• constantius

Edit: I just chain-cast GH:1 on myself for 5 minutes straight without dropping below 50% mana ......

Notes:
1) 2-piece T5 rocks. Really.
2) Spellsurge is a nice proc, and is definitely going to be the enchant of choice given how much +heal is on T5-level gear (easily breaking 2k raid buffed).
3) Clearcasting is still sexy.
4) GH:1 hits for 2350+ average. As a spammed spell, that's not terrible. GH:2 is about 2850, for an extra 72 mana, which may be the spell of choice. With the -100 Mana on any spell that tops someone up, you can afford to move up one rank (or two) in order to guarantee a top-up, which then drops the cost down. It's downranking, only based on the hit, instead of the spell cast.

All in all ... 2.1 is what I wanted/expected TBC to be. The gear is upgrades, everything is shiny, and I finally feel like there's a POINT to raiding again. There's actual differences between blue D3, Karazhan, Gruul, Mag, and SSC drops now. Hallelujah.

 

Aadar

This is an interesting discussion.

I value the stats along the lines of the gems; 18 heal = 8 spi = 3.5 mp5.

Int and Crit are tricky to value, but are a consideration all other things being equal. Does anyone quantify the value added by int and crit (or even sta) on their kit?

 

Babe Bridou

I've been slowly but surely building myself some gimmick spirit set. The highest amount of spirit I managed to reach was 1941 with spirit tap on, but the highest screenshot I got on live was that one:



...with spirit tap of course. This is highly based on unenchanted green "of spirit" gear and in that case using blessing of kings and the bangle of endless blessings, so it really is just that, a gimmick.

With raid buffs, zanza, etc, I'd be tempted to believe the 1000 spirit mark before spirit tap is within reach in a mix of blue and epic gear - possibly only after 2.1 though.
edit: forget about the "smite" damage part, the screenshot was some time ago already

 

Jo_

*goes search hd for old ss of when ad and av spirit water stacked with itself*

 

Iya

If you use keybound macro with /stopcasting - I have one tip how to use it more efficiently.
You can keep that button pressed while casting and when you want interrupt cast - just release button. It is a bit faster then press and release.
And moving/jumping can be risky sometimes so this keybind is really useful imho.

 

beann

Would any Priests in SSC or TK comment on their mileage with PoM in these instances? I know that in Kara for the fights when the entire raid is taking dmg it is unbelievable nice, better even than Chain Heal, it's closest analog. In our guild non-healers have even noticed its effectiveness and several times a raid I hear, "PoM rapes," or some such variation. Fights like Maiden and Curator it does an unbelievable large amount of healing. Hit the MT with it, bounce to the last hateful bolt target, bounce to melee on a spark, bounce, bounce, bounce. Even on fights where I am healing the MT exclusively it is well worth the mana to fire it off every 15-20 seconds, assuming someone else in the raid is taking dmg that it can bounce off of.

 

afflickted

PoM really has it's uses on fights like hydross - my general theory has been to throw pom on the tank initially on pull strictly for the threat generation. I have a tendency to use pom on water tombed targets during frost stages (generally because people think it's a great idea to chain water tomb to others) and I normally see it get all 5 charges off. You'll also be able to get all charges off when adds spawn; normally what I do is throw PoM on the soon-to-be tank between transitions so that when the swap happens and he takes a hit, that much more threat is built on him. As soon as it bounces off of him it generally goes to an offtank, so it gets it's other charges off as well which is nice.

 

Kass

1. Gilded Trousers of Benediction - with 3x18 healing gems
2. Gloves of Saintly Blessings - with 1x18 healing and 1x11healing6stam gems.
3. Scarab of the Infinite Cycle
4. Alchemist's Stone (on consumable runs and long boss encounters)

Those are probably the top four items that I love the most out of my gear set and haven't found anything that is directly comperable pre-SSC/TK. Even in SSC/TK I won't replace the Legs or Gloves until T5 and I've yet to find anything I'd replace my Scarab or Stone with.

