As I just mentioned, I picked up the [Vial of the Sunwell] last night in Heroic Magister’s Terrace, and I’ve been trying to assess its value.

A brief attack of theorycrafting (hello, Excel spreadsheets) later, and here’s what we’ve got:

Assumptions

• Healer is a paladin
• Healer uses approximately 75% Flash of Lights and 25% Holy Lights
• Healer is chain-casting
• Trinket is used every time the cooldown is up

Results

• On raw numbers, given the assumptions above, Vial of the Sunwell is worth 15 mp5 and approximately 55 +heal.
• Apart from raw numbers, this trinket has some particular strengths:
  • Triggering the “Use:” effect doesn’t activate the global cooldown, meaning it stacks nicely on top of your regular healing rotation, and can either be macroed into your regular healing macro, or be used when you need burst healing to supplement your heals without eating a GCD.
  • Unlike many trinket effects you can ‘charge it up’ ahead of time; the Holy Energy buff (which represents the collected energy, and stacks to 20) has no duration. This means that you can charge it up with 20 rank 1 heals before a fight starts.
  • Edit: As Matticus just pointed out to me in chat, the effect of the trinket isn’t suppressed by silences, so it’s great for use on fights with silence effects and big damage, like Gruul and Nalorakk.
  • Note that the effect can crit, for 3000 healing.

Variations

• The figures aren’t wildly different for paladins with different casting rotations. Chaincasting 100% Holy Light lands somewhere around 47 +heal; chaincasting 100% Flash of Light equates to around 58 +heal.
• Keeping the same casting rotation, and instead assuming you’re only casting 75% of the time instead of chain-casting, the value of the trinket rises to an equivalent of around 72 +heal.
• It is important to note that this trinket doesn’t magically do more for you just because you’re casting less often. These numbers are equivalents to give you an idea of the end effect of the trinket, compared with other alternatives you might equip.

Healing trinkets can often be difficult to analyse, because they offer stats and effects that you don’t typically find on other items. MK of A Dwarf Priest said it best: “you should carry multiple trinkets and select based on your needs for the given encounter.”. That’s an excellent post analysing healing trinkets, incidentally, and I recommend it for all healers. Of course, if you’re a pally or shaman, a lot of the numerical rankings won’t apply as we get zero benefit out of Spirit, but the overall listing and analysis is excellent.

So, let’s take a look at the numbers on one much-misunderstood trinket: the Alchemist’s Stone.

Alchemist’s Stone
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
+15 Strength
+15 Agility
+15 Stamina
+15 Intellect
+15 Spirit
Requires Alchemy (350)
Equip: Increases the effect that healing and mana potions have on the wearer by 40%. This effect does not stack.

This is very much an all-rounder trinket. From a healadin perspective, though:

• +15 Str and +15 Agi are irrelevant.
• +15 Stam is nice for survivability but doesn’t affect our efficacy.
• +15 Spi is only relevant if you’re getting innervated, which is pretty unlikely.
• +15 Int is useful. It provides +150 mana, and equates to 0.21% spell crit (or the equivalent of 4-5 Spell Crit Rating) and +5.8 spelldamage and healing.
• +40% output on healing and mana potions.
  • As far as I know, this works on any health/mana potion that shares a cooldown with healing and mana potions – so it works on Healing and Mana potions of all strengths, Bottled Nethergon Energy, Mad Alchemist’s Potions, and all those other lovely potions. (See this post for a summary.)
  • Looking at a Super Mana Potion (or instance-specific equivalent), their range of mana return increases, with this trinket, to 2520 – 4200 mana. This is an average return of 3360 mana per potion, or an equivalent of 140 mp5 if you’re chain-potting (compared to equivalent 100 mp5 for chain-potting without this trinket).
• Therefore: this trinket is worth: 15 Int (approx 4.5 Spell Crit rating, 5.8 Healing, and 150 mana), and up to 40 mp5 if you’re chain-potting.

Note that the mana return from trinkets like this scales down sharply on fights where you’re not taking a potion on every cooldown. Also note that, like mana return on spell crit, it’s not true mp5 – true mp5 mana regen is passive, and valuable because it returns mana without you having to cast or drink a potion. I tend to work things out in terms of mp5 because it provides an easy mechanic for comparing two items – but if you do that, you must remember that an mp5 equivalent is only equivalent as long as you’re meeting the conditions – chain-potioning for this trinket, chain-casting for spell crit, etc.

Upshot: Minor benefits to healing, spell crit and mana pool. Up to 40 mp5 depending on frequency of potion use.
Use: Fights where you’ll want to chain-chug mana potions.

And now let’s take a look at the upgraded version! The recipe for this trinket will be available in patch 2.4, from the Shattered Sun Offensive quartermaster at Exalted reputation.

Redeemer’s Alchemist’s Stone
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Requires Alchemy (350)
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 119 and damage done by up to 40 for all magical spells and effects.
Equip: Increases the effect that healing and mana potions have on the wearer by 40%. This effect does not stack.

So, this variant loseWeight Exercises the +15 to all stats, in exchange for a big +heal boost that makes this trinket worth it regardless of your potion use – this is on par with Tier 6 trinkets. As a bonus, it retains the same potion boost as the previous version.

Upshot: +119 healing, up to +40 mp5 depending on potion use.
Use: Anywhere, particularly healing-intensive situations where you’ll be throwing big heals and relying on mana potions rather than mp5. Great for progression fights.