If DPS spells scale as base1*(1+k1*spellpower) and heals scale as base2*(1+k2*spellpower) then you can expect that the equality point will be when base1-base2 = spellpower*(base2*k2 - base1*k1) => spellpower = (base1-base2)/(base2*k2 - base1*k1)

Any factor that affects both (e.g. evangelism) will not affect the spellpower levels required for equality. But if a factor affects only one specifically then it needs to be multiplied into the base value in the above formula.

Penance cast on a target does not behave in the same way as atonement. Each penance hit adds a grace stack so the first hit is 1 then second is 1.1 and the 3rd is 1.2. So penance cast on a non graced target is equal to three ticks of (1+1.1+1.2)/3 = 1.1.

Thus penance cast on an ungraced target produces a buff of 10% for penance.

Similarly when you don't have fully stacked evangelism the first cast of penance applies evangelism for the other two ticks, so the average tick is

0 1.026666667
1 1.066666667
2 1.106666667
3 1.146666667
4 1.186666667

If a person does not have grace and he is taking regular damage. It is almost always worth using a penance at him though, because its just a 13% difference at 30k spellpower. and it just takes 2 atonement heals in 15seconds to make up the difference. Even at very high spellpower the difference is no more than 22%, which means 3 atonement heals.

We just killed will of the emperor hc tonight and it was really tough on the tank. 2 unmitigated back to back hits was a tank kill, so what I saw on my screen was tank takes a hit from 90% to 30%, 2 seconds later another hit and dead. Rather than keeping grace up on the tank through the devastating combo its best to stack grace near the end, because entering the phase between the devastating combos without grace = tank death.

That is of course right, but WoE, especially if you have to solo heal the tanks in 10hc, is one of the few encounters where you actually have to bomb the tanks with healing. With current gear levels it is way easier, though, so no real need to worry, especially if SS is ready (which it should for every other non dance phase).

But during Sha hc progress I've found myself in situations where I had to use penance on the tank to specifically get his health up, because dds took hits from the masses of penetrating bolts and would take away healing from the tank. Patch 5.2 will make those kinds of situations more or less a dps loss only, which is quite nice.

The break even point for penance dps vs heal is at 13942sp, and with a scaling difference of 144%sp the dps version does nearly 35k more healing even before penance for myself. That is quite a huge loss if you "have to" use the heal version.


On a different note: I finally got a formula for the combinations of glyph and 2t15 for prayer of mending and was quite surprised HOW good the 2pc actually is.
For my current gear it bumps poms hpet from 180k up to a whopping 220k (assuming all 5 charges are effective and not wasted, especially since the last one is the strongest), which is higher than everything I have except for L90 talents. Its hpm now also only get rivaled by L90 and offensive penance.
I catch myself from time to time pretty much ignoring pom even during aoe like overwhelming corruption on protectors hc because simply alternating poh on my 2 10man groups is easier (and probably currently more hps) but with 5.2 pom will be incredible.

I did the calculations a little earlier for unglyphed 2p set bonus PoM and whenever its usable its our highest HPS spell, until we get the 4 set. Glyphed binding heal is very close to it though.

Glyphing PoM is bad unless you want to use it frequently as an instant single target heal (e.g in pvp).

I think PoM should only be used when there is continuous damage

The overall formula for PoM is

base*(0.6*g + sum_i=0 to n-1 [(1+0.1*p)^i])*(1+crit*(2+mastery))

where sum_i=1 to n means Sum the formula in the brackets with i having values from 1 to n-1. n is the number of PoM hits, g is 0 if you dont have the glyph and 1 if you have it and p is 1 if you have the 2set bonus or 0 if you dont have it.

Latex is not working for me or I would make it nicer.

Using this formula its easy to get all the values for the 2nd factor in excel

Something to keep in mind when theorycrafting PoM is that, at least last time I checked (couple weeks ago), it did 25% more healing than the tooltip indicates, for no reason I can discern. It's really quite a large amount of healing, and I imagine it's mostly used on cooldown (cooldown syncs up with Penance and Solace anyway, so you'll probably have an easy rhythm in 5.2).

That is the result of one of the first hotfixes during MoP. I recently checked the 5.1 tooltips and some have been updated, but some still have their pre-hotfix values (like pom and ds). But the hpet/hpm already include the 25% hotfix.

Edit: found the hotfixes..
12 Oct:
25% more healing for pom (tooltip not up2date) and poh (up2date)
cascade 25% more damage and healing (up2date)
mindsear 25% more damage (up2date)
29 Nov:
40% more damage and 133% more healing for ds (not up2date)

Dont ask me why they updated some and others not when 5.1 came but those are the current values, tested multiple times.
That buff also boosted ds ahead of every other spell in terms of hpm (except for holys 3min cds).

Hmmm my calculations used the tool-tip value, so I need to check if they are accurate.

Under situations of continuous damage, but where the raid is regularly healed up, I find PoM to be very useful even in 5.1, because PoM is relatively small and it heals when someone takes a hit, which means that unless almost all the damage is absorbed it will have low overheal, but the biggest advantage of PoM is that its front loaded. You can cast it on someone and it stays there for 30s. So if you have a very bursty fight with little damage then huge hard burst, PoM is a free buff to your HPS in the burst phase.

