Healer Metagems – Let’s be frank

I’ve written about this before, specifically for healadins, but I’ve been seeing terrible advice floating through the “blogsphere” for other healing classes.  I’m glad there is such a wide variety of healing points of view out there; I just wish people would do their research before posting things that will mislead new players.

– You only get the one, so make it count. –

First, let’s get a happy list of what all the options are, just so there’s no confusion.  I’m listing only the ones applicable to raiding; there’s no excuse for taking the snare/stun/silence resist metagems in PvE.

Beaming Earthsiege Diamond – 21 Critical Strike Rating and +2% Mana
Bracing Earthsiege Diamond – 25 Spell Power and 2% Reduced Threat
Ember Skyflare Diamond – 25 Spell Power and +2% Intellect
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond – 21 Intellect and Chance to restore mana on spellcast (~70MP5)
Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond – 11 Mana every 5 seconds and 3% Increased Critical Healing Effect
Tireless Skyflare Diamond – 25 Spell Power and Minor Run Speed Increase (8%)

It is important to keep in mind that you only get a single metagem slot, so it is really best to maximize what you can obtain from that one slot.  Also, you -must- keep in mind that you are not picking a metagem in a vacuum; your choice will be working in concert with the rest of your gear, enchants and gems.  The flexibility you have in other areas helps make up for the lack of choices you have here.  (ie. choosing a regen metagem because you know you can gem for all throughput, choosing a non-run speed metagem because you can easily get Tuskar’s Vitality enchanted on your boots, etc.)

A few of these can be pretty easily weeded out as far as good choices go.  As healers, we simply do not generate enough threat to make it any sort of worry.  If you are getting aggro over the tanks -and- over the DPS, then there are bigger worries than you.  So that negates the Bracing as a choice.  The 8% run speed from the Tireless might seem tempting, but the ease of getting Tuskar’s enchanted on your boots, with the added bonus of extra stamina to go with the speed, means that using your metagem for it is a complete waste of potential.  (I should add that I highly, highly recommend that all healers get Tuskar’s Vitality enchanted on their boots.  There are enough movements fights out there to make the 8% run speed more than make up for the small amounts of Spirit, MP5, or crit you’d be missing.)

Looking at the Beaming might make it seem really tempting.  I have a lot of mana as a healadin, but you only really need to stop and consider what 2% really means to see the issue with this one.  For the sake of argument, we’ll say I have a 50k mana pool.  (I wish!)  2% of that is 1000 mana.  That’s extremely “meh”, dare I say a drop in the proverbial bucket.  For healadins, if we pretend you have 100% up time on Replenishment and Divine Plea on cooldown (both unlikely), at that mana pool size you’d be getting ~20 MP5, including from the crit.  That’s pretty much terrible.  Yes, the crit rating gives a small amount of throughput, but the secondary effect is going to be utterly useless, especially to any class that doesn’t have the healadin mana pool or Divine Plea.  Overall, a really horrible choice of metagem.

– Quick chat about Revitalizing –

How about that Revitalizing metagem?  Again, it seems really tempting.  The secondary effect of adding a scaling bonus to critical heals seems like it could be a fantastic idea, doesn’t it?  There is sadly a major problem with it, though, in that most critical heals result in at least partial overheal.  No healer is going to rely on a crit when it comes to healing their target.  Crits are considered nice bonuses (and for many classes, a source of mana regen).  Increasing the healing during those times when you’re already wasting part of your heal is just silly.  You gain nothing from it.  There is a noted raiding example where this could actually be a very good metagem and that is in the case of Valithria Dreamwalker.  Overheal is completely taken out of the equation in that fight if you are healing the dragon and this metagem could see some -excellent- use, especially when your healers have a specific set of “throughput only” gear for it.  Even the requirements for activating it (2 red gems) help in making it perfect for a “Dreamwalker gear set.”

There has been some buzz in the Resto shaman community about using Revitalizing instead of the IED when you are using both Solace trinkets.  What happens is that the HEP value of the Revitalizing beats that of the IED by about 10 points when using both the regular and the heroic Solace.  I’m not terribly sold on that yet, as there haven’t been enough HEP reports to really get a full grasp on the situations where it’s true.  My reservations are based on the fact that I’ve been hearing a 75% overheal report from the extra healing Revitalizing gives  while spamming CH and also on the fact that it’s incredibly easy to gear towards haste/crit, minimizing the amount of regen you obtain from gear.  I’ll keep my ear to the ground on this situation, although I’m pretty sure the vast majority of Resto. shaman who use double Solace are skilled enough with theorycrafting that they don’t need -me.-

– ESD vs IED!  Fight, fight! –

I’ll be honest with you, I can get really riled up about this competition.  My theorycrafter’s blood gets boiling and I lose the ability to speak clearly and plainly.  Pretty silly, huh?  Let me calmly go about things in this bit.  Note that I’ll be focusing on non-healadins, since I’ve covered it for healadins before.  I’m addressing this mostly to priests, druids and non-Solacex2 using shaman.

