I dont really think that as such you are meant to ask this type of question here, but i will try to answer it anyway. Keep in mind that you actually outgear me so all of this is from a purely theoretical point of view.

I believe that before you start looking at haste you should move towards more +healing (until about 2000 at least). Haste, while it increases your hps, increases your mana consumption, and while you are lacking 2pct6 that could hurt.

As far as what you should spend your badges on, I would personally reccomend either Natural Life Leggings for 75 now, or 100 badges for the legs post-patch. Main hand wise I would be pvp'ing (ie. merc or vengeful salvation if possible). Your boots look pretty solid, the boots, while they are better, are not so much better to be worth 60 badges for you atm, just pick up two-toed sandals from zuljin when convenient.

I have T4 and mailleggings from KZ at bank. Been lazy and I haven't enchanted/socket them yet. I guess I will go for KZ-leggings with +healsockets. Dont think the T4-leggins are that good imo!? Thx for the reply...

You're dead wrong there. The [Cyclone Kilt] is excellent and is, in my opinion, quite a bit better than [Heart-Flame Leggings]. Especially at that gear level. The former has more stam, more int, more base healing and 11 mp5 while the later has three sockets and ZERO mp5. Not to mention that having the two piece T4 set bonus adds a nice mp5 boost to your Mana Spring.

Spell haste is annoyingly difficult to quantify, especially as it can be amazing on some fights and just good on others.

I have 4pcT6, 2011 +heal, 174mp5 (unbuffed, no watershield) and ~170 spellhaste rating from gear on my "haste" raid set. This means 2.2 second casts on chain heal and healing wave, and 1.3 second lesser heals (can't wait for 2.4 and the GCD reduction with haste). My "normal" raid set boasts 2200 +heal and 200mp5 unbuffed.

Initially I started testing the haste sets on fights that I knew would benefit from it (Gurtogg, RoS P3) and I've definitely seen an improvement of 5-10% over similarly geared shaman in my guild that run without haste. Since then, I've expanded my use of haste to cover pretty much every fight, with the exception of Council (I usually heal the Lady Malande tank and interrupt on this fight) and Illidan (this might change in 2.4 as 1.3 secs LHW will be spammable).

Note that since the WS and MS mana improvements I can happily chaincast through Teron or Gurtogg without a shadow priest and not even using mana pots, while Naj'entus is doable either by chain potting or having an SP.

Most noticable for me, though, has been the advantage of spellhaste on trash. The HPS you can pour out with a decent haste set when things go bad is amazing, and I'm sure the combination of passive haste + bloodlust + berserking (meaning <1.5 secs CH!) has saved a wipe on more than one occasion.

The only issue for me has been the time I wiped us on Gurtogg by out-agroing the tanks! Salvation is a must for a hasted CH shaman

Replace pendant of the violet eye with the badge reward trinket, boots with badge boots, shield with badge shield (or better - magtheridon/kara or even better ZA shield), legs with badge legs, bracers with badge bracers. Also put golden spellthread on the legs.

That is a lot of badges but that's also a lot of extra healing, and it's not like heroics are hard to run when you're not doing kara/za. With a tank above 13k HP and a healer above 1500 healing you can do pretty much any heroic with great ease, especially the easier ones like slave pens (that also drops 11 heal 2 mp5 gems that will no longer be unique in 2.4) and mechanar. You don't even really need CC. There is really no excuse not to have that gear, which you could've easily found yourself by using wowhead (heck most of it is badge gear you could find it by talking to geras in shattrath...).

Do you *need* haste? You don't need anything really this game is easy enough. But if you want to do your best in some fights haste items are better than in others, depending on your need for efficiency (which haste has very little effect on) as opposed to your need for high HPS burst to top people off quickly. That's why everyone keep arguing about haste - the answer is simply "it depends on the fight" (and a few other things).

i apologize if this has been listed in the last 30+ pages but its not in the original post...

on illidari council i solo-heal the lady malande tank while interrupting her divine wraths...i wear t6 elemental gloves gemmed and enchanted for spell hit for this

works very well for us

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before but when I first went into Tier 6 content, I used Totem of Living Water instead of Totem of Healing Rains for added mana efficiency. Ever since then, I've wondered how much efficiency I was actually gaining from swapping totems like this. I finally sat down and looked at the numbers:

Living Water vs. Healing Rains

I lose 3.43% of my healing without Healing Rains (115 per CH - 87*1.1*1.2). Avg heal from one jump of CH5 is 3351 with HR totem and 3236 without it (no 4p tier 6 yet).

Currently, Living Water saves me 17 mana per cast, which is 3.70%. Without 2-piece tier 6, you save 19 mana per cast.

