Brief thoughts on Meta Gems
Loading ...Inspired by Dawn over on WOW Insider, here are my thoughts on meta gems for priest healers, very quickly (and leaving out the gems that are clearly not healing gems):
- Beaming Earthsiege: Maybe. Gives about 0.45% crit chance and +2% mana. The extra mana will vary depending on your current mana pool; the crit chance means that if you’re Disc, you’ll get another Divine Aegis for every 217 spells you cast, or 1-2 more per fight.
- Bracing Earthsiege: No. Gives 25 spell power and 2% reduced threat. Only take this one if you’re having trouble on the threat meters, which hopefully you aren’t.
- Chaotic Skyflare: No. Gives about 0.45% crit chance and 3% increased critical damage. That’s important. It’s tempting to think “oh, they mean “critical spell effect”. They don’t. It’s just damage. Steer clear.
- Destructive Skyflare: No. Gives bout 0.55% crit chance and 1% chance that offensive spells that target you will hit their caster instead. This is a PVP gem, although it can be useful for certain fights (those involving randomly-targeted spellcasts or poison affliction, for example). Spell reflect does not affect AOE spells, although it can redirect chained spells (like Chain Lightning).
- Effulgent Skyflare: No. Gives 320 health and reduces spell damage taken by 2%. Another PVP gem; if you’re really having that much trouble staying alive against PVE spellcasters, swap out one of your other gems for Solid Majestic Zircons.
- Ember Skyflare: Yes. Gives 25 spell power and 2% Intellect. This gem will directly increase your throughput, and while 2% Intellect doesn’t grant quite as much mana as 2% mana (Beaming Earthsiege gives about 72 more mana regardless of how much Intellect you have), it grants more crit and more regen.
- Enigmatic Skyflare, Forlorn Skyflare, and Impassive Skyflare: No. These give about 0.45% crit chance and various duration-reducing effects. They’re PVP gems with highly-situational PVE uses. Steer clear of them.
- Insightful Earthsiege: Yes. Gives 21 Intellect (about 315 mana, 0.125% crit chance, and mana regeneration that varies based on your Spirit), and every spell you cast has a 5% chance to restore 600 mana. That works out to an average of about 60 mp5 (which can go down if you insist on casting long-cast-time spells and up if you have lots of haste, as I do). This is the beloved, overwhelmingly-recommended meta gem for priest healers; over a 6-minute fight that adds up to 4,320 extra mana in your pool. Get this unless you can afford to be more concerned with throughput than mana.
- Powerful Earthsiege: No. Another PVP gem, this one gives 320 health and reduced stun duration. Not worth it.
- Revitalizing Skyflare: Yes. Gives 11 MP5 and 3% increased critical healing effect. That’s not healing chance; instead, when your heals do crit, they heal for 3% more. That means that if you’re Disc, your Divine Aegis will be 3% bigger too! The 11 MP5 is 792 mana – not fabulous, one additional spell over the course of a 6-minute fight, but it’s better than nothing.
- Tireless Skyflare: Maybe. This is another PVP gem, with 25 spell power and a minor run speed increase, but I ran with it for a long time. Part of this was because it helped me get out of the fire faster, and part of it was because I was entertained by running faster than anyone else in the raid. Sadly, it doesn’t stack with other speed-increasing effects. Go with this if you can’t get one of the others, or if you have a hard time staying out of the stuff on the floor.
- Trenchant Earthsiege: Maybe. Gives 25 spell power and reduces stun duration by 10%. It’s a PVP gem, but it has some uses in PVE. It’s not fabulous, but it can be useful for certain fights, especially in heroics. The faster you can get out of a stun effect, the faster you can start healing again. That said, if you have the chance to get another one of the gems, take it.
The bottom line: Get Ember Skyflare, Insightful Earthsiege, or Revitalizing Skyflare depending on your playstyle, with the first two recommended more highly than the third unless you really, really love Divine Aegis. Get Beaming Earthsiege, Tireless Skyflare, or Trenchant Earthsiege only if you can’t get one of the first three.
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Excellent brief run-down on the various meta gems and their usefulness in PvE.
