Until recently, my talent spec has been: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dVg0sm0oZfVxcc0mx

I really like the effect of Spell Warding, since, in my opinion, any mana/time spent healing myself is better spent healing tanks or DPS.

That said, some specific encounters in Naxx (primarily Patchwerk) have demonstrated that it is much more beneficial to the raid as a whole to keep Inspiration up as much as possible. So, to help ease learning on these encounters, my new spec is now: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dVg0sm0oZfxxcc0mx

However, I'm still debating which talent spec is better for overall use in PvE. The usefulness of both always seems to be, for the most part, exclusive (fights that have raid-wide AoE tend not to have heavy physical damage and vice versa). Obviously, I could always spec for whichever type of fight is causing trouble at the moment, but I'd prefer to find a good general build to minimize respec costs.

I was hoping to elicit some responses from the rest of the community to see what other people think of the two talents and their comparitive usefulness.

(As a note, I do not yet have 4 pieces of Faith which obviously boosts the value of Holy Specialization significantly)

In my optinion Holy Spec is a must have if your goal is to proc Inspiration reasonably often. Priest gear tends not to have a lot of +crit on it, which means you could (depending on your gear) boost your crit rate by 50% by speccing Holy Spec. Although crits are of course nothing to rely on, as the damage gets spikier through the instances a 5% +crit might save some lives.

Regarding Spell Warding, I found to be useful when I had my Honorwhore-weeks and was specced as full pvp supporter. For it to be worthwile, you would need an encounter where excusively you are hit by some non-lethal mob aoe. Against a shadow flame Spell Warding wont help you, and in all cases of raid-wide aoe I remember at this time of the day not only you get it, but other players in your group as well, making it neccessary at some point to use PoH. Shades of Naxxramas or the trash before the Grand Widow for example. You might take 10% less damage by their aoe, but at some point you will need to cast PoH anyway, healing not only the others but you as well.

I too believe Spiritual Guidance to be a rather weak talent. With full Faith you will have a raidbuffed Spirit of ~400 resulting in 100 +heal for 5 talent point. Back in MC when you already had 350 spirit raidbuffed, but only ~200 +heal the additional +heal from Spritual Guidance might have been a nice boost. The above mentioned full Faith with weapons/trinkets of matching quality grant you more than 1000 +heal, and the 100 +heal from Spiritual Guidance offer a mere +10%.
The +100 spell damage you gain might be nice for the weekly warsong, but the rest of your spec holds nothing offensive in it, and Spiritual Guidance alone wont make you a nuker.

side note: it's a) 3:00 am and b) english isnt my native language

I don't think it's all that important for horde priests to have inspiration anymore, now that Ancestral Fortitude is only 3 points and very easy to pick up; your shamans should have no issue all having it.

In my opinion I would stick with Holy specializaton over Spell Warding, as Eleni said, unless you are being single targetted by magic damage, (eg. Fireballs in Ony phase 2, or Shadowbolts in Nef phase 1) SW is a pretty useless talent. Holy specialization on the other hand gives you a passive percentage to both conserve mana due to bigger heals and slap on Inspiration.

Also I disagree with the people who said that SG isn't a very good talent, anything that gives me more +heal is my friend. This may be because I focus on +heal and Spirit as my 2 main stats, but I think combining the two is invaluable.

-Imi
60 NE Priest
The General Public
Laughing Skull

I took the liberty of incorporating your detailed information into your profile, which exists solely for this purpose.

Shaman/Priest have the same int/crit ratio (59.5 int per crit). However, Shaman have 5 to crit with spells with around 160 int, the Priest has 5 to crit with around 225 int. So the Shaman should have more crit than a Priest (especially if they have Ten Storms).

Still, even with Shaman around I would think some Priests should get Inspiration, and Holy Spec is a good way to fuel it. Sadly, losing Spell Warding seems to be the best way to do that.

Eh, probably, but I've ditched a bunch of PvE talent points (Silent Resolve FTL) because I started PvPing, but I stuck with the Holy/Disc thing because it's just way too good to give up in raids and passable in PvP. Spell Warding I think has a dual purpose, not too shabby in PvP and mitigating damage = less needed to heal, so I don't feel too bad/gimped to have it.

I guess if you're really hurting for points in Holy... but there aren't a lot of places to directly improve your throughput in the Holy tree, and SG and SH are certainly among those.

I'm just bitter from being around too many WoW forum mouthbreathers who are convinced that because SH only adds about 45 HP to a Heal 2, it's worthless, and MS ("it scales with gear! I'm going to go masturbate to my additional 700 mana, which is 70 more bonus mana than I had in blues") is automatically better. But I'm derailing again.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMhsZfyxcc0qt

try this build,made for 6t3,no mental agi/silent resolve since u got those bonuses from gear.

Why Lightwell? And for that matter, SoR isn't the greatest use of a talent point either.

No, it really doesn't, those talents are not very good. I'd rather have an extra point in mental agility or imp. prayer of healing then SoR or lightwell.