Hot damn, you got the *crab* to drop? Most of the time nobody ever does Gur'sha!

I got it in the second week of cata - that's the only reason >.

ZA shoulders are a dps option for getting into Firelands, although trying to farm Halfus is maybe a bit better. The problem is that there still should be a T12 level set of plate DPS shoulders. Getting tier may not be too much of a problem if you only raid in 10 man, but if you are in 25 man it's more competition.

In T11 we had two options, in T12 only one, and we have to get a token that two other classes can use.

ZA/ZG is NOT meant to fill gaps in your FL gear. It was meant to be in the same patch as FL. It ended up filling the gaps of T11 and is a stepping stone before raiding. I suggest raiding T11 to get 359 shoulders until Staghelm stops being a jerk and drops your token.

I think I'm being misunderstood: I agree that it's stupid, but it could be worse. You could be in the sticky spot several other raiders like myself are in: shoulders from T11 not drop, and they are stuck farming a 5 man to be competitive.

As for the no spirit on the cloth, I thought that was a conscious decision by Blizz to make priests realize that there is more to gearing than stacking spirit.

Also, I thought that there was a set of shoulders that could be reforged into a decent set of shoulders, or had the random secondary set of stats on them?
Unfortunately, I can't load wowhead very well on my iPhone, or else I would check. :(

Having things not drop and having to run ZA/ZG for lower-level alternatives ...

OR

Having things never drop (because they don't exist) and having to run ZA/ZG for lower-level alternatives.

I dunno, I'd prefer the first one.

VSU Reaper, fyi, priests have always known that there's "more to gearing than stacking spirit". Exactly like every other healer class and spec, there has always been spirit AND other secondary stats on our gear. And just like every other healer class and spec (in the case of holy priests, slightly more than the others), priests discussed and theorycrafted about the relative merit of haste, mastery, and crit. Unlike every other healer spec though, priests get no drops in Firelands or rewards from Hyjal dailies. It is, as Matt says, not the end of the world but it IS silly and bad.

For DPS i'm using 359 tanking shoulders that dropped from a croc in TB. If I didn't get that lucky I have no idea what I'd be wearing.

Things could be worse, Reaper. According to Ask Mr Robot, the heroic versions of both the Porcelain Crab and Throngus' Finger are superior to most 359 -- and even 378 -- tanking trinkets.