An important thing to consider is that if every healer ends every kill with 0 mana, it means that one additional hiccup (be it positioning error, lag, dc, bad dodge streak) would have transformed that kill into a wipe. The extra mana that healers end with on a fight where things went smoothly was mana that could have been used to recover from an error or incident. This is why it's such a personal decision. Each healer needs to make the decision on how much of a buffer to allow for based on the other healers in their raid, their skill level, and the ability of the raid (one of your other healers prone to DCs? A little more regen to be able to accomodate that is good unless you want to wipe it whenever they dc immediately).

It's a standard RTST.

If you're taking more damage, it's likely because of class composition, raid cooldowns or resistance. (Higher uptime on Aura Master, Power Word Barrier, Divine Guardian; or also having more Moonkins, Shadow Priests or any other class with high passive damage reduction).

Also, the fight is stupid easy since the nerf; your entire raid sans Hunters and a single Kiter (Mage or Death Knight, though a Hunter can possibly do it) can stack in melee. It's a waste of DPS to have your ranged killing parasites.

This of course, allows you to use cooldowns like Power Word: Barrier, but also the new Spirit Link Totem whenever the patch hits.

[e] I am bad, and mistakenly necro'd something. Sorry.

First, let me say you guys are an encyclopedia of priest knowledge that I hope will steer me in the right direction to resolving my issues.

Log: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Armory: Pendarrin @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft

While in the Nef fight, I did use Binding heal a lot during P2, but isn't used a lot in my normal "rotation". (I did not have any mana issues) I use Prayer of Healing and Circle of Light, quite often, Prayer of Mending when I see it on cooldown, and recently I started using Holy Word: Sanctuary. In majority of all encounters, I'm usually 5 out of 6 on the meters. (Even though I try not to use meters to gauge success or not). If there is no damage being done, I do not cast, so there are times I'm not healing anyone. Last night in BWD, even though they haven't posted the WOL yet, we had this order show up time and time again on bosses:

Resto Druid - Mikeháwk @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft
Resto Shaman - Dizdik @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft
Disc Priest - Dikparty @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft
Disc Priest - Yandis @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft
Resto Shaman - Zwyftyzap @ Alterac Mountains - Game - World of Warcraft
Holy Priest (ME)

When in 10 mans, the top two on that list, Resto Druid and Resto shaman, are always above me by 10%. I know in some cases certain classes will excel over others on some encounters. Since I am finding myself last in almost every encounter, I take that to mean I need some improvement. Any assistance you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated.

It seems like from a first glance at the logs that you are assigned to tank healing or may be using Chakra: Serenity to get through the pillar phase. If that's the case and the other 2 are assigned to do more raid healing, then they are going to show higher on the meters than you. If you were assigned to do strict raid healing, you would probably be making more of a showing.

Lightwell usage is really low, too. On attempt #11, for example, it was only used by 4 people (one of them being you) and still not often enough. If used to its fullest, Lightwell can make a huge impact on the meters.

Echo of Light is also showing a very low overall uptime of around 31%. This can also impact your showing on the meters and may show even higher, were you doing more raid healing instead of single target healing.

Overall meters show a very low showing for Prayer of Mending. Are you sure that you're using it off cooldown or near that? I don't think I have ever seen mine show that low before. That's kind of surprising.

I'm not able to view the Armory @ the office, so I'll check up on that later. The things listed above were what jumped out at me from an initial glance. Let's see what others have to say and I'll see if they cover my thoughts later, when I am able to look at your Armory and give you some more attention.

Sorry about the confusion. I edited my post after the fact, when I saw all of your logs were from a 10 man setting. I still think some of my initial observations may come into play in a 25 man setting.

If you are asked to raid heal in 25s, you should be using CoH pretty firmly off cooldown and the same goes with PoM. Your Lightwell usage should also make more of a dent in the meters, as well and you should have a much more noticeable presence with your Echo of Light than you do now.

I'll see about getting the bwd 25 man logs from last night. That would probably make it a lot easier to answer my post.

**Here's the logs from the 25 man last night. **

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I have been absolutely bored to tears @ the office today, Pendarrin. So thank you very much for giving me a project to focus on and something to do. Just wanted to get that out of the way first!

Moving on.