I am a big fan of +Healing and that will always be the stat I gem and gear for first. After that, I'll usually look toward Stamina. 9 times out of 10 I won't gem for anything but +18Healing because most of the socket bonuses are garbage. I won't gem for Stamina, but I might pass up gear that lacks Stamina or only use it situationally where I know I my survivability is never in question. Those legs above are an example of an exception for me because there are no other legs out there pre T5 that come close to the 155+healing. Spirit and mp5 to me are about equal and below Stamina at this point because I know I can manage my mana through consumables if need be. After an encounter is on farm status, consumabes and mana become a very minor-issue.

I will typically chain cast/cancel GH(2) and prep GH(7) on certain encounters when a fellow MT healer might be temporarily occupied - mostly SSC/TK encounters. Like you, I can't really see any reason to cast Heal(3) anymore, though it was the saving grace of Naxx. So now, if I have mana to burn, I just throw up renew and POM and just watch. For me, with renew ticking at 800+ and my fellow MT healers (Paladins) spamming away 1.5k to 2k heals, while the MT hovers at 90% HP, I look to land my heal when the MT can actually benefit from it...so I cancel a lot. In the end, it seems to work.

I will point out though, that as a single target healer, a Holy Priest probably can't keep up in efficiency and effectiveness with Paladins now (I say now as Horde with newly acquired Pallies). Nevertheless, there are many encounters come SSC/TK where a Holy Priest can really be utilized through POM, correct rank GH, and high ticking renews as a raid or OT healer where he/she is not competing with several Paladins to fill a 2-5k MT health deficit.

Just a note: I'll probably alter my gemming habits once I hit around 2000+healing. Until then, I've not seen a fight where I've run out of mana and been unable to do my job. If I reach either of those points in the near future, I'll probably go with Spirit (because it still impacts my +healing...haha).

 

Jayde

I have recently been raid healing a lot on my Priest, and have found that at least with my current gear, GH7 is actually generally the most useful heal I can use when assigned to MT healing. Buffed, I am in the mid-1600s for +healing with 385/161 unbuffed regen.

While I use and keep multiple ranks of GH on my hotbar, the primary ones I have found to be generally most practical are GH1 for efficiency and being roughly the correct size for patch healing and squishy class healing/periodic damage. With my current gear, GH1 is the highest efficiency GH, so it makes sense to use that rank rather than others to me.

As for larger healing, I have found that there are very few situations where GH7 is terribly inappropriate. Perhaps once I push into the 1800-1900 healing range I will look at downranking, but I can say that in the 1400-1600 range, GH7 feels quite solid.

I see little purpose in spamming GH1 on a MT as a Priest, simply because it is not playing to the strengths of the class. My philosophy with BC bosses is simply to let the Paladins spam up the 1-2k gaps with Flash of Light, and cancel-queue max rank heals to land them with the most effectiveness. Not only does this minimize overhealing, but it really does save MTs from brutal spikes.

As someone noted earlier in the thread, a /stopcasting macro is extremely effective for this. I bound it to "1" and pretty much cancel any GH7 cast around the halfway mark unless it seems as if it will land for a useful amount.

From my point of view, the issue with overhealing has less to do with mana efficiency (although it is certainly an issue) and more to do with simple survivability. Landing a big overheal means you are opening yourself up to a situation where the MT takes a big hit right after you land a fairly ineffective heal, and you're stuck waiting quite some time for your next upranked heal to land. If you have solid patch-healing backup, I see little reason not to attempt to land your biggest heals when they are most appropriate--all while getting substantial amounts of full regen ticks at times--and playing to the strengths of the Priest class.

Cancel-casting a GH7, landing a meaty heal followed by an insta-PoM can be a huge tank lifesaver.

As for "meters"--which, at the end of the day, don't really matter anyhow so long as you don't wipe--I am typically #1 or #2 in effective healing done, while also being one of the lowest in overhealing. I also have not had to use more than one or two mana potions in quite some time, although I have been lucky to have a shadow priest on a few occasions.

