely no value and is riddled with logical fallacies of a magnitude rivaling that of the national debt.

An overview: you simultaneously argue subjectivity and "a point system". These ideas are mutually exclusive. A single value depicting the worth of a gear is inherently unable to subjectively account for a wide field of variables. Further details will be provided later in the post.

I have a few issues with your logic here. First, I disagree with the premise that "if you can't agree on a point equivalence system, you will never agree on which items to use." I can prove that false as follows: take any slot and any tier of gear. Approach any fight and classify it as regen-oriented or pure healing-oriented. If you had NO equivalence system whatsoever, you could still agree what gear to use, for the most part. The ONLY exception to this is weighing between haste and healing, which is the topic of ongoing discussion in this thread.

You have to prove, in this post of yours, why an equivalence system is a necessity. By the end of my post, you will have no such proof. Read on.

Let's look at the factors you named.
1. Your gear - For resto shamans, the amount of value you get out of each stat does not mathematically change based on the rest of the gear you have equipped. (Other classes, like paladins and as of 2.4 both priests and druids, have their stat values change based on the rest of their gear.) Certainly, if you have a lot of regen you would want more healing instead of more regen, but this isn't a quantifiable value, because there is no way to objectively determine what the ratio between regen and mana should be. That ratio is highly subjective, debatable, situational, and susceptible to such a huge body of factors that only a rule of thumb could be (loosely) determined; such a rule of thumb lacks the precision necessary to incorporate into any point system that would be simple enough to understand.
2. Party raid/buffs - see my comments on gear. The only applicable buff is the (improved) priest spirit buff, which turns 10% of your spirit into healing.
3. Your raid compensation - Erm, no. Having two resto druids instead of one, or one priest instead of 3, has absolutely no effect on how you should value your gear. If you had a shadow priest, you wouldn't need as much regen, but if you get put in a raid with a shadow priest, just slap on your healing gear; you wouldn't go consult a spreadsheet.
4. How the fight works - You do NOT design a point system that is based on specific fights. There's simply too many variables, and it's unbelievably subjective.

So by your definition, ALL point systems are "faulty". I notice that you don't try to suggest how the factors you named should be incorporated. As I discussed earlier, this does not at all mean that people "can't agree on what items to use."

My issues with your grammar notwithstanding, I must once again point out your complete lack of specific details. Tuning your gear to a fight is an intuitive art that comes from experience and forehand knowledge, it has NOTHING to do with the "perfect point system" you so advocate. Yes, adjusting your gear so that you have "just enough" mana is an imperfect art, but that's something a spreadsheet can only assist with. Blindly adhering to a point system does not expose you to the subjective art of adjusting your gear based on your experience with certain fights.

In short, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

First of all, half of all that was simply stating the obvious. The rest of it is impossible to actually put into a formula. Please, tell me how you quantify:
1. whether your "burst" healing is high enough
2. whether a NS with a trinket will save the raid
3. whether HPS is valuable to you or not
4. exactly how many casts of a spell you will need to put out during a variable length fight

You're trying to quantify something that can only be accomplished with heuristics, and there simply isn't enough heuristic data available in a standardized format to adequately produce a formula. Variable evaluation on the scale you're talking about would be so hideously complex that you couldn't possibly produce useful results.

Do you have a formula? No? Shut up. Let me see if I can get a handle on your logic here: "If your point system isn't perfect and doesn't account for every possible variable, people will pick useless gear." Hmm...

You haven't put ANY thought into such a system. If you had, you would not have vomited out all those unquantifiable variables.

You have absolutely no idea what I calculated. I didn't say a word about HPS, HPM, or "total mana multiplied by 2". You don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Here's a clue: blizzard's itemization values are balanced BY DEFINITION. Why? Because that's how gear is calculated. Anything that DEVIATES from itemization values (or itemization values passed through the filter of talents) is inherently subjective! Once subjectivity enters the picture, you expose yourself to a wide array of variables, such as the unquantifiable ones you enumerated in your attempt at some semblance of logic.

You have provided absolutely no basis for your numerous and wild claims. You have put absolutely no thought into your post before you posted it. You have no idea what a cohesive argument is, nor how to form one. Your post is nothing but sheer idiocy vomited out onto the thread. You added absolutely nothing of value to this conversation. Go back to your holy paladin thread and pester them, instead of us. :P

You make a good point that totems are often recast before expiring. I’ll redo the calculations based upon recasting them every 1.5 minutes (for Scenario 2). However, I prefer to keep the searing totem. If you compare the mana cost of the Fire Elemental versus the Searing Totem based upon using it every time the cooldown is available, the Fire Elemental costs 2.83 mp5 while the Searing Totem costs 17.08 mp5. Or during a 10-minute fight, you will spend 2870 mana on Searing totem but only 680 mana on your Fire Elemental.

