You will not be getting that much per swing, but per proc. It supposedly has a rate of 15ppm, haven't confirmed it but it is definitely a lot less then 100%. It can still be good on some fights, especially ones that have really frantic healing phases followed by a relatively calm one, Felmyst is the best example of this I can think of.

Yeah, i´m running the same setup. And no matter how i twist or turn it, nothing seems to be better or worse.
And i usually bring kings to 10-mans as we dont always have ret/prot´s available i save a lot of mana on the BoK one.

The benefit of the BoW and BoM minor glyphs seem to carry on to the greater as well for some reason, or it´s a bug in my ui or if the greater are actually increased by 20 min as well. That could be a replacer if we get a ret/prot in our 10s that kan bless kings. That way i can take the imp wis and save a few g/mana over time.

Sense undead is ok in naxx, but i guess Uldaur wont have as much UD´s to kill.

OK, I'll word it this way. Currently I have SP socketed in every single gem slot, and being a JC that includes 3x 32 SP gems. With all this, once my Illustration of the Dragon Soul is stacked (basically after the first ~15 seconds of the fight until the end) I have 2256 SP, not counting any raid buffs, flasks, or anything else. And this is without a few good pieces of gear (my weapon is only 408 SP, have had terrible luck with drops/being outbid, and at least six items are not best in slot). Point being, that's a pretty hefty amount of unbuffed SP, and once I finally get Turning Tide/some other upgrades, I should easily be over 2400 SP unbuffed.

Now, let's talk about Sarth 3d. Yes, there are definitely times when you will need to spam Holy Light. Not just once, there are a few occasions in the fight where it will be spammed. However, there are also many, many instances where you can get away with Flash of Light. Now, I use Holy Light roughly 3x more often than Flash of Light for 3d kills, so obviously Holy Light is still the favored spell. But I have seen so many WWS reports of Pallies not using Flash of Light at all. Not once. Some even never using Holy Shock. Is it realistic to believe that in a fight like that, there wouldn't even be a single time where Flash of Light would do the trick?

For 25m Sarth 3d I usually only have to Divine Plea once, for 10m Sarth 3d usually twice. It isn't *that* long of a fight, and a Runic Mana Potion returns a fair chunk of mana, and they *should* be used (see plenty of Holy Paladins bragging they never use them... I'd much rather use one over a Divine Plea any day). With no Int gems and not focusing on Int, using Divine Plea one or two times in the hardest encounter in the game currently, and not having mana issues, this is why I wonder why people are gemming for Int. If I'm not having mana issues with Sarth 3d, obviously I'm not having mana issues with any other encounter. So why would I gem for regen that I don't need?

Enough of this "just because current content is easy" argument. Most minmaxing is done through gems, which are very, very, very replaceable. If I have mana issues in Ulduar, yes, I will re-gem for Int. Regemming, even considering AH price for 3 Dragon's Eyes, would cost a maximum of a thousand gold - if you're really pushing your toon, that's nothing. And guess what, Ulduar isn't here, it probably won't be soon, so we should gear ourselves to best handle the current raiding content. If I'm not having mana issues even though I don't have a single Int gem, the logical conclusion is that raising my SP will increase my overall HPS. Last week I was 2nd overall for Sarth 3d, I regemmed to pure SP since then and ended up 1st overall this week. With no mana issues and an increase in performance (among pretty much same healers), why would I care about Int at all?

I'll put it this way - I get the math. I get how powerful Int *can* be. But, if you socket pure SP, your HPS will go up. Pure Int, your HPS will be less but you can heal over a longer period of time. The longest boss fight in current content is 10m Sarth 3d, which like I said I usually only have to Divine Plea twice during, and that's with a two healer setup and pure SP gemming.

So I must ask again, why are people gemming pure Int? Why are people using Holy Light 100% of the time, to the point of never casting even one Flash of Light (again, seen dozens of WWS reports without a single Flash of Light)? Why are Paladins gearing themselves for future content that probably won't be here for a good while? Why are Paladins gemming for the longevity that Int provides if such longevity is not needed?

So far I've gemmed originally for pure Int, then I tried a mix of Int and SP, then I tried a mix of Crit and SP, and finally I tried pure SP. I've probably spent around 2.5k gold in regemming in the last two weeks alone. And I can tell you this, until the *current* - not future - hardest raid content involves 10m+ long boss fights where I'm forced to use Divine Plea often, I'm not going to touch an Int gem with a ten foot pole. If and when I need to regem for Int, I will. What I'm questioning is why people are gemming for it now, when they clearly don't need to.

I'm not arguing with EJ's math. Obviously over a long and healing intensive (mostly Holy Light spam) Int would far outweigh SP. But the current hardest raid encounter is not that long and not that healing intensive. The math is right, it just doesn't make sense when applied to current content.

Well, i did my numbers, and this are my thoughts, correct me pls

ATM divine plea is 50% less heal, so casting flash is not a way, and casting Holy Light is a big amount of mana. So, socketing int is a good way to have a good mana pool and have a nice mp5.