From looking at the logs, I really feel that you are doing the right thing - in terms of what spells to be using and in fact, you seem to have a large amount of overhealing on most fights. From looking at the other healers and what they're doing, I think it's safe to say that you may be able to go with one less healer on some of these fights and be OK. I don't think it's that you're not healing, because all signs point to you are. I just think that you don't have anything TO heal. You seem to be running with some skilled folks and maybe you're at a point with gear and experience where 5 healers would be OK. Perhaps one of you has a DPS off-spec and can do that from time to time.

The other thing that caught my eye was the massive gap between the resto shaman that's topping the meters and the rest of you. It's not uncommon for shaman to rely on Healing Rain, even when it's not needed. It has one of the highest spell co-efficients in the game and can easily overheal like HW: Sanctuary can if used "just because." I'm not sure he needs to be using it as faithfully as he is, especially if the rest of you are bored to tears and you're already running over on heals. He could probably scale back on that and the numbers for you all may seem more in line.

I haven't had a look at your Armory, but I don't feel I need to, really. To me, I'm going to go ahead and say you just have too many healers and a shaman who is leaning on his Healing Rain button. Scale back on one or both of those things and I believe you will see results more in line with what you would like to see and should be seeing.

I will say, healing has not been a problem for us really, so I guess it is def. a sign to reduce numbers. I think my overall concern on myself was not knowing if it was just something I was doing. I've only been playing a priest for like 3 months and healing for like 8 weeks, so I've been gearing and such as best I can find, but still unsure of myself, at this point.

I didn't say that the shaman had to STOP using Healing Rain, but I also don't feel it needs to be used off cooldown during some encounters, either. COULD I use HW: Sanctuary off cooldown, with points in Tome of Light? Sure. Do I NEED to? Probably not. I don't feel it has to be a study of extremes like you may be proposing. I feel the shaman could certainly cut back on the HR usage, while not dropping it altogether.

I do recall closing my thoughts with an either/or proposition. I didn't say that both had to happen for Pendarrin to get the kind of results that he wanted.

Well, HW:Sanctuary is at best mediocre except when you can predict damage and have it down pre-emptively, so you wouldn't want to use it on cooldown as-is anyway. As for asking another healer to use a spell less -- well, clearly what they're doing is working, and if their mana allows it, why on earth ask them to stop? As a raid leader if one healer asked another to not heal to their utmost is not something I'd enjoy hearing about.

You're running with two disc priests resulting in a huge amount of overhealing on PoH as well as making smart heals even more valuable. You have high mastery, which when you run with too many heals and with disc priests, is really suboptimal. Reforge to haste -- it will help your spells land faster and reduce the overhealing of Echoes of Light. EoL is decent in some fights but usually you're better served with haste if you have too many healers.

Also make sure your groups are organized sanely (so PoH is more likely to hit all five targets and targets are likely to take damage at the same time, ie, don't mix melee and ranged, etc) and you're casting it on someone likely to be within 30 yards of the rest (not hard, but it can sometimes miss someone on fights with large arenas).

Your spell selection also could do better. If you care about meters (which isn't the only metric, but it's a good one) -- Always Be Casting, Always Be Cooldowned. PoM on cooldown, CoH on cooldown, keep a renew on tanks if you have spare GCDs and mana, For instance, in Omnotron (the 9:14 wipe, looks like you DCd on the kill so I'm looking at the other parse), a 550 second fight, you only cast 32 CoHs (~320 seconds worth of it on cooldown) and 27 PoMs (~270 seconds worth of cooldown). These are two of your best spells so you should be using them constantly. Make your UI scream at you if they are off cooldown.

Good healing also is about anticipating (like HW:Sanctuary above); if you have nothing to heal, toss something at the tank (fishing for Inspiration procs as well as possible heals) and also Renew in anticipation of damage (I'd also say consider PW:S before damage, but with two disc priests, you don't want to do that). I stress this is only if you have mana to spare, but your gear seems fine for regen so I imagine you're fine for mana, especially pushing instants like PoM, CoH, and Renew.

Each spec brings different strengths and weaknesses on different fight.

And it's flawed to just look at it as a whole like that. Besides, I suspect most healing priests are dualspecced Holy and Discipline. Especially if you're in a 10-man guild.

That said, both specs are perfectly fine for all 10-man content. There isn't a single 10-man fight that requires a Disc Priest or a Holy Priest. The spec that makes the fight easier, however, is dependent on your raid composition and other healers in the raid (not even just their class, but their spec/talent and preference).

Really, the only short answer is: both specs.