I already signalled the problem to neglect haste and crit, which you can't when you try to evaluate spellpower.
I would also like to clarify one point : the original question was the relative weights of spellpower vs haste. l337n00b said that for disc., spellpower was almost always better than haste.
Then Tedv said that since holy had a better scaling (that could be debated, but lets' take it for the sake of the discussion) with spellpower, the same conclusion also hold for holy.

The trouble has been tackled by several people (including me) : you can't count only for one side modifiers that modify the total output of a heal : they modify the same way all the scaling w.r.t haste and spellpower.

No, it seems that Tedv spoke only of relative value of spellpower between disc. and holy :
But I'd like to know how to conclude that if spellpower is better than haste for disc., then it's also the same for holy.

As a conclusion, I might seem fussy, but being a researcher, I'm seeing too much papers focused on giving tones of papers, and lacking of the reasonning line. Getting number in a spreadsheet is often needed to back your claims, I acknowledge it. But numbers is not enough : you need to "show" why they are correct, pertinent and useful.

Had you not linked directly to your talents I probably wouldn't have looked at them, but let me start there. Surge of Light is a must have. If you have trouble seeing when it's up use an addon to play a sound when it procs. I would also take BR but that's more of a personal preference. I designed my spec after reading most of the threads on this site.

Toss the renew glyph (I use renew all the time, more then I should and I still don't use the glyph. It's just not worth it). I would also get rid of the Flash glyph. You have way more then enough mana regen already and there are other useful glyphs. I would pick up Guardian Spirit glyph and Prayer of Healing glyph. Minor glyphs aren't really important but I would suggest the shadowfiend glyph instead of the fortitude glyph. You cast fort when you're out of combat so all that's saving you is some drinking.

Your gear seems about equivalent to mine and I am always at the top of the healing list. Sometimes in 25mans a druid will edge me out. The main gearing suggesting I have is to get the tier-9 bonus as soon as possible. It is very helpful. Much more so then 4 piece tier 8.

If you are doing 25-mans I've found that CoH is huge. I cast it almost everytime it comes up if there are around 5 or more people that need healing. PoM should be on someone at all times, recast if it's sitting on someone that doesn't take much damage.

If you are doing 10-mans which is mostly what I run, then CoH isn't as big because people are ussually too spread out on most fights and PoH becomes more valueable because there is a higher likelyhood that the people that are damaged are all in the same group. Even as raid healer I always keep renew on any tanks (assuming other people aren't in dire need of healing of course). PoM should always be on someone in 10-man too. If someone takes damage and I know they won't be taking more in the immediate future (due to fight mechanics) I throw a renew on them. Additionally in fights with steady single target damage like light bomb on Deconstructor or Legion Flame on Lord Jaraxxus I throw a renew on the targeted person.

In 10 and 25-man I almost never cast greater heal unless the tank healers are under geared or lacking in some way. Flash heals whenever SoL procs (which is often) and otherwise only when nothing else makes sense to cast instead or to get stacks of serendipity up.

Your gems aren't bad but personally I wouldn't waste a spot for a dragon's eye. I try to stick to all Runed Cardinal Rubies unless the socket bonus has spell power on it. Then I will either go 10 int /12 sp or 10 spi / 12 sp. Have considered switching to some 10 haste / 12 sp but haven't done that yet.

Lastly, I would look into how much mana you are using per fight. I can't imagine that you are blowing through that much mana with all the regen you have, especially with a spark of hope. I have 200 less mp5, 2k less mana, and no Spark of Hope and I don't run out of mana unless I am trying to make up for a lack of tank healing. If you find out you aren't using all your mana every fight I would consider swapping out some of the mp5 for crit.


I'm sure that people will find problems with how I operate and I welcome feedback as well, but so far it's been working for me. Hope you can get something out of my advice. Oh, and one last thing, the meters aren't the be all end all. Being able to cast a timely GS or PoH or heck, even a shield or renew goes a long way toward being a good healer. Don't solely rely on hps meters.

One other wee thing is that the belt buckle socket is colourless meaning you can put any non-meta gem there, you don't need to use a prismatic +stats gem.

I saw some questions earlier about whether you can equip a regular and heroic version of the same trinket. I did not see anyone answer this, but you can. A shadow priest in my guild has the normal and heroic Talisman of Volatile Power.

Armory link for that priest: The World of Warcraft Armory

Just to confirm it for the healing trinket as well. Here's our resto shaman wearing both trinkets:
The World of Warcraft Armory

If holy gets more return from spell power and spell power is better than haste for discipline, that is insufficient to get the conclusion that spell power is better than haste for throughput for holy. All I have to do to make haste better than spell power for discipline is factor out borrowed time. If you have more than 153 haste rating (which everyone does) and have all raid haste buffs then Borrowed Time makes you hit the 1 second GCD limit. Borrowed Time is up a very high percentage of the time, making haste rating beyond that incredibly low soft cap irreleveant to a large number of casts (I average about 26% of the time my haste is irrelevant, but on an individual fight it can be almost 100% of the time). Knocking 20-30% of the value off a stat is pretty significant, and holy has nothing similar. I can't say I know anything about holy stat weightings, but the two premises here do not lead to the conclusion.

The initial specs are still valid as a starting point. If you're looking for a cookie-cutter spec, you're not doing anything that will really require you to understand the nuances of the differences. Once you've gotten to the point that you are comfortable in your spec and role, start reading these 300+ posts and get a feel for why people think certain points should be shuffled around.

Are the new Ony trinkets worth getting if you have access to the ToC25N trinket? The Cauterizing Heal according to Wowhead is a ~2.5k heal proc. I'd assume it has a 45 sec internal CD. Obviously, the trinkets on their own suck majorly so this is regarding the trinkets as a pair.