To me, the mana efficiency gains from more frequent usage of something like GH1 seems terribly offset by the loss of full regen ticks. While I try to stack enough Mp5 to maintain general sustainability--and have a heavy emphasis on Mp5 gear in general--spirit is an important splash, and full regen ticks are still highly effective. (Especially, as people have noted, with the use of clearcasting and inner focus.) I try to steer away from downrank spamming, simply because I feel my mana efficiency goes down the tubes unless I am being supported by a Shadow Priest--in which case, spamming GH1 is nearly free.

 

Dirich

I've made some counts to find how much +heal and regens stats I need to aim for. I still have to start kara (casual gamer since TBC) but I had my good share of endgame riding pre TBC so i come out with this testing cycle:

Spell - End of cast
R --------- 0,20
PoM ------ 1,40
G2 ------- 6,60
G2 ------- 10,80
wait/walk 11,60
PoM ---- 11,60
G7 ------ 15,80
R ------- 16,00
G2 ------ 21,20
wait/walk 21,80
PoM ---- 21,80
G2 ------ 27,00
G7 ------ 30,00

G = Greater Heal, R = Renew.

This is a cycle of 30 sec and as you may notice casting time on G2 and G7 cast I always assume a bit of "precasting" (casting/cancellin cast) because in my experience as MT healer pre TBC tanks didn't need chain heal most of the time. For every cast i add 0.2 sec dealy because of lag.
Of course during a fight there will be much more to do (healing off tanks, dpsers and so on) and sometimes tanks need way more healing than this (spikes damage), but it was intended to study my MINIMUM healing capabilities on an average enviroment.

My counts were made for a human priest with maxed Divine Fury, Improved Healing, Spiritual Healing, Empowered Healing, Meditation and Inspiration.

I used the following values:
225 bonus int
1570 +heal
151 Mp5s
302 total spirit
13k armor tank as target (to take into account inspiration) and a 400 or 1k dps on boss part (i can't remember at the moment, and btw that was took "out of the blue" beacuse i needed a value, but Inspiration proved to be marginal because of crit chance used).

In those values I counted only the following buffs:
1) Pala's BoW (improved)
2) Flask of Mighty Restoration (the 25/5 version)
3) Arcane Intellect

I chose to keep the buffs at minimum and to use only the "must have" talents (at least in my builds) so that my calculation would be the very worst possible outcome.

Special equip:
Alchemist's stone
2/2 Whitemend set bonus
3/3 Primal Mooncloth set Bonus

Consumables:
2 Super Mana Potion
2 Dark Rune

I used the average to find the mana gain for each of them, obviously.

I was able to keep up that cycle for exactly 5 minutes (46035 mana total).

I don't know how long bossfights in kara (and other raid instances) will be, I think at the very beginning they could be 8 minutes probably so I'm pretty happy with the outcome (i'll have more buffs and more talents than those listed here... and a shadowpriest 90% of the time).

I am used to be always on precast (2.5 is a way too long time to start casting after the tank took damage) and using my cycle I'm always under the 5sec rule so i greatly prefear mp5 rahter than spi. I also stopped stacking +heal when reached 1500 +heal and started looking for mp5 to do not run oom. Those values I used are based on an old version of my pre-kara gear (i made some changes and gained more Mp5).


I'm quite skeptic towards +spi (over mp5. I appreciate spi per se, of course) because being always under that nasty 5sec rule, even with Meditation and Primal Mooncloth's set bonus 8 spirit = 1.75 mp5 and with the current values on gear 8 spi costs 8, while 1 mp5 costs 2.5, which means 8 spirit costs as much as 3.2 mp5 and gives only 1.75 mp5. Even considering Spiritual Guidance 5/5, Spirit of Redemption (+5% spirit), human racial and Imp Divine Spirit buffed the overall benefit of spirit is lower (8 spirit = +3.08 heal, which, converted by their cost on items, is 0.56056 mp5).

