A necklace dropped the other day that I wasn’t really interested in.  It had stam, int, crit, haste and spell power.  I made the passing comment of “No Spirit, not really for me” to which I got the reply “Well as long as you have 350 mana regen who needs spirit”  Obviously I disagree… Let’s explore this, shall we?

Let us first start by saying nearly every piece of caster gear that drops has stamina, intellect and spell power.  These things are a given.  Usualy after this it has two of the following… sometimes three, usually two:

Hit
Crit
Haste
Mp5
Spirit

Let’s look at each of these stats.  

Hit - clearly this isn’t for us because  healers don’t need it.  Generally if you see it it’s assumed that it’s for DPS.  This isn’t to say that the other stats on the item don’t still make it an upgrade for you, but this would be a completely wasted stat.

Crit – As I write this rejuvenation and wild growth together make up about 85% of my healing on most boss fights, give or take based on the fight.  That means that the huge majority of my healing CAN NOT CRIT.  I’m not saying that it’s not nice for your occasional LB or Nourish to crit, but it is certainly not worth stacking.  Now, when we all start getting our four piece T9, this might change.  This might become a far more desirable stat. 

Haste –  Haste is another tricky one.  Since most of what we cast while raid healing is instant (as stated above when I talk about crit) this is mainly used to reduce our global cooldown.  I assume we all have Gift of the Earthmother, so the base 1.5 GCD is already reduced to 1.2.  This caps at 1.0, and to reduce it the remaining .2 of a second requires massive amounts of haste since it has diminishing returns.  This is another stat that I don’t mind having on my gear, but I honestly don’t think it’s worth our time to stack.  We’ll accidently get enough haste to trim that down GCD down below our 1.2 base without trying at all.  

Mp5 – Usually you see Mp5 on an item and people instantly say “healer.”  Well you can’t argue that mana regen isn’t useful, it certainly is.  But, what you have to keep in mind is that this stat does ONLY mana regen, unlike spirit.  So, be aware of how much rejen it’s doing and how much spell power the item may or may not have when comparing it to a spirit based item.  

Spirit - Ok, I saved this for last because I think I love spirit  You got me.  But seriously let’s look at what spirit gives us.  

There is a whole complicated formula about how to calculate your mana regen based on based on your spirit, int, and level.  But 1 spirit isn’t 1 spirit at all.  We have Living Spirit to increase it by 15%, we have an extra 2% from Improved MoTW, and we almost always have Kings for an extra 10%.  So unlike straight Mp5, it scales up from what we see listed on the item with talents and buffs.  1 spirit is more like 1.27 spirit most of the time.  So when you seen an item that says +50 spirit, in your mind you should read +63 spirit.   

For me personally, at level 80, with any accidentally intellect I get on my pieces, 1 spirit (while buffed with gotw and kings) = .77 Mp5 not casting.  With Intensity, which I’m sure we all have, this means that you get approximately .385 Mp5 while casting for every 1 spirit.  

Ah, but we also have Improved Tree of Life to make 15% of our sprit into healing.  

So… as an example I’m going to use my Majestic Dragon Figurine.  Yes, its an iLevel 200.  Yes, I still use it.  It’s almost always fully stacked, meaning it gives me 180 spirit. But what does 180 spirit give me?  Well when I am buffed with GOTW and Kings, this gives me approximately 69 Mp5 while casting, and  34 spell power.  

I’m not saying that you can’t overdo the spirit a bit, I have stated before that I have recently scaled my spirit back to add more spell power with gems and enchants.  But when you compare it to hit, crit, haste, and Mp5 I do think it is the most useful of the optional caster stats for us, mainly because it serves the purpose of increasing both our mana regen and our + healing.  The plus healing is always nice, and have you ever heard someone say “Damn, it sucks that I can give my innervate to the priest that’s out of mana because I don’t need it, I wish I had less mana!”.  I’m simply saying that of the options usually bundled with spellpower & intellect on our gear, weapons and jewelry, sprit seems like the best option!