Here's my problem with the "Any leftover mana is a waste" theory:

Healing isn't DPS. More DPS is always good. Healing is binary-- either healing was sufficient, or it was not. Delivering sufficient healing is pretty easy in most cases, and we could do it in blues.

So, what's the point of good healing gear? I don't see the point in gearing to execute a best-case scenario with higher efficiency-- you're already delivering sufficient healing in that scenario. I think, at least for progress raiding, good healing gear extends the *number of possible scenarios* in which you can deliver sufficient healing.

That's why, even though I agree with the +heal proponents on the technical aspects-- lots of mana is available from potting, leftover mana is wasted-- I still gear for balance with a slight skew towards regen. I want to still be there and casting when things have gone badly.

I'll gladly sit on a pile of wasted mana on a smooth kill if it means I can occasionally turn a bad attempt into a kill. Enrage timers interfere with this a bit, but I've talked a little beforehand about how having spare mana, at least as a priest, opens up your emergency healing options more often.

I think having a deep mana pool-- deeper than a smooth kill requires-- is important for expanding the number of scenarios where healing is sufficient. It almost certainly makes me a less optimal healer on smooth kills-- but smooth kills aren't where you need optimal healers.

At the end I guess it really depends on WHY people are dying. If nobody is dying in a fight I agree there's no point trying to adjust healing gear for that fight ;p while DPS can always be higher, healing can only heal as much as the damage that was dealt to the raid.

If people are dying (or even needing to pot/healthstone/bandage) because you can't top them off fast enough, +healing is what you're lacking. If it happens beacause you couldn't afford to heal them due to mana issues, combined mana and HP/mana (calculated as explained in the first paragraph of my previous post) is what you're looking for.

The more I think about it the more I tend to say it really depends on the fight. If damage is consistent and low enough so that you can heal through it with any +healing, then the combined healing/mana is what you need. If the damage comes in "bursts" that need to be healed asap with breaks in between, pure +healing will save people more. Of course in reality it's more complicated than that as most fights are some kind of a combination of both scenarios, but I think this is the main idea behind pure +healing compared to combined efficiency of healing/mana.

Another note is that if you do try to max your combined efficiency of healing/mana with low raid buffs/consumeables, you'll most likely see mana regen stats being the most efficient use of the item budget. That's probably because bliz assumes heavy consumeable use and the fact that your raw HP/S is also extremely importnat and not just efficiency, but then again there's always the option that the item budget is wrong, as bliz are known for never ever balancing items enough that it'll be hard to choose between most of them.

I agree with this sentiment. Paladins seem to have fairly high overheal ratios. The way this is countered is with regen (mp5 or spell crit). Stacking +heal because ideally every fight should end with 0 mana suggests that reserves are useless.

A mage with mana to spare has in some way held back.

A healer with mana to spare doesn't mean he/she held back. I either means DPS went faster, tank took less damage or other healers healed more.

I suppose the same could be said about mana-based DPS classes, but their job is to take 100% Boss to 0%. For a healer it's continous patch work. Considered how fights are becoming less and less "tank and spank" the flexibility mana regen provides shouldn't be over looked.

If burst damage is a concern, a trinket with on-demand +heal should provide the extra 200-300 heal necessary to cover.

I've been exploring this topic as of late and for me the magic number is around 200 regen in combat (450 out of fsr). Since I'm in a casual raiding guild (just starting on the Eye), perhaps I just haven't seen the encounters that will require better mana regen. So, for me I guess I've decided that I'm going all +heal from here on out till my combat experieneces tell me I need more regen.

Hard topic to nail down since different classes use their mana pools differently and all have different ways to regen (shadowfiend, mana tide, talents, etc). The only way it seems to figure out whats best for you is to set a regen limit where you don't see any mana issues and go all heal from there, or the other way around - set a +heal limit where you're seeing the hps you want then going all regen from there.

There is always a little epeen going on, DPSers like to see 4k hits, as a Healer I love seeing huge single heals, so as long as I'm not going OOM with my current regen then i'm going for those big numbers.

I think the way you gear also has to depend on your play style as well. If you are good at canceling heals and conserving mana that way, MP5 might be less valuable than +heal for you. There are many other such situations where a different stat would be more fitting for your play style.

Another thing to consider is how freely you chug mana potions. Generally, the only time i catch myself going out of mana is when I am cheap and use a couple Combat Mana potions mid fight, rather than chugging Super Mana Potions right off the bat. If you have no problem using a mana potion every time its up, then MP5 is something you could put less weight on.

That being said, I tend to lean more toward a balance healing set with good stam, good Mp5, and go a bit heavy on the +heal. I feel that a balanced healing set allows for great flexibility and lets you walk into every situation with all the necessary tools at your disposal.

