You're arguing over what's good for piss easy farm content, like Patchwerk and whatnot, while the only difficult encounter in the game currently, you definatly would be x/51 or 51/x depending on setup (especially in the 10 man version). Unless you've been doing Patchwerk with two healers, it doesn't really matter what mana you have at the end of the fight, because you basically overmanned it compared to "progress encounter standards".

When it comes to the whole Divine Spirit-argument, don't forget that Guardian Spirit makes holypriests stackable

Please Bad, do not assume everyone plays Priest the same way. There is no 'Right' way to play a healer. If you beat the content, you are technically doing it right.

For your request of a full WWS with more than 10% Greater Heal. Actually its not full, but here is the rest.

Note that I am Discipline, a raid gimper.

No, I understand that. It may not be "right" or "wrong" , for the sake of everyone's feelings. However, If you look at the priest that beat you by 5 million healing, there is a very different story. I was mainly referring to holy priests with the option of hc / ihc / serendipity.

PW:S and Divine Aegis absorption don't credit as healing on a WWS report. The difference in total healing is quite meaningless when one of the priests involved is Discipline.

This is a point I tried to emphasize many times. Disc will never excel Holy on the meters, however, this board is one that assumes people have more knowledge of the game than to judge healers by meters exclusively. Holy is versatile. Disc is also versatile. Disc can perform any given task (tank healing, raid healing, whatever) in a raid (as can Holy, of course). The comparison with the old-school Paladin is quite neat. Disc is very like that, with the addition of powerful Shields, Buffs (PS, PI, Inspiration, DS, Grace) and - not to forget - Penance. Don´t make a fuss out of the argumentation Disc vs. Holy. Both have their reason to be in a raid if played properly.

I don't really understand how anyone can justify taking DS over GS. GS as is, is an insane ability and I wouldn't be surprised if they nerfed it in the future.

It's called having a sense of humour. I even pointed it out with the help of wording "nitpicking" and a smiley.

I'll give you a real example then where your spec is subpar: Sartharion 3 drakes, - the only hard fight out there for your gear level. There will be transitions where your added healing output together with a preemptive or reactive GS is saving the day, and if you REALLY want to spec for a bigger mana pool and DS you can go spec disc for that fight with the same raid saving result.

Anyway, the only reason I replied was because I thought it was very amusing with your little verbal assault, if you only could have used that clever imagination when you spent your talent points too

-and-

Perhaps everyone should take a look at Not So Evil's post again, specifically Bad. If you beat the content, you are doing it right.

When I bring in new healers to test out, I don't expect them to rock out, I don't expect them to beat the CoH priests or the resto shaman, however a lot of it does depend on the fight. If there is alots of AE healing, priests are sure to do quite well (trash + a lot of bosses these days). However, when it comes to certain types of damage Druids/Pallys/Shaman shine.

I could care less about healing meters as a whole, but more so the WWS breakdowns of specific fights. As for us priests, we have the best of it all (in my opinion). We have the ability to do so much because we have been given so many different tools. Hell, if you want to count GS/Lightwell a holy priest has 10 (no to holy nova) different ways to get the healing done.

As far as the GS/Divine Spirit arguement, it has got out of hand. Spec what works for you. If you want to raid min/max, and you take 2 holy priests one can very well go 21/50 (or a variety of that spec), and the other can go 14/57 or whatever they please.

Fact of the matter is, if the content is dying you're doing something right (though this current content is pretty easy).

This is very important point in my opinion. Last time before the GS debate I met it in a topic discussing whether shadow prot or fortitude glyph is best if you want to optimize your raid performance. I said -mana cost to fort which you might need to buff midfight to someone who was ressed/ankhed saves you mana, only a bit but still - while there's no 20min+ fights in game where shadowprot is needed(never did sartharion+3 drakes though, how long that lasts?). Everyone kept saying "but people shouldn't die anyhow" using it as an argument.

In ideal world no-one makes mistakes and no CDs need to be used. But can any of you with hand on your heart say that during progression raids no one ever dies midfight? While healing you gotta do your job as well as you can, and it's fair to expect everyone else to put in their maximum effort. I agree that you can start questioning your healing team as a whole if everyone has to start to spec for "odd" things because people repeatedly screw up their assigned tasks. However, in hectic boss first kills, things almost never go 100% according to the plans. Personally I think GS is awesome tool for making a first kill out of a pure wipe. I can immediately recall two times in wotlk when that happened. And it is a good tool in other ways aswell, as described above in other posts.

My own rule is that while I try to give my best and expect others to do that aswell, the whole healing team has to work as one aswell and if, as we are humans, others screw up, I can be there to save the day. As can be someone else when I screw up.
I think stuff like is perfect example how separate practise from theory sometimes is

You can beat the content with a 0/0/0 spec. That's the not the point. The point is to figure out the best way to spec/gear. Saying we're all unique and special snowflakes is wonderful, but ultimately people come here to get answers to the question of how they can do it better.

There may not be a single right answer, but there are a whole lot of wrong ones.

I think what I said got somewhat oversimplified. Of course I dont mean to say that if you go naked with 0/0/0 and beat the content you are doing it right. I was trying to keep it within the boundaries of "Definately not doing it wrong."

The point I am trying to get across is; Priests are possibly the most versatile healer. We can fill any role needed, almost without a specific spec. Although having Circle of Healing definately helps with the throughput, smarter group setup and better positioning allows a Priest without CoH to do the job more than adequately.

And this also applies to gear. A lot of Priests will want to gear for how they play. Of course there are wrong ways to gear, but with the way talents is doing everything for the Holy Priest, anything goes.

If you feel you get more out of a spec that others claim is not optimal, and you still beat the content, use the spec you are happy with. That was the point of my post. The same goes for gear.