I'm looking for a meta gem recommendation for my Tier 4 helm. Here are the three I'm looking at:

Bracing Earthstorm Diamond (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25897)
Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25901)
ystical Skyfire Diamond (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25893)

y least favorite of the three is the Mystical, because I cast so many instant cast spells that I'm not sure the casting time reduction will come up at the right time to get used. Of the other two, I think the Bracing is my favorite (I've been wanting the threat reduction enchant for my cloak too), but I'd have to re-gem a number of sockets to meet the requirements, and I just finally crested 100mp5 unbuffed.

Any thoughts? Armory link in sig, if desired.

I use the Bracing gem myself: +healing is nice and us druids can sure use the -threat that gives.

Definitely junk the Mystical one. It's useless. 90% of your heals are instant cast. You'll get absolutely no use out of any kind of spell haste abilities.

I've never used the Insightful gem: I can't comment on its proc.

I will tell you only ONE bane I have with the Bracing I have; keeping up with the gem requirements. A lot of my armor is Blue socket armor. Try keeping the above requirement when 4:6 sockets are blue, and you want the socket bonuses. ^_^

I agree with the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond.

*sigh* But I so love my purple gems.

Well, if you don't want to sacrifice your gems, go with the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond. Probably not AS good, but it's what I went with on my shaman. Then again, my shaman has mana issues ( until next patch hopefully ).

*sigh* But I so love my purple gems.

You need more yellow than blue, and more red than yellow.

So that means if you get 1 yellow gem and 2 red gems, you fulfill the requirements.

Pick any yellow gem you like the look of and just fill the rest of your slots with the red +healing gems imho :P Then you can point at people and go BOOOM insta-full health. =)


-Annikk

Bracing requires more yellow than Blue and more Red than blue. The above still work out. The only problem I find is mp5 and +spirit are blue gems. ugh!

I have a setup where I have 3 yellow, 4 red and 2 blue gems. I loose a socket bonus on one piece of armor (+4spirit), but I at least gain it on another (+7healing).

Maybe y'all have fewer sockets than I do... but I have:

6 purple
1 yellow
1 blue
1 orange
2 green

ixed gem colors count as both, so... I effectively have 7 blue vs 2 yellow (the yellow/blue green cancels itself out) and 3 blue vs 1 red (the blue/red purple cancels itself out).

As for the sockets themselves:

2 red
7 blue
2 yellow

Guess I need to look more closely and see which socket bonuses I might not care about.

As far as actual sockets, I have 2 yellow and 4 blue. ha

My wife has Insightful on her shaman. It procs quite frequently and on some off the wall things as well. She could be making potions and have it proc.

Vindler

My wife has Insightful on her shaman. It procs quite frequently and on some off the wall things as well. She could be making potions and have it proc.
How much mana does it return? That's the important question. And as for proc'ing on potions; I hear they are fixing that.

Definitely curious how much mana it returns.

I've heard people say it's about 300mana per proc. And it does in fact proc on instants.

I have run into the same problems myself with meeting the requirements for the Bracing but I have made it work. I am considering changing it though....uggg, decisions, decisions...

Royal Nightseyes are fantastic gems and the way itemization works, alot stronger because the stats were 'rounded up'. I'm wearing Forestlord Striders with 2 blue slots and the pants from Opera. I had to do alot of manuvering to get the meta gem to work and I'm not certain its worth it. Hopefully some gear upgrades will eliminate some of those problems.

I'm a big fan of Purified Jaggal's and Purified Shadow pearls, but that's me. Royal Nightseyes are nice, but overly pricy. The Jaggal's are a nice easy to find fill in which is all good for a resto druid.

I think, but I will have to check, that the pearls are considered a "purple" gem. I know they fall under purple in my spellbook (I am a JC) So...same problem, though the stats are nice.

I ended up going with Insightful Earthstorm, and I have no complaints, other than that the meta gems just don't seem as awesome as they could be. I'd trade my T4 hat for something similar with more 'normal' sockets.