P.S.
That fast conversion mana regen/heal using stats cost on items is just a trick to do things fast, it's not the best way to find a conversion factor but since I use cycles with more than 1 spell i'm not very fond of a heal/mp5 conversion factor. When needed i'll just run a test like the one above, in all the other case I stick to the item value factor (because in the end the overall power of my gear is bounded to stats cost).

P.P.S.
When I say "Inspiration is marginal" I mean that it doesn't "heal" that much in an overall heal over a bossfight, but it's really nice "heal" when it proc. The problem is I've low crit chance so it doesn't proc that much (around 10% crit means a 2.5% proc... and it's not worth to gear up with crit for priests.. for every +100 heal lost 100 crit rating is needed (if I remember well the test results with the +1570 heal value) to compensate trought crit heals and inspiration so that the overall healing is at least the same).

 

Aadar

It is unlikely you will never be out of the FSR. Of course it varies depending on your raid role and encounter type how much you are out of the FSR. I find in Kara that I am interrupting my casts quite frequently because another heal has landed while I am casting and I am therefore spending a reasonable amount of time at full regen.

Given the nature of our job it is difficult to quantify how long we will be out of the FSR and therefore what weighting to give to spirit.

 

Lightshadow

I'm missing something in your math here--10% crit would be a 10% chance to proc on each heal? Or are you saying only 1/4 of the time you're casting a heal that can crit? (For the record, with 5/5 holy spec and nothing but int from gear, I'm running 15%)

The issue as far as I'm concerned isn't always one of "total healing done". Boss damage in BC is extrordinarily spiky--by that I mean tanks take little or no damage at all for a period of time, and then suddenly lose a large percentage of their life. If bosses just did a constant DPS to the tank with no such spikes, raids would require significantly fewer healers. Given that, at least for the moment, priests don't have the sheer throughput that paladins have, one of the best things we can do for a raid is to try to limit the chance that a bad series of events kills a tank. Hots, instant reactive healing (PoM/Shield) and Inspiration are all tools in our kit to do that, and of those I think inspiration has by far the most potential. From your post it sounds like your guild hasn't ventured too far into the raiding scene just yet, but when your guild is first killing prince or gruul (who are extrordinarily melee heavy fights), the ability to keep inspiration up on a tank is one of the best things you can bring to the table. I expect the same thing will be true when my guild gets to Fathom-Lord Karathress in a couple of weeks.

Maybe an example is in order: Magtheridon is a fight where I would love to be able to swap out mana regen for +healing and +crit. The first two-three minutes of the fight (with the adds) can really stretch your healers thin, especially if shadowbolt interrupts aren't 100%, but once that's over 5 healers are more than enough to deal with the damage being thrown around. The only real dangers are that a) someone doesn't click their cube and b) the tank takes a nasty damage spike (possibly right around getting bounced around) and dies. Not much to be done about a) unless you happen to be standing right there, but in terms of dealing with b) knocking 13% off the damage the tank is taking by keeping inspiration up seems like a pretty good use of time =) It may be that a single priest with this talent isn't sufficient to keep inspiration up, but with two priests and two shaman, the chances are much better.

Inspiration is actually getting an effective stealth-nerf in the next patch: even without it, druids in full kara gear are going to start getting pretty close to the armor hard cap at 36k (75% DR vs. a level 73 mob is ~36k) so pushing them up yet more isn't going to be all that effective.

 

beann

"Inspiration is actually getting an effective stealth-nerf in the next patch"

Please explain, I was not aware this.

 

Dirich

Ok, that 2.5% is a plain error... lol.. I for sure calculated a 10% chance to proc on a 25% armor increasing effect... for a 2.5% nonsense result xD
Well, ofc 10% chance to crit means 10% chance to proc (when the spell casted can crit, so no renew and shield count).

I said that Inspiration is just great, i always had and will always have it in my healing builds. The point is that considering my cycle and my chance to crit, the overall heal of Inspiration is very low. So why do I stick with it? exactly for the same reasons as you. When it proc, it's really good.

