Phenominal work as always, Constantinus. Thanks for all your efforts.

I do, however, have to jump on the bandwagon that you're undervaluing Holy Reach. I think it has many values beyond the simple 44% increase in total area healed (I am quoting from earlier in the thread, so forgive me if that number hasn't been 100% confirmed yet). I see tremendous value in the speed of target selection. Having a larger radius allows me to pick my target much more liberally, without first having to eye the battlefield and determine where the AOE damage is occuring (or with the ability to do this less accurately). With a larger 'Circle' of healing, I feel more confident simply choosing, say, a melee raider or a caster that's just taken damage and COH'ing them from my raid frames. This, for me, is a much faster process.
Additionally, I stand by the logic that COH is by far and away (opinion, again) the most important and powerful spell in a holy priest's arsenal, possibly the most powerful healing spell in the game currently. Any talents I can take that make it more effective (and I absolutely view 'hits more targets' as 'more effective', the glyph is a Godsend), I'm not opposed to. If Holy Reach allows me to get that 6th target in, say, 5 times over the course of fight, I find more value in that than I would in additional healing and crit chance on targets at or below 50% health (which, if I'm AOE'ing right, with the shamans, should be rare).

I don't want to make blanket statements, but yes, in general pre-shielding is fine. In particular in a raid scenario where a tank should be getting misdirected on any kind of pull that is threat sensitive, and with tanks generating more threat from their own personal dps, you should definitely be pre-shielding as a disc priest as you want that weakened soul debuff to be active any time you're hitting the tank with heals, really.

It is important that you shield BEFORE the pull, and not during, as the shield itself generates aggro toward yourself, but you knew that, right?

I reiterate what I said in the 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 versions of this thread. Any tank complaining about a PW:S pre-pull in a raid situation is a moron. End of story. It absorbs, at most, half a hit. If they're smart, they ran in with Bloodrage up anyway (or equivalent for feral druids), so they have enough rage to land their opening move. The shield lowers the incoming damage for the first 5 seconds of the fight, during which they should have landed at least 3 auto-attack swings, giving them enough rage to use another special. Then it's over, the damage ramps up, and they have enough rage.

Rage-starving in a Sunwell raid environment is a myth pre-3.0. And post-3.0, they have so many tools in their arsenal, and such great TPS that a little lost to slightly less rage generation is meaningless.

Shield your tanks.

I assume the claims around haste changing the spell coefs are incorrect? It was always my understanding that there was no change due to haste, unless 3.x has changed this.

No one seems to have commented on this.

As it's often necessary to convince tanks, here's a counterargument that I got several times and that could probably still be made post 3.0 (though not for 25-mans, where a hunter will always be available):

Unfortunately many tanks run with a rather low amount of hit rating, especially feral druids. This may not be ideal, but many do (and perhaps some itemization issues are a good reason for this, too). In that case, the 3 auto-attack swings may not be a given.

In 10-mans without a hunter, the point as such is valid, but my rationale so far has been that shielding buys the tank more time to build threat preventing post-pull healing aggro than he really loses by receiving a bit less damage.

My main is a holy priest but I have a feral druid as alt and I tanked with him heroics, kara, magy, a bit of ssc/tk...
You always go in with shapeshift + enrage, thats enough rage for 2 hits mangle + maul and after u get the first hit u still get enogh rage to hit another 2 times (even with the shield). So you need s**t load of bad luck to miss all 4 attacks..
It never happened to me and I tanked more than 6-7 months the most I missed 2 times in a row but that was not enough for the dps to overaggro.

