I am a lvl 80 Holy priest, naxx 25 man geared(approximately) and waiting to get the guild group up for Ulduar 10.
Ulduar 25 is atm out of question with my guild, but in a few weeks we might get it down.

I am trying to decide, based on the opinions in this thread what will be most appropriate spec for my stage.
I am raid healer using almost everything i have at my disposition, but i tend to do more Flash heals and Renew's than any other type of spell, followed by an Serenditipied PoH or GH (which is the case needed).

The Spec you can currently see on Wow armory is the basic cookie cutter spec for healing, but i am looking to improve it, and the spec i thought of was this one.

Now, since i am not able to test this atm and only theorycrafting and i would really like to hear some expert opinions.

My questions are as follow:

Renew: Can i live without?
Renew is mostly the third healing spell as healing done in my recounts.
I tend to renew mostly everyone in a ten man raid who is presumed to take damage in the next few seconds, being a nice damage mitigation ability. Imp. renew is really nice cause it can proc SoL(which i use anytime it's up, in cases when i can afford GCD), HC and inspiration.
My new spec only has 1/3 ER, because i can afford 230(unbuffed) healing+700 on the initial cast and still get the procs off, so i can put some point in Healing Prayers and Holy reach.
My real question is: IS ER worth it? and if it's not could i swap improved renew for Improved healing.

SoL: Is the bug still up?
If it is, then 1/2 Points in SoL should be enought, i think.

BR: Should i get points out of ER and one point of SoL to BR?

Am i mostly using FH as my main, and that is why i glyphed for it. After that, CoH, an instant FH(maybe) or a another normal and then a 1.5 cast(not exactly) PoH.

That explains the first two fo my glyphs, but what about Glyph of renew?

I find it interesting, because it doesn't affect the output of the heal, but just makes it faster, which is kinda good for my style.

I usually don't run out of mana in 10 mins length fights, but that kinda reaches my limit i think.(never tested smth above 1 drake Sartharion and Heroic Kel'Thuzad).

I would be very pleased to hear any comments at all, and i'm sorry in advance if this is an inappropriate post or time to state it.

I know a lot of people will flame me for saying this, but overhealing does not exist. Atleast for the sane healer. If you are tossing a heal as a healer, its because you are damn certain it is needed. Yes, someone may snipe it, but was the heal worthless? Would you not do it again? If you have the time or mana to wastelessly throw out heals, you are probably outgearing or trivializing the encounter anyway. If every heal counts and you are trying to maximize the potential your mana gives you, there is no such thing as overheals.

I know some oldschoolers still think overhealing is a sign of a poor player, but I'd rather have the healer who isn't stingy, and puts out those heals when he thinks its needed, and oom'ing towards the end of fight, than have a healer who has 10% overheal and sits at 99% mana.

Concerning the trinket discussion:

It is quite obvious that the INT Darkmoon Card is superior to the SPI one if you take them as standalones, and assume you get the spirit proc.
However with Ulduar level gear (which is in many cases low on spirit) I find it hard to keep my Spirit above my INT. Unbuffed my Spirit is 1099 and Int 1041, and that is with me wearing Spirit World Glass + Darkmoon Greatness-Spirit.
As you understand, if I chose the INT I would get the INT proc, which I consider inferior to the Spirit proc. From what I have seen this is usually the case with everyone (Having more INT than SPI)

So that is the reason I chose the SPI version over the INT, and many users should consider the above.

I gave up trying to get my SPI above INT, and learned to love the INT proc by waiting for it before sending the Shadowfiend out.

I'll use two logs posted on this thread in #177 (Nidaba) and #195 (Bulgaratus), expanded to all fights to maximize the data available. These are for illustration purposes only and comparisons between the two are of limited value.

Surge of Light is tough to analyze. However, let's take a swing at it.

Nidaba has 1/2 Surge of Light. His expected critical is around 27%, his Flash Heal critical is 21%. So of the 937 Flash Heals he cast, ~216 consumed Surge of Light. So that 1 point in Surge of Light is equivalent to "reduces cost of Flash Heal by 23%". This translates to around 90 mp5 over the course of the raid, or about triple the per-talent-point value of what he got from Holy Concentration or Healing Prayers.

About 5% of his Surge of Light procs were overwritten (requires browsing the log for the refreshed procs). The average amount of time a Surge of Light proc was active before being consumed with 3.88s. This indicates that overwritten/wasted procs probably aren't all that significant a concern.

Bulgartus has an expected critical is around 26.0% but his actual Flash Heal critical is around 8.5%. With 141 Flash Heals, that means he consumed Surge of Light on ~95 of them. So those 2 points in Surge of Light are equivalent to "reduces cost of Flash Heal by 67%". This translates into about 273 mp5.