I referred to some test regarding how much crit rating i need to replace a loss in +heal in my previous post, i made those counts because i would have liked to be able to proc more frequently Inspiration. The problem is that my overall heal drops way too much for a minimal augment in proc chance.
Inspiration augments armor, this means less damage taken, which can be considered as "heal" (actually better because damage was shielded, but i convert it to heal during my counts). Now suppose that the boss, over all the fight, hits the tank for X damage and assume you have to heal those X damages. By assumption, with the cycle you choose and a gear with +H heal you are able to heal exactly those X damages. For a value of H around 1500 in order to have a total healing of X over the fight you need to trade 1 heal for 1 crit rating. It's obvious that such a replacement isn't possible (+1 heal costs 0.455 and +1 crit rating is 1, and usually it's impossible to find items with lots of the budget spent on crit and nothing else... i also considered that items with +crit gives some +damage, which is +heal, but still, i couldn't find a gear that could let me do that exchange, and even if it does, i will surely lose a lot on the mp5/spi side).

In the end the problems are:
1) If you want to have a reasonably high chance to proc Inspiration you need to sacrifice so much +heal that you will no more be able to heal those X damages.
2) Inspiration isn't like PoM or Shield, you can't control when it's up. U could be so unlucky to never have it up when the spike damages arrive. Of course it's still "healing" even when no spike arrive, but we all knows that the problems are spikes, not standard dps.

I prefear to spec for Inspiration because if all the healers have it someone is gonna proc it. Altough not having fast spammable spells to augment the possibility of a proc, i prefear to gear up to maximize my healing power rather than my chance to proc it (which also means i would be gearing up to augment my aggro... and i'm squishy ). And as far as the healing power goes, when making counts only on dps (no spikes) basis, the overall healing power of Inspirations is low compared to those of the spells i'm using.

 

Belenos

I think it is unwise to completely ignore intellect's value as a stat.

The int on a gear can play a nontrivial role in its total worth. By my math, (and with my spec) in a six minute fight, with 35% time spent outside the FSR:
- 1 point of Int = 15 mana
- 1 point of spirit = 21.1 mana
- 1 point of mp5 = 72 mana

So even though priests don't have any real talent synergy with intellect, it is debatably 75% as good as spirit in terms of pure mana value. This isn't enough to favor getting a +30 int enchant over 81 healing or spellsurge of course, but it's worth noting.

 

Lightshadow

Beann: the game caps damage reduction from armor at 75% Given the way armor scales, it takes ~36000 armor to achieve this cap, and that's a number that some druids in T4+ are going to find themselves near without inspiration, at least if the patch goes live with the gear it has now. (26k armor is very reasonable at the moment, and T4 alone is getting 1000 extra armor base = 5500 extra armor in bear form without even looking at the other slots.) So, assuming that inspiration doesn't allow this armor cap to be broken temporarily, druids will gain less/no benefit from inspiration once their gear reaches a certain point, hence the conclusion.

Dirich: Your calculations are very solid, but I think there are a couple of things which make crit more viable than they would suggest, at least for certain fights. Raid healing isn't so much about just having the ability to heal x--if that was all four or five well geared pallies could heal virtually anything. The trick is that the total healing needed is way less than the healers are capable of, but it needs to be delivered to the right people inside of very short timeframes. Warriors, at least ones that want to live, spend a great deal of their itemization points on stamina not because it provides any mitigation whatsoever, but because it decreases the likelyhood that they'll die to damage spikes. (Many could, for instance, swap out stamina gems for dodge/parry, but they don't). Likewise, I view inspiration (even if crit is costly) as a way to decrease the chance of the tank dying, even if keeping it up means that I do less healing overall. Especially on melee heavy fights, overhealing is a huge percentage of the "healing" that gets done: if my healing dropped by 10% on gruul, no one would notice, and if I could get another 5% crit for it I'd do it in an instant because keeping it up on the tank at the end of the fight is just that important. Definitely not a good trade for every fight (maybe not most), but that's what all the bag slots are for, no? =)

 

SindirHH

Just a quick note on gems, and how Blizzard designed the system.

