How situational is Archangel (+15% healing) for holy? You see the spec in some HC fights these days, mainly where there's a burst of AOE damage.

With 4.0.6 on the horizon, we're get to free some points in our holy tree. And Archangel is one of our options that we can reach easier.

In which fights do you use this niche spec? (And do you only use it for 25 man, or for 10 man aswell?)

There's some discussion about that in the last two pages of the Holy thread. In a nut shell, the argument goes:
- The talents you give up to take AA aren't very important
- Smiting to a 5 stack of Evangelism and then popping AA is a minor net mana loss and a minor HPS loss over time, but:
-- it allows you to give up healing time in low damage phases to have 15% increased HPS in high damage phases
-- it adds a tiny bit of dps

Then you weigh the importance of that flexibility against what you lose by speccing it. It's a personal preference thing, since the value of flexibility can't be accurately measured.

It should be worth noting that the tick duration is maintained when the HoT is re-applied, so chain-casting PoH will result in 1 tick every 3 seconds (I will test later if haste effects the tick duration). A weaker PoH HoT can over-write a stronger one, although there seems to be some fudge going on when the heal lands at the same time as a tick.

On a separate note, to clarify this I did some testing and it would appear that Glyph of PoH benefits separately from Twin Disciplines, resulting in a double benefit of the effect (first on the PoH, then again on the glyph).

My PoH healed for 7017 after TD, and the HoT healed for 743/744
7017/10*1.06=743.8

So with TD glyph of PoH is actually giving 10.6% additional PoH healing per tick.

I tested Grace for this effect too but it seems only TD gives it.

I looked around but couldn't find an answer to this. Under the holy priest compendium, for reforging it says:

"Holy may choose mastery or haste, Disc may want extra mastery (depending how close
to the soft cap you are)."

My question is - what is the soft cap (I presume it's referring to a haste cap not a mastery cap right)?

More than likely the haste softcap for the extra tick of renew

I have been looking for a comparison of a few trinkets to consider for a Holy set up.

These trinkets would include:

[Tyrande's Favorite Doll]
[Darkmoon Card: Tsunami]
[Core of Ripeness]
[Design: Figurine - Dream Owl]
[Tear of Blood]

Obviously the Darkmoon card would be one of the best trinkets in slot, provided you can get it. But where do the others fall for regen? The Doll seems nice for a use on demand every min trinket. I also think the tear would be up there as well. Currently I have the figurine trinket and it is very nice to pop that just before a mana tide totem for insane regen.

Two Atonement Questions:

1) Does Atonement Heal the Target with the lowest HP total or the lowest HP percentage?
2) Does Atonement target when Casting Smite or when Smite hits?

1. Like most "smart" healing spells it heals the one with the most absolute missing hp.
2. It targets when the Smite lands and sometimes is quite weird regarding the range and the hitbox of the target.

The extra renew tick isn't really a haste soft-cap, more of a plateau. You will see linear gains from haste from each point of haste rating you gain.

The importance of spirit in raiding situations:

Disclaimer: I'm not a priest, but just trying to understand the gearing decisions behind it (yay loot drama)

At what level (if any) do you want to stop focusing on gearing spirit? I'm seeing conflicting reports on this - the holy guide indicates that spirit is something that you gear for up to the point that you're comfortable with your regen. The disc guide simply states that you should only consider items that have spirit. Are the two specs that different in their mana usage characteristics?

Similarly, what is the level of regen that healers are looking at getting to (for normals, and for heroics?)

Finally: is 4.0.6 going to change this much? (with Holy Concentration getting a mild nerf, and probably other ability tweaks?)

Holy has a higher value on Spirit because Holy gets more mana out of Spirit (largely because of Holy Concentration, but also because Holy does not have any Intellect boosting talents). On the same token, Discipline has a higher value on Intellect because it not only gets more mana out of Intellect (6% return on Rapture), but also because it passively gets 15% more Intellect.

The "comfort" thing is hard to describe because it depends on a plethora of factors that are really unique to not only your playstyle and role, but also your raid composition and players in your raid.

In my opinion, because of the higher weight on Intellect and cheaper spells (primarily Penance, but also usage of Inner Focus and Power Word: Shield), Discipline is farrr easier of a spec to start doing 5-mans and heroics with. As long as you genuinely have your average 333 item-level (that is, you're not cheating the system) you should be fine doing heroics as Discipline.

Once again it really depends. For both specs I prefer static int with a spirit use/proc (Tsunami, Core of Ripeness, etc.) because going with something that only has spirit sacrifices throughput.
The only exception I could think of would be [Jar of Ancient Remedies] in certain situations if mana is ever incredibly stretched. But I can't think of a fight I have done so far that would make that trinket more attractive than Tsunami and Core of Ripeness.

You should still be picking up spirit as Disc or at least reforging to add spirit.

Spirit is always useful as haste is always useful. As you gain more haste you need the spirit to support it.

Are there any "hard caps" on additional Ticks? (or is there a haste hard cap?)

- I assume Penance has a hard cap of 3 since BT and and 5% Raid buff should otherwise already yield 4 ticks
- For Renew, Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn I calculate 6 ticks on 37,5% haste, but the formula Int[Base # Ticks * (1+ Haste *.01) + 0.5] would mean that 62,5% haste would yield 7 ticks. So is there a hard cap on haste?

You gain extra ticks at certain levels but they definitely are not hard caps as you still gain benefit from other spells and even from HoT's (as they tick faster in the allotted time). Renew is 12.5% but I am unsure about penance as I don't heal much anymore.

You will see constant gains from haste at 1%, 10%, 50% as long as you have the mana to keep up.

I managed to do some testing myself with the Wichting Hourglass Proc 3/3 Darkness, BT and PI. In theory with the witching hourglass proc I should have 3052 haste Rating or an overall haste of 74,49%. This should result in 7 ticks of Divine Hymn - but I got 8. I can confirm, that hasted hymns are not limited to a total of 12 "charges" overall. I'm still not sure if my haste calculation or tick calculation is wrong, regarding the 8 ticks from Divine Hymn.

Keep in mind divine hymn tooltip has been around since Ulduar; before haste increase tick counts. In my opinion the tooltip only mentioned a maximum of 12 ticks to reinforce 3 x 4 = 12.

This was discussed in one of the other priest posts a few weeks ago, and the end result of the discussion was the the heal limit on the tooltips is indeed out-dated. Personally, as Disc I try to line up my Hymn with Borrowed Time, Archangel(5/5), Heroism and Power Infusion (I actually have a macro to AA/Power Infusion when channeling it) - The result is a cooldown that utterly trivializes raid healing for its 8second duration. You can also try lining up Hymn of Hope with a Shadowfiend, Borrowed Time and Heroism for extra mana ticks (which will generally pay for the cost of the shield even if you're casting it well inside the rapture cooldown).

Sorry for noob question, but I do recall reading somewhere, that PI doesn't stack with BL?

It doesn't. Haste modifiers by % do not stack (Icy veins, PI, Heroism, etc.).

Just checked - they don't. Got hero from a shaman, popped PI, no change in spell casting times.