This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
Gemming seems random, why?
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
trademen
I've recently gotten back into healing on my priest. I'm 80 and Disc and pretty familiar with how the class works. Like a good healer I did not want to jump head first into gearing my priest, and as such decided to lurk some good Disc priests I knew of on armory. The results were fairly surprising. The gemming almost looked random to me. I saw
Runed
, some
Luminous
, some
Purified
and even some
Reckless
gems, and they seemed to be all over the place. And it does not really seem like they are going for socket bonuses, I'm super confused.
Can someone give me a quick rundown of what the standard procedure is for gemming? I have my meta taken care of, so I'm not sure what to do with empty sockets from here.
EDIT for armory link
Post by
Pachuca
It mostly depends on your group role, current gear and goals, and mana requirements. If you're a bubblebot, you'll likely be RunedP with the odd Luminous gem thrown in there for the good socket bonuses. Tank healers will find great utility in gemming Reckless. The meta gem needs to be activated with a blue somewhere, which ends up being (more often than not) a Purified.
General rule of thumb: just go with Runed.
Post by
140518
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Pachuca
I would avoid gemming for crit rating. All of your crit rating should be coming from your gear. Tank-healing disc priests will be spamming FH and Penance in between shields, so haste rating ends up being more valuable.
Post by
Paolo
Agree with both Pachuca & Starji.
Plus one more thing:
Disc priests fall into one of several categories:
They know what they're doing & why. They gem regen because they play hard and still OOM.
They know what they're doing & why. They gem only spell power because they play hard and never OOM.
They are sheep who gem intellect because someone told them that it is THE disc stat. Perhaps they saw
Mental Strength
and went all oooo
They are sheep who gem only spell power because that's the new black.
They are foncused and isdoreinted, and just gem whatever, usually following socket bonuses (sparkling in blue, luminous in yellow, etc).
Many disc priests are pretty unclear on the concept, and their gemming reflects that. My gemming is all over the map, but every gem choice has a reason.
Post by
trademen
It mostly depends on your group role, current gear and goals, and mana requirements. If you're a bubblebot, you'll likely be RunedP with the odd Luminous gem thrown in there for the good socket bonuses. Tank healers will find great utility in gemming Reckless. The meta gem needs to be activated with a blue somewhere, which ends up being (more often than not) a Purified.
General rule of thumb: just go with Runed.
I'm probably going to end up being more of a tank healer, but I'm a tad worried about my mana running dry. I use to heal on a holy pally, which was more or less un
oom
able. While I don't find myself drinking between every pull when doing randoms, I'm terrified at the thought of trying to heal a tank though something in ICC, spamming flash heal and penance between shields. How much mana is enough really? I've been gemming for Luminous more or less, and can sit at 30k mana raid buffed.
Post by
140518
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
328121
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Badent
On my Disc Priest I've currently cleared 6 bosses in ICC 10 & 25 with heroic modes on Gunship Battle.
I'm sitting at 26k mana unbuffed (30k raid buffed) and I never go oom in the boss fights I've done. Most of the time I finish the boss fight with around 20% mana left and not even used Shadowfiend or Hymn of Hope. Of course there are fights where people make mistakes in positioning and the healers have to do double the work / stress that would be normally but even for these cases I can use Shadowfiend and have over half my mana left over. Think the most stressful fight where I just about went oom was on
Festergut
where we were running with 2 healers rather than 3, and the 2nd healer was a Naxx geared Holy Priest (yes you heard right). I had to pop Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope and did 70% healing
but I didn't go oom.
So if you want to start doing ICC I'd aim for 24k-25k for the first few bosses. I can't speak for the bosses 7+ though and I'd imagine you'd need
a lot
more mana but if you're still gearing up these fights are a while away yet. As Starjl mentioned, I've seen Kingslayer Pallies & Priests at 40k mana.
Hopefully that will give you a bit of insight on your question about mana, going back to gemming, I like to match my sockets for the bonuses. So having +23 SP for red and a mixture of +12 SP +12 Int & +20 Int for yellow.