Please let me know what your WWS parse shows for how often you usually drop totems. A quick look at a BT WWS parse shows I drop them about every 1 minute, 45 seconds. However, I know that I drop them far more often on some other fights, such as Archimonde where I'm running all over the place and always want to have Tremor nearby. I will probably stick with 1.5 minutes for calculating a maximum benefit of Totemic Focus.

@Daidalos:

The four points enumerated were simply samples taken from his rant that I pointed out as next to impossible to put into the "point system" he wanted so badly (but refused to take any steps to calculate). I agree with you on most of those. The point is, you can't obtain some magical value for a piece of gear by trying to weigh all those variables.

I'm not sure why you're trying to tell me this; read the posts on the last two pages and you'll see that the entire point of my spreadsheet--and conversely, my argument--is to help you gear yourself properly for each fight.

Did you look at the sheet before you posted? All the stats are hinged on a cell that indicates how long the fight is. It's called 10MM for short, but you can put any fight length in there.

Go check the posts and check the sheet.

[Edit:] You edited your last sentence, so:
Go back and read the FAQ. Then read what I said in the next post I wrote. And the next...and every single post where I responded to someone being critical of the "Ranking" stat. In summary: that's not the point of the stat.

Even inputting the length of the fight the ranks still have no relevance to my needs. My point is there are far more variables than the length of fight and you just dismiss these as hard to quantify doesn't really help anyone with half a mind select gear. I saw the other posts but if I am looking at a sheet that ranks gear I want it to rank according to my needs not some other ranking which isn't what I want. HPS and number of casts are not something I can spout off the top of my head but it is something I can examine with WWS and calculate HPS for burst situations. Perhaps my needs are different than others but the point is there is no way to make it suit my needs without rewritting it.

Well, if you're trying to evaluate gear based solely on a ranking--ANY ranking--then you really need to come up with your own formula. Sorry it isn't what you want, I didn't design my spreadsheet for your whims. But, if you go back and READ what I wrote, you'll see that my point is that no ranking should ever be considered as absolute. Likewise, any formula you rely on will be worthless in all but some arbitrary "ideal" situation. The point is, the ranking is for SORTING. You have to look at the stats themselves. The spreadsheet isn't an "I Win" button, and I won't craft you an "I Win" button even if it exists. You have to inject sentient thought into your gear selection.

That was my point. I already did a great deal of thinking selecting my gear and your sheet doesn't help me at all so I wonder whats the point?

The point is that the sheet provides very precise analysis across four variables instead of six, showing the result of all mana/mp5 calculations alongside the three simpler-to-calculate values for purposes of readability and objective comparison. (In other words, for a fight 10 minutes long, you get to see how much more mana you'll get if you equip Shard of the Virtuous instead of Dark Blessing--and then immediately weigh that against the three other variables without having to get your calculator out.)

I don't mind working with Bink to come up with a spreadsheet that's programmatically generated from live data in a resto flavor and an elemental flavor. I still hold my objections regarding applying subjective/arbitrary weight into value formulas, but will cede the point if enough people advocate that approach.

It's not that I find Shamstats overwhelming, it's just that I believe it takes an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach that I feel is unnecessary for resto. (I've made the bulk of my argument clear on this point, I won't waste your time with more. >_> ) For elemental, its complexity is necessary and appropriate.

If you want to, by all means do so. It would mean I could remove a large number of DEP/HEP checks and values, which will make it a bit easier for me to maintain stuff.

Fairly sure I can adjust things so that when I make an update you'd be able to copy/paste the item lists over mine, and the healing calc over my ele calcs to fill in the same global variables.

To be quite honest though, I've been tempted to hand over the reigns of the speadsheets, and I don't think I'll have the time to devote to them anymore (combination of Work, Raiding, and getting the Wiki entries written), so I might ask if anyone wants to handle the Elemental side soon.

Quick Edit: I think the "standard" of comparison for restoration should be how much extra healing results from adding 1 of the desired stat, normalised so that heal = 1. Half of the trouble at the moment is that while higher ilvl usually equals better item, it's not always the case (how many of us wanted Mag's shield over the T6 equivs?) Could even take the current ShamStats calculations, extend them all to look at time period X, and see what the overall effect is for the timeframe, then convert it down to a 5 second basis.

Heck, we could even remove the gear entirely, and just calculate "EP" values to plug into lootrank or something.

What? This is based on what countless people have reported item point distribution for a given item budget to be. You may want to disagree with everyone, but you better bring some hard facts into this and not just unsupported statements.
*groan* And +heal doesn't allow you to downrank? Stop throwing wild theories around without backing them up.
Not sure which "rating" you refer to. The suggested table Blizz uses has a lot of different values for stats. mp5 being the most expensive.
Err. If my gut is a "stat equivalence system", then yes. I've never used any system to try to break my healing set into math, because it's not static like DPS. I've noticed how my mana usage has been though T5 and T6 content, found my regular regen demand. Opted for mostly +heal and a little haste for the rest of the budget. My upgrades have usually been more healing(and any other non-vital stat) at the cost of mp5. But never to cut into regen deep.

