Playstyle

PvE Is Not Easy

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If you peruse large WoW communities – the official forums, the big gaming websites, trade channel (*shudder*) – you’ll see a common thread: ever-so-terribly leet players telling us that PvE content is easy, that if you fail on X encounter you’re terribad, that anyone with half a brain could faceroll through this stuff, et cetera.

Well, they’re wrong.

I’m not talking about the current level of raiding content – that is, indeed, pitched at a less challenging level than most, if not all, of TBC content. (Which is not to say it’s trivial – it’s certainly not, especially for inexperienced raiders.)

No, I’m talking about the blithe statements, usually made either by hardcore raiders, hardcore PvPers or disparaging ex-WoW-players, that all raiding is easy, that you can’t help but win if you don’t suck.

One of the popular measures for ‘not being bad’ is managing spatial awareness and 3D movement. Well, you know what? Those tests of spatial awareness and movement (Frogger boss, I’m looking at you) probably are trivial if you have the reflexes of a 20-year-old, or you grew up playing FPSes, console games and arcade games.

Hi, I’m thirty-three, and I avoided combat games like the plague. I never owned a console growing up, I spent very little time in arcades, and the first time I had access to a computer capable of running games more advanced than NetHack was in my second year of University. Granted, I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time playing games since then, but they’ve largely been RPGs and strategy/simulation games because I’m not a particularly aggressive or competitive person. (Please note that ‘not competitive’ and ‘not performance-oriented’ are not synonymous.)

Frankly, I’m sick of the attitude that treats WoW like another twitch-based FPS game, and that rates these skills above everything else. If you’re going to ignore the fact that my tanking is good, my DPS is fine, or that I just saved your ass with a split-second heal, just to mock me for dying on Frogger? Kindly shut up.

(True confession: sometimes, just sometimes, I turn with my keyboard. Gasp! Yes, it’s true! Guess what? It’s never gotten me killed, and it’s never caused a wipe.)

Edit: Based on some of the comments, I should probably clarify: this is not ‘Confession of a Terribad Raider’ time, because I don’t think I am. I certainly could do better, particularly on movement issues, but I do okay. (For the record, I’ve only ever died on Frogger twice – once in a 40-man because I’d never seen it before and no-one explained it, and recently in a 10-man, purely due to lag. I’ve never failed the Thaddius jump, I’ve never been beaten by the Ledge Boss or the Pipe Boss, and I haven’t been hit by a lava wave on Sartharion since the first time I did the fight. I did, however, once fall off a ledge in Karazhan for absolutely no reason at all, which caused a lot of hilarity.)

What this post actually was intended to be – and this probably didn’t come across clearly, since I was writing it at 7am after a night of zero sleep – was expressing my frustration at the elitists who’ve been practising these skills for half their lives, who do not ever stop to think that not everyone has the same training they do.

Media

Video: The Craft of War: BLIND

4 Comments

I don’t generally watch a lot of machinima, but this one’s just amazing. A professional animator has used the WoW models, textures and scenery to create a very cool little story – and one hell of a fight scene. It’s called ‘The Craft of War: BLIND’ by Percula.

Watch it via the embed if you wish:


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

but I recommend viewing it in full size on Vimeo if you can.

(Link via Binary Colors.)

Okay, now I’m really going to bed, I swear.

Meta

Banana Shoulders in 2008

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As so often happens, I’m taking a leaf out of Leafshine’s book (hah, sorry).

As with so many other WoW blogs, 2008 was the first full year of Banana Shoulders’ existence. I took a long hiatus across May – I posted only six times between mid-April and mid-June – but despite that, traffic numbers returned to their previous levels and grew well beyond them thanks to what I hope, at least, was some useful and relevant content.

A lot of my traffic comes from search engine referrals, and as a result my most popular posts tend to be those laden with crunchy data. Still, nothing compares to the sense of achievement when I see someone recommend my blog as a good source of information. On that note – if there’s something you want me to discuss, and I’m not covering it, please ask!

So, on to the most popular posts of 2008:

10. Brewfest – Preparing for Achievements (September) 2,600+ views.
The timing on Brewfest this year was funny; it was just before we were expecting patch 3.0 to hit, so people knew what the Achievement system involved and were starting to prepare to get as many Achievements as possible.

