Message from Blizzard: Get your mana regen gear set if you want
to heal in the new instance dungeon (which promises to be very exciting
and with challenging and sophisticated scripted encounters).
Quoted from the Blizzard preview information for the new instance dungeon Ahn'Qiraj set to go live in the 1.9 patch
"All healers need to watch the tank at all times --
which can drop in a blink against Kurinnaxx's stackable-debuffs; and
wear their mana-regen gear. Some of the fights with the first two
bosses are very long. If you do not have mana regen gear, you will
exhaust your healing before the bosses hit half health. That extra mana
per tick can be the difference to keep your tank and team alive."
http://www.blizzplanet.com/?action=...ge&pid=251
From my research on priest gear, a lot of the primo stuff that has mana
regen and still has decent stat bonuses is found in Dire Maul. There
are some occasional items that have mana/5 sec bonuses elsewhere, but
they often have no other stat bonuses. Some of the important pieces in
Dire Maul for priests:
Padre's Trousers
Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas
Mana Channeling Wand
Whipvine Cord (cloth belt)
Ring of Demonic Guile
x2 Mindtap Talismans (mana regen trinkets)
Mindsurge Robes (I have these, not sure if I like them or not. They have 10 / 5sec regen)
I am not an expert on the other healing classes, but I am guessing they also have mana regen gear in Dire Maul also.
The mana regen gear templates basically sacrifice Intelligence for mana
regen or spirit boosts. I find that many of these are of marginal
value, so you have to be careful selecting them when you give up
intelligence. 1 point of intelligence gives you 15 points of mana
capacity. So keep that in mind when you sacrifice high +Int items for
ones with spirit, mana / 5 sec or +healing. Would you rather have 150
mana now (10 points of Int)? Or do you stop healing and wait to regain
150 more mana over the next 2 minutes (10 points of spirit)? Most
groups can't survive if you stop casting for 2 minutes ;-). If you are
in a healing rotation for a boss encounter, you might be able to stop
healing for 2 minutes though.
You have to consider how long you are really going to be fighting.
From my experience, most of the time you are better off with a large
mana pool than better regen capability. The large mana pool allows the
flexibility to pull a party from potential wipes due to tactical errors
(pull too much aggro, someone makes a normal mistake, etc.). In those
cases you are casting fast and need to burst-heal a lot of people
rapidly. You can't wait around for mana regenerate -- people will be
dead in seconds. In almost all testing, you are much better off with
+mana/5 sec gear as opposed to +spirit. Main healers like priests are
almost constantly casting heals, so you will rarely be outside the
5-sec rule for mana to start regenerating. +mana/5sec gear regens your
mana regardless of casting status.
For the really long boss fights that you know are going to be that way
when you start them, mana regen is has a more significant value to the
party. Here is where i can see dragging along secondary armor pieces
that I can swap out for higher regen for those specific encounters.
The nice thing I have seen about the Dire Maul gear is that they still
have decent +Int bonuses while ALSO giving you respectable +mana/5 sec
bonuses. I can often justify wearing them all the time.