Ultimately, this discussion is generally moot for healers. Healing is not gear-based for the most part, unlike DPS where gear is particularly relevant and mathematical min/maxing formulas are developed to optimize damage. I would suggest evaluating yourself, through monitoring your performance, and see where you come up lacking. Then try to gem/gear specifically to address the shortcomings.

I disagree. If you're good at cutting heals and you get ticks outside of FSR often spirit is your stat

Which, btw, makes me wonder why no one values spirit very highly. It seems everyone is all for chaincasting and rarely cutting heals these days. I guess stacking MP5 is a lot easier than managing fsr.

I do agree with the rest of what you said though. Namely the points that you need a balance between +healing and mp5, and that the ratio at which you decide that balance depends entirely on your playstyle.

My bad... didn't look at your class =P Yeah generally when I cancel heals for whatever reason I get outside fsr. Shaman with shorter heals wouldn't get that =P

I admit I don't really understand this. How is extra mana not wasted? I understand that healing is not DPS, but my point was that +heal was as close as you get. Extra mana is completely wasted - extra healing is only wasted insofar as how much of your heals were overhealing (and not even all of that). Either is a waste, to be sure, but as a paladin I really don't see how mana could be a problem with any consistency. Extra healing also lets you use lower ranks, or, as a paladin, FoL almost the whole time.

For other classes, yes, regen is more viable. As a paladin, I just don't see it.

Also, I don't think click healing trinkets are really the answer. Burst DPS isn't typically predictable enough for them to be reliable, so most of the time they are sitting on cooldown with all that item budget being wasted.

I also consider PvP with my gear selection, I admit, and output is a significant concern there.

The time in 5SR imo depends a lot more on the fight than on your gear, and because of that you adjust your gear to the time in 5SR and not the other way around...

Extra mana when the boss is at 0% is worthless. However, extra mana at 1% is very useful, and the only way to ensure you always have that is to end most fights with mana left. Unless you're ending fights at full mana while healing as if you're fighting Vael, more regen will nearly always be useful. Of course, that doesn't mean it's more useful than more +healing, just that there is no attainable point where more regen is useless.

Right, that was what I said:
I simply find myself with plenty of mana at the end of many fights without chain popping pots or even having a shadow priest in my group most of the time, and my issue is that in this scenario, more regen would be totally useless.

Yes, but you also have to consider that if the boss died and you didn't then any extra +heal would also be wasted since you were able to complete the encounter, making the difference between +heal and regen in your example moot.

I put all +18heal in my gear for Karazhan, SSC, and TK. The ONLY blue gems I used were the epic +11heal/2mp5, or +11heal/6stam.

My guild has now stopped raiding SSC/TK, and we're focusing on BT/Hyjal. I currently have 2pc T5. Only one of my main healing set items contains Royal Nightseye, and it's because it's T4 and I gemmed it before the heal/spirit gem came out and it's not worth it to re-gem. I have a few "regen" pieces that do contain the +9heal/2mp5 gems, but I don't believe in regen gems when I can use a Flask, Potions, Inner Focus, and my Shadowfiend to compensate for that.

The fights where I swap in my regen gear are fights where I find myself chain casting COH. Otherwise, I use my +healing or more "spirit-based" set. Also, if I know I'm not going to be getting an Innervate for an encounter, I typically just pop the Earring of Soulful Meditation every time it is up.

We don't run Shadow Priests in our healer group either (they are in the caster group and the hunter group). Mana is rarely, if ever, a problem for me, but I'm also not afraid to use 2-3 pots for an encounter and Flask for the entire night. I am also a raid healer, sometimes OT healer. I am not an MT healer...so I can find time OO5SR to maximize my Spirit and Trinket usage.

EDIT: Just for clarification...I use the +9heal/4spirit gem now in my blue slots. The gear I consider "regen" gear are items that have 0 spirit, but high levels of mp5:
Leggings of Eternity: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30912

Yes, but if you've killed the boss, then no upgrade would have helped you, as you killed the boss. It's when you're wiping that gear upgrades are useful, and both +healing and more regen do the same thing in that case: cast larger heals (unless you're chaincasting HL11, but you aren't doing that without two shadowpriests and some pots).

That's the thing with healers though, just like leftover mana is useless, if you're not casting max ranks on everyone all the time and struggle to keep them up, you also don't need more +heal... If nobody dies you don't even need more skill, there's no better way to keep everyone alive than making sure eveyrone is 100% HP all the time ;p

At the end though you want to do your best when things get rough, and the stats that will help you do that depends on what "kind" of rough they're getting to.