Currently there are the three main colors (Red/Blue/Yellow) and the mix colors (Purple/Green/Orange). Basically Blizz decided that Red = Blue = Yellow, so you can turn it all into an equation.

As for us healers the only gems we should use:

Teardrop Living Ruby - 18 Healing
Brilliant Dawnstone - 8 Intellect
Lustrous Star of Elune - 3 Mana Per 5 sec.
Sparkling Star of Elune - 8 Spirit

So equate these and we have 18 healing = 8 intellect = 8 spirit = 3 mana per 5.

However when you move to the mixed gems you find an anomaly. Here are the mixed gems we should use (Not counting the epic heroic ones):

Luminous Nople Topaz - 9 Healing + 4 Intellect
Dazzling Talasite - 4 Intellect + 2 mana per 5 sec
Royal Nightseye - 9 Healing + 2 mana per 5 sec

If you notice that by using two of the combo gems that include 2 mana per 5 sec you would obtain a higher overall item value from the gem slots. Read over this for a moment:

3 slot piece of equipment, you want +healing and mana per 5. there are 3 ways to obtain this. All mixed, 2 Teardrop living and 1 Lustrous or 2 Lustrous and 1 Teardrop living. The totals would look like so:

All mixed = 27 Healing + 6 mana per 5 sec.
2 Tear + 1 Lust = 36 Healing + 3 mana per 5 sec.
1 Tear + 2 Lust = 18 Healing + 6 mana per 5 sec.

Clearly the best way for us to socket gems (barring no odd personal preferences) is the Royal Nightseye gem, however I personally like to socket to grab bonus' so I have used a combination of the three mixes to obtain the needed gem slots for my mana restore meta gem (which is awesome btw!)

 

Kass

For now, I wouldn't disagree that the Royal Nightseye gem is probably one of the better mixed gems to go with...provided you're not a +Healing nut like me and put the Teardrop Living Ruby in everything. Honestly though, if mana isn't ever an issue (either through consumables or playstyle)...why would you ever gem for anything but +healing? Especially when you look at the actual mana returned from the 6mp5 over say a 10 minute fight?

Nevertheless, in 2.1 the following gem is looking to be my gem of choice based on T5 and T6 socketing bonuses.

Unstable Sapphire: 9 Healing and 4 Spirit
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32636

Is there any confirmation on if this gem is craftable by JCs or if it's a drop yet?

 

Dirich

I completely agree with this sentence and with all your post in general. Point is that in kara I'm not on a MT duty only, like I was pre TBC, so I have to be able to keep all the raid up. From there my concern about the overall healing capability of my gear (I usually am quite generous with renews when my mates are not 100% healty, for the rest I think I'll leave some work to our resto shammy's chain heals ).
For 25 man raid probably I should try to gather a bit of +damage/+crit equip for bossfights and see how it works. I admit that I would be really happy to have this change in gear stats, it's been almost 1.5 years I've being stacking only +heal/mp5s items... (not to talk about the advantages in my pve solo gear.. >.>).

P.S.
Sigh... why the only +healing/+crit items are plate? Nasty palas... they have all the goods :S

 

Calya

You know, I'm sort of underwhelmed by this gem, and I'm a human priest with all spirit-based talents, the PMC set, and a Bangle (i.e., I get about as much benefit from spirit as possible and place a heavy emphasis on it in my gear). Even under the best circumstances-- that is, a long fight where I'm casting and cancelling and spending about 65% of my time in the FSR, and factoring in the +healing bonus-- I wouldn't value 1mp5 at anything less than about 2.5 spirit. I just can't see how I could ever justify using this gem over a Royal Nightseye.

If only you could get spirit on yellow gems. That would make me a very happy priest.

