[Druid] Spirit is the New Hit

Blizzard released a gigantic wad of information about how stats are going to work in Cataclysm. Most of the basics we already knew. Hunters won't have Int anymore because they won't care about mana, mp5 is going away, etc.

One of the things that had been mentioned though was that Spirit was going to be a healing stat, and all healers would want it (even paladins...). However, it's easy to produce cloth gear with no Spirit on it for mages and warlocks; less easy to to produce leather gear with no Spirit on it because that means there's balance druid gear that only moonkin will use and resto druid gear that only trees will use, and Blizzard doesn't like dropping items that are only good for one out of the thirty specs in the game.

So... how to get around that?

If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:

You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.

Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.

You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.

Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.

Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

I admit when I first read that I was a selfish little moonkin and thought, "Why do we have to be the ones to covert Spirit to Hit instead of the trees converting Hit to Spirit?"

Of course, it wouldn't be any more right to expect the trees to do the conversion.

It just feels a bit clunky any way I look at it. I've never been a fan of convert X stat to Y other stat through talents or what-have-you. I was hoping during the Cataclysm overhaul we'd get away from that, but I guess not.

It's too soon to see what the itemization is going to look like, but I'm concerned that if Spirit is piled on gear like it is now, we'll constantly be over the Hit cap. We don't need Hit on every piece of gear in ICC, but generally trees want Spirit on every piece of gear.

Maybe after the stat overhaul Spirit will be used sparingly (especially since it will no longer scale with Blessing of Kings), so a little goes a long way and trees won't need as much of it to keep their regen.