High end geming question.

[Misshooks]

What gems should i be looking for when i do high end raiding? As of right now i'm full spell power gems, and i have 2766 spell power unbuffed as holy. however my crit is garbage at 14.something. At what point does too much spell power because not so usefull.

[thunderdome]

spec might help

[Donolgann]

You should link your armory, it'd be useful and what does "High end raiding" mean for you? Pretty sure a lot of people on this forum would say "DUUH normal ToC25 YO!" in which case you could be in blues and do good as a healer. And what's your haste at?

[harky]

He's Holy and has ~2.8k SP. That puts him in 8.5//9 gear. Read the post. :

@OP: Spellpower never stops being useful. Assuming you're specced properly 14% crit should be 19% with talents (for Holy) and 24% with a few buffs. Probably closer to 27% fully raid buffed. The loose stopping point is 30%, so you're not as bad off as you think. General rule of thumb for gemming as Holy is that if you can't hit 12% haste you can gem for it, but spellpower is just as good. If you have mana problems gem for Int, which is your best regen stat. When activating good bonuses and meta gem requirements use: Red: SP -- Yellow: Haste, Int -- Blue: SP/Spirit. If you notice something is lacking (mana problems, <12% haste) then you can ignore a lot of the colors and gem for that. If you're missing haste I'd still use Red for SP in most cases. If you're having mana problems you can gem Int in everything, with Int/Spirit in Blues if a bonus is good. Don't gem for crit, mp/5, or straight spirit. Any other option you can probably come up with some excuse for gemming that way as Holy.

[[-Spiritus-]]

I've been moving towards INT/SPI for blue and yellow sockets and +10stats for red sockets... With 3 INT Dragon's Eyes in yellow. I just have too much regen when I gem straight INT, and having a better mix of int/spi allows for activating gem bonuses and better regen for idle phase changes, plus more SP through the holy SPI coefficient.

With ICC, barring some fundamental change in the way I'm healing, or fights lasting x2 the time, I will move into more SP.

[Mithip]

I'm currently sitting at 3050sp with IF/Spi, around 13% haste and 23.5% holy crit unbuffed.

Trying to get my self more haste with sp/haste gems in yellow and some red slots.

Gemming Spirit only for blue sockets with sp/spi, I got no mana problems in ToGC10 and ToC25 (haven't tried ToGC25 yet :/)

The less mana problem you have, the more throughput you have to go for with Spellpower/Haste gemming, and less Int/Spirit (except blue sockets with SP/Spi).

[Worshaka]

Gemming for pure Int is a bad strategy as far as I'm concerned... there is plenty of Int on gear alone to get the base regen requirements, you should be looking to gem a mix of int/spirit which provides regen and throughput. I like to use int/spirit gems for yellow sockets and pure spirit for blue sockets. If you switch between holy and disc then you might have a good argument why you want to avoid spirit gemming but i'm talking about maximising your holy output. I've been putting SP/Int into my Red sockets but i'm considering moving that to pure SP and I'm also considering moving yellow sockets to Haste/SP based on the fact that I can't go oom.

I guess the general consensus is you gem early for regen, some say Int but the assumptions about the Int regen factor on EJ's are poor (IMO), spirit provides adequete regen and SP (via talents), then your 2 best throughput stats are SP and Haste. Crit should always be taken care off via gear, it's not a particularly good throughput stat but it has some regen benefits but not in the same league as Int & Spirit.

[Zeuq]

I think there's some good advice here, but I don't think it's a cut and dry "at this gear level, gem this" because there's so much variance in specs, play styles, healing compositions, etc. How is your regen doing? If it's fine, consider SP/Int in Yellows and SP/Spirit in Blues and either SP/Spirit or possibly pure SP in Reds. If it's not, as Worshaka and Spiritus point out, I find a balanced approach of Int/Spirit to be the best approach to handling regen.

To your specific questions, I don't think there is really a "too much SP" point. I tend to run with 3.5k SP raid buffed, and I'm not running into situations with excessive overhealing. Sure, it makes a spell like Greater Heal almost always massive a wasted overheal, but since I find I'm heavily favoring abilities like Renew, PoM, and CoH, it's very seldom a waste.

For your implied question, don't worry about your Crit. In my opinion, the minimum is 25% raid buffed which and your 14% unbuffed should put you right about at that threshold. That is, I might consider your Crit a problem if you couldn't reach that, but even then, it's not worth gemming for since Int/Spirit give better and more consistent regen, SP/Haste give better and more consistent throughput. If you do still feel a little low, just get one more piece of Crit gear and you'll be fine. Also, for the record, I consider 30% to be about the maximum you would want raid buffed and when I exceed that, I try to trade a Crit piece for a Haste piece.