I have all gems, and ill gem tonight to fight malygos, so ill tell tomorrow what happened with my mana and my spell power. My nums said, in paper, that ill lose like 50sp, and 0.02 crit, but ill gain 3k mana and 12mp5. The crit lost is not a real amount, and the sp is not that hard, ill cast some more flash, so ill have more sp on time terms.

Furthermore, atm i have like 36% crit, so i think i have to grow it till 40%, i guess, isnt it? when i reach 40% ill regem and reenchant to get more spell power and haste. Is the bigest lost ive suffered equiping my toon for crit. I think that socketing int will give more mana return from illumination when proc, and having a good pool will give more mana from divine plea.

And the point everyone is making is that we are not discussing gearing for current content, we are discussing on what is expected from the next tiers of content. As mentioned, I could heal most 25 man content wearing spirit cloth and without a single gem (with 4 or 5 other stupidly geared healers), this doesn't make it a valid or indeed discussion worthy setup it justs points out how pointless the current content is.

Sarth 3 drakes has been pointed out to be "not quite so hard" and it certainly isn't intense in terms of length as we would expect from the promoted as harder Ulduar content. At this point then we have to speculate on the "best" overall gear setup in terms of throughput and burst, hence why the majority of people are saying "gear for haste, gem for int" As this gives the greatest yield in terms of healing. People need to start reading the last 20 pages of this thread and seeing that it's not simply an intellect circle jerk, there are valid reasons for why people are saying it and certainly a disclaimer in there that's been mentioned a few times (it's to do with later tiers of content for those who find it hard to read).

Just a note regarding the new Divine Plea. Before the patch I used it sort of mindlessly on the CD even though I never REALLY needed it, except on Patchwerk I guess. Last night I was in 25man Naxx with a half-guild/half-pug group and I didn't find I was missing it. The few times I did lose more than half my mana, when things went wrong in a fight and everyone needed heals (other healers dying, for example) I still got through the fights. I only used DP between fights, which is, I think, going to be the best time for holy pallys to use it now. Once I used it in-fight to see the effect, and I sure felt it. A HL that normally would have healed the MT fully only did--you guessed it--half as much, LOL. It wasn't nice to see. I have plenty of mana, 21k unbuffed or something like that, so I could use it in-fight if I wanted to work harder, but I'm lazy. I'll only be using it between fights in lieu of drinking, for those times when you don't want to stop and sit.

And just a note regarding the gemming discussion. Maybe because I'm nonconfrontational, or I just like Aristotle's golden mean, but I gem for a balance. I set myself some goals, like more than 20k mana, 2k spell power (still don't have that yet), a certain amount of crit and haste. As my gear changed, these numbers change of course and I adjust, but I still think that if you have 20-22k mana unbuffed, 30% or so holy crit unbuffed, a haste about 350, and about 2k spellpower, you'll be fine with current content. More than fine. We hear about future content, it's smart to think about what to do about it and gear up for it, but until we see it we won't know the right answers.

Let me first get the obvious counter argument out of the way, since it's been made before in this thread. Stacking int does not mean your HPS goes down. Another way to increase your HPS is to cast a Holy Light instead of Flash of Light, which you can do if you have more mana.

The question then really becomes: are you able to do more healing by using HL instead of FL, or are people using HL when they should be using FL, as most of the HL healing is waste?

I know this much for myself: the only time I use FL really is when the tank is taking almost no damage and I have nothing else to do, or I'm raid healing. We have an excellent priest, shaman, and druid that I trust with raid heals so I don't really try to maximize for raid healing. (I should mention at this point that we're a pretty small guild and we 20 man most content, so we run 4 healers most of the time, leaving me as mostly solo tank healer). On the other hand, if I'm tank healing using FL , then either the content is stupid easy or there's too many healers on the tank. So given these two situations, I take to using HL as my main spell, using Holy Shock+FL to sneak in some raid heals if I think I can. Since HL is my main spell, the best way for me to do more healing is to be able to cast more of them, not necessarily to heal more hit points when I do use it.

Assuming you have roughly 30k mana, and you seem to never use it all on any encounter ever, would it then be safe to assume taking a few of the int gems/enchants out and replacing them with sp is a safe bet? I understand that int is the "best in slot" item but honestly if you have mana you can't use and the mp5 from int is not a big deal (once your mana pool is this large of course) and the crit per gem is such a small amount could you reasonably assume it would be safe to replace some of these items.

I guess what I'm saying is if an int gem is going to give you mana you wont use, mp5 you don't need, and only a small amount of crit, would it be better to just socket/enchant sp at that point?

And if 30k mana is not sufficient to make this argument lets assume you have 100k mana just to eliminate the "I have 30k mana and I go oom all the time" argument.

It is, assuming you are spending every time you have squeezing as much/big heals as possible. If at that point you still have tons of mana, regemming is a more effective (pretty much the only one actually) way of increasing your HPS.

Since HL overheals a lot of the time, Haste is a more effective way to increase your HPS at this point in time. However, as had been said 100s of times, current content is easy and you could go enchantless/gemless and still do fine.

Almost all of these arguments against Int are saying I don't run OOM so I don't need Int. They never say why the extra SP is better choice over the Int. You should try to show situations where gemming for SP over Int would prevent someone from dying.