9. Sunwell Dailies: the Guide (February)
This was basically a complete guide to all the new dailies in patch 2.4, helping people navigate all the confusing daily chains. I really enjoyed the SSO world event, and I hope Blizz does more stuff like this in future.

8. Breaking News: New Facial Models (September)
At one point in the WotLK beta, all the skins and facial models for a number of races were changed, and I was one of the first people to present visual examples. (I got bombed with hits from WoWInsider.) Not long after the community started freaking out, Blizz reversed the changes and said they were just testing something (which I still don’t credit). I actually quite liked Sailan 2.0, and I wouldn’t be sad to see those changes introduced for good.

7. Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Sheet for WotLK (November)
The original TBC version of this quick reference sheet was something I put together for my guild to see exactly what I could do (as I was, and still am, our most active jewelcrafter). On impulse I threw it up here on the blog and people loved it, so I felt a WotLK version would be just as useful. Given the plethora of cuts in WotLK, I couldn’t get by without it.

6. Wrath Jewelcrafting Dailies and Epic Gems (August)
This was where I broke the news about the new mechanism for learning Jewelcrafting patterns in WotLK, and it still gets a heck of a lot of google traffic. Now we know how things work it’s not terribly helpful, which is why I wrote yesterday’s guide to the JC dailies.

5. WotLK Wallpapers (July)
Back when everyone was hungry for glimpses of Northrend, I provided these wallpapers from the beta. Interesting to note how some of the scenery (especially Dalaran) has changed.

4. Professional Advantages (October)
This is a post I still refer to now; it grew out of me trying to work out which professions gave what benefits in WotLK. I’m glad other people found it useful too.

3. Pre-Raid Holy Paladin Gear List, v.1 (December)
Only posted in December and already it’s in the top ten posts – ah, the mighty Googlepower of gear lists. Not that I wrote it as Google-bait; it was mostly a case of me poring over WoWhead and putting together some gear lists for myself, and then thinking “hang on, I bet other people would find these useful”. Of course, since I hate writing gear lists, it took about three weeks longer than I intended.

2. Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK (August)
This is another of those posts that grew out of me working something out for myself. I’d read up on the gearing and mechanical changes fairly early in the piece, but a lot of other people seemed to be confused or misinformed, so I felt a summary and guide to the changes wouldn’t go astray.

1. The Inscription Levelling Guide (September) 14,000+ views.
(and in fact the companion posts scored thousands of visits themselves, but I didn’t list them here as that’d make the list rather boring). New content on this kind of scale is tremendously popular, and I’d already seen that with the Jewelcrafting guide I wrote during the TBC beta. At least this time around I knew how best to tackle it! Dropping and relearning Inscription five times got tedious, though.

And there you have it; the high points of 2008. I hope I’ve stlll got things left to say in 2009!

Game Info

Jewelcrafting Dailies

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More of my Google traffic comes from ‘jewelcrafting dailies’ than any other single search term, so obviously people are looking for some good information. Hope this helps.

Unlike most other tradeskills, there’s a daily quest for Jewelcrafters to complete. Each daily rewards you with 13.23 gold (or 7.4 gold and 12,650 experience if you’re doing it before level 80), 25 Kirin Tor reputation, and the most important thing: a Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Token. These tokens are essential to acquire for any serious jewelcrafter; they’re used to purchase most of the core rare-quality gem cuts (for more on the cuts available in WotLK, see this post). The tokens are also used to buy recipes for high-quality crafted necklaces and rings, as well as the raw gems for JC-only cuts.

The Questgiver

All of the quests come from one NPC, Timothy Jones in Dalaran. He’s also the main Jewelcrafting Trainer.

Jewelcrafting Trainer Location

The Quests

You can’t do the daily quests until you’ve completed a basic starter quest from Timothy called Finish the Shipment, which just asks you to take him a raw Chalcedony gem. The quest is available at level 65 and requires 375 Jewelcrafting skill.

Once you’ve completed that, Timothy gives one daily quest a day, selected randomly from the following list:

Each quest involves combining a quest item from a Northrend mob with two different uncommon-quality raw gems. As with the starter quest, the dailies are available at level 65 and require 375 Jewelcrafting skill.

Note that there’s no actual crafting involved; once you have the quest item and the gems, just right-click the quest item to combine it into the final hand-in.

