Gems – For PvE Healing Priests

So, as usual, there are basically a few stats we're pursuing. Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Healing, and Mp5. Each of those stats is aligned to one of the three colors of gems. Red provides Healing; Yellow provides Intellect, and Blue, our beloved, provides Spirit, Stamina and Mp5. I'm not here to tell you that there's a very specific gem you have to target – this depends on you as a healer, your gear, your preferences and your current challenges. Generally though I avoid having any more “yellow” involvement in my gems than necessary – and in those cases I go for Orange or Green, never pure Yellow. As nice as Intellect is, I rarely just want it straight.

Beyond the stats they provide, gems do us two other services. First, if we properly gem our slots we get socket bonuses. They're small, but every point counts. Second, if you're lucky enough to get a head piece that has a meta slot, the ratio or number of gem colors you have filled determine which ones you can use. Remember that an orange gem counts both as a red gem and a yellow gem at the same time for the purposes of fulfilling a meta gem's requirement, and green and purple gems follow similar lines.

There are generally two sources for gems – those crafted by a JC, and those that are dropped in heroic instances. The latter are obviously not a terribly reliable source, but not to be ignored either.

The following table is sorted first by color, then within each color, then by quality – from uncommon to epic.

Meta Gems

For PvE priesty healers there are pretty much two meta gems you want to look at. The first is the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond, which offers 26 bonus healing and 2% reduced threat. An attractive enough set-up – until you check the gem's requirements for activation. It requires that you have more red gems than blue gems socketed. This is often undesirable – as you can see above, blue gems have no less than three kinds of relevant stats, while the red component can only supply bonus healing.

The other option, and the one I recommend, is the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond. It provides 12 intellect and a 5% chance on each spell cast to regenerate 300 mana. Given the frequency of spell casts while healing and the relatively high proc rate, this can result in a fairly high mp5 score. Furthermore, its requirements are easily met – it only requires that you have two red, two yellow and two blue gems socketed. This means you can activate this meta gem with as few as three gems, if they are one orange, one green and one purple.

Making either requires an earthstorm diamond made by an alchemist, with the mats being 3 Deep Peridot, 3 Shadow Draenite, 3 Golden Draenite, 2 Primal Earth and 2 Primal Water. Then a jewelcrafter needs to cut this for you. Tada!