Balance Druid Gemming confusion.

To make things short and simple, basically, I quit the game for a bit then came back. Now, before I quit, Balance essentially just stacked red Spell Power Gems; however, after coming back, I've seen many, many, many Balance Druids on my server gemming for sp/hast/ and sp/crit. Either they're dumb or I'm way behind. I looked up on the many different sites which had varying opinions.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...don&cn=Sayalol

Here's my armory. Am I gemming correctly or am I just completely retarded and behind? If so, what should I do? Please and thank you.

Logging out in feral gear doesn't help much. Looking at just cached information from a month ago on wow-heroes for your Balance gear some of this may be outdated.

First off what you need to understand is as a DPS, you gem to maximize that stat, DPS. Or the theoretical calculated value of what you will do following the optimal rotation. While 23 spellpower is very nice, 10 crit with 12 spell power and a socket bonus of 9 spellpower yeilds way more DPS. You net a loss of 2 spellpower but gain 10 crit. This example pretains to your tier 9 helm in particular. To better understand how each stat increase affects you, you should take a look at the WrathCalcs DPS spreadsheet attached to the bottom of Hamlet's guide over at Elitist Jerks.
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-m...dated_3_3_3_a/

Under the haste soft cap, haste is more benefitial than crit. Once over the soft cap however crit now has greater benefit in general. Above both the crit and haste soft caps (where Wrath cast time is 1 second under Nature's Grace and Starfire crit chance is over 100% during Eclipse) they are about equal in value. Since they are about equal and the crit soft cap is significantly higher, most will continue to favor crit.

Gemming for balance generally follows these rules.

If it is a Red or a Prismatic (i.e. belt buckle, color irrelevant) socket, it would always be a Runed Cardinal Ruby. While under the haste soft cap, haste may have slightly more benefit than pure spellpower, since the soft cap is so low most would use pure spellpower cut simply so they don't need to bother regemming it later if they exceed the soft cap. This socket should always be met.

If it is a yellow socket and the socket bonus is worth going for it should be filled with your ideal orange cut (either haste or crit with spellpower depending on where your haste is currently at). Reckless Ametrine or Potent Ametrine.
Is the socket bonus worth it?
If it is a single socket (5 spellpower bonus) it is worth it. Otherwise you would put a Runed Cardinal Ruby in it instead.
If it has two sockets and the other socket is red (7 spellpower bonus) it is worth it. Otherwise you would put a Runed Cardinal Ruby in it instead.
If it has three sockets and at least one is red and there are no blue sockets (9 spellpower, either 2 yellow and 1 red or 2 red and 1 yellow) it is worth it. Otherwise you would put in a Runed Cardinal Ruby.

If it is a blue socket the ideal cut is a Purified Dreadstone.
Is the bonus worth it?
If it is a single socket (5 spellpower bonus) it is only worth it if you need it to satisfy the meta requirement. Otherwise you would put a Runed Cardinal Ruby in it instead.
If it is a two socket and the other socket is red (7 spellpower) it is the most common to use these to meet your meta requirement. It will net a small DPS loss compared to Runed Cardinal Ruby but less loss than a single socket blue or a three socket item with a blue socket.
If it is a three socket item (9 spellpower) it is only worth it if both the other sockets are red it is worth it. This is the only point where using a Purified Dreadstone will actually net a gain in DPS. If either of the other sockets are not red, all three sockets would be filled with Runed Cardinal Ruby.

Meta is always Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.

The optimal placement of Purified Dreadstones to meet your requirement for the meta was in your chest and in your boots, both 7 socket bonus with a red as the second socket. Currently you are using it in the gloves as one of the two which nets a larger DPS lose than using it in the boots, however probably not worth regemming them.

Your helm as I mentioned earlier is gemmed wrong. It should have an Ametrine in the second socket since the socket bonus is 9 spellpower, way more than 5 spellpower which was enough to warrent using a Ametrine. In your case since your haste is below the soft cap it would be recommended that it be a Reckless Ametrine though you may choose to use Potent instead since you may find your next several upgrades push you over the haste soft cap anyway.

All of your other gemming is fine.

On enchants...
Unless hit is an issue, Tuskarr's Vitality will be better than Icewalker on boots. Don't bother replacing it on your current ones though.
Chest has no enchant. Best enchant would be +10 to all stats.


On Gearing...
Avoid MP5 like the plague. It is the worst waste of item stat allocation for a balance druid.
While you may not be there yet, Moonkin Form replenishment scales to the point that you require no other replenishment. On a raid boss I generate mana faster than I can consume it.
Work on replacing that outdated tier 8 with tier 9 at least, emblems of triumph are easy to come by.

On Spec...
Glyph of Starfall is the best glyph now, replace Glyph of Insect Swarm.
Get rid of both points in Intensity. You shouldn't need them anymore.