 

SindirHH

Perhaps we can get a bit of TC'ing for Circle of Healing. Any of you avid users of CoH, or just ignore it totally?

Personally I'm loving it more and more each night, I use it with a mouse-over cast function and if I'm MT healing and see a group take 2k damage I cast 2 CoH's and usually that nears everyone to full. It is incredibly efficient if 5 people get hit with it (even 4 is good) as well the instant cast makes me like it more than PoH. I grabbed 2 points into holy reach and with melee/caster dps groups I am almost always hitting all 5.

Any thoughts from anyone else?

 

Lightshadow

I really liked CoH all the way to 70 and in the level 70 5-mans--I reccomend it to people doing that. For 25 man raids though, I just can't find a way to see it as viable.

Pros:
-> Instant cast
-> Can target other groups
-> Very nice mana ratio if you hit enough people
-> Very nice level of healing when mobs hit for 1-2k and aoe for 500
-> Decent range when talented.
-> Can Proc Inspiration

Cons:

-> Not many groups are standing near enough each other for most 25 man fights
-> The range talent has a high opportunity cost (there are other very nice things you could be taking in either the holy or disc trees)
-> The spell just doesn't hit for enough when trash hits for 6k and aoes the raid for 3000+
-> No one other than tanks cares about inspiration because even trash meleeing them is going to kill them.
-> Tends to overheal/cause overhealing because there are 7-8 other healers in the raid

Honestly, I think the biggest downside is the third one... post 2.1's buff (whee, 25 points) an extremely well geared priest with 1800 +healing is still only hitting each individual person for <1k, and while that's just not enough given all the other restrictions on the spell. If it hit raid members in range that needed healing or cost more and had more kick, I could see using it, but as it is alternatives for raid healing like chain healing, prayer of mending, and tree druid hots blow it away.

 

Cloudgatherer

While learning Karazhan, our healer core was a little low, so I ended up playing on my priest and learning everything past curator from a healer's PoV. I think I ended up being the only priest having more than 38 points in Holy (everyone seems to go 23/38 or 21/40), so pretty much the only one with the opportunity to use it in Karazhan (19/42).

In practice, there were a few spots it is useful. The mana feeders tend to de-agro and damage alot of different people, if PoM isn't keeping people up, can use CoH to help there. The Sorcerous Shades do a fair amount of multi-target damage, CoH can be utilized there. On Aran, it's the only group healing spell you can use in close proximity to Aran (instant cast avoids the lockout problem of PoH, cast it while running away from Aran). Did not typically have enough melee to have it be useful on Maiden (usually only 3 melee tops in on Maiden), and the limited range (even with Holy Reach) limited it even further.

To maximize this spell is to play to its strengths: instant cast, heals a different group (key advantage over PoH, imo). If you consider raid setups, you want 3 rogues, warrior, shaman in your melee group (or something similar), shoving a priest in there just to pop PoH every once in a while will be a loss in DPS for whoever is the "odd man out" of that group (and is that priest really taking any damage?). Can make a similar statement for the caster DPS team (assuming you can get those guys to stand together, but saying "stand near that guy or no heals" might be enough encouragement). I'm curious if that actually plays out anywhere, if there are encounters where it would be beneficial to have such a raid setup with a priest in a different group using CoH to keep a DPS group topped off, but there are not even many priests using CoH out there these days to even present this option to raid leaders.

That's a very "raid benefit" oriented look at CoH. Most just look at PoH HPM/HPS vs CoH HPM/HPS as it scales with +heal and draw the conclusion that CoH sucks as a 41 point talent. Truthfully, CoH is a little weak, but it does offer an option not available via PoH, you want to heal those 5 guys in that other group rather quickly (HPS), and are less concerned with the mana. That mana cost might even be offset by being able to be put in a group with a shadow priest or shaman for passive mana regen. I'd like to see theorycrafting from a raid composition standpoint (DPS/HPM-S tradeoffs) of CoH vs PoH given different group make-ups. That's far more theorycrafting than I'm interested in doing atm, but I'd be interested in reading about it =).