Currently my holy priest has Eye of Broodmother + Sif's Rememberence.

Verdict?

They're nowhere near the level of two dedicated healer trinkets, unless you can somehow use the Health/5. Your example of [Sif's Remembrance] + [Eye of the Broodmother] has 235 spellpower, 87 crit rating, and ~ 65 Mp5. Much, much superior to the new Onyxia options.

There are many better options. The heal proc would need to be modified by sp and proc very frequently to make up the difference.

Just as an example, [Solace of the Defeated] + [Sif's Remembrance] is 28 more passive sp and over 2x the mana regen than Onyxia's 25m set.

I still don't get why people stack Int like mad (and not SP and/or Haste for instance). Paladin envy?

I've also noticed most priests switched to Renew mode, even though the conclusion (usability,procs,glyph) wasn't in favour of the spell as opposed to say Flash Heal.

p.s. anyone thought about going thoroughput crazy? (BR+ToF+EH, -HP -IF 1/3ER)

Blessed Resilience + Test of Faith + Empowered Healing, -Healing Prayers, -Inner Focus, 1/3 Empowered Renew

I imagine it looks something like this

More or less: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...HVdzbUe,,10482

Question remains - why Int stacking than SP/Haste?

I don't know of any priest that's doing this. Pretty much everyone has infinite mana these days, if they have enough ToC loot. We're all stacking spell power and haste.

That spec seems very legitimate. I use renew a lot and need Body and Soul, so I moved the 5 points out of Empowered Healing for Empowered Renew and B&S. I threw the last point in Lightwell over Inner Focus to see if it's still worthwhile, but my hunch is that it still sucks. Empowered Healing seems like a reasonable place to spend talent points though if you rely on Surge of Light a lot like I do.

Worth mentioning the ilvl 245 trinkets pair up to: 250 spellpower, 96 mp5, 576 hp5 (lol? i guess it's useful on Anub'arak...) and of course Cauterizing Heal ~ 2500 (which I think is useless, but anyways).

Many of the top priests I've armoried were full of Intellect gems and usually Intellect trinkets, rocking up to 30k mana (depending on spec ofc).

I'm in a guild atm on Twins 25 HC and i'm still ooming myself trying to keep up with the crazy spaming you have to do on that fight, even with int stacking gems and 245/258 ToC loot. This fights healing is pretty close to the IC hard mode spamming of phase 3 we saw in ulduar.

However the earlier heroic modes and more so the 10 man are not very mana intense as the fight mechanics seem not to be too punishing and allow for breaks.

So i wondered if it would be viable stacking Int up if you are going to be doing the higher end 25 man heroics just out of personal observation, but maybe going for SP/haste for 10 man / 25 man normal and early heroics.

You should not be spamming heavily on Twin Valkyrs heroic. Aside from the tanks, the damage is incredibly predictable and easily healed with HoTs and the occasional Chain Heal.

If your raid is taking much heavier damage than this, then you need to consider a strat change.

I certainly wouldn't recommend stacking int over spellpower, but gemming for int over haste or crit in a yellow socket is a simple and effective way for those of us who are switching between the two healing specs to gem tier pieces, etc. for both Holy and Discipline.

For disc, because the disc soft cap for haste is so low, haste gems aren't desirable. For holy, I've been able to make up the difference in haste between T8 and T9 with offset items, so again, no need for haste gems. Now that I've picked up a decent amount of ToC gear, my raid-buffed crit is already nearing the point of diminishing returns as Holy and I'm already past that point in my disc spec, so there's really no need to gem for crit either. All this considered, intellect isn't really such an unattractive stat for a yellow socket, and the extra mana has come in handy on progression nights.

Renew is probably better than you think it is. From a couple pages back:

Rejuvenation is the clear winner here obviously, but we aren't druids, HoTs are not our "niche." But I think you'll see that there is comparable throughput between Renew and Rejuv, granted you invest in it and mana efficiency is not an issue for you. Renew has consistently been in my top three healing spells, it's a very viable healing tool.

I still use Flash Heal quite a bit on some fights (noticed I was using it a lot tonight on Heroic Jord Jaraxxus.25 while spot healing and healing Incinerate Flesh) but in general it's more my go-to for a reactive heal or a heal that's needed *now*. I usually toss up Renew on someone who will be taking predictable damage. That sounds sort of elementary but I do find they fulfill two different niches for me. Regardless, I don't think anyone glyphs for Flash Heal in T9 as mana isn't really an issue anymore in ToC gear, so that can't really be used to argue for using it vs. Renew. Surge of Light is a good argument, however.

Well, you explicitly said ToC. Renew was never bad in Ulduar (it was terrible in Naxxramas for various reasons); however some situations in ToC just makes it shine.

It's good for Burning Bile, Legion Flames, Surge of Light/Dark and/our Touch of Light/Dark, and fairly good for Penetrating Cold. A periodic heal is awesome for periodic damage. (This however didn't make sense for Napalm, since Napalm overwhelmed poor Renew -- and the person would die without assistance from other heals).

Even if you consider not needing much haste as Disc, therefore stacking Int for dual spec, it still doesn't change the fact that Spell Power would be better in general.

But some of those priests had like 700+ haste to begin with :P, which is clearly an overkill for Disc.

I'm just trying to understand if there's a super challenging encounter where you need up to 30k mana, which you can't progress with your stacked spell power. Or is it just a preference, as good as other options.

As for renew, I agree with its usability and I've always liked it.
The only thing that bothers me is Renew not proccing Inspiration or Serendipity, while Flash Heal procs everything.