I was looking to buy these but... I now have to say,
for PvE priests, the blue
Hallowed Trousers is better!
With these you have +90 Health Points and +52 Armor. Hardly the stats to look for in PvE. This is only useful on the occasion when an extra 90 health would have saved you.
The difference in mana is +31.2. Barely anything...
This item has no spirit, but if you have Improved Divine Spirit and Spiritual Guidance, your Spirit is going to make a small difference in healing and mana regen.
I also have Spirit of Redemption (+5% spirit) which makes
Hallowed Trousers' numbers a little higher, but many PvE priests have that as well.
With those 3 talents the comparison between the two is:
Achromic Trousers of the Naaru:
+21.4 Healing
-10.5 mp5
+2.85% Spell Haste
Because you can never spam Flash Heal faster than 1.5sec because the global cooldown is 1.5sec, the only 2 spells this affects are
Greater Heal and
Prayer of Healing.
Greater Heal = 2.43sec (-0.07sec)
Prayer of healing = 2.92sec (-0.08sec)
The following stay at 1.5sec due to the global cooldown
Prayer of Mending
Renew
Flash Heal
Binding Heal
Circle of Healing
Gift of the Naaru (if Draenei)
Spell Haste is great if it's stacked up, but here (-0.07/0.08sec on 2 spells) doesn't seem to make a huge deal of difference.
Which leads me to mainly compare:
+21.4 Healing
-10.5 mp5
In my opinion, +21.4 healing
is not worth 10.5 mp5 in any long encounter (raid bosses). If you never, ever get low on mana during a raid boss, then fine, this is an upgrade.
Blizzard didn't think so either.
Compare 2 gems of the same level:
Lustrous Star of Elune 3mp5 and
Teardrop Living Ruby +18 Healing
1mp5 = +6 healing
Lustrous Azure Moonstone 2mp5 and
Teardrop Blood Garnet +13 Healing
1mp5 = 6.5 healing
Blizzard assigns a value of importance to each stat and uses that value in a formula when creating gear (or when randomly generating things like "of the Boar" gear) to make sure that items aren't overpowered. Their formula puts 1mp5 around the same as +6 Healing.
So 10mp5 would equal around +60-65 Healing.
BECAUSE OF THE CHANGE TO THE PRIEST TALENT "MEDITATION" SPIRIT PLAYS A MUCH BIGGER ROLE IN MANA REGEN. My guess is that this was balanced using the old system of 15% mp5 from Meditation instead of the 30% that it is today. It would've been closer to 5mp5 (30 Healing) before 2.3
Of course it all needs to be balanced on your character and you are the one who can best figure out where your weak points are (Healing or Mana regen).