That's not entirely true. Your output determines the load placed on other healers, as well as the amount of burst damage you can mitigate by yourself.

Anyway no one is arguing the point that healing upgrades are pretty shitty compared to DPS upgrades. DPS always matters because stuff dying faster is always better, while healing does not *unless* your gear gets to the point where you can simply bring less healers, at which point the first priority is "can x healers deal with y damage output." The second priority is "can they do this for z minutes." And it is far easier to extend your mana pool through shadow priests, pots, flasks, food, and the like than it is to extend your output. Again, this is directed at paladins more than other healers.

Anyway this is all somewhat trivial, I think it's sad to say that most of the time the gear on your healers is the least important choice for the raid nowadays, and in the end all we are really talking about is Gems and enchants since for the most part everyone ends up with exactly the same gear otherwise.

I don't see how 4 int and 4 stam holds a candle to +9 healing. I agree stamina isn't a completely irrelevant stat, but in this case I think one can safely say the former choice is mediocre. You don't need stamina for every fight, anyway. Why not just have a piece you can swap on for a couple hundred health and gem for the prime healing stats?

As for spirit, I do agree that it is itemized a bit too high. Spirit shouldn't take up as many points as it does, but I don't feel it offers anything on a small scale. with PMC and raidbuffs, 1 spirit = .4 healing, .125 mp5 in fsr and .625 mp5 out of fsr. Even in the relatively small values you see on gems and enchants that certainly makes a difference, as long as your play style matches the way spirit works. While it's not as shiny as mp5 or easy to come by, it's not the waste that a lot of players think it is.

These two paragraphs seem like something of a double standard. If spirit is good because it gives you broad, gradual increases to important stats, then wouldn't socketing in a diverse way to include gradual increases to important stats be equally valuable?

The fact is, Healing Theorycraft is much, MUCH more convoluted than DPS. Who's to say if it's better to spam Rank2 Greater Heal or Start/Cancel Rank7 GH, allowing it to land when the tank needs a large burst? In fact, as long as whatever choices you make in gear match your play-style, you are making the right decision. If you prefer to spam down-ranked heals, mp5 is probably better for you. If you prefer to Start/Stop Max Rank heals, providing large burst healing and dipping in and out of the 5SR, +healing and spirit are probably better for you.

As such, I think it is possible to achieve both in the same gear set through balance. Stamina is relevant regardless of strategy, because if you get killed you have made it that much harder for the fight to go well.

I'd rather not use a "high stamina" item socketed with +healing or +mp5 to switch in for survivability, because there is a lot of gray area in survivability. While priests that exclude balanced stats might need to do this for fights like The Shade, Gruul, etc, a priest with balanced stats can succeed in most fights, with the same gear set, and be highly productive.

I mention priests specifically for obvious reasons... I really can't speak to other healing classes. It seems to me that priests are designed in such a way that they are the "balanced" healer, having every single type of heal available in the game: Large, slow, effective heal; fast, less efficient heal; HoT; Reactive; Shield. It makes sense to me to accentuate what Blizzard gives the class, which are diversity and adaptability.

I think it's been concluded before that different play styles are going to require different focuses when it comes to gearing and stat distribution. I was simply trying to champion spirit for a short time instead of everyone's favorite discussion of mp5 vs. +healing. I wasn't saying that socketing the terrible spirit gems is a good idea, just that you shouldn't view the 20 spirit on those gloves with no mp5 as a useless item.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the different sets of gear. In my experience a healer isn't at a risk of getting one shot in every fight. Yes there are some out there where higher stamina keeps you alive, granted, but not every one by any means. Socketing and gearing yourself with one set of gear for both types of fights seems lazy to me.

Since the increase to HP/mana is very similar when you change heal ranks with a pretty wide range of +heal values, I don't see how downranking VS no downranking makes the difference between getting more +heal to getting more mana.

To get the best benefit out of a given item level, you want an even spread across all the stats that are important to you. ("Even" would be in inverse proportion to the stat point costs as detailed here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Item_Values).

So when it comes to item choice, unless you count mp5 or healing worthless, you'd be gimping yourself by not choosing items which boost them in even measure.

Gems, on the other hand, don't (generally) appear to be penalised by the exponential budgeting - so you won't be losing out by going for a pure +heal gem.

In the abstract, yes. If you're dealing with rare-quality gems though, you are losing out by not going with 9 Healing/2 MP5 as that gem should only have 1.5 MP5 but is rounded up. (Mentioned earlier in this thread.)

While I whole-heartedly agree with spreading your stats out on items, swapping from 9 Heal/2 MP5 to 18 Healing is really like going down in "gem level" because of that single itemization oddity.