Ndiayne´s last blog: Return of the flailtank
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Regarding Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond, your Divine Aegis bubbles’ size are 30% of the crit. So, if the crit is increased by 3%, that does not equate into a direct 3% increase in the size of your Divine Aegis bubble. It equates into.. uh. 1% increase? .1%? hrm.
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Chris Anthony Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 9:24 AM
@Miss Medicina, that seemed right to me, too, when I was writing it, but I did some quick envelope math: if I crit for 10,000, my Divine Aegis will shield for 3,000. With Revitalizing Skyflare, that 10,000 crit will actually be 10,300, and the Divine Aegis will be 3,090 (30% of 10,300). The additional 90 shielding is 3% of the original 3,000.
To go into probably more math than you wanted, that holds true because +3% in WOW is almost always actually *1.03, and because multiplication is both associative (the order of evaluation doesn’t matter: (x*y)*z = x*(y*z)) and commutative (terms can be rearranged without affecting the outcome: x*y*z = y*z*x) but not distributive (that is, (x*y)*z != (x*z) * (y*z)). So (taking X to be the amount of a critical heal) (X * 1.03) * 0.3 is equivalent to (X * 0.3) * 1.03, not (X*0.3) * (1.03*0.3), which is the answer that made sense to both of us at a quick glance because the tooltip implies addition, not multiplication.
I hope that made sense. :)
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Glad you wrote this up… I have to admit I died a little on the inside and /headdesk when I saw the post the new Spiritual Guidance writer put up. (poorly written and even more poorly researched, in my eyes. WoW.com is where people go to for information… anyhoo, I dont want to go on a diatribe) One thing that I’m glad the priest community is seeing, is people speaking up and commenting on that thread and creating Blog Posts about this as well. Kudos to you good sir!
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Chris Anthony Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 12:32 PM
Dawn had a good point – it was just hard to dig out of the column because of the organization. It’s unfortunate that there really isn’t a good meta gem for priests who are okay on mana – all of them have to do with mana pools or mana return. Blizzard’s using Meta gems to do interesting things, when what the top-end raiders want is gems that do universally useful things, and so they’re forced to take something they don’t really need. In this case it’s a choice between lots of mana pool manipulation/mana return and a little manipulation/return, and if she doesn’t need the mana then her choices are valid.
That said, I think most priests should probably stick with IED just because mana is an issue for everyone who’s not just stacking Intellect like it’s sweet, sweet candy.
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Slightly off topic, but if you’re even *considering* the Tireless gem, just get the boot enchant for run speed — it’s called Tuskarr’s Vitality and also adds a bit of stamina. The boot enchant alternatives are lackluster (spirit, crit+hit), compared to the excellent meta gem options you open up (yes, they’re annoyingly all mana-oriented, but still a darn sight more useful than +18 spirit). And everyone can use more stam.
I highly recommend it for healers, particularly if you’re pugging frequently. Tanks who run without raid frames, and are oblivious to the fact that Charge and Pursuit of Justice can carry them swiftly out of heal range? Less of a problem. : )
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It’s interesting that Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is a “no” for you guys. Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (and Earthstorm for pre-80s) has the same 3% crit damage boost and is THE go-to meta for rogues:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41398
Shadowpanther.net is a well-respected authority on number-crunching and min-maxing for rogues, and here’s their PvE gem chart:
http://shadowpanther.net/gems-pve.htm
You say, “It’s tempting to think ‘oh, they mean “critical spell effect”.’ They don’t. It’s just damage. Steer clear.” It’s not quite “just” damage– that 3% translates to a reasonable boost in dps. In fact, all of the top rogue metas have that particular 3%. =)
I totally understand that this is a list for priest /healers/, and you say you’ll be “leaving out the gems that are clearly not healing gems”, but the Skyflare was still in there and caught my attention, so here’s my comment on its usefulness– if not for haelz priesties, maybe some food for thought for a future Tiryns? ;)
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Chris Anthony Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 8:54 PM
@Jess, haha – I didn’t mean “pah, merely damage” so much as “only damage and not healing“. Didn’t intend to imply that damage was beneath me! :)
Chaotic Skyflare is great for Shadow priests, and as soon as I get an spriest hat I’m stickin’ one in. But healers generally are at the bottom of DPS meters for good reason. ;)
And yes, you should! The site’s there when you want it. :)
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… /should just launch moulin rogue already… =<
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