[Misshooks]

Lots of good info here thanks guys. I wish i knew how to link my character sheet from the wow armory...i dont use this site very often. Could someone tell me how to link Misshooks from the wow armory to this forum so people can see how i am set up. Again thank you all for the info.

[Danner]

If you ask me, int is superior to spirit in almost every way. Granted, this is as long as you manage to pop shadowfiend with hymn of hope. After the nerf to PoH in 3.2, it doesn't really scale that well with spellpower anymore, though other heals certainly does. Still, I found it preferable to boost my output by stacking haste - at least as long as i'm still well below the cap. So my gemming strategy right now is as follows:

Red: Nightmare Tear (+10 stats) for the first gem (it's unique equipped), then +12 SP, +10 int/haste
Yellow: +20 int/haste
Blue: +10 int/haste, +10 spirit

Whether to go for int or haste really depends on whether you need mana or not.

[Thepuntedone]

Lots of good info here thanks guys. I wish i knew how to link my character sheet from the wow armory...i dont use this site very often. Could someone tell me how to link Misshooks from the wow armory to this forum so people can see how i am set up. Again thank you all for the info.

Here you go. To post websites, highlight the address from the address bar and copy it. Then paste it into the location you wish.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...le&n=Misshooks

[harky]

Lots of good info here thanks guys. I wish i knew how to link my character sheet from the wow armory...i dont use this site very often. Could someone tell me how to link Misshooks from the wow armory to this forum so people can see how i am set up. Again thank you all for the info.

Is this you? Misshooks - Stormscale US

If so get rid of that meta in favor of Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. You're also lacking a lot of Int. Despite what Worshaka said, Int really is your primary regen stat. It's better than spirit by a massive amount and you need to disregard both raiding experience and testing of a great number of people to think otherwise. It's just not a sound argument. I'll hold off on anything else until you can confirm that that's the right character.

If not go to one of these sites and search for yourself:
Europe: http://eu.wowarmory.com/
US: http://www.wowarmory.com/

[Misshooks]

Yes Harky that is my character, feel free to speak about her.

[harky]

Okay, you're going to want to switch to IED as previously mentioned. You'll need 1 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue gem to activate it. You have a couple options, but your main goal is going to be regem primarily to Int. Use Int for yellow, SP/Int for red and Int/Spirit for blue. Look at your socket bonuses and keep in mind that you only need 1 red and 1 blue. Find the best bonus for that red/blue. From what I can see the Blue should be your neck. Now look for easy to obtain good bonuses. Your chest is easy, one Int gem and one SP/Int gem. It's not a great bonus, but it's the better of the two gems. Your helm has a very nice bonus and could go with SP/Int as well. The rest of the bonuses aren't worth aiming for as you'll have to use more Int/Spi gems which aren't so great. Make sure to redo the JC gems to the best of the gems you're using, which is Int.

It's not that SP is bad mind you, but that you're setup in a manner which has very high throughput, but not enough mana to support it. I'd also suggest running normal 5 man Trial of the Champion for [ur=http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47215l]Tears of the vanquished[/url]. It's easy to get and a very good replacement for your PVP trinket, or if that's not something you use in PVE it would also easily replace the Egg. When you start reaching 25k mana unbuffed you can consider moving more towards throughput by moving Int gems over to haste (if under 14%) and SP.

[Misshooks]

eh just the idea of re geming and losing spell power hurts lol...but i know i need to redo my gems...however i have always thought that my mana was good and i of course use mana potions durning raids to help my mana. Of course i've never done any raids excpet TOC and some nax and os. Perhaps when i start doing heroic 10 man toc and 25 man toc i'll notice my mana running out even after using a mana poition. I guess what i would be losing by re geming is spell power but gaining intel...is that what it comes down to Harky? I'm replaceing some spell power with intel?

[harky]

Yes, basically. The goal is to be able to be able to spam spells as quick as your GCD/PoH cast time will allow without running out of mana. How long can you keep PoM and CoH on cooldown while spamming renew every GCD? How long can you do the same but spamming PoH? I had massive problems with longevity until I hit around 24k mana unbuffed.

Also keep in mind that if you use that Disc spec a lot, you'll be gemmed somewhat poorly for it. Your gear probably can support that type of gemming as Disc. Holy has a ton more mana problems. If you're not having mana problems, try harder.

