But we should do more than just share our opinions. Lets get real math on the total healing output we can do and then decide.

By the way, I don't buy the argument "more +healing just produces overhealing so regen is better". The argument relies on constructed examples and there are other examples where the +healing setup happens to win. Here's a typical argument.

That is a bad argument. Because you could just as well say that the tank is taking 6k hits. Now the spell power setup can heal 10 hits (60k actual damage), but the regen setup now needs to cast TWO heals to heal up every incoming hit, resulting in 4k of overhealing for every 10k healed. So the regen setup only heals 6 hits (36k actual damage).

The point is that you can muck with the example numbers however you want to get a specific situation where a particular spell power / regen quantization is optimal or not. But real healing situations aren't so cut and dried. These examples aren't meaningful, and it's the primary reason we should focus on total healing output throughout. If one setup can do 10% more healing than another, then it's almost certainly an improvement, regardless of whether the heals happen to be a bit faster or slower.

Again, you can muck with examples however you want. The purpose of this example was to show that healing 25 total damage is almost always better than 21. It's not useful to try extrapolating anything additional from it though.

I think this has take a nice turn from the last healing thread. Couple things I would like to add to the whole debate of regen vs output is that depending on the fight you can run same same total output with higher and lower downtime.

Take for example Kologarn to xt for example. Total boss damage would be about the same however the spells used vs mana used in a given period changes.

I find its important to note that on fights where you'll blow a couple PoHs quickly then have downtime / lower THS time. Compair this to Xt where you your throw a more contant mix of Flashes and gh's on the raid from light bombs.

2 different types of fights and I heal them in different ways as holy and personally I'll use SP flask on Kol because I want my fewer big heals to hit for more, were as xt is more of a keep mana up and pound is my only big mp5 time.

I tend to agree with the math that states higher output is more affective then int/mp5 mathematically, however from experience I find that unless your in a perfect word spike dmg and using larger heals/overhealing is more common and mana usage is higher them I think your taking into account.

Healing comp also takes a key roll in this bebate imo as different healer compositions require holy preists to change the way they heal. Just as before with a large amount of shamies you tend to do less PoHing, however on the other hand I personally raid with 3 holy paladins and end up having to cover more of the raid splash. In the later case Mp5 and int take a higher priority for me as I need to throw more large mana spells and having a larger pool to work with is more to my advantage then the extra HPS Spell power would add for me.

I think your statement that more spellpower always equals more +throughput is what is flawed, though you are right that constructed examples are not the way to address this. To break it down, let's first look at the cases where having more spellpower is better than having less spellpower, and therefore see what extra spellpower exactly gains you.

The first case, and the most situational, is where having the extra healing power would prevent an instagib either on the tank or on the DPS. While we can all produce scenarios that this would solve for, the reality is that the majority of the time this happens is because someone made a mistake or you have a very unlucky RNG. Neither of these cases is something to gem for, any more than you should ask the DPS to gem for extra stamina to fix the problem of them standing in the fire for too long. That being said, if you consistently find your heals are too low, boosting your spellpower or boosting the tanks gear is obviously the right call.

The second case (and the least situational) is when the difference between the amounts of spellpower would allow you to cast one less heal or a cheaper heal to top the target off (e.g. when your greater heal hits enough that you can use a flash heal or a hot instead). While it seems like having a large number of extra spellpower would allow you to do that, the numbers you have given so far (for example ~243 extra hit points per target with a prayer of healing), amount to something between 1-1.5% of a target's health. This is hardly ever going to allow you to substitute a cheaper spell. The only thing that might be considered an exception is if the stacker would bring the heal target to 100% (i.e. near 0 overheal) while a non-stacker would have brought them to 99%. This is hardly something that most healers would be worried about as a smart healer would simply wait until the target takes more damage and use a heal then, or would alllow another healer to top them off with a very cheap heal (like a rejuv or flash of light).

Of course, back in BC, this would be a different argument entirely as you could have downranked if you had enough +healing and saved some mana. But the end result is that gemming for spellpower once you have enough to top your target off will only result in increased overheal (actual waste) while gemming for regen is only a potential waste as having more mana allows you to fix mistakes made by the raid and increases the margin for error.

Given the fact that having enough spellpower to increase your heal strength by 1-2% of a target's health isn't going to make much difference in the number of heals you have to cast, then haste really is the better way to increase throughput effectively as it allows you to cast those heals faster. That being said, I would agree with you that gemming for haste once you have a decent amount will only result in marginal gains in most cases.

Since gemming for spellpower does not increase the size of your heals to the point where you can cast fewer heals, it is my opinion that the only real purpose for having more spellpower on gear upgrades, therefore, is not to increase throughput, but to match the gains in hit points that accompany gear upgrades for the rest of the raid and increased damage to the raid. To put it simply, you can not gem for another tier's worth of spellpower without gimping other stats, but you naturally get the spellpower you need to heal new content as you get gear upgrades and stacking spellpower or any other single stat, is superfluous.

Alright, fair enough: there could be DPS players doing some important things besides DPS, and you do need to consider only those actually doing DPS. Better yet, if you want to be more precise, you can estimate how much faster you can do a fixed amount of damage with:



So if you are able to increase your raid's aggregate DPS from 100K to 110K, you can do a fixed amount of damage in about 100/110 or ~91% of the time. Is that better?