I'm finding that, while there are burst segments in a lot of heroic fights, a lot of them also have downtime where you can get everyone topped off enough. Smiting there is good - especially if you mouseover heal, so the boss is always targeted. Also, there are a number of burn fights where, the longer you take, the more healing is necessary. Helping with the DPS at the start can make a significant difference. Same with add fights - getting them down fast helps the healing burden a lot.

With good CC in heroics, I find that I've got time to smite often enough to get a 5 stack before the next Archangel CD. Most boss fights seem to have a "high damage" phase and a "recovery" phase where you can Smite to keep the tank topped off and recover some mana.

Edit: I use a 33/8/0 Atonement spec. I also use macros to allow me to target the tank (or any other friendly target) and continue Smiting, along with mouseover macros for my heals.

Whilst reviewing this thread I came to the opinion that I wanted to trial the IF-GH style currently identified as a viable spec by several posters, as I am having difficulty providing sufficient throughput in Heroics with Smite/Atonement.

The talent build concensus for this build, created from reviewing the armory of several posters and from page one, is 31/08/00 +2 with the remaining two points being spread far and wide.

During this time I wondered if there was any merit in placing these two points into Improved Renew and using the Glyph of Renew to further boost the power of Renew! For maximum efficiency one would have to ensure haste was above 12.5 %, to allow the additional 5th tick. Final Talents 31/10/00

I downloaded the spreadsheet and entered the numbers and think Renew became one of the most efficient HPM spells in the spellbook. I say think as this was a first attempt at 'working the numbers' in a spreadsheet as opposed to 'how it feels'!

This in turn would provide a useful heal; both on the move and to throw on the DPS to prevent moving the Grace stack (with the added bonus that the DPS will see their health rising rather than being protected by a shield and still remaining low).

What I'd like to know is if this a good idea in general or are there better talent point choices?

Given the generous Rapture change (2/4/6% mana return), a fully consumed shield will return 4800 mana to a priest with a mana pool of 80k (the very beginning of raiding). Fully talented with MA/IW, this means a mana gain of nearly 2000 mana per consumed shield. This will completely change talent choices (MA/IW become less crucial) and play styles (shield spamming becomes viable aoe "healing").

On paper this seems too big a buff, but for priests struggling for mana it seems Disc has a clear advantage (despite the Holy Concentration buff for Holy). Though the throughput isn't ideal, with these numbers a Disc priest could maintain a Shield/Mending/Heal tank-healing rotation indefinitely.

Rapture still has a 12 second ICD. Shield is still an inefficient heal without Rapture, so you will only want to shield once every 12 seconds if possible. Play styles will not change, but mana sure did get a lot better for disc (and holy).

(EDIT: Sorry, Vherna beat me to it)

I checked your WoL that you posted, and you put up some very impressive sustained healing numbers. However, when I look at your gear, I see that you have reforged pretty much every item to haste, with the exception of a few items that were lacking spirit. My understanding is that the current consensus on stat weights places haste last in terms of secondary stats. Why make this change? Evidently something is working for you and I wouldn't mind knowing what that is. Is it because you lack darkness?

That conversation was regarding single target healing specifically. If you read carefully you'll find a couple of references to haste still being valuable for PoH.

Rapture has a 12s ICD. Weakened Soul is 15s. Even one Heal with only 1/2 SoS will bring Weakened to 13 seconds. Bringing it lower than that won't increase your Rapture returns, and may in fact be detrimental considering Weakened at least gives you a crit bonus if Grace drops. If you don't have a Rapture timer, you may also end up shielding before 12 seconds has passed, thus delaying your next Rapture by a lot.

I recommend going 1/2 SoS. Get a Rapture UI timer, and you can increase Rapture's activation rate from every ~15 to every ~13 seconds. That's 300 mp5 right there for one talent point, assuming 100k mana pool. Any more is pointless.

Is Archangel actually a mana gain? I'm not sure exactly how it works since it doesn't appeal too much to me, but it seems like it offers 5% mana when used at 5 stacks of Evangelism. My mana in heroics is about 83k (ilvl 341), which is 4150 mana back, right? Doesn't it cost more than this to cast the 5 Smites needed to stack up Evangelism?

Maybe I'm missing something...

Assuming that you're casting these smites with atonement, these 5 smites are taking the place of heals you would be casting instead. That's mana returned for those heals that you wouldn't have gotten back if you were just casting heal. So it's innaccurate to call it a mana gain, but it is more of a mana conservation strategy.

Additionally, the Evangelism buff can be used to reduce the mana cost of Penance, although it's dependent on the situation to determine if it's better to use Penance at 5 stacks of Evangelism for the mana savings, or immediately after Archangel for the healing buff.

Haste is defiantly working out well for encounters that can accommodate heavy Atonement/PoH healing. The reasoning for the reforging strategy I am using is primarily due to the gear that I have had available to me. If you look, much of it is mastery or crit gear which put my haste a bit under budget for my needs. With Goblin racial I am running a little over 14% haste in raids. After tonights Cho'gall (WoL) kill I went and respec'd and dropped Train of thought for 2/3 darkness. I wanted to look through at least the second weeks logs before I decided if ToT was worth it for the types of healing I would be doing. My penance and GH usage was just not worth it when I looked at my HpM on each fight. With this change I'm looking at a pretty good stat balance with 16.5% raid buffed haste, 23.05% crit +10 on tank or whoever has WS/Grace and almost 12.5 mastery or 31% absorb increase. Good mana CD usage is key to huge sustained. You need your healing team to coordinate with you and call out when they plan to use mana CDs (HoH - Tide) and then use your own CDs with theirs for the best return.

Best way to go is to never consume your evangelism unless you do not plan to go back to smiting again any time soon. Pretty much when you know a large amount of damage is incoming on either the tank or the raid and you will need to be using PoH/Gheal ect for at least 10-15s. If it's just a small spike of damage I tend to just cast a Shield>Penance>Gheal as needed or a PoH then back to smiting before the stack drops. If you pop AA to cast 1-2heals then go back to smiting you are wasting more mana and doing less healing.