The gem requirements are balanced, in that if you did all six quests once each, you’d need two of each type of uncommon gem.

Blood Jade Amulet

The quest item drops off any Vrykul in Northrend.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: vrykul around Kaskala in Borean Tundra, or outside Valgarde in Howling Fjord.
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: vrykul in Ymirheim in Icecrown, or Valkyrion in Storm Peaks.
  • Can combine with: a run through Utgarde Keep or Utgarde Pinnacle, as it can drop from the Vrykul in there, or the various daily quests for Ymirheim (from Orgrim’s Hammer/the Skybreaker) or Valkyrion (from Brunnhildar Village).

Bright Armor Relic

Northrend Revenants

The quest item drops off elementals in Northrend.

The quest description says the item comes from revenants, the new style of elemental mob found in Northrend, but other elementals do carry them as well.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: Ice Revenants at the frozen lake east of Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight, .
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: Crystalline Ice Elementals in the North of Dragonblight.
  • Can combine with: farming in Wintergrasp, the Hot and Cold daily quest for Sons of Hodir, a Halls of Lightning run, or any number of other quests.

Glowing Ivory Figurine

The quest item drops off any shoveltusk in Northrend.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: shoveltusk packs all over Howling Fjord.
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: shoveltusk packs all over Howling Fjord.
  • Can combine with: not much. Farming for meat, perhaps, if you’re a cook.

Intricate Bone Figurine

The quest item drops off any proto-drake, small or large, in Northrend.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: Proto-Whelps in the Ember Clutch in Howling Fjord.
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: Stormpeak Wyrms in the centre of Storm Peaks.
  • Can combine with: an Utgarde Keep run.

Shifting Sun Curio

The quest item drops off any ‘scourge mob’ in Northrend. This basically means almost all undead. Check this list to see who drops it.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: take your pick, seriously.
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: mobs south-east of Mordrethar in Icecrown, or ghouls around Galakrond’s Rest in Dragonblight.
  • Can combine with: Ahn’Kahet, Drak’Tharon Keep, CoT: Stratholme, Utgarde Keep, Utgarde Pinnacle, Naxxramas, or any number of daily quests.

Wicked Sun Brooch

The quest item drops off any iron dwarf in Northrend.

  • Easiest for low-level JCs: the iron dwarves in Giants’ Run in Howling Fjord.
  • Closest to Dalaran for high-level JCs: Stormforged Dwarves around the Temple of Storms in Storm Peaks.
  • Can combine with: nothing significant.

Damaged Necklaces: The Non-Daily Repeatable

Apart from the daily quests listed above, there is one way to get Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Tokens. Acquire a Damaged Necklace (which is a BoE drop, and usually sells on the AH for hundreds of gold), and use it to start the quest. The quest asks you to repair the necklace using an uncut chalcedony, and then return it to Timothy Jones.

Unsurprisingly, the Damaged Necklaces are as rare as hen’s teeth, and will possibly cost you an arm and a leg on your realm’s AH. (They’re 600g or more on my server’s Alliance AH, for instance.) However, if you’re desperate for extra tokens and you just can’t wait, they’re your only option.

Playstyle

Siha Has Lots And Lots Of Class

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Pike recently tried to convince us that she has no class, which is a patently false idea.

I, however, can proudly assert that I have lots and lots of class. Observe:

Siha bought WoW, installed it, and rolled a paladin. To this day she can’t remember why, except that she’s always loved playing healers, and a melee healer sounded like fun. She tried levelling as holy, which was fine until things got very slow and tiresome in the mid-30s, and a guildmate convinced her to swap to Retribution. Whee! Siha duoed her way to 60 with her best friend, who played a hunter. Good times. A couple of months after saying the fateful words “Oh, I don’t think raiding’s really something I am interested in”, Siha was spotted in MC, up to her elbows in fire elementals and healing like crazy.

Somewhere along the way, Siha decided she had some free time (hah) and rolled a druid. It was slow, and horrible, and got shelved around level 9. Months later she dusted off the druid, got to level 10, and bearformed her way through Ashenvale. Cat made things go faster, but Siha has decided she fundamentally hates feral. Druid is currently stalled at level 40; every few months Siha logs her on, runs in circles for 10 minutes, giggles at the moonkin /dance, and logs off again in boredom. In principle, Siha loves druids; in practice, the druid is shelved.

