SoR has always been very undervalued for progress. People have railed on it with the argument that "it only helps if you're dead, and you shouldn't die in the first place!", but when you're learning the ropes, things are rarely that simple.

Whether it proves its value through providing a few extra seconds of healing on an accidental death or as an emergency suicide to extend your mana bar, it's a strong talent that is very hard to quantify. It's better in 5-mans than raids due to the single healer dependency and shorter boss fights, which could help as we're taking our first forays into heroics.

Its strength is obviously dependent on the encounter style, but for a varied collection of encounters it can be incredibly valuable. I'd include it in any initial talent build aimed at versatility, and cut it if bottleneck encounters don't allow it to shine.

While things are still being theorcrafted and I do things slighty different right now in heroics than what the present theories state (again, these theories seem more plausable for raids than heroics), I need this question asked.

How is Holy Word: Sanctuary viable? Costs 9k mana (less if reduced through meditation, but still 7kish) and onyl heals each person for roughly 5k - but that is 5k over 18 seconds. Now, witht he entire raid stacked I see it being worth the cost, but using it on just ht melee or just hte ranged - it's value doesn't seem to be overall worth it, espeically with all the movement and the fact it's ticking for only 500 or so.

Seems like a big waste, espeically considering the renew refresh heal gives.

I have found Holy Word: Santuary to be very helpful in specific encounters.
First off, like Lightwell, once this is cast you don't need to worry about it.

The AOE damage it will help you heal through effectively is the unavoidable AOE damage. You are right about it being ineffective on the AOEs that are avoidable.

What I mean by this is AOEs that can be run away from or interupted are typically big damage AOEs. While they can be healed through once (or maybe twice) in an encounter you are likely going to burn through your mana. So as long as the DPS does their job and CC, Interupts and Kites the assigned targets it is an effective spell to help the melee through the challenges they have to deal with since they are right up on the mobs and have less reaction time to get away from avoidable damage.

Right now what I'm seeing in the heroics is DPS is still learning the ropes of CC, Interupts and Kiting. Tanks and Healers are being forced to take up the slack during their learning curve, and frankly the DPS has the steepest learning curve of all the class roles right now. DPS is just used to maxing out their numbers and not using the rest of their toolkits.

Awesome guide as usual. I love pretty much all of it but I have a problem with 3 things starting with this section.

Spending massive amounts of mana on Fheals to keep Serendipity stacked, particularly in the beginning or when the tank is full hp, is terrible mana efficiency and mana is extremely important currently. Plus its another thing you have to keep track of in your head. The rotation/priority should be more like this Mending(no aggro and you usually regen the mana while tank is running in), Renew, enter Chakra: Heal, use Heal before Renew drops, spam Serenity(most mana efficient), Heal if Serenity is down and tiny portion of life missing, Gheal if not overhealing, Fheal if below 50% and you don't have Serendipity up.

I am a fan of SoR, 3% chance for a free Fheal from a Heal and 2s longer Chakra are both mediocre talents you could swap out for it easily. Lets say you go through 200k mana in a fight, in SoR you can go through another 40k, even if that means you have to kill yourself to help the raid finish the fight. It might be hella embarrassing having an enormous gay angel showing everyone that you messed up or got boned but at least when that happens your healing output goes way up. Imagine if you put every talent pt in SoR you would die and be able to heal for 10 minutes with no mana cost.

I also prefer mastery over haste with the exception of having a renew tick 5 times if your near that. For haste rating vs mastery rating 1% haste is equal to about 1% healing over 6s. So think of it this way would you rather heal like superman with your response cut in half and go oom twice as fast or would you rather all your heals do double healing over 6s. If you could Fheal someone's entire hp bar and never go oom like the old days I would prefer the haste but now it takes 4 Gheals to heal someone to full and we go oom really fast.

I've found myself stacking quite alot of Serendipity last night in BWD on both Omnitor and Magmaw by using Binding Heal as much as I could, due to its fast cast and good MPH. On Omnitron it helped me to deliver a faster GHeal on the tanks while on Magmaw to get a fast first PoH during the raid AoE it does. I agree that Flash Heal is used very rarely, and mostly in tight situations like during the Toxitron add phase where healers move alot and you risk a tank death, there Flash heal comes handy to prevent a wipe. I wouldn't drop Serenpidity for now, even if in my current spec it made me drop Body and Soul.

Also Vieled Shadows is useful in raids. Those two fights which I've done till now were quite long (~7mins on Omnitron), which allow you to use it twice. But, even if in a 7min fight you can use a 5minute CD shadowfiend twice, you need to take into consideration how the fight looks like. If there is minimum damage in the first minutes, then you don't require to use it, and if you drop unde 70-75% mana after 2-3 minutes, then you won't be able to use it two times, or you it on the last x% when you have the choice to kill yourself for SoR if is necessary .

I use flash quite a lot when I've taken damage. It's hpm is good and its hps excellent. The only trouble is that it does not work with the Heal Chakra (ie. does reset renew duration on the target). I've done no raid yet, but in aoe situation, I can imagine it being excellent for self-healing, then a hasted cheap POH on another group.
I also like Serependity for minimizing tank death risk. If a tank gets low, for any reason (silence, or heavy group damage for example), I can cast one or two flashs on him to prevent death, then a quick cheap GH to top him. In other words, it allows a maximum hps sequence of 2 flashs and 1 gh, if need be.

I hope you mean that you use Binding Heal quite a lot when you've taken damage. Flash heal's HPM is horrible, while Binding is as efficient as heal if you actually need the healing yourself.

Can you clarify which blue post you're talking about? I can't find it on any of the bluetrackers.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker

Agreed. I found my healing output in 5mans vastly improved when I allowed myself to start working up Serendipity stacks every now and then (though I still try to reserve starting a stack for SoL procs or occurrences that demand FH/Binding).

I'm still having difficulty finding Holy's niche in raids, however. I've only been in one so far, and ended up swapping to Disc midway through to see if I had an easier time then (I did). HW: Sanctuary seems like a great spell in theory, but in practice I've had no shortage of grief from tanks/fellow raid members about it either closely resembling a boss's adverse ability (Prophet Barim and the first boss in HoO come to mind), or else covering up ground projections that need to be seen to either be avoided or targeted. I'm almost always filling a raid healing role, but I've been hesitant to use the AoE chakra over the direct healing chakra and I'm not sure what tack to take with it.

The extra shadowfiend will be tougher to use in heroics for sure, but if you look at Carnathagia's logs that he posted one was 7:20 (easily get 2 there) and the other was over 5 mins, so no use.

Your armory was not opening for me at work, but for me the 2 points came to a choice between 2% spell haste or the reduced cooldown on shadowfiend (same as others discussed earlier). As your gear level raises and you don't need that second shadow fiend as much and would rather have the throughput you'll likely be swapping those talent points around.

I am going to give veiled shadows at least a week or two of 25-man raiding and then determine how many times I make use of that second fiend.