[nikkita]

For each one 'high end' is different, some still stuck in ulduar not geting all the hard modes there see themselves as 'high end'. Others assume that since they completed ToC 10m heroic means they are 'high end' - so its merely a matter of prespective, and what is 'high end'.

Most that 'high end' means they wipe weekly on ToC 25m heroic, got p to twins, but have all types of weird anub idea's without a real kill (in 25m heroic) will usually end up advicing you to gem for int, or a combination of int/spirit. They will also walk around with the restore mana meta gem (IED), claiming its the best. If 'high end' for you means; toc 10m heroic, and toc 25m heroic up untill anub, still farming ulduar - the gem choices you should be doing is towards int/spirit.

I personaly got anub with 50 tries left 2 weeks ago. I consider myself 'high end'. Since toc came out i have not steped a foot in ulduar. I've cleared every HM in ulduar, including algalon and zero light a month before ToC came to live (probably before, can't be arsed to check). I personally do not stack int, most of my gear is 258 item level. I have 24k mana self-buffed with out one int gem. The meta gem i chose to use is the spellpower one (ESD). The is a huge theory craft behind this - when is it worth to take ESD over IED due to the amount of mana. For me it was simple; i do not run low on mana, and if i do i use shadowfiend, i will get a innervate if i will call for it, and since we do most toc 25m heroic with 5 healers; i am usually in the mana tide group, there fore i rather have a meta gem that will allow me to gem mainly red gems, the 2% mana is just a minor bonus and not the reason i pick this meta gem. I dissagree with EJ that in end-game you need to get balance around your stats, which might explain why they aren't doing so well and why they priests are not amazing (sorry if i go by rumors but thats what i heard), i would purely go for the stat that benifits me the most; which is spellpower. I use mainly spellpower gems, if the socket is blue and the bonus is 7 spellpower or more i use a spellpower+ spirit gem. I aim geting as much spellpower as i can - this will directly make me a more efficiant healer. I get enough haste, crit, int and spirit from the gear, to a point where i would rather increase the stat that makes me strong. This stat is spellpower.

For those talking about spaming PoH, i find myself not using PoH at all in ToC, i can end up with zero to maybe one cast of PoH in a full ToC 25m heroic run. I find myself using Prom, Renew, Surge of light, CoH and greater heal often. I find myself standing on around 28% - 32% overhealing (depending on encounter), I find my spells being very efficant, meaning; when i heal its not some anemic heal (like a paladins FoL), its a heal. For the setups we go; for northrend beasts we go with 5 healers; resto shaman, resto druid, holy paladin, holy priest and a discipline priest or a holy paladin. Same for lord jara. for faction champoins we ocationally add another resto shaman if he's online, for twins we go with 6 healers; holy paladins, resto shaman, 2 holy priests 2 resto druids. for anub we go 6 healers; resto shaman, resto druid, holy priest, discipline priest, holy paladin and holy paladin or a resto shaman. We tend to use less healers per encounter compared to other guilds because we have extremely strong healers; i am the main holy priest, but the 2nd holy priest also stacks spellpower.

In 'high end' when you need someone to spam raid you use a resto shaman, when you need someone to spam tanks you use a holy paladin, when you want someone to HoT either tanks or raid you use a druid. You will not use for any of these rolls a priest. You would use a holy priest in high end to help the shaman, to help the paladin, to help both. Which makes walking around with fully int gem's, and anemic heals not so appropriate for a 'high end' raiding guild. This ofc considering a high end raiding guild has the classes needed and not uses priests to cover up the lack of a shaman or any other class they lack. Spaming PoH is not a enjoyable gamestyle, and with the way i raid, will cause alot of death's. When you raid in a way that each GCD matters, and your preformance can't be slacking and mashing a fixed rotation - but you actually need to heal who's needed - i find spellpower the most efficiant stat. Ofc if 'high end' raiding means for you that you still do ulduar, and still trying FF, that you use 5 holy priests to heal raid, and 8 +/- healers per encounter, i would probably expect you to stack int/spirit/ haste, "cause EJ says so".

For the question: do i run dry on mana? no i don't. I do need to manage my mana, rotate proper CD's. i sometimes even find myself playing the 5 secs rule abit with SoL. But generally no, i have never found myself runing low on mana, but i do need to manage it alot more then other classes. As for healing: i am usually the highest on the effective meter, i am usualy 1st-3rd on raw meters, i am usualy lowest on overhealing. Ofc this mainly depends on the encounter.

