Effective 'Serendipitying' requires to cast up to 3 flash heals before each and every PoH. In a raid situation, in which the mission is to heal as many targets in as little time as possible by the maximum amount possible, I'd go for hasted [by gear] PoH [apart from CoH + PoM], instead of wasting valuable cast time + GCDs for haste preparation.

If, as holy, one mainly heals with instants, doesn't like or doesn't need to heal with PoH often, then crit is perhaps the way to go. If instants are not sufficient at one point anymore, then my goal would be to stack haste up to an 'instant' PoH (if that was possible).

So, in the end the value of each stat also depends alot on playstyle and content.

One thing that most people tend to forget is that if you stack haste and crit and don't cast Flash Heal, you aren't effectively getting procs from Holy Concentration. Forcing yourself to slow down and cast some FHs between PoHs actually increases your regen by a noticeable amount (anecdotal only; never bothered to parse the logs to prove it).

If you're a Renew lover, putting Empowered Renew casts in between can accomplish the same thing, but without giving you the benefit from Serendipity.

Well, just confess why you wiped to settle the issue. On a more serious note, your Silent Resolve would almost certainly not have saved you. Thorim's arena is all about timing and choosing heals appropriately. If you insist on landing a PoH just the moment a large new wave spawns, you are bound to have serious problems, What saves you is Fade (possibly using prefade) as well as using shields liberally while it's safe to do so.

You can also use Holy Nova. HN your group, then throw your CoH to the others.

All of that said, you might consider switching to discipline for that fight. Shield spamming is very effective in the area.

No, 3/3 SR isn't worth it.

I also don't think a respec is going to solve your problem of talking on the phone during a raid.

More generally, almost all the threat issues I've had have been a result of a slow tank pickup (Yogg P1/3, Mimiron P3, XT HM sometimes). Once you learn to love your Fade keybind, those all go away for the most part.

The only exception to that would be Freya's Detonating Lashers, but between Fade, Shields, and them just not being all that deadly you should be fine.

Yes, he should respec for Body & Soul and tell his girlfriend they are hers if she stops calling during raids.

17k/25k is definitely not the result unless you regen a ton in the 8second window. You always drop a portion of the boosted mana amount.

You would end with 15k mana + regen over the period. Because you spent less than the 5k bump you will lose the difference at the end of the 8seconds. I can not absolutely rule out the 12k mana + regen over the period though I will investigate this for definitive results later tonight.

HoH takes your current/max mana and scales it by 20% when you gain the buff. So if you start with 15k/25k, the buff will push you up to 20k/30k through additive mechanics (compute 0.2*max, add to both current and max). You will then gain whatever Replenishment you have ticking, any actual ticks of HoH, any further mana gains (Shadowfiend, Mana Tide, Mana Potion, Innervate). At the termination of the buff, you are returned to the to your old mana by subtracting the amounts added to both current and max again (so you would return to 20k+<gains>-5k-<uses> / 25k). Using your numbers, it would be 20k+<small gains>-<3k> = 12k+<gains>/25k. In a perfectly world, you'll gain some Meditation, Replenishment, and actual ticks of the HoH in there, so you should end up back near where you started.

Test I did:

Started at 10k/21,403 (exactly). Channeled full HoH, gained 4 ticks of mana + 577 Mp5. Burned a mana potion (4380 mana gained) right at the end of the buff duration. Final mana was 24k/25,683, which was returned to 19,700/21,403. It definitely worked by subtraction, and the mana potion was to full effect.

Thanks to VRoscioli for fixing my mental processes so I actually had to sit down and figure out exactly how the mechanic works. My apologies for the initial version of this post that was dead wrong.

One neat thing about the additive nature of the mana gains is that you can do things like go from 0 mana up to a certain amount (typically 5-7k), use it as "free mana", and at the end of the buff go back down to 0 mana. This is helpful to squeak out a little bit more healing or dps on Vezax, as well as other applications. It's also beneficial the subtractive nature at the end means you never lose anything from Shadowfiend, Mana Tide Totem, Mana Potion, etc. -- use them at will, and you'll actually gain +20% per tick courtesy of your enlarged mana pool.

Thanks for clearing that up!
I didn't mention mana regen because I was just interested in the effect of HoH, specifically because I wondered about it's use on Vezax. I guess I could have included that line of thought in my post. >.<

If I understand correctly, in my scenario I would be left with 12k/25k after the 8sec. buff so using HoH early on Vezax is pretty much moot since you don't get to keep your mana gained via the 20% buff and you don't get max mana based returns in that fight?

