Hmm, interesting. I've tested PoM and know it doesn't proc Divine Aegis on crits. I'll try to test it with respect to Holy's mastery for the next update as well as the other effects you mention. Thanks for the report.

It certainly did on Sunday, I looked at my logs to make sure. However, I thought it would be worthwhile to investigate these claims a little more.

- It doesn't benefit from Chakra: Sanctuary.
- It doesn't proc DA or Echo of Light on the casting priest at all. I looked at random parses uploaded today and tested ingame, so there should be sufficient proof.
- It does correctly proc DA and Echo of Light on other players all of the time, I just made sure by running a dungeon and they show up in those same parses.
- The claim that Prayer of Mending criticals proc an EoL equivalent to the non-crit amount is true. I have ~24% of my healing as a hot from mastery, PoM critically healed for 16807 (I removed the glyph, I suspected maybe that was causing these quirks but it isn't) but caused 2030 healing over 6 seconds which is only 12% of the heal.

What is the value of shard of woe in 4.3 for a holy priest? Obviously the trinket is nerfed, and obviously one of the trinket slots will be Heart, but the question is, how competitive is shard with the other options (static int + either healing proc or haste proc) in its current state.

What makes shard probably better than it seems is that the haste is controllable, so you can always be sure to add an extra tick to hymns, and have it be up for high damage phases. Extra tick of divine hymn makes it 20% better, which is kind of a lot of throughput. This is on top of a fairly decent chunk of mp5.

edit: you would need a bit over 1900 haste to go from 5 to 6 ticks for hymn/renew with a shard clickie, though.

I'm still using shard as holy due to a lack of options, and I've gotten so used to having it ready for every divine hymn and shadowfiend + mana hymn combo. It owns. This from a 4/8 heroic perspective, 10man.

I'd like to ask the theorycrafters to settle a debate.

There seems to be agreement that [Windward Heart] is the best trinket for holy priests before heroics. However, there is debate on whether [Seal of the Seven Signs] or [Heart of Unliving] is better for the second slot.

Tankspot seems to be down as I post this, there was a thread there which came to the conclusion that the Seal was better because of 135 flat intellect more than Unliving. However, WoW Insider recommends the Heart of Unliving and so do its commenters, for the most part. I commented (with my nickname Revnah) but met a lot of opposition.

I fail to see how regen could trump so much intellect, but maybe I'm just being slow here? I currently have around 3.5k spirit, I hardly think I need that much more. Mana-wise I'm mostly ok in my 25man raid (I have a mastery-heavy build with only around 10% haste).

I'd love to see what the masters of math say.

Heart of the Unliving is very good because of the near-static 10 stacks you have of it. This will allow you to reforge away massive amounts of spirit into throughput stats and therefore improve your overall healing more than the static int from the seal can.
Additionally proc trinkets with throughput stats are, at least in my opinion, a bit lackluster because you can't control them. A spirit proc will mostly never go to waste (see Cho'gall trinket) but a haste proc could grant you near nothing during a lul phase but be on internal cd for the next burnphase.

I didn't say that there is. I also named the two sources I particularly refer to in my post.

You could just as easily get that Haste bonus from Seal of the Seven Signs of even Ti'tahk, if you are setting your sights on being able to reach that second Haste breakpoint for extra ticks of Renew, Hymns, and even Lightwell (which is possible).

I can see Shard of Woe being useful for certain fights, but I really think we should move past the idea that it's still BiS across the board for holy. It was great for two full tiers and can be for parts of this one, but there are better options out there.

Seal haste is an uncontrollable proc. Shard haste is a clicky. There is almost no chance to have the proc align with the time you need to push a hymn out. Examples: Zon'ozz black phase, Hagara lightning phase, etc. The uncontrollable nature of Seal's proc coupled with a long ICD make the worth of that proc very low.

I absolutely agree that Shard may well not be BiS for holy anymore. I am not even sure how to evaluate Shard, which is why I asked a question about it in this very thread a little while ago!

edit: I think it's pretty clear Shard is not that great for Disc. Haste clickies is not something disc cares about as much, due to not having breakpoints, and having PI -- if the opportunity cost is giving up static int. I would suspect Windward heart is a good second trinket for disc.

Indeed; on-demand haste and proc'ing haste are so different it isn't even comparable. That said, if you do make yourself aware of Seal procs, sometimes you can maximize on them, but overall it's pretty tough. It's hard to say how valuable that on-use haste is, or how it compares to on-use of Bottled Wishes/Reflection of the Light as an emergency cooldown. The 397 on-use trinkets certainly provide more healing throughput but don't provide extra ticks of our Hymns, so it's a matter of how much you value the latter two (on the flipside, haste doesn't affect HW: Sanctuary, so it's even more tricky).

The spreadsheet can take into account the mana reduction of the Shard, so you can at least see how it affects your time healing in whatever rotation you want. I haven't compared it for Holy but at this point it doesn't even beat a trinket with a lot of static int for theoretically-perfect play as Disc (and factor in the throughput 400+ int gives, it is definitely inferior).

Just for the fun of it, I've been testing some procs lining up.

• The Ti'tahk proc (I have the staff)
• the proc of seal
• Bloodlust
• 5% haste of the shaman totem
• myself having 12.65% spellhaste

This gave me a casttime for Divine Hymn of 7,74 with a tick every 0,97 seconds. (8 ticks if Im correct) I couldn't believe that at first so rechecked and I got the same result. This made me wonder what the different hastecaps are for holy priest and what can we do with an irratic haste proc from this staff? For those that don't know. It procs about every minute.