[Azyoulike]

As people have said - for regen as holy your mileage may vary. Holy priests are kinda the arcane mages of the healing world, we can trade mana into throughput even better than a holy pally.

This means that the exact amount of regen that you need is determined not just by the content that you're running but also by the number of other healers and their quality. If you're having to carry slacker healers, and that's a common problem in more casual guilds, then you may need to spam more PoHs and thus need more regen. As a result my experience, or nikkita's experience or harky's experience may not match your experience.

IED isn't always the best meta, that's true - it is however the best meta if you're going to socket for any regen at all, because it is the best regen for the item budget available.

If you decide to socket for some extra regen and have already fitted yourself with an IED, you have to decide between Spirit and Int. This is another movable feast, Int is somewhat more consistent whereas spirit regen varies more depending on uptime of Holy Concentration. On the other hand the SP from spirit is more throughput than the crit from Int.

Given that you're a belf and your offspec is disc, gemming for Int would seem preferable to spirit, but people can argue about the relative benefits till the cows come home.

A final option to consider is to keep your current +SP gemming and pick up some solid regen trinkets. Tears of the vanquished is nice, spark of hope is incredible, Greatness +Int is still solid. I'm a trinket whore, so I have a huge selection and can generally find a nice combo for any particular encounter.

TL/DR - Priests don't have any easy answers for gearing, which is one of the reasons that they're the most interesting healers in the game.

[G l o w y r m]

This is off your topic of gemming but I looked over your spec and felt like talking about it.
I hope you don't mind me sharing my findings.

I very much recommend this Holy Spec -> http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfE0cbMqihhIuVo

Now, a few (long) points explaining this spec...the really important, juicy, math stuff is the last bullet

• 
  I doubt you are casting Greater Heal enough to warrant spending 8 talent points (Divine Fury / Improved Healing) for just that 1 spell. Many people would agree that dropping Improved Healing is a good idea, especially since you do not have Surge of Light, which I would put 2 points into after dropping Improved Healing.

• I would then switch Divine Fury over to Spell Warding for a nice survivability boost since GHeal is rarely the best spell to cast with today's fast and furious heals. Holy is better off focusing on it's strength which means maximizing our raid burst healing. This isn't really a huge deal though.

• Holy Reach is slightly debatable but I really don't see anything much stronger in this tier area than making sure the heals that help us do the thing we are best at, which is burst healing massive raid damage, have a higher chance of hitting it's targets by increased range. In today's raiding scene, people move around more than ever and it can make the difference between missing a target or 2 per cast of CoH and PoH.

• Healing Focus 2/2 is pretty huge. Raid damage is everywhere in today's raid encounters and they do slow down your heals here and there and many times you might not even notice it. You could do at least 1/2 Healing Focus and still pick up Desperate Prayer if you use it often.

• From my experience, and from talking with many other healers, I don't find too many situations where a bunch of people drop below 50% health for Test of Faith. When these situations do occur, those people are healed above 50% very quickly by you and others, so the 12% extra healing is not used often enough to pass up flat healing increase all the time with 3/3 Blessed Resilience, in my humble opinion. My last point farther down addresses that Test of Faith is still useful, but it should still be coupled with 3/3 Blessed Resilience if you take it. I talk about that more later.

• Now, 3/5 Empowered Healing is not a huge loss compared to having 5/5 (20% instead of 12%), not at all, especially since GHeal is not a very often used spell and because of how this talent actually works (explained soon). You should really only be looking at how this talent affects Flash Heal and Binding Heal. Blessed Resilience is a big boost since it affects ALL of your heals which definitely makes up for the slight loss to just Flash Heal and Binding Heal.
  
  Now you should think about how Empowered Healing actually affects those 2 spells. What it does is increase the spell COEFFICIENT by 20%, NOT 20% of your spell power.
  
  The coefficient for Flash Heal is [0.8057 * (your SP)]. With 5/5 Empowered Healing it becomes [0.9668 * (your SP)]. With 3/5 Empowered Healing is becomes [0.9024 * (your SP)]. Now to fill in the blanks and see the difference.
  
