I agree... but I don't think anyone has been saying it is that black and white. That is, the argument isn't that a slightly improved single target heal is always a lifesaver, nor that slightly improved multitarget heals never will be.

If I understand Havoc correctly, I believe the main point is that a single target heal is generally more likely to prevent a death than a multitarget one. At least that is my read of it. That isn't as crazy as saying it always will, and I tend to agree with the generality -- even though I know that isn't always true.

If you accept that, then it isn't crazy to enhance a few select single target heals even if you don't get as much "yield", measured as total healing done. That seems plausible, and that is more or less all I ask. As far as I know, no one has even presented a good mathematical model that explains how to place a value on the healing from a single target heal versus a multitarget one, so there is no great way to measure whether you gain more than you lose in the tradeoff.

I could not agree more. I think the usual healing metrics are perhaps useful for diagnosing problems. For instance, a raid leader in seeing disparities might shift around healing assignments. However, current healing metrics are poor performance metrics.

One of the main problems with healing done is that it is extremely correlated (unsurprisingly) with damage taken. That seems obvious yet somehow forgotten. I think if one reflects on this philosophically, it is hard to "believe in" healing done as a measure of healer performance. For instance, if "healing done" is good, that impies "damage taken" is good, which seems more than a little counterintuitive. So if your raid takes more damage, your healers are ... better?? Oh really?

Many try to get around that by only considering relative healing done -- i.e. look at the % of healing done that each healer does. That makes the problem less obvious, but healers are still mostly limited by how much damage their targets take relative to others. If you have healing assignments (and your healers diligently follow their assignments), then their healing done will once again be driven by how much damage their target(s) take. It doesn't particularly make sense to compare healers who were given different amounts of healing to perform. Maybe if you compare two healers on the same target, but comparing a tank healing pally to a raid healing shammy using their healing done makes little sense because each was limited by a different amount of damage that their respective targets took.

I suppose if I wanted to size up healers, I might want to know their peak single target and peak multitarget HPS, and I'd want to know how much mana and mana regen they had. In a pinch, all those things might be important limiting factors. But of course that doesn't tell me if they know where to be when, and when to use what ability, or even if they know not to stand in that stuff that is killing them. The only statistic I know of that gets at that is... deaths. So in the end, that's the only stat I really care about. If they and/or their targets die more often, they are not performing well.

Everything has to be put into the context. I, for one, am very confident about my ability to single target heal, but I have recently encountered a couple of times where my AoE healing simply wasn't enough. Namely, Iron Council & Freya Hardmodes. Well, my healing was good enough in theory, but I had to hold back a lot in order to not go out of mana. Second point on why I have an aoe specialized spec (as you can see), is that at least 2 of our healers have a viable dps spec as secondary spec. On "I choose you steelbreaker" with 5 healers, I ended up solo healing 2 groups. I found out that I have neither enough healing power or mana for it (didn't kill him). Enough healing power? Maybe, maybe if I spammed like mad, but then I would go out of mana way too early.

But I understand if people feel like AoE damage is easy: before those 2 encounters I thought all aoe dmg was easy. I don't know you or your raid: maybe it is easy for you. If aoe damage is easy, why spec for it? Better spec where you are not confident, and if single target healing is that area, by all means spec for it. Havoc 12 said they raid with 4 healing priests. That is very likely more AoE healing power than you will ever need. However, not everyone has 4 healing priests.

So, I come to a conclusion: pick talents that fit YOU the best AoE healing? Single target healing? Or some hybrid holy spec that combines both?

If you are very pressed for throughput and mana I definitely recommend glyphing for holy nova. Yes it has a huge drawback with the small radius and yes it only heals your own group. But if you know everybody in your groups is going to take damage and you are standing close enough to each other a glyphed holy nova is both cheaper and heals more than CoH and isn't bound by a cooldown.