Bulgartus had an average duration on Surge of Light of around 2.9s. I couldn't calculate the overwrites since the log browser didn't work for me (somewhat thankfully, since it's a massive nuisance).

Note that this comparison isn't remotely an answer. Bulgartus and Nidaba not only had different levels of Surge of Light, they had different levels of gear, different accomplices in raiding, and were fighting different content. The Bulgartus parse is also a bit minimal to really get the data as accurate as we want - that 273 mp5 could very well be 200 mp5 if we re-parsed the entire log.

The best I can say is that these logs (and others I've seen) strongly imply that the various arguments against the second point in Surge of Light aren't accurate. Surge of Light's performance - especially the potential performance - so far exceeds anywhere else you could put that talent point that avoiding it doesn't seem to make much sense even accounting for potential antagonisms.

Empowered Renew depends on your healing style. Let's pretend you're Nidaba (from parse above). Each point of ER will add about 20/tick to your Renew as well as that upfront healing. Nidaba got about a tick-and-half out of each of his Renews, so that ends up being about 30 points of healing per Renew, or 5370 healing over the course of the raid. This is an order of magnitude less than what 1 point in Blessed Resilience would have returned on his Circle of Healing, so it's safe to say that the empowerment aspect of ER is meaningless (if you're Nidaba).

The upfront healing aspect is not so irrelevent. While listed at +15% benefit, Nidaba actually enjoyed ~+45% from 3/3 ER. So each point was really worth +15%, not +5% due to being an instaheal rather than an easily sniped HoT. Unfortunately, Nidaba only produced 1% of his total healing from those 3 points. So his points in Empowered Renew are only producing a third the value per-talent-point as points in Blessed Resilience would.

Small caveat: the first point in Empowered Renew increased his Holy Concentration up-time by 20% (50 Renew crits vs. 250 non-Renew crits). So that first point in Empowered Renew was worth +0.33% overall throughput and ~20 mp5.

Glyph of Renew follows the discussion above to some extent. Just as ER does little for your overall Renew healing, Glyph of Renew suffers from the same problem. You're applying +25% to only a small portion of a small portion of your healing.

Adding +20% to your Circle of Healing or +10% (expected yield) to your Prayer of Healing will almost certainly produce signficantly greater benefits.

Glyph of Flash Heal depends on playstyle again. If you're Nidaba, it will save you tons of mana. If you're Bulgartus, it's almost worthless. Saving 10% off the 0 mana cost of a Surge of Light proc is meaningless, so you need to be casting most of your Flash Heals at full cost to make this glyph worthwhile.

Ultimately, all of these questions depend on your playstyle. The best way to make the decision is to pull logs from your various fights and analyze what you're actually getting out of your talents/glyphs.

I've found using HoH with Shadowfiend gives me a damn-near full mana bar everytime regardless. And so far I've been able to find time to channel it. Albeit it's a bit more difficult in some fights (Steelbreaker-last) and a bit easier on others (Hodir, Thorim).

Also, I have no idea how any Priest is keeping their Spirit above Intellect. I think I am logged off in my spellpower-suit, but last night my Raid-buffed/flask Intellect was always a solid 100-200 points higher than my Spirit.

[e] Spark of Hope's best case isn't 215 mp5 for Disc. The mana reduction is done before talents. And Disc reduces the mana cost of PWS by a decent bit. Bit fuzzy on the math, but I think Spark of Hope provides ~160 mp5 if a Disc priest spammed 60 PWS in 1 minute. It should be about 180 mp5 for Holy Nova spam though assuming a 1.2s gcd.

I apologize if my post sounds redundant. I have been reading through this thread for a while now, particularly searching for terms related to the talents I have questions about, namely: Test of Faith, Blessed Resillience, and Empowered Healing.

I read a post about 2 pages back that says that BR is better if flash heal is less than 40% of your overall healing, and mine defintely is. I also read a post somewhere on the front page that also concluded that 3/3 blessed resil and 2/3 test of faith were better.

If I fill in my build while putting no points in BR, ToF, or EH, I have 7 available points.

Here is the build I have been using:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Here are the Wow Meter Online stats for my healing using this build (most of it is failed mimiron attempts =( too many people dying):

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

After thinking about it some and reading the posts on here, here is the build I want to switch to (I admit I'm hesitant to drop the second point in SoL because I occasionally have mana issues, especially if fiend dies to aoe, but I'll try it out):

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Spell warding over inspiration because we have 2 pallies and a disc priest most of the time, btw -- we are usually short on raid and not tank healers, so I'm rarely healing the tank, and think I could get more benefit from taking less damage from Hodir's frozen blows, mimiron's phase 2 fire nova, etc.

Hesitant on the body and soul simply because we often have a dpriest and I don't want to trample on his shields, but might be nice occasionally.

If I find that BaS isn't working out, I would drop the 2 points and put 1 to get 3/3 ToF and the other to get 3/5 EH.

