Maybe you compared 5/5 EH to 3/3 BR, not 3/5 EH. 13% loss from skipping 3/5 EH sounds too much, this would require a pretty high GH quota.

Regarding the fight comparions: the problem is that even if we assume the same behavior (that's acceptable, I guess), overheal will affect results a lot. If we really want numbers on this, we need to determine how many of each of the casts would actually profit in terms of effective healing from 3/5 EH vs 3/3. Even if the overheal quota (in terms of number of casts) is only a few percent off, this can easily shift the balance fully towards either EH or BR.

I swapped my darkmoon card with a jez bell and noticed a nice increase in mana. mainly due to its but being slowed by the 50% spirit regen in 5 sec cast time issue.

Let me Rephrase. if i wanted the best regen trinket to go with Spark of Hope. what would you use?

[Pandora's Plea], [Soul of the Dead] or Greatness (Int) are all better regen trinkets than Greatness (Spirit). Depending on luck, even [Majestic Dragon Figurine] could pull ahead (180 constant vs ~190 proc-based).

Ty for info. will get Int version

According to Rawr (Holy Priest model, using FH/CoH/PoM/PoH), the highest regen/endurance trinket is Soul of the Dead, followed closely by Pandora's Plea and Spark of Hope. Following those 3, is Greatness/Spr and then Greatness/Int (very close, but Spirit still above Int on their scale using my gear set).
Although Pandora's Plea is also near the top for HPS burst on their stat wieght, so probably the best choice.

And yea, I guess I left that part out. Yea, that was assuming you had 3/3 BR 2/2 B&S vs 5/5 Emp Healing (if you aren't taking all the points in EH, might as well take none is my logic to that). That also assumes 3/3 Test of Faith on both, which another 3% on top of ToF, when they are just barely under the 50% mark, is going to be all overheal anyways, PoH is already hitting 9-9.5k on good crits, not counting any +bonuses, so when they are under 50%, its potentially healing for 10k+ (plus the glyph, which rocks :p).

Before you go any further, I'd like to say that please don't trust Rawr in your arguments on what item is better and what is not. With my custom spell usage (using a real log as a template, of a certain fight what I consider the benchmark for me) Pandora's plea beats soul of the dead by miles, in every respect. Rawr is an accurate tool, but also subject to very different views, so in order to use Rawr well you have to ask the right questions. Soul of the dead definately is not the best regen trinket. The crit mechanism for regen sucks (in my opinion, compared to other trinkets).

You seem to be forgetting that extra crits from Soul of the Dead, and the extra spell power from Pandora's Plea actually give you more healing from the mana you already had before those trinkets. Also extra crit from Soul of the Dead gives you a greater chance to keep up Holy Concentration, further increasing gains from passive mana regeneration. You give a very simple mp5 calculation to value your trinkets, without really considering that what you are trying to gain, is the most healing from your mana over a period of time.

I don't believe I ever said otherwise. Those trinkets are ranked on regen, which was the topic of discussion. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions regarding the throughput offered by each trinket.
That's a fair point. From the OP calculations, 1% crit ~= 12 mp5 from Holy Concentration. Soul of the Dead is 2.07% crit, or 25 m5, bringing Soul of the Dead to ~110 mp5.

Readjusting the order:

~1. Spark of Hope
~1. Soul of the Dead
~1. Greatness (Int)
4. Pandora's Plea
5. Greatness (Spirit)

I also assume Spark of Hope is calculated before mana reducing talents and Glyphs. (Can someone with this trinket perhaps verify?). Although a Holy Priest may not use Glyph of Flash Heal, you definately got other talents that reduces the cost of heals, which somewhat reduces the value of Spark of Hope. Disc spamming shields pay 3863 * 23% = 888 base, but with talents its 888*0.75 = 666. With Spark of Hope its (888-42)*0.75 = 634, so its not more than 31,5 mana saved/shield or about 157,5 mp5, not the 225 you were hoping for. (Although its still GRRREAT)

Also, with regards to the extra spell power, its not so obvious, but if we take an easy example where you cast Power Word: Shield, and gain another 100 absorb due to increase of spell power. If a normal PWS absobed 6000, and it now absorbs 6100, that means you heal the same amount 59.02 shields and that saves you 0.98*666 = 652.68 mana over 60 seconds, or 54.39mp5.

You may choose to disagree with this method of thinking, but +Heal does give more Oomph out of your mana. That is a fact.

Healing done? Hmm... Perhaps you can elaborate more on what you mean here. I have actually looked at a lot of log data, and nothing is significantly correlated with the "healing done" statistic, except for damage taken (which is nearly perfectly correlated).

In particular, I have looked at deaths versus healing done. The only times I saw any significant relationship at all was when looking at longitudinal data on similar raid groups, and in those cases more healing done was associated with more deaths -- not a reduction. On reflection, that isn't surprising since healing done is nearly perfectly correlated with damage taken, and no one should be surprised that there are more deaths when there is more damage taken. So over time, a given raid group tends to have less damage taken, less healing done, and fewer deaths on a particular encounter.

I suspect you're meaning to suggest that higher throughput is correlated with fewer deaths, i.e. having the potential to heal more damage more quickly should prevent more deaths. That makes more sense, but as many previous posters have pointed out, the relevant axiom is really: "Not all healing is equally likely to prevent deaths".

If you accept that axiom, then you simply cannot conclude that option A prevents more deaths than option B simply because it increases your healing throughput more. It just doesn't follow -- especially when one option increases single target throughput more and the other increases total throughput more.

In fact, if I had my way, single target throughput and multitarget throughput would be considered as separate entities. They are generally used in different contexts to counter distinctly different patterns of damage. They are just not "the same thing", so they shouldn't be treated as such.

Healing spread across multiple targets often may be less likely to prevent deaths per point healed than single target heals -- just as damage spread across multiple targets is less likely to cause deaths per point of damage than damage concentrated on a single target. So it is not crazy to believe a lower HPS option on a single target heal could be better.

It would be nice if we could place precise numbers on everything and reduce every problem down to arithemetic, but that is not always feasible. One cannot simply discard reasoning because no one can attach precise numbers to it. Some things are much easier to quantify than others, and if you merely optimize factors which are simple to optimize (e.g. throughput), then you tacitly oversimplify the problem by throwing out everything that is too hard to deal with.

That reasoning makes sense to me, but speaking of things that are difficult to quantify, what about increased overhealing? On a shield this won't matter much, but on heals as you increase the size of the heal, you may also increase your overhealing by some nebulous amount. Other healers may also increase your overhealing significantly. So you may not get quite as much oomph as estimated.