Siha rolled a hunter. She got it to level 17, got bored, and lost interest. The hunter is now her herb banker.

Siha rolled a priest. She got it to level 12, and shelved it. She later realised she’d lost interest because she didn’t like the way the priest looked. The priest is now her food banker.

Siha rolled two rogues, a warrior, and a warlock. None of them made it into double figures before getting deleted.

Siha rolled another priest (who was actually named Siha), and stuck with it. Levelling was slow going until she got shadow form, and then she fairly zoomed along. The priest hit 60, and Siha raided on her a bit, but she always felt a bit pointless because the paladin was so much better-geared and could do the job so much better. Siha later levelled her to 70 and raided in TBC with her as a disc/holy DPS/heal hybrid and really enjoyed it.

Siha rolled – look, let’s be honest, and say Siha rolled another banker. This one was warrior-flavoured.

Siha bought another account to make room for all her bankers. On the new account she rolled a mage, and loved it. Stuff died fast, and things went boom, and Siha cackled madly all the way to 60. The last few levels were a crazy slog; the mage hit 60 in a Strat Dead pug literally 8 hours before TBC’s midnight launch. This was to allow her to dual-box the paladin and mage through outland, since the paladin was an alchemist/jewelcrafter and the mage was a herbalist/miner.

Siha discovered she hates dual-boxing.

Siha rolled a draenei shaman, like every other alliance player. Siha actually really liked it, although she made life harder for herself by levelling as elemental despite a complete lack of spellpower mail. Shaman currently on hiatus at level 60.

Siha rolled another hunter, and enjoyed it, right up til level 10. Then, inexplicably, got bored and eventually deleted it.

Siha rolled a warrior on another server to play with a friend, and hated it. Shelved at 17, and not entirely sure which server she’s languishing on, either.

Siha rolled a Horde hunter. Shelved at level 26.

Siha rolled a Horde warlock, and quite enjoyed it, but missed her guild and her vast stash of tradeskill mats. Shelved at level 27ish.

Siha rolled a dwarf rogue and loved it, and stabbed face along with a group of friends levelling together, all the way up til about level 68. Then Siha discovered what she loved about rogue was the way they play in world PvE, and that she doesn’t actually enjoy single-minded melee DPS in instances. The rogue is currently shelved at 69, parked in Dalaran to make potions and engineering thingies, although she’ll probably get levelled as a solo character in six months or so.

Siha rolled an Alliance warlock and enjoyed it, but is unmotivated to play it more. It’s okay, she supposes, but feels a bit ‘meh’ about the whole thing. She wonders if she might enjoy it more when soloing, where the versatility of the warlock will be more useful. Shelved at 64ish.

Siha rolled hunter #4 and is really enjoying it. She is surprised by this. Levelling interrupted by the arrival of WotLK, currently sitting in the teens.

Siha rolled a death knight, and looks forward to playing it, but can’t get motivated to actually finish the starting area quests after playing through them too many times in the beta test.

Siha admits that she might perhaps have a teeny weeny addiction to alts.

—

I’m off for some New Year’s celebrations, so I’ll see you all in 2009. Which means I’d better hurry up, as that’s only an hour and a half away. Happy New Year, all!

Game Info

Item Changes in 3.0.8

6 Comments

A few of the items I recommended in my Pre-Raid Healadin Gear Guide are seeing some changes next patch, and they’re worth looking at. (Source: this MMO-Champion thread.)

  • The Titansteel Guardian is being nerfed; its spellpower is being reduced from 490 to 457. Other stats are unchanged. It’s still an excellent mace, and worth getting if you can’t get your hands on something better, but it’s now a less competitive alternative if you do have the War Mace of Unrequited Love from Heroic Keristrasza.
  • Je’Tze’s Bell is becoming BoE. That’s a damn nice trinket, although I suspect prices are going to be sky-high.

Carry on!