EDIT: Of course we are not talking here about mages that start nuking in the second u make the pull (PoM pyro and stuff like that :P)

I am not sure about it, but that is what data suggest. Following are all the Greater Heals from wow web stats link that have not the proceeds of the MH exalted ring in it:
5596
5491
5351
5369
5445
5433
5243
5617
5228
5407
5339
5450
5646
5279
5398
5238
5398
5525
5347
5370
5379
5258
5235
5404
5322
5334
5223
5519
5280
5358
5297
5452
5509
5472
5483
5603
5255
5233
5280
5405
5429
5447
5248
5279
5631
5435
5237
5393
5591
5354
5518
5278
5558
5348
5422
5499
5348
5233
5315
5288

Arithmetic average of this values = 5389. If average value of unimproved GH is 2609 and the spell power of the gear was 1317 then the computed value of the heal should be for a holy tree with 2 points in Empowered Healing(16%), 5 points in Spiritual Healing(10%) and healing value of spell power having a coeficient 1.85:
healing = (2609 + 1317*3/3.5 * 1.16*1.85)*1.1 = 5535 using method with haste not influencing the result
healing = (2609 + 1317*2.83/3.5 * 1.16*1.85)*1.1 = 5384 using method with haste included into empowered healing modifier.

If there is a mistake in my formulas I would be glad if you point it out.
The values for casting naked fit ok with data as well.

Greater Heal Rank 7
32% of base mana 40 yd range
3 sec cast
A slow casting spell that heals a single target for 2396 to 2784.

(2396+2784)/2= 2590

Not 2609 assuming wowhead is correct.

Also its still random numbers, so it is possible the numbers are just off due to the sample set.
Your average is between the ranges if we assume the normal 3/3.5

5300
5727

But some of your heals fall below this. If we assume the 2.83/3.5 the min should be 5190 which your numbers fit better with....


I guess I will look at it a bit more when I have time, I can do it with and with out haste etc to get a better feel for it.

EDIT: Wowhead is different to the spell book, but the spell book has hasted cast times and talented mana values as well

EDIT 2: The way you have used empowered healing looks off as well?

(2609 + 1317*3/3.5 * 1.16*1.85)*1.1

It should be (2609 + 1317 * (3/3.5 + 0.16) * 1.85) * 1.1

I also thougth healing was 1.88 x spell power.

I am going to give up posting until i have a real look at it

Spells tend to gain a very small boost every time you level - GH7 is a level 68 spell so it would make sense if in game it was very slightly more powerful than the trainable ability.

The correct formula for calculating the value of a gheal is



Using your numbers you expect your gheal to heal on average for (2609+1317*(3/3.5*1.88+0.16) )*1.1 = 5436

The difference between your numerical average and this value is less than 1%. I can run a stat test on it, if you want, but I do not expect the difference to be statistically significant. Using 2.83 as the value you get 5303, which is just as close to the expected number.

If the co-efficient is 1.85 then the value without including haste is 5398, and with haste included its 5268.

Your data makes it appear as though that the correct co-efficient is indeed 1.85. You can make absoludely no conclusions concerning the effect of haste whatsoever.

Now that all that is out of hte way.

1) The way you have done your experiment is absoludely unacceptable. You cannot confidently identify differences of 1-2% with your methodology, especially without statistical analysis. Any conclusions made are not on a firm basis. The correct way to determine the coversion of spellpower to healing is to use spells whose base is either a single fixed number (e.g. HoTs) or does not vary appreciably, then vary the amount of spellpower that you have. Casting a heal whose base value varies by something like 10% and tring to detect 1% differences is just unacceptable really. Until you can do the experiment properly there is no reason to deviate from 1.88.

2) Getting your formulas right before you begin saves you a lot of wasted effort

3) I can assure you that haste has absoludely no affect on spellscaling whatsoever. This is very very simple to determine, as there are plenty of high haste procs and abilities going around. You will notice no drop in healing values when you get heroism, IHC or power infusion. Also there are priests running around in full sunwell gear with a great deal of haste and no one has noticed any reduction in the amount of healing from gheal/fheal. That reduction would be very noticeable.

Really? I've yet to experience this. Granted, levelling grants you more spirit, which, with Spiritual Healing, would bolster the spell's power, but I've seen absolutely no reason to believe that simply levelling up makes spells more powerful. Do you have proof that this is the case?