And that's the exact point. Other gear (T4/5/6 etc) has stamina as part of it's item budget. There are haste items that don't. Quid pro quo. You gain heal and haste at the cost of stamina, not haste at the cost of heal.

On a note more relavent to the discussion on the spreadsheets.
I use RatingBuster in game to get all the info i need when a new item drops. I can compare all i want out of game, but if it hasn't droppped and i don't have it, there is no use pining over it. I know which pieces need an upgrade, i know whether or not i need more mana, healing, haste etc.
At the moment, i value Bastion of Light over Enamelled Disc of Mojo. Primarily because i don't have enough required stamina and overall it's the better shield FOR ME (that and it has more +healing). Once i get the remaining pieces i want with the stamina that is required, then maybe i'll change. Until that point though, there's nothing i can do about it.

Again: What? [Naturalist's Preserving Cinch] is an example of a typical T6 content haste item. Haste has replaced mp5.
Armor - Items - World of Warcraft show epic healing item, including 2.4 items available for a shaman. There's not a lot of items with no stamina.

Spell Haste Rating, Spell Crit Rating, Spell Hit Rating, Haste Rating, Critical Strike Rating, Hit Rating, Expertise Rating, Parry Rating. Any stat labeled "rating" is budgeted on a 1-for-1 basis alongside Int, Spr, Agi, and Str.

Viewing all available gear at both current level and all successive levels helps enormously, in my experience. Let's say you have 80 badges. What is the first thing you'll buy? (I'm speaking abstractly.)

I believe you are mistaking [Dark Blessing] and [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] for a more prevalent trend. There are only five items that have haste and no Stamina, while there are fifty-four items that have both haste and stamina.

Now I see what you meant. Yep, that would boost the value of Totemic Focus even more -- although still making it a weak talent. However, I think Scenario 2 is a pretty good "best case" scenario as it stands with the totem refresh rate at 1.5 minutes, instead of the full 2 minutes.

Hmm. Tell you what. Give me a few days, and I'll incorporate a lot of Bink's stuff into my spreadsheet. Let's see if I can come up with a sheet that Bink, Skyhoof and I are all happy with. That way, Bink can stop maintaining a resto version. If it works well, I'll expand the scope of the sheet (with another version) to include elemental. Sound fair?

I'm also going to use a parsing algorithm to load heuristics data from successful boss kills that are posted on WWS. I'll build a Ruby on Rails application to allow anyone to upload said heuristics data so that we can get a good cross-section on what spells get cast by shamans during certain fights. That should help us come up with a more accurate weighting system. PLEASE NOTE that this will take (at minimum!) 3-5 weeks AFTER I get the regular spreadsheet automated. Web applications are always tricky, and I'm not 100% proficient in basic Rails applications yet.

There are a couple of non-spreadsheet enhancements I am considering (ALL OF WHICH will only function with OpenOffice, and would require Ruby to be installed):
- I could develop a simple addon to pull all currently-owned gear out of your inventory and bank and adjust the spreadsheet based on what you do or don't have.
- I could develop a script that will automatically set up ItemRack sets and AtlasLoot wishlist entries based on decisions you make in the spreadsheet.
- I could develop a script that will calculate your DPS (elemental) or HPS (resto) for a given number of minutes and make recommendations. (This might require heuristics data to be more useful.)

But if you have 'enough' MP5, they why not boost hps instead. I could happily lose 100MP5 whilst casting when fully raid buffed (if in a SP group) and replace that with Haste. As it happens, the pieces i have give me 110 hr, at the loss of about 20 MP5 (at the very most) about 200 hit points and approximately the same plus heal...which hardly breaks the bank, but does increase my hps by around 110, and that's on a 100%/50%/10% split for chain heal.
Or i could choose to downrank by 1, stay at the same hps as the unhasted higher rank, and keep it going for longer, even with a 100mp5 loss.

Not really. The point being there are pieces, not that every single one replaces stamina.

From the 2 you have there, would increase CH by 0.1s.

Each to their own. A haste set can increase hps and not at the cost of efficiency. You just have to be sensible about what you use, when you use them and how you use them.

Why'd you quote my entire post if you were just responding to the last line? Earlier, you said:
Your point is only correct in the sense of a technicality. Yes, there are THREE healing items worth mentioning that have haste in their budget and no stamina in their budget. Any person trying to make a cohesive argument would list those three explicitly. Your statement gives the implication that a significant body of gear that has haste and no stamina, which is horribly incorrect, to the tune of fifty-four to five. (Or, if we count just epic shaman-usable items, 41 to 3.)