I suppose you've "capped" haste when you reduce the global cooldown to 1 second, and therefore any new haste is not affecting your instant spells or any spells with cast time <= 1.5 seconds.

According to wowwiki this number is 1639.5. Keep in mind that in a raid you can probably rely on imp moonkin or ret aura, so subtract that contribution (3% = 98.37 haste rating) as well as Wrath of Air totem (5% = 163.95). So the cap would be now 1377.18.

Disc - Remove another 5% from Enlightenment (163.95). so 1213.23. If you use Borrowed Time, take off another 5% (163.95) so 1049.28.

While bloodlust/heroism allow your gcd to go below 1 second, there may be another softer haste cap with those, after which you could argue that you are getting no additional healing throughput from the contributions of bloodlust/heroism.

Remaining questions:
Does Power infusion reduce the GCD? If not, and you are ever receiving them (I don't think this happens but still), you would consider that as part of a soft cap.
I don't have anywhere near the haste numbers to test this, but I don't know if the Improved Holy Concentration numbers reduce the GCD, and if they do, if they are capped at 1 second still.

In essence, it is quite easy for paladins and shammies to reach a haste cap, but probably nearly impossible for a priest at this time. I wouldn't worry about it.

I am almost positive IHC doesn't reduce the global cooldown, because if I remember correctly, GC mentioned they were fixing the tooltip of the buff/talent to indicate that it reduces the cast time of the next heal, rather than haste until then (unlike borrowed time).

Power Infusion I'm pretty sure follows under the same category, since it reduces casting time rather than increasing haste.

I can give PI a test tonight though.

Also, l337noob I think I agree to an extent, though POH is not as useful now, they did say they want to make it raid like CoH - but that it would take time to properly balance (holy nova too), when that happens (I'm hoping for 3.1) then it will be really nice to have the regen to support it. Binding heal is something I wish and hope they will put on rapture, because I love that spell to death. Any time I take damage it's slotted up for a cast.

Isin, thanks for the input. I think I'm going to switch around a couple of pieces if I can pick up those robes.

I have to agree that I love binding heal and use it on a regular basis (Malygos is one fight that it is quite awesome in).

l337n00b, I used to have about... 1500-1600 mp5 oo5sr before I regemmed and switched a few pieces around... and it was too much. I'm a huge regen freak, but I think we as priests can benefit more from other stats other than regen. I can't seem to waste my mana on fights... it's just ridiculous.

In my raids, no healer asks for an innervate... our arcane mages do... That's pretty absurd. Just with my trinket and shadowfiend (or certain mana intensive fights) it's enough to have enough mana for a 10 minute fight. Maybe I'll try and spam flash heal more to burn more of my mana (or gheal... whichever =/)

I got [Je'Tze's Bell] in my mail codded for 5000 Gold, im not sure weather or not i should take it out.

Is it still the best trinket available? Is it worth 5000 ?

I bought mine for 5K gold and I love it. Havent really gotten a chance to raid much with it yet, but did some heroics and like it better then [Majestic Dragon Figurine].

If you want a spellpower trinket, the BiS option is [Je'Tze's Bell]. If you choose to not have one, then basically you're choosing between:
[Soul of the Dead]
[Majestic Dragon Figurine]
[Spirit-World Glass]
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] (with intellect or spirit as the stat)

Personally, I still hold to the <throughput> (spellpower > crit/haste) + <regen> (spirit/int > proc) trinket combo that we're all familiar with from the days of [Memento of Tyrande] + [Earring of Soulful Meditation].

I've been using my Bell for a little over a week now, and I'm very much a fan. I really don't miss the haste proc from the Egg, and Forethought Talisman has a dumb proc. Je'Tze > Egg > Forethought, imo. The Prisms deck is interesting, but the cooldown on the mana return is so long that it's underpowered comparatively.

Borrowed Time is 5% spell haste for the next spell per point in the talent, totaling to 25% that would impact the number quite a bit.

Just for the record, how would you rate [Mercurial Alchemist Stone]? I really enjoy it - even though I rarely pot these days (except for 3 drake Sartharion in 2 healer setups more or less) - I find it very well balanced. I swap my second trinket around and will probably end up forking out the gold to buy a Bell soon.

Hello all This is my first reply to any threat, but i am a long fan of Ellitistjerks and i got often the best and good responses.

I wanted to say also that this threat helped me quiet much to get informations on how to equip and play my new main class which is priest.

I followed intensly the conversation about the trinkets and still am not sure which one to use.