Any ideas on all of this? Will this help increase my raid healing output? I really need to do that because people are dying in phase 2 on mimiron.

Well, I'm going off thier model. There are also several other factors to that, other than just stat values.
And I also said that was based on MY gear setup, which is could be just as different from 1 priest to another.

They are also factoring in spell power, in that sustained healing as well, which is probably where a large chunk of the variation comes into play.

Like for example:
Soul of the Dead: Has crit rate, which increases the Surge of Light proc's (which they consider Surge of Light as the third highest regen talent), plus also has a mana regen effect.

And I understand why they give DMC Spirit slightly higher value than Int. Because, when the Int proc's, your max mana goes up, as well as your current mana, so you'll actually be increasing your current % mana, which would make you a less viable target for Replenishment, so you'd probably see a reduction in Replenish uptime while the Int card would proc. This wouldn't be true for the spirit bonus, as it would be pure regen + temporary spell power (which is also another factor for them in determining sustained healing).

IDK where ya get numbers like 1050 int/spr raid buffed, and call that Ulduar gear level. I'm sitting at 1100-1150 both Int/Spr (with no Spr trink on) unbuffed. I think its 1300/1300, or 1300/1500 (w/ spr trink rolling). I haven't had mana issues in all of Ulduar, including Hodir/Thorim/Council hard modes (Council is cutting it close, but some of that is inneffective positioning).

Where's a flame emote when I need it?

Actually, I pretty much agree. Overhealing is only a "problem" if mana is a problem. In other words, there's nothing wrong with healing someone more than they need, and even "wasting" mana isn't a a problem. Only running out of mana when you still need it is a problem... well, having to sit and drink too much maybe too, but you get the idea.

However, changes in overhealing rates could skew the estimations for mana savings from something like a spell power proc from a tinket. So if your overhealing increases after a proc, you may not save as many casts as you think. Probably the effect is small, since it's not the overhealing rate that matters but the change in overhealing rate due to the increased heal size (which is probably quite small). Practically speaking, the effect would only affect close calls, where I'd tend to favor an item that got me back mana more directly over one that dependend on increasing my heal size, supposedly leading to fewer casts.

Especially if you end up topping off multiple players frequently, I would be a little skeptical that bigger heals will actually save you as many casts as predicted. If a player is down 3K and I flash heal them, the mana I spend is mostly dependent on the number of targets I need to heal and not the overall amount of healing I need to perform. So a spell power proc doesn't save me much mana compared to a theoretically similar +int item, for instance.

I have no idea how to quantify that accurately, though, so I just note it mentally. I wouldn't change the way you estimate mana gains from spell power and similar procs.

And then your guild tries Vezax hard mode and your healers who haven't learned the art of conserving mana, overheals like crazy and run oom at 60%

I understand what you're saying, but I definitely don't agree. As discipline you reactive heal and have minimum overheal, as holy you won't tank heal (probably) and there's no point spamming someone else, so when does this overhealing appear? When 2 people from your PoH are already topped?

"I know a lot of people will flame me for saying this, but overhealing does not exist. Atleast for the sane healer. If you are tossing a heal as a healer, its because you are damn certain it is needed. Yes, someone may snipe it, but was the heal worthless? Would you not do it again? If you have the time or mana to wastelessly throw out heals, you are probably outgearing or trivializing the encounter anyway. If every heal counts and you are trying to maximize the potential your mana gives you, there is no such thing as overheals."

I wouldn't flame you, but instead of sane, you should replace that with 'skilled' or 'experienced'. If a certain reaction or spell choice on a healer's part has a high likelyhood of leading to significant overheal, that healer is making bad choices (MT healing aside). And those need to be unlearned to increase the effectiveness of the healer. Which seems to be what you are saying in the last sentence that I have quoted, I just think you have a HUGE assumption in there.

I prefer to end the fight with 20% mana AND 10% overheal...having blown my CDs as well.

"Healing spread across multiple targets often may be less likely to prevent deaths per point healed than single target heals.."

Well, yeah exactly. Per point healed I don't believe that anyone would argue with that. But per point healed our single target spells blow chunks. Compare the potential healing points of CoH vs flash, or the potential of PoH versus GH. Our AoE spells on a per point basis utterly destroy our single target heals. And I understand that that is POTENTIAL healing, but when I find myself sitting on a CoH off CD and only 1-2 people in the raid to heal...there are often 5+ other healers jumping on them, I don't need a 3% better flash heal. Haste would be a better choice at that point...and I'm not a huge fan of haste.

So it comes down to what modifier are you going to assign single target versus AoE heals, and that modifier is going to have to be pretty high to make it even. And it may well be that high, but I'm thinking it is for a much smaller subset of holy priests than the ones that are valuing it at that level.