First, let’s acknowledge that part of the problem is how these two are compared.  Many people compare the primary stats on each (21 INT vs. 25 SP) and then the secondary (mana return vs. 2% INT).  What seems to happen is that people look at them and say “okay, I use SP and don’t need more mana.  I’m going to ignore the secondary effects because they both give mana and just take the SP one.”  That is a very, very limiting point of view to take.  Your metagem is just a part of the rest of your gear.  I see this most commonly in priests and druids, who also seem to go about using Spirit gems.  (The amount of throughput you get from Spirit, druids?  1 SPI = .194 SP  And you holy priests?  1 SPI = .25 SP)  I shake my head at the irony that switching their gems to SP and their metagem to the IED will net them -more- throughput at the same time as -more- mana regen…

But let’s break into the math on this so I can show exactly why the ESD will never catch up to the IED.  I’m going to work with 1500 INT and 1500 SPI when applicable in this example, since I’m feeling lazy.  First, let’s figure out how much MP5 the ESD is worth to each spec.  We’ll be adding in Gift of the Wild and Arcane Brilliance, but not Kings, as that applies to both metagems and just equalizes out.  So with those, we’re up to 1597 INT and 1597 SPI.

What we’re looking at then is 25 SP and 32 INT for the ESD, 60 MP5 and 21 INT for the IED. (I usually calculate 70 MP5 for the proc, as that’s closer to what I get, but I went more conservative this time for the sake of argument. So 25 SP and 11 INT vs. 60 MP5. That’s still a little hard to compare, so let’s work out what the INT would net each of the healing classes. Let’s note that 11 INT will net everyone 3.096 crit rating.

For Holy priests:
11 INT = 2.0625 MP5 (from Replenishment, 100% uptime)
11 INT = 2.1227 MP5 (from Meditation with 1597 SPI)
11 INT = 2.2880 MP5 (from increased mana pool in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 1.1440 MP5 (from Shadowfiend in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 7.6172 MP5 total

For Disc priests:
11 INT = 1.6918 MP5 (from Rapture, maximum amount possible)
11 INT = 2.1227 MP5 (from Meditation with 1597 SPI)
11 INT = 2.0625 MP5 (from Replenishment, 100% uptime)
11 INT = 2.2880 MP5 (from increased mana pool in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 1.1440 MP5 (from Shadowfiend in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 9.3090 MP5 total

For Tree druids:
11 INT = 2.0625 MP5 (from Replenishment, 100% uptime)
11 INT = 2.2880 MP5 (from increased mana pool in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 2.2084 MP5 (from SPI based mana regen with 1597 SPI)
11 INT = 6.5589 MP5 total

For Resto shaman:
11 INT = 2.2880 MP5 (from increased mana pool in a 6 minute fight)
11 INT = 2.0625 MP5 (from Replenishment, 100% uptime)
11 INT = 8.4700 MP5 (from Mana Tide totem)
11 INT = 12.8205 MP5 total

That gives us a much more solid base of comparison! Now let’s show that comparison again for each class. Remember that this is under ideal conditions favoring the ESD. Such conditions are unlikely to occur during actual fights.

Holy priests: 25 SP and 3.096 crit vs. 52.3828 MP5
Disc priests: 25 SP and 3.096 crit vs. 50.6910 MP5
Tree druids: 25 SP and 3.096 crit vs. 53.4411 MP5
Resto shaman: 25 SP and 3.096 crit vs. 47.1795 MP5

As you can see from this, the value you get from IED is far superior to that from ESD, even taking into account unrealistic situations that blatantly favor the ESD metagem.

– “But I don’t need mana regen!” –

Ah, the most common thing I hear when I tell someone how much better IED is than anything else…  Do you know what the most common cause of having too much mana is?  Not casting enough!  Unless you are getting GCD locked with a 1 sec GCD (or casting every single moment of the fight, for those of us without instants), you can’t really know how much mana regen you do or do not need.  If you -are- GCD locked, take a look at your gear, gems and enchants.  Are you fully maximizing for throughput or do you have several sub-optimal choices going on?  (ex. SPI enchanted to your boots instead of Tuskar’s Vitality, more than one SP/SPI (or MP5) gem, any straight SPI (or MP5) gems, SP/MP5 shoulder or head enchant, etc.)  Tweak those to get the most out of what you have; maximize your choices while minimizing wasted ilevel points.

If you feel that casting more will just get you more overheal, then you’re simply running too many healers.  I know that we all hate to hear this, but it’s true.  Most fights can be accomplished with 5 healers, so long as they are playing their best.  Heck, sometimes you can run fewer than that, if you don’t mind extreme stress and your crew is in tip-top shape.  Don’t remind me of the time back in the day that I had to solo-heal Beasts-hardmode-10 as a healadin…  Boy, was I glad I had min/maxed myself when my other healer went down to the first fire!

In the end, this is very much about “skill and knowledge.”  I’ve shown why the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is the best healer metagem in the game.  (And it took me several days to write all this up, it’s so long.)  Use that knowledge and go forth to improve your healing!  Let’s all strive to be better than average!