I see some people gem purely for a single stats and don't match the socket bonuses, when I say this, I mean people who think "Oh I need some more mana to hit Xk so I'll stick in a few Int gems. Now I've met that, I got 5 slots left over and need some more SP to hit Xk so I'll stick in a few SP gems." But when you think about it, if all you're geming for is a mixture of SP and Int, you might as well take the time to get the sockets that match as you'd effectively gain SP from the socket bonuses as if you added 2 extra SP gems.... and still have the same amount of mana + regen for example as the person who just stuck in Int gems with a few SP gems on the side.
I noticed Harmacy mentioned the difference between Spirit and Mp5. I've never seem anyone gem for it more than once to meet the meta socket requirement of having a blue socket. Having said that, I've got 2 +10 Int + 5 mp5 sockets which I added while I was first gearing up for PvE and the gems were a bargain on the AH. As I said before, by matching the sockets, I'd still come out with the around the same SP and mana + regen due to the socket bonuses.
I'd like to throw out the question about choosing items that either have Spirit or Mp5 - such as the caster cloaks bought from the Emblem of Frost vendor in Dalaran. They have the same stats, only difference is the spirit for mp5. Technically they give the same amount of mana regen, but my question is, doesn't Spirit scale with buffs and talents? When Mp5 does not? Such as
Blessing of Kings
and
Enlightenment
?
Post by
trademen
This thread has been super helpful for me so far, so thank you all very much. I think I should probably take this time to give you all my armory, and I'll so stick it in the original post.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Wildhammer&cn=Deldaro
You'll notice a few oddities, such as my boots enchant. I use to be shadow and I've not yet quite gotten ride of all my shadow gear. Also, the little bit of pvp gear I have were just easy upgrades at the time. I do intend to get ride of them asap.
Post by
318206
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Pachuca
I'm probably going to end up being more of a tank healer, but I'm a tad worried about my mana running dry. I use to heal on a holy pally, which was more or less un
oom
able. While I don't find myself drinking between every pull when doing randoms, I'm terrified at the thought of trying to heal a tank though something in ICC, spamming flash heal and penance between shields. How much mana is enough really? I've been gemming for Luminous more or less, and can sit at 30k mana raid buffed.
You'll just have to try it and see where you end up. Personally, I just started healing hard modes at 36k mana raid-buffed, and that's been more than enough for almost every fight. In fact it's probably been too much. I think the sweet spot is around 30k for most* fights assuming you remember to use your mana cooldowns.
* LK not included.
I currently have 33.7k mana, fully raid-buffed and I find that to be just enough for what I'm doing. For Lich King 25 (normal) or Dreamwalker 25 (hardmode), I could probably handle a
little
more mana but I have learned when to pop
Shadowfiend
+
HoH
to get the absolute most out of my mana pool. Once I drop to about 15% I can pop 'em both and be back at full.
On a fight like Rotface or Festergut 25-hardmode, I will still end up with more than 50% mana after popping both cooldowns, but even on LK 25-normal I am finding that I'm squeezing every last drop of mana out of my priest like a wet rag (
WoL parse for Monday's LK kill
)
I'm a tank healer, and as such I'm geared in almost entirely Spellpower/Haste/Crit gear, so my crit rating and haste rating are both sitting at around 840, equally. This is important to keep your crit rating and haste rating about the same. They work with such fantastic synergy with each other that it is foolish to neglect one stat for the other. More crits, more often = happy tanks :)
Get Minor Glyphs of Shadowfiend and Fading.
This, 100%. I've bound Fade to my F key and use it
a lot
, whether it's in 5-player heroic dungeons or ICC-25. It's completely indispensable and will save your ass, and anything that keeps you alive will in-turn keep your tanks and the rest of your raid alive. Amazing how Fade can sometimes prevent wipes...
The Shadowfiend glyph is great because how many times have you popped Shadowfiend only to have it cleaved or insta-gibbed by a loose add? I found a great use for this glyph on the Gunship encounter the other night. Set your Shadowfiend loose on the riflemen on the opposing faction's ship, and with about 5 seconds left on the Shadowfiend's life, send him on the opposing faction's captain (boss) and have him get 1-shot. This of course is only really possible when your tank isn't on the opposite ship tanking the captain. You'll get an extra little chunk of mana by sacrificing your fiend right before he would normally die.
Post by
trademen
Okay, thanks for all the advice. I'm currently only doing heroics for gear, but I intend to take a crack at ICC maybe later this week.
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.