Game Info, Playstyle

Two Wintergrasp Tips

3 Comments

Two handy Wintergrasp tips for you:

  • It’s a great place to get the With A Little Helper From My Friends achievement. WG is one place where it’s fairly easy to get a lot of HKs without getting repeatedly killed by the other side, provided you’re smart and you use cover and teamwork appropriately. It’s easier if you’re the defending team, of course. And best of all, there’s no deserter debuff – if you loseWeight Exercise your gnomeness halfway into the match, just nip out, regnomify yourself, and get back in there to finish the battle. I got all my kills in about 25 minutes of a defending WG this morning.
  • If you’re a healer, you can heal from the back of a moving siege engine. I had always assumed it would be impossible for spells with a cast time, that you’d get prevented due to movement, or that you’d be locked out from doing anything when you’re a passenger. But no! Protected by the tank, and free to cast to my heart’s content? I have a new favourite hobby.
Game Info

The Importance of Intellect, Redux

8 Comments

This is an update to this post, taking into account some factors I’d forgotten.

For people who don’t want to follow the math, here’s the conclusion up-front: Given items of equal quality, gearing for Intellect is better than gearing for mp5.

Read on to find out why!

Introduced in patch 3.0.2, there are a number of new/revised sources of mana regen that are based on your total mana, and therefore scale directly with Intellect:

Divine Plea
This is the new paladin spell at level 71; it restores 25% of your total mana over 15 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown (and a debuff to healing done).

Replenishment
This is the new raid regen buff granted by Shadow Priests, Retribution Paladins and Survival Hunters. It “causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second” whenever the priest, paladin or hunter uses a particular ability.

In addition, if you happen to raid regularly with a resto shaman, the Mana Tide Totem restores 24% of total mana over 12 seconds.

Doing the Math
To see how these balance out against mp5-based regen, let’s look at the value of 500 Intellect. (Note that I won’t be assuming the presence of Blessing of Kings, as you may not have access to it – and with current gearing levels it’s inferior to Blessing of Wisdom for regen anyway.)

500 Intellect on gear becomes 575 Intellect in play, thanks to Divine Intellect. 575 Int is worth 8625 mana. Assuming regen abilities are used on cooldown, on 8625 mana:

  • Divine Plea can return 2156 mana per minute, equivalent to about 180 mp5.
  • Replenishment can return up to 21.56 mana per second, equivalent to 107 mp5. This is dependent on uptime; 100% uptime is fairly unlikely.
  • Mana Tide Totem can restore 2070 mana every 5 minutes, equivalent to 34 mp5.

500 Intellect therefore gives anywhere from 180-321 mp5, depending on your group composition and the uptime of their regen abilities.

However, looking at the item value of Intellect vs mp5, 500 intellect costs you the same itemisation budget as 200 mp5, which is only 20 mp5 more than the mana return of Divine Plea alone.

Illumination and Crits
That increased intellect has another effect: it increases your crit chance, which increases your mana return from casting spells. This is a lot harder to model, because the mana returns from crit rating are very variable, depending on your spell choice and casting frequency. However, doing some rough napkin math:

500 Int on gear becomes 575 Int in play for a holy paladin; 575 Int equals about 3.45% spell crit, according to this Elitist Jerks post.

Using a very rough casting model (which assumes that you’re using about 60% Flashes of Light, 20% Holy Lights and 20% Holy Shocks; that you’re keeping up Sacred Shield on one target, Beacon of Light, and Judging once a minute for Seals of the Pure; and that your Haste compensates for time lost to positioning), 1% crit chance restores about the same amount of mana, over time, as 10 mp5. This assumes near-constant casting, which is typical of a paladin healer; however, even if you’re spending up to 40% of your time not casting, 3.45% spell crit still provides as much mana return as 20 mp5.

The Bottom Line

Assuming you use Divine Plea on every cooldown, and that you spend at least 60% of each fight casting, gearing for Intellect gives you as much mana return as gearing for mp5. In addition, gearing for intellect gives you extra mana return from Mana Tide Totems and Replenishment if you have access to them (up to 78% extra mana return, in fact). And, finally, gearing for intellect increases your healing output as well, by increasing your spellpower (via Holy Guidance) and your crit rate.

The Caveat

Don’t eschew mp5 completely.

Yes, gearing for intellect is better than gearing for mp5, assuming items of equal quality. However, you’re often not choosing between items of completely equal quality, and you shouldn’t disdain mp5 to the point where you’re discarding otherwise-excellent items just because they have mp5 on them. Mp5 is not a dirty word – it still does the same job it always did, it’s just that now Intellect does it better.