I have: [Je'Tze's Bell]
[Spirit-World Glass]
[The Egg of Mortal Essence]
[Majestic Dragon Figurine]
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] or [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] ( have gonna hand in on monday the quest )
[Darkmoon Card: Illusion]
[Figurine - Sapphire Owl]

Can you help me to make the best choice ?

I thought about using [Je'Tze's Bell] and the [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] for most of the fights and for the most intense mana fights light malygos or Sartha 2-3 adds the [Majestic Dragon Figurine] instead of the Jet'set Bell.
Or [Je'Tze's Bell] with [Darkmoon Card: Illusion]
Thanks for any answers.

Regarding discipline stats: I don't think there is a clear consensus on what is best to stack or gem for at the moment.

My own thinking is quite similar to l337n00b's. Despite the fact that discipline priests have great mana and mana regen, I still always want more. As has been said previously here, when content gets hard or you are trimming back healers, the wall you run into is almost always a lack of mana. Insufficient throughput is just really rare. So maybe I'm excessively cautious but I advise erring on the side of too much mana. Also, keep in mind that some rapture bugs are causing it to return too much mana currently, and this may be fixed at some point, so keep that in mind.

On the other hand, I think it is quite fair to suggest that one can always change gems from throughput statss to mana stats when needed. So I don't think it's crazy to forego int and gem for crit, haste, or more spell power under an "I'll deal with mana when it's an issue for me" strategy.

I also can't argue at all with getting as much spell power as possible. It affects all discipline spells in meaningful ways, and because of rapture, spell power is also a (stealth) mana regen stat. Bigger heals and bigger shields lead to bigger mana returns.

I know some discipline priests really like haste, and some others really like crit, but both have some limitations that bother me:

For instance, crit does not help PW: Shield. Also, athough crit improves throughput overall, it does so in a less predictable way than spell power. On the plus side, crit is also a mana regen stat because it increases heal size sometimes and leads to more DA shields, both of which yield more mana returns through rapture.

In addition, although there are several posts about crit leading to significantly greater overheals, I have actually looked at this systematically, and I was surprised how little crit affects overhealing in 25 man raids. More precisely, I looked at the rate of overhealing for all my non-crit heals. I then looked at all my crit heals and how much they overhealed. Crit heals did overheal more on average but the difference was very small -- about 1-2% more overhealing. That surprised me, so I looked more carefully at how overhealing happens. What it boils down to is that heals tend to either completely land or completely heal most of the time. A minority of heals partially overheal. So overhealing depends more on when the heal lands in relation to other healers' rather than on how big the heal is. Hence, it didn't make much difference when the heal was 150% of its normal size: it usually landed completely or completely overhealed.

Haste is a great stat if all you care about is throughput. You don't need as much haste rating to get a decent increase in throughput (i.e. it has great bang for the buck). In addition, healing is fundamentally about landing heals at the right time, and haste gives you more control to be able to do that.

However, unlike spell power and crit, instead of slowing down how quickly you burn through you mana, haste will speed it up. Cooldown limited spells (and discipline has a few) also see less benefit from haste. In addition, many discipline spells (penance, shield) are already very fast, and enlightenment grants 5% haste, so I tend to feel that holy benefits more from haste than discipline.

Overall though, I think what people prefer can be explained mostly by how much you feel running out of mana is a credible threat. If you think it is, then your preference may be something like:

Int > Spell Power > Crit > Haste,

but if you don't feel like running out of mana is a credible threat, you may be more like:

Haste > Crit >= Spell Power > Int.

At least for now, I don't think you'll go too far wrong if you gem for any combination of those four stats. So pick what you like.

I realize this was posted days ago in response to my comment about overhealing, but I have been busy and unable to check the forums.

I just hit 80 a few days ago and, until today, I was wearing all blue pieces of gear from Normal 5-man instances. My stats were (and still are) not very good. I am working on getting geared, and seem to be achieving this very rapidly. For my level of gear, I do find that I run out of mana rather quickly in 5-man heroics. This of course all depends on whether or not the tank is geared (tanks with 17k HP FTL) and if the DPS is able to focus the tank's target and keep aggro off of themselves.

I haven't decided if I will be going Holy or Disc for raiding yet. And am currently trying to get more spirit and haste. I find that my biggest problem with healing at the moment is that I have almost 0 haste rating. It takes FOREVER for me to cast my Gheal, and it has cost my groups some deaths.

I suppose what I am getting at, is that I really seem to have no clue what I am doing with my priest at all, with my current level of gear, I don't seem to be sitting on a decent bit of any one stat. One minute I feel that more spirit would be helpful, then next I feel that more int would be better.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what stats newly leveled priests should be looking to get first?
(I did use search, and have yet to find a really concise answer.)
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