Of course it is still nice when you or other healers are OOM if you coordinate to spam use that mana during the 8 second duration.

HoH is best saved for after the Animus dies, so you can get everyone a bit of mana to do whatever they need to do: refresh a debuff on the boss, cast a couple of heals, or use Rebirth.

The casters around you actually get 14 seconds, since the buff refreshes with each tick of HoH (so you have 6 seconds from the first tick until the end of the channel, plus the 8 second buff duration).

The buff only refreshes if that person gets the effect. Using it at the end of Vezax tends to rotate the buff through 10-12 people, so they get less time (but more people get it). At least, that's my experience.

I am confused by the Power Word Shield calculations I have gone over from several threads in the Priest Forums.

Using the formula found here >PW: S Absorb Calculation with 2300 SP I get the absorb value of ~6280.

In my talent build Disc Build I have all of the modifier talents actively used for the calculations. With Raid Buffs I am currently running with 2500 SP.

Looking at the PW: S parse from this past Friday's raid >WoW Meter - PW:S Absorbs it shows that my shields are holding 4514 avg. / 5575 max dmg.

I have noticed the same discrepencies when testing my shields on myself vs. high dmg in Storm Peaks. Mostly by doing the Argent Tournament daily A Chip Off the Ulduar Block. The explosions from the bombs you set are enough to deplete the shield in one shot and see how much they are mitigating. Even here the mitigation is falling short of 5000, when I would expect to see ~5825 mitigation according to the formula with 2000SP.

Could anybody shed some light for me? If I have not been clear on a point or two I appologize.

Take a look at the page before ... Link. This might help you.

Yup that was a reply to my original question. The Link I posted was a neater write up of that information. The numbers are not adding up whioch is why I am asking follow up questions about that formula.

Have you been to the trainer lately? Power Word: Shield (R12) from WMO, I'm assuming, is rank 12. The base absorbed damage is 1265 instead of 2230. I believe there are reduced spell damage coefficient penalties for downranked spells which I cannot quote for you at the moment, but running the same absorb calculations with a base of 1265 shows a shield of [(1265+(2300*0.8086)+(2300*0.4))*1.09*1.15=5070] at 2300 spell power, or [(1265+(2500*0.8086)+(2500*0.4))*1.09*1.15=5373] at 2500 spell power. From these observations, I would recommend a trip to High Priestess Laurena ASAP.

I was working with the program RAWR and I noticed that the program tends to have about a 15% haste cap for Shadow Priests. However when I was looking around on the forums, I didn't see any rule saying that 15% haste raid buffed was the cap. Can anyone confirm or deny this. On my shadow priest, I am trying to stack Spell power (while hit capped) and then work on Crit more than haste. It's just RAWR is wanting me to use a pvp boots, with less spell power, than the BoE boots from Loatheb, all because it has almost 2% haste and would put me over this supposed 15% raid buffed haste cap.

I am still working on tweaking haste in Rawr. Haste has this nasty side effect on modelling where you start switching between 2 different results in casting rotation (ie, MB may be ready soon enough to skip a MF), thus making Haste slightly hard to get entirely right.

Regarding metagems (for Disc Healing), how valuable are they?
IE: Should i even bother considering helms that have no meta slot?

I ran the math on this (and then confirmed in SimCraft). The maximum amount of time where you're better of casting nothing and waiting for Mind Blast to come off cooldown rather than casting a new Mind Flay is incredibly small. So small that it is quite likely to be within the margin of error for most people and even more so when you consider variable latency.

And so, it is almost always the right decision to just cast that next Mind Flay. If you support clipping after 2 ticks, then by all means do this (if mana isn't a problem) but otherwise just finish the full cast before casting the next Mind Blast.

That still does not take away from the fact, that Haste might be more worth when MB gets delayed because you are finishing a MF, compared Haste being less worth when you are done MF'ing and have to wait for MB cooldown. This is whats causing haste to be somewhat hard to handle.

Im having problems with my Circle of healing not hitting the maximum number of players.

Just wondering if theres a plugin for GRID that tracks the range of players to each other?

For example if i mouseover a target it will highlight all the players within 15 yards of him so i get maximum hits from Circle of healing