Trinket Talk Part 1

Trinkets are confusing. There are so many of them, they have so many different stats, and then there’s the procs and on-use abilities. Some give you additional spell power, some give you stacking spell power, some reduce the cost of your next spell…it’s enough to drive a spreadsheet loving mathematician nuts. So that’s why I’m going to point out two blue trinkets that are relatively easy to get and unexpectedly good.

Soul Preserver

This guy, which drops from Mal’ganis in regular (and only regular) Culling of Stratholme, doesn’t look too special at first glance. Looks a lot like the Eye of Gruul from TBC, just updated for 80. You might even pass on this to a Paladin that wants it for his holy set since they’re ALWAYS casting spells.

Well sir (or madam) you’d be missing a small and interesting little side-note for this trinket.

The proc, which makes your next cast cost 800 less mana, procs off every heal, not just casts. That means every full jump glyphed chain heal has 4 chances to proc this. Every earthliving tick from that chain heal has a chance to proc this. Your riptide ticks can proc it. Even with a 2% proc rate, that’s still a lot of procs. Numbers on the EJ forums suggest an effective mp5 rate ranging from 33-141 mp5, which, with the spell power, makes this a formidable trinket especially if you’re spamming chain heals.

The icing on the cake: no internal cooldown right now.

Spark of Life

While a bit more difficult to obtain than the Soul Preserver, this trinket, which drops off Sjonnir The Ironshaper in Heroic Halls of Stone, is slightly more geared towards 25 man raid level healing, which emphasizes haste and chain heal spam more than in 5 and 10 mans.

First off: haste rating. Always good.

But then the proc. Similar to the Soul Preserver, any proc that grants or deducts mana can be converted into an effective mp5 rate when chain casting, which you’ll be doing as a resto shaman in raids.

This trinket? 40-60 effective mp5 depending on haste rating and level of spam. Even factoring in the 45s internal cooldown, this trinket still gives significantly more effective mp5 than other options.

What makes both these trinkets especially nice is that the heroic level mp5 trinket, the Winged Talisman, only sports 29mp5 and an on-use rather than passive effect.

While there are some better trinkets down the line, these two are relatively easy to obtain pre-raid and can provide a significant edge to the plucky and undergeared resto shaman.