I have been using Ti'tahk for some time now and I have noticed a couple of interesting things, regarding our Haste caps and at which point certain spells benefit from them.

Initially, we all thought that the two main breakpoints of 12.50% and 37.50% applied to all of our spells (at least the ones which could generate extra ticks with Haste). However, it doesn't seem like that's entirely the case. Renew and Divine Hymn start generating extra ticks @ 12.50% and then give you another tick @ 37.50%, per usual. Hymn of Hope and Lightwell seem to give extra ticks outside of these breakpoints.

My Lightwell Renew was giving 3 ticks @ 12.50% Haste, and Hymn of Hope was generating 12 mana returns, which is the standard amount of ticks that they usually give. Somewhere between 1707 - 3635 Haste, I was able to get a 4th tick of Lightwell Renew and a 5th tick of Hymn of Hope, which led to a total of 15 mana returns. I haven't been able to pinpoint what exact amount of Haste led to these things and I wouldn't necessarily suggest that a priest gear for these things, but they are possible.

Are you sure that hymn of hope gave you only 4 ticks at 12.5%? I'm getting 5 at 13.15% character sheet haste, which matches the theoretical breakpoint for a 4 tick spell.

Lightwell gives a 4th tick at 20%, (based on tests at 19.98 and 20.10)

Lightwell gains an extra tick only via haste rating. Heroism, Power Infusion and spell/talents don't affect it's calculation. 2130 haste rating is required.

At the time I tested it, I had 1707 Haste, without any raid buffs or procs from gear. With that amount of Haste, I had only 4 ticks per person from Hymn of Hope.

I'm wondering if people could shed some light on the next matter. After alot of raiding with both sets (T12 and T13 all pieces) I find the 4p setbonus of T13 almost a waste of time. The increased intelect is usefull, but the longer duration of the holy word ability doesn't seem to way heavier to the 2% manaregen I get from the 2p of T12. Mana is an issue for me in the progress fight we do. (Ultraxion) I know that the 4p of T13 is nice there because you can keep sanctuary up almost the entire fight, but I get OOM going into the last phase of that fight if I don't keep the T12 2p setbonus. I now raid with both 2p setbonusses.

(I heal that fight with a paladin. I get the first buff, he takes second and third)

Isn't it weird that disc gets an extra regenpossibility while holy doesn't. Or am I missing something?

The thing about Ultraxion is that you shouldn't need to keep Sanctuary up the entire fight. It is very common for people to go all out with the healing during the first minute or two of the pull and you really shouldn't have to start going full throttle until the gems start to come out. So my first suggestion would be to look at how much healing you are doing right off the bat and see if you are healing harder or more than you need to be.

Second - I notice that you have the glyph of CoH, which is interesting because I took that glyph out when I did this fight on 10m. If you are using that spell a lot on 10m, that could be another reason that you are having such troubles with your mana.

Overall, you have a high enough quality of gear where you really should not be having any mana issues unless you are doing too much or the other healer is not doing enough. It could also be your DPS. If the DPS is dying early or not doing enough damage this will cause the fight to last longer, which means more healing will need to go out, and eventually nobody can keep up with that.

One thing concerns me about the newly-updated MoP talent calculator. This is the first update since 4.3 gave us Heavenly Voice. Yet the calculator's tooltip for Divine Hymn (which will become a holy-priest-only spell) shows it as having the CD and output of Divine Hymn without Heavenly Voice, and the updated MoP talents have no Heavenly Voice option. I sure hope the tooltip is wrong, and that Heavenly Voice is intended to be "baked in" to Divine Hymn in MoP.

EDIT: Blizzard community manager Kaivax made a post some minutes ago that may address this:

Has anyone else noticed that CoH has sort of gone down in efficiency, with the start of Heroic modes? I used to use it pretty much on cooldown, along with other spells in my toolbox, and now it seems like a lot of fights favor straight PoH spam. Even when I try to weave CoH in with the fights that require PoH spam, I feel like doing so causes a decrease in healing, rather than an increase. I realize that it's not about topping the meters or anything, but I certainly want to do what is most efficient and will keep people up the best.

What does everyone else think about this? Have you been able to find a place for CoH in any of the Heroic modes, or has it fallen by the wayside in favor of strict PoH usage?

The only reason it has 'gone down' in efficiency is because it has a lower base and a lower coeff than PoH, meaning your PoH is scaling better with better gear.

Still stands that CoH is instant, smart, heals 6 people.

So yes it makes sense you are not casting it as often.

I'm still using CoH, because it's a smart heal, but I agree that it's use isn't as great as it was before. Because of alot of damage being static throughout the raid (everyone getting about the same damage) I have lots of moments in which I just chain PoH's. Also as holy being able to do the 2 BH's or FH's with a PoH after that, CoH is sometimes less usefull. In 10 man I have lots of stress situations in which I BH 2 people in my own group and then PoH the other group.

The only way for Blizzard to get CoH back to a priority heal, is if they make PoH a bit more powerfull and/or make damage be less the same on all the people in the raid. It's almost a travisty that CoH is so useless you can't use it on a purple ooze during Yor'Sahj. Getting a stack with such few healing is just a waste of a healtick.

I don't know if anyone cares but for some reason the additional ticks from Haste do not appear at exactly the same point for Renew and Hymn. Renew gets a fifth tick at 1182, but Hymn requires 1184. If you sit exactly on a rollover point, it might be worth checking your tooltips to see that you're actually getting five ticks on both.