Game Info

Gemming Your Holy Paladin

19 Comments

Time for the next installment in my series of ‘How To Gear Your Paladin In WotLLK’ posts: Holy Paladin Gem Choices. This is an issue that’s been somewhat complexified by the mountain of new gem cuts in WotLK.

Updated 1 Feb 09 to include the Reckless orange cut and adjust recipes based on 3.0.8.

In general, I will be talking about gemming for maximum effect (for PvE), not ‘how to use up your stockpiles of old gems’. Therefore, the first lesson:

  • Do not use TBC-era gems! No, not even epic gems. Even uncommon-quality WotLK gems are better than the very epic-est of TBC gems. Compare, say, Runed Bloodstone and Runed Crimson Spinel if you don’t believe me.
The Bottom Line:

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to look at each type of gem in a little more detail. I’ll list the gems of each color that are appropriate for paladin healers, and then we’ll look at the pros and cons of each gem.

The Choices

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Purple

Meta

Choosing the Gems

So, that’s a lot of gems to choose from. When you’re making these choices, you really have to consider four major factors:

  • Mathematical advantage. Some stats are just stronger than others for holy paladins, because of the nature of our game mechanics. See this post for a discussion of why gearing (and gemming and enchanting) for Intellect is better than mp5, for example.
  • The stats you need for the content you’re doing. Mechanical advantage aside, nobody knows your gear better than you. If you need more healing output, gem for spellpower. If you’re PvPing, gem for crit and haste, for mobility. If you’re running out of mana, gem for Int/mp5/Crit.
  • Socket bonuses. As I’ve said before, many people get tunnel vision, and pick gems based on socket color regardless of how good the socket bonus is. Others ignore the socket bonus and gem for one stat with no exceptions. Neither choice is necessarily the wisest.

    A piece of gear with two blue sockets and a 3 mp5 socket bonus? I’d ignore that, and stick two red spellpower gems into it. A piece of gear with a red and a yellow socket, and a 5 spellpower socket bonus? That’s probably worth sticking to.

  • Meta gems. All other considerations aside, sometimes you have to socket a slightly sub-optimal gem for the sake of activating your meta gem.

Now you know the factors involved, let’s look at what to socket where.

Red Sockets

Runed Scarlet Ruby, no question.

In fact, if you’re not constricted by meta gem activation or an appealing socket bonus, this gem is arguably stronger than any other color gem and you can use it comfortably in any socket. However, if you need to socket other colors too, read on:

Blue Sockets

You’re really choosing between 9 Spellpower (Royal Twilight Opal), 8 Intellect (Dazzling Forest Emerald), 8 Haste Rating (Energized Forest Emerald) or 8 Crit Rating (Sundered Forest Emerald). All other factors being equal, I’d go for the Royal Twilight Opal again.

Yellow Sockets

Yellow has better choices than blue; none of these gems are really bad to socket, and depending on the kind of content you’re doing and the role you’re playing in your team, they often make for a more well-rounded gear set than pure spellpower gems anyway.

Avoid any of the green gems for this socket, and look at yellow and orange gems. Pretty much any of the orange or yellow gems I listed above are acceptable, in fact – although make sure you’re not needlessly piling on auxiliary stats like Haste at the expense of your mana pool or crit rating. Int and Crit are both multi-purpose, improving throughput and mana longevity; by comparison, Haste only improves throughput.

My personal preference is the Luminous Monarch Topaz or Potent Monarch Topaz for the balance of stats they provide. The Reckless Monarch Topaz is also acceptable if you’re trying to build up your Haste rating, but I generally feel that there’s more than enough Haste directly on gear and you’re better off gemming for Int or Crit.

Meta Sockets

Of the options I listed, the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is the strongest choice; +Int has come into its own as a stat for paladins, and the proc is very powerful: +600 mana, 5% proc rate, possibly with an internal cooldown of 15 seconds.

Elitist Jerks has a comparison of meta gems in this thread and the IED comes out far ahead. The next best choice is the Ember Skyflare Diamond. Really crit-stacked healadins may also like the Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond but it’s still probably not strong enough to compete with the IED.

Also note that there are a few PvP-oriented meta gems that may prove very useful in specific content, such as those with reduced Fear/Silence/Stun duration, or improved run speed. You can see a complete list of jewelcrafter-cut WotLK meta gems with this WoWhead filter.