Ok, here's a question (since my math is always considered inaccurate), can someone break the math down for me for the following situation for int vs spr regen (a mimiron w/ poor raid positioning, making PoH only hit 3 people max):

1400 Int/1450 Spr Assuming 30% uptime with Holy Conc (34% raid buffed crit, on a fight where flash heals are used often).

Fight length is 9 min 1 sec.
Replenishment ticked 308 times during this fight, which is 5.1 min uptime (out of 9 min 1 sec fight).

Can someone be kind, and do a breakdown for this? From everything I've seen on a 25 man, I've never seen 100% uptime for replenishment, even when there are 3-5 providers.

I've never directly intended to stack Spirit, over any other stat, more so due to the fact that I've never directly needed additional regen (IMO stack more Crit/Spell/Haste).
I see the same formula's from the 3.0 theory thread here, with the exception of the Old Improved Holy Concentration, which I never had to abuse the 5sr in Naxx. I'm just trying to understand with the small changes, how 1 thread can say Int=Spr, and the other saying Int>Spr.

Well, me and the other priest (usually holy), are typically about even on a week in/week out basis (in overall healing, and typically in average healing per spell), yet both of us have completely different choices in spec's. He takes Blessed Resil+Emp Renew+B&S, but I take ToF/Emp Healing/Holy reach. There isn't a huge difference between the 2 of our individual heals (although mine do have higher crits, due to ToF crit's on low health players). But as for CoH, even with his 3% (which I don't have, and we both are within 20-30 Spellpower, depending on fight, endurance/output), both of our CoH's heal for about the same on normal hit's.

But, isn't our flexibility the key factor, for the Priest class being the best healing class? Wouldn't not taking Emp Healing, reduce our single target potential? 20% off 3k spellpower. Thats a good 600 less (IE 10%).

The reason I'm considering it is partially based on my flash heal overheal. It was approaching 50% on our hm-hodir kill (you can assume that I was mashing my buttons unnecessarily harder perhaps !) . One can argue that the potential for more healing is there but if my flashes were overhealing with 4 healers in a 25 man raid, I can afford to lose output when the life of the person is greater than 50%. Thorim will be another story, because I'm supposed to help with tank healing once the debuff has stacked high enough and the tanks are in larger danger of dying.

Test of faith doesn't increase crit chance anymore. It's just 12% more healing on players under 50%.

I don't understand why people ignore 99% of a post, and only string 2 words out of an entire post together, in some unreasonable compilation.
Crit was only mentioned once in that entire post, and crit had absolutely nothing to do with the comment about ToF. The only thing even close, was saying that a crit, on a person with lower than 50% hp, granted a higher max crit for FH.

I interpreted what you said the same way Rootbreaker did, perhaps it's the way you phrased "(although mine do have higher crits, due to ToF crit's on low health players)".

Serendipity is nice when learning fights in my opinion, I almost always need every GCD, unless it's not a hard mode encounter.

Serendipity is absolutely necessary for holy. By all means, do not drop Serendipity if you know what you're doing. If you need Body and Soul, drop points from Empowered Renew. With some fights in Ulduar requiring intense healing, the extra second saved from Serendipityx3 on a PoH might be the difference between killing the boss and wiping.

Nice work putting the numbers together, though I do not agree with your conclusion. As Havoc12 and others have pointed out, the conclusion will depend on what value (in terms of benefit to the raid) you assign to each spell.

Also, you do not factor in individual overheal for each spell - this can shift the numbers quite a bit. If 50% of your flash heals overheal (which is not the same as 50% overheal, of course), and only 25% of your PoH or CoH hits overheal, then your break even point will be different.

Now, to get back to the main point: if you are certain that you can frequently save lives by making flash heals a few percent larger, then it's irrelevant how much more statistical healing BR provides, because it provides the additional healing in a place where it is worth less to you.

This is why you are not going to settle this issue - you can only provide a mathematical and/or statistical model as a basis for individual conclusions.