In patch 2.4, the totem will save 20 mana per cast, or 4.36% (3.9% without 2p tier 6).

In terms of Heal Per Mana (HPM) and Heal Per Second (HPS), this is:

Without 2P tier 6, it's:

So sadly, you gain very little mana efficiency from swapping totems and using CH (rank 5). I'd only suggest this when you absolutely know you'll have mana problems in a fight. You'll be lasting longer in fights but your HPS will suffer proportionally. CH (rank 4) is a much better way to become mana efficient.

Speaking of rank 4 chain heals, let's see how the totems affect that.

HR (w/2pT6) - 3057 heal , 369 mana
HR (w/out 2pT6) - 3057 heal, 413 mana
Heal w/out HR totem - 2942

The totem switching actually provides some nice mana efficiency using CH (rank 4). So if you're using CH4 constantly and are looking for a little more efficiency, the Totem of Living Water will help, even moreso if you have the 2pT6 bonus.

Nice analysis of the relic before Patch 2.4 and after Patch 2.4. We haven't talked much about the change except in this post: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19181-s...25/#post649453

As you show, it's better to equip the +healing relic and downrank to Chain Heal Rank 4.

I'll also add a note under the Patch 2.4 changes on the first page. I had forgotten about the change to this relic.

Remember even with the gloves, gem and enchant you will still have a noticeable and significant miss chance - so if you're the only interrupter and a lack of interrupt means a wipe to you (then again it might not and you could afford it, but in that case you can probably even more easily afford a backup interrupter...).

Chances for no interrupt with:

1 interrupter with NO hit gear: 17%

1 hit capped interrupter: 1%

2 interrupters with NO hit gear: 2.89%

3 interrupters with NO hit gear: 0.4913% (less than 1/2 of a single hit-capped interrupter!!)

2 interrupters with +7% hit: 1% (same as 1 hit capped interrupter)

1 interrupter with +7% hit and 1 hit capped: 0.1%

2 hit capped interrupters: 0.01%

As you can see increasing the number of interrupters generally has a much more noticeable effect on the failure chance than increasing your hit chance. Unless you find it acceptable to have 1-17% failure chance depending on what hit gear you wear (most likely not even close to 1%...), at least a second interrupter is required to give your raid a good chance to go through the fight with no interrupt failures. Especially when if one interrupt failure causes a wipe and N interrupts are needed during the fight, you will fail on 1-(1-chance)^N of the fights. But at the end it all depends on how much you can afford an interrupt failure VS how much you can afford to have a backup interrupter.

All you need on council is /focus Malande on two or more shamans in range and a /cast [target=focus] Earth Shock(rank1). But I guess the gloves help.

didnt mean to cause confusion with my above post

i dont SOLO interrupt the divine wraths, i merely SOLO heal the lady malande tank (which I mentioned so it could be included in the possible raid uses for a resto shaman section)

the gloves dont make a HUGE difference obviously, but you dont need the 2/4pc bonus for that fight if you are doing what I do and i think the trade off of a little healing is worth the occasional DW not sneaking through

So while gemming my gloves tonight ([Gauntlets of the Ancient Frostwolf]) I thought to myself about whether or not i should start gemming for straight plus heal. Currently I am sitting on 201 mp5 with watershield 2003 plus healing unbuffed and i think about 70 + haste (i will be changing in dark blessing when heroic badge vendor becomes available for the chest).

I gemmed the gloves 2x[Teardrop Crimson Spinel] missing out on a 1 mp5 socket bonus for an extra 11 healing i felt was worth it. But curious how everyone else treats gemming on when and when not to gem for purely plus heal. I generally have a shadow priest so I am starting to think that Squeezing out as much plus heal as i can might be a good idea.

Did you even read the first post? Or even look at the spreadsheets? I mean, seriously? All your answers are found by reading this thread.

But I digress, currently I am gemming my gear to get my meta gem, and then I am slowly turning every other gem into a 22 healing gem. If you are guaranteed a shadow priest, and are not afraid to pop mana potions, there is really no reason to not gem for straight +healing.