  Flash Heal = [Average Flash Heal + (Your SP * Coefficient)] * Spiritual Healing(10%) &/or Blessed Resilience(3%)
  *Below, I just used a decent spell power amount and the average heal based off of the Flash Heal tooltip, it may not be the amount you actually heal for but the math and differences calculated between these talents are still correct*
  
  With 5/5 Empowered Healing With 3/5 Empowered Healing + 3/3 Blessed Resilience
  Flash Heal = [2040 + (3000 * 0.9668)] * 1.1 = 5445 Flash Heal = [2040 + (3000 * 0.9024)] * 1.13 = 5364
  
  The difference between the 2 setups is only 5445 - 5364 = 81 less healing on Flash Heal and Binding Heal BUT you are getting 3% more healing on ALL of your other heals which definitely makes up for that minute difference by a significant amount. I have also calculated how much it's worth to drop Inner Focus to get 4/5 Empowered Healing instead of 3/5...your Flash and Binding Heals would heal for ~110 more. If you think that's worth switching for, go for it. In my humble opinion, I think Inner Focus' utility makes up for that difference and I would say to stick with 3/5 Empowered Healing + 3/3 Blessed Resilience.
  
  The thing I want you to take away from this is that Blessed Resilience + a small amount of Empowered Healing is better than just pure, maxed out Empowered Healing. Now to address Test of Faith a little more since it does indeed provide a significant boost in some situations (just not often enough in my opinion), a build with both 3/3 Test of Faith and 3/3 Blessed Resilience is a great way to maximize your raid healing (Holy's strong point) with a minor loss of ~100 healing to Flash and Binding Heal due to getting 2/5 instead of 3/5 Empowered Healing. You should be comfortable with the strength of your mana regen with this build because you would have to drop Healing Prayers to put those into Empowered Healing (otherwise you would have 0/5 Empowered Healing). This version of the build would look like this -> http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfE0cb0qihhfuAo
  
  The raid wide healing output is maximized with this build with a tiny loss in mana efficiency (Healing Prayers) and a small loss (3/5 to 2/5 Empowered Healing) to Flash and Binding Heal to get better healing on ALL of your other heals AND a big boost when people drop low. Personally I would still stick with the first build and have Healing Prayers and ~100 more to Flash/Binding, since I don't see enough ToF moments personally.
  
  TLR (Just the last and most important part) -> Due to the lack luster prowess of Greater Heal compared to faster heals these days and the way Empowered Healing works off of the spell coefficient, dropping a few points from Empowered Healing only really affects Flash and Binding Heal by a VERY small amount. The difference is MORE than made up for with Blessed Resilience affecting ALL of your spells. So...getting 3/5 Empowered Healing + 3/3 Blessed Resilience is better than just 5/5 Empowered Healing (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfE0cbMqihhIuVo).
  
  If you insist on getting Test of Faith, it should really be coupled with 3/3 Blessed Resilience still. At this point you can still get 2/5 Empowered Healing (still not a huge loss) by dropping Healing Prayers, which is not a big deal if you have strong regen (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfE0cb0qihhfuAo). I personally like the first setup but will probably be switching to the 2nd if I encounter more fights with people consistently below 50% HP. All of this is explained in the last, long bullet of my list with maths and stuff.

[Zeuq]

I hate to continue the off topic, I don't want to get into a long spec discussion but...

• • Holy Reach is slightly debatable but I really don't see anything much stronger in this tier area than making sure the heals that help us do the thing we are best at, which is burst healing massive raid damage, have a higher chance of hitting it's targets by increased range. In today's raiding scene, people move around more than ever and it can make the difference between missing a target or 2 per cast of CoH and PoH.
  
  ...
  
  
  • From my experience, and from talking with many other healers, I don't find too many situations where a bunch of people drop below 50% health for Test of Faith. When these situations do occur, those people are healed above 50% very quickly by you and others, so the 12% extra healing is not used often enough to pass up flat healing increase all the time with 3/3 Blessed Resilience, in my humble opinion. My last point farther down addresses that Test of Faith is still useful, but it should still be coupled with 3/3 Blessed Resilience if you take it. I talk about that more later.

• [Emphasis added by me]
  
  I see this sort of reasoning a lot and I really don't understand it. That is, most people agree that a Holy Priest excels at burst healing, and then say they don't find Test of Faith very useful. Yes, I will agree that Blessed Resilience is probably a bit more useful, since it helps with that and with everything. However, Test of Faith seems tailor made for what we do best and just makes us that much better at it. I can understand passing it over for low-end content, but and it's downright awesome in most Ulduar fights, and it's still useful in ToC on fights like Beasts, Jaraxxus, and FC (though it is a negative in Anub P3). I suspect that there will be a few more burst healing oriented fights in ICC.
  
  Anyway, I guess my point is, I would rate both Blessed Resilience and Test of Faith above Empowered Healing point for point.