Currently when the bars are full it is better to put down a PoM if it will get used up in the burst phase, than it is to cast a PoH for the aegis. PoM is also very important for those points in the fight where you won't be able to cast or you have to move.

For example on garalon I use PoM and cascade before every crush and everytime the raid is brought to full health, after pheromone switches or whenever I have to move for more than a GCD. Despite that PoM has pretty low overheal considering it mostly goes on when everyone has full health:

Details for Shaarra - 04-02 22:58 - After Hours - World of Logs

I do the same thing on hc WotE and it works quite well.

Incidentally hc WotE for us tank healing the druid tank was a really tough job. When your tank can be two shotted.

Look at this from the kill: Damage Taken - 07-02 23:07 - After Hours - World of Logs

Notice how the druid sometimes takes double the damage of the warrior tank, when there is a bad avoidance streak. and that is with the warrior having blocks and absorbs on. Also this is on the kill with me switching to a full tank healing spec and tunneling him at all times and with a constant CD chain on him.

This is an example of the kind of deaths we had before I switched to tunneling him:

Deaths overview - 07-02 23:07 - After Hours - World of Logs

Basically he was full health so I hit an atonement to try and stack evangelism higher for archangel and then suddenly he gets a 210k hit 0.5s before my atonement heal landed. I immediately started spamming gheal and landed one but not the second, basically 4 seconds after you see the damage tank is dead despite landing a big heal on him. He only had 1 grace stack there and I didn't have archangel.

On those tries I was using spirit shell and AA on the raid during devastating combos. Most tries it was ok and then bam suddenly he takes this huge burst.

In the end I started using spirit shell on him with full stacked grace and archangel every 2nd combo and using a CD chain whenever spirit shell was not up on top of bone shield.

[01:24:00.006] Whiteredbull gains Spirit Shell from Shaarra (Remaining: 259731)
[01:24:01.987] Shaarra's Spirit Shell fades from Whiteredbull (Remaining: 0)
[01:24:01.993] Whiteredbull gains Spirit Shell from Shaarra (Remaining: 216163)
[01:24:02.019] Whiteredbull's Spirit Shell is refreshed by Shaarra (Remaining: 259731)
[01:24:08.050] Shaarra's Spirit Shell fades from Whiteredbull (Remaining: 0)
[01:24:10.465] Whiteredbull gains Spirit Shell from Shaarra (Remaining: 259731)
[01:24:12.961] Shaarra's Spirit Shell fades from Whiteredbull (Remaining: 0)

In patch 5.2. I won't be able to do this, because spirit shell gheal will be 170k instead of overcapping with a single hit.

Incidentally:

PWS-penance-solace-PoM and a cast all fit into a borrowed time even with just the haste raid buff, because PWS eats up only a fraction of its GCD from borrowed time for some reason. With 10% raid buffed haste or so you can fit a third instant in there.

If its a burst phase with the sky falling on the heads of your raid you need to do whatever it takes to produce maximum HPS and maximising borrowed time is a lot of extra HPS. If you have to cast a couple of PWS without rapture so be it.

In the best case, a PWS eats one GCD and gives you back 6s (let's say 7s if you stretch a cast at the end of it) of 15% haste, which is worth at best about 1s. But that's only if you follow up every PWS with a little chain of carefully-sequenced instants. But when you're trying for "max HPS," you're not casting PWS or Solace anyway (you are still casting Penance and PoM, which is a bit of an improvement from previous design); you're basically powering out PoH just like you did before.

Nope, you are weaving PWS with penance, PoM, binding heal and as a last resort PoH, when you have nothing else. I already showed quite conclusively that weaving PWS raises your HPS quite significantly.

I did forget about Glyphed Binding Heal, although it's only really better if close to a full third of the healing you need to output is on yourself. If you're only getting two targets (target+smart), it's slightly less on-paper HPET than PoH, with slight advantage of only requiring two targets and being partially smart, and disadvantage of much higher mana burn. Not technically an issue if you're totally literal about "max HPS" but among casts that are close to tied otherwise, 2.5x higher mana usage rate isn't something to just ignore.

I won't discount that sticking a PWS before a Penance/PoM/PoH sequence can be a raw HPS increase (albeit slight), since the PWS is "borrowing" around half its cast time from the upcoming casts. A few practical issues though:
--You need a second target on which PWS is likely to be fully effective--10s is too often to cast on the tank. While that certainly happens a lot (seeing a person you can productively shield because of something that's about to happen to them), you're counting on it happening at exactly the moment you need. It's nice if it happens, for sure.
--Casting a PWS every 10s actually a lot worse than casting one every 13s, because you lose a substantial amount of Rapture frequency and PWS casts on the tank (each now happens only every 20s). If you're using PWS enough for both, great, but that's a lot of PWS.

The larger point is that I caution against a carefully-planned sequence of heal casts that maximizes utility of minor buffs the way a DPS class would (I've said the same thing a lot in regards to the Resto SotF talent, which I don't like much). Flexibility/reaction in healing is worth a lot, and during the most intense moments, if you commit to a 6 second long cast sequence you may be defeating the whole purpose of gaining a little more healing (as measured by the meters).