I would advise changing your gems in your shield, and bracer; both to 22 healing gems. I believe Binkenstein's spreadsheet has a gem socket calculator that will tell you if your socket bonus is worth getting.
ShamStats 11/02/08 - FileFront.com

High-Level Shaman (Tier 6)
Or grouped with a shadow priest

Stam = 0.30
Int = 0.55
Spirit = 0.1
Healing = 1.3
Crit = 0.5
Mp5 = 3.0
Haste = 2.0
Armor = 0.01

From first page: If I try re-evalute int hep value using other values I get:
0.3 * healing(HEP) + (22.8/80) * crit(HEP) + (1 + 0.24 * number of manatides) * (15mana / (0.2 * duration) * mp5(HEP))

In 5minute fight these values is:
0.3 * 1.3 + 0.285 * 0.5 + (1 + 0.24) * (15 / (0.2 * 300)) * 3

[top] 0.39 + 0.1425 + 1.24 * 0.75

1.4625
And with kings 1.1 * 1.4625 = 1.60875
And with +5% mana talents with kings = 1.6599

Quite opposite that 0.55.
If this sound ridiculous too high then we have to lower mp5 HEP value or just give int more value.

I don't have any sunwell gear yet and I am running around in raids with 120 haste 2380 +healing and about 125 mp5 (no buffs) while casting. If I have a shadow preist I don't even equip a regen trinket (eye of gruul, fathom brooch, alch stone. I don't consider my memento a regen trinket) and I still dont' run out of mana. Without the spriest things change a bit but my philosophy for gemming has been gem for +heal and ignore mp5. I only get mp5 if the socket bonus makes up for the loss in healing or comes close. I if it was a mp5 socket bonus I went pure healing gems.

Going forth I think I will (assuming it is a +heal socket bonus)
Red socket: [Teardrop Crimson Spinel]
Yellow Socket: [Quick Lionseye]
Blue Socket: [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst]

If it 2 or more blue sockets I probably ignore the socket bonus and just get haste / healing

I apologize if this was covered somewhere in the 33 pages of posts and I missed it...

In the FAQ's you list some suggested number for healer by tier.

With each of those, are they numbers that you should be expected to have with that level of gear, or when starting raids with that level of gear? As in, should I be expected to somehow be at 1900 + healing and 150 mp5 before I set foot into TK/SSC or is that what I should be looking at for numbers in T5 gear?

If you consider a current set of BT gear with minimal haste, all items from Sunwell are atleast equal in terms of mp5 and upgrades in terms of +healing and haste. Would it not make sense to increase your mp5 on Sunwell gear due to a loss in mana efficiency from a new abundance of haste?

It makes sense putting +heal in it. Reread the OP. +heal is never wasted, mp5 is.

I have a question about Sunwell. My guild just downed Illidan 2 weeks ago so we're still gearing up and fights can take a long time. We haven't gone to Sunwell yet but I suspect that we're going to have a difficult time and fights are going to last an even longer duration. For those that have gone to Sunwell and don't get a Shadow Priest, are you having a harder time with mana than you did in Tier 6 content? Should I hold off on the haste gems for a bit just in case?

In my experience of the first 3 bosses on live, there is not much of a mana issue on any of the fights, with or w/o a shadow priest. With that being said, I personally believe you should not necessary gem your items with haste, most of the gear in Sunwell comes with haste on it already, so by using a gem slot for +10 haste is going to eventually hurt you in +healing.

Just by looking at your armory (maybe pvp gear?), you should still be going for +healing. Wait off until around 2200-2300 healing before you think about adding haste.

------

On a different note. With the buff to Ghost Wolf, I think it should be noted that a 0/7/54 spec should be useful for Sunwell specifically. Being that each of the first 3 bosses are considered "outdoors" and in 2/3 you need to be running to a specific spot or away from something. Thoughts?

Yeah, current armory link is half pvp gear. I'm at 2191 heal, 141 MP5, 102 Haste in my raid gear. I have a few older pieces of gear that still have blue quality gems (luminous noble topaz) and was thinking of upgrading to the 10 haste gem once they're available via badges.

I don't understand your statement "2. You need efficiency quite a lot more than you need HPS."
+healing is the best way to increase efficiency mp5 isn't a help with this. Maybe you meant it the other way around?


Since the HPS weighting of haste vs +heal is about 2 v 1 10 haste gem is about 20 healing. If you are very low levels of haste it will be a little more at higher ones its a little less but its a variation of about 21-22 healing to19-18. There are some diminishing returns for haste but they are not dramatic and keep in mind haste is percentage so the more helaing you have the better it is. Having yellow gems that increase HPS roughly equivalent to red gems now allows us to meet socket bonuses when applicable. Saying things like always use teardrop spinels could actually lower HPS if you lose out on socket bonuses (in most cases this will not happen since we seem to 2 or more blue sockets nowdays but some older BT gear and stuff this would apply to). If the socket bounuses are +healing this is a bad idea or if its only red and yellow sockets (this isn't the case for most things but its something to keep in mind).


Sadly my guild is one of those "spinels go to dps" guilds so I will be using 18healing / 10 haste gems and be extra nice to my spriest.