Now that our Archangel has had it's mana return cut from 3% per stack to 1% per stack I'm starting to feel pressured on mana again. I've heard from other healers in our guild that mana is starting to feel a little tighter then before. I went through the patch notes and such but couldn't find any on spell costs rising. Did I miss something I should have seen somewhere?
Regardless, mana is feeling a little more constrained so I'm confused about which way to go with my cheaper filler heals. I found Smite/Atonement healing to be interesting and once you come to grips with it a great filler heal.
On the other hand using Heal has seems cheaper overall but how much by, if any is completely beyond me to calculate because of all the variables involved.

Using Smite as a heal requires more talent point investment. Atonement is required and seems rather weak without Evangelism, Archangel and Train of Thought to back it up.
Less Penance cooldown via Train of Thought means having to resort to Flash Heal less, though how often you would need to do that would depend on the fight and how often you can safely heal via Smite/Atonement.
Archangels bonus healing results in Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Penance, Flash Heal and Atonement healing for more and thus requiring less healing spells having to be cast (assuming little overhealing)
With Evangelism, Smite gets cheaper and damages/heals for more, though for how long really depends on when you burn it with Archangel.
Atonement may heal a Pet or even worse, a minion with low life expectancy such as those spawned from items like Nibelung, Shadowfiends etc. which is basically a wasted heal however...
Even if Atonement/Smite does completely overheal or heals a minion/pet it still stacks up the Evangelism buff, drops the Penance cooldown and does some minor damage, potentially 'refunding' that mana later.

Having Heal as your primary filler heal frees up more talent points so you will be taking Mental Agility.
Strength of Soul reducing the cooldown of Weakened Soul means more shields on the Tank, more Rapture procs and more Absorption. How much this results in you having to cast less heals varies on your Mastery and the nature of the fight. (On heavy AOE fights you probably won't be shielding the tank due to multiple Rapture procs from shields breaking on multiple targets at once.)
Unlike Atonement, you have full control over where Heal lands, so no mana is wasted in this regard.
Using Heal can be considered the easier filler option as you don't have to keep track of Evangelism stacks and when to best utilize Archangel.

Personally I use the Smite/Atonement method because it's more interesting but I'm really concerned it's hurting my mana efficiency. I got very low on our LK encounter last night and I'm finding it hard to believe it was just because of the Archangel nerf to mana returned. I'm considering changing my talent tree to have heal as my filler next week to see if the mana feels any better off but would love to hear anyone's hands on experience with this.

I don't know if this has been discussed, but it seems like the best strategy for gemming/enchanting is to pick up as many +Str enchants/gems as possible and then to go back through and reforge secondary stats to reach the hit and expertise caps. People should only be gemming hit and expertise if there simply isn't enough stats on your gear to reach those caps.

Ideally in raid gear gems should be all STR plus a nightmare tear or whatever to activate the meta.

What about trying to hit the haste soft cap? do you ever want to gem for 10str 10 haste? or reforge to haste?

Str > everything else. Why gem haste when you can gem Str, unless you were shooting for socket bonuses, which probably only make sense if the bonus is Str.

Agreed. And hopefully, we won't have to use anymore an aoe spell for monotanking situations.

Another topic : I wonder why the TBC bracer enchant is not less strong but cumulative with the standart one like engineer bonus to match other profession bonuses. At the moment, for an EH orientation, TBC is far better than any other professions.

hey guys, i have a simple question thats been bugging my mind lately, shall i drop enchanting for LW in cata raiding ? or is not that worth the money loss since it would be a minimal upgrade on dps ?

Well 1 thing I rmmbr is that Blizz said that they want 2 make frost 2H viable. & they've done it.

i play mage and now it seems every spec is viable for pvp but what is gonna be the best come cata?
both for Rated bgs and areans? pls help also a post of your spec would be nice with gems

I believe you, the damage calculation of the ticks of ignite is kind of a mistery for me... I did some tests and didn't understood the way it's calculated.
Thanks for your work looking forward to your next version then

Thank you very much for the list. Can anyone provide some stat-weights for pre-raiding and t11 content ? I mean something more complex than:

int: 4
spirit: 3
mastery: 1
haste: 2
crit: 2

?

It's subtlety mastery and Cataclysm raiding FAQ didn't have subtlety values until Aldriana edited it today so I think we can safely assume that values are now up-to-date.