On a different note, think I've used Binding Heal all of 3 times, but those were actually times it made sense to use it. Was main healing for a tank on R&J, got hit with the holy damage/dot, used it to patch myself up a bit. Think I've used it once or twice on maiden (dispel myself after holy fire, fire binding heal to patch myself and tank up as repentance was coming in). Another "situationally rare" spell, but possible to get some use out of it.

 

Dirich

CoH heals for 525 (average) rank 5 and cost 450 mana, it's instant so speccing Mental Agility 5/5 menas it costs only 405. Prayer of Healing costs 1255 and heals for 1281 (average) rank 6.
PoH takse 3/3.5 bonus from +heal, while CoH only 1.5/3.5 (half of PoH's bonus).

Just analyze 3 cases: 1000 +heal, 1500 +heal and 2000 +heal.

PoH will heal for 2138, 2566, 2995 respectively, while CoH only for 953, 1167, 1382.

Heal/mana (1000, 1500, 2000 +heal, 0 talent points spent)
PoH - vs - CoH
1.70 ----- 2.12
2.04 ----- 2.59
2.39 ----- 3.07

Total average heal over 3 sec "spam" casting (I'm assuming 10% chance to crit):
PoH 1 cast @ 10% chance to crit is (1000, 1500, 2000 +heal)
2245, 2694, 3144
CoH 2 cast @ 10% chance to crit is (1000, 1500, 2000 +heal)
2001, 2450, 2902

Of course when using Inner Focus there is no comparison, but in standard situation we have
1) The ability to use a group heal on ANY group, not just our own
2) The ability to MOVE while casting
3) We spend 2/3 of the mana we would otherwise need (and it can be reduced by 10% speccing Mental Agility) at the loss of 250 heal (WAY better mana efficiency).

I rarely used PoH without Inner Focus tough (because I rarely need to cast a group heal), anyway I appreciate CoH because it's way better than PoH 80% of the time. Altough the heal seem to be quite low for the 25 man raid and probably 2 priest are needed to recover from a dangerous situation using this spell. But I can't really tell because I'm not raiding 25 man instances.

My problem was, being me the only healing priest in my kara run (the other main healer being a resto shaman), should I spec Divine Spirit (no points in Improved DS tough) or should i spec CoH?
I think that it's better choice to spec CoH because without Imp DS the spirit buff it's useless for most of the raid. And being only 2 main healers + our OT pala 20/41/0 (for boss fights) i think a better spell for group healing will make the difference (even if I will not use it very often).
Anyway, i will be happy to have some feedback on this spec ussue (I mean CoH vs DS vs DS + Imp DS) from someone who has kara on farm status. I hate to lose healing power (most of all when those 2 points for Imp DS need to be taken from Empowered Healing), but the whole "buff to spirit -> buff damage/healing" thing is very tempting (our "caster" group is made by 1 lock, 1 mage, 1 shadowpriest, me and the resto shammy).

P.S.
Meh, my mage keeps bothering me if I have "the spirit buff" even when I'm shadow specced because he looted the trinket "+130 spi on Use" (I can't remember the name right now xD).. :S Damned the hunter that didn't ninja looted that trinket to him! xD

 

• Psykal

I might be missing something but rank 5 CoH costs 600 mana, or 540 with 5/5 Mental Agility. Using these numbers your table is quite different.

Heal/mana (1000, 1500, 2000 +heal, 5 talent points spent)
PoH - vs - CoH
1.70 ----- 1.76
2.04 ----- 2.16
2.39 ----- 2.56

Heal/mana (1000, 1500, 2000 +heal, 0 talent points spent)
PoH - vs - CoH
1.70 ----- 1.59
2.04 ----- 1.95
2.39 ----- 2.30

Pretty marginal in each case in terms of efficiency. It is interesting to see that you get more over 3 seconds from CoH than PoM, that actually still makes the spell better most of the time (if people are in range!) because of the instant cast time and more control on overhealing.