"Sure. Still, the point in question was whether haste has a negative effect on total mana consumption. This is what I reject. I agree that, especially during progression, there is a lot of avoidable damage that needs to be healed. But this is exactly what dictates mana consumption. Not haste. Thus haste does not have a negative effect on MP5."

Haste enables you to increase your HPS by casting more spells in a set amount of time. Casting more spells requires more mana. Therefore haste does have a negative affect on regen/MP5.

"Now, one can argue that, in specific progression encounters where you struggle to deliver the total healing required to keep everyone alive, haste enables you to perform more total healing if you have the mana to do so. Still, there's no negative MP5 effect, it's just that heal per mana doesn't go up by using haste."

Actually I will argue just that. Yes, haste allows you to output more healing. Yes, more healing is good. But by definition, if you healed more with haste than you would have or could have without that haste, you used more mana. You had to, it is how haste works.

I think Elimbras and Hegen have hit upon a good idea: figure max HPS and sustained HPS. (TheDoctor may have done just this, will have to check his spreadsheet when I get home). This would be a fairly straightforward computation and could be done for each spell. Then we could try to form our own composite based on our predicted casting patterns. Haste, for example, would have a huge affect on max HPS for any spell, and no affect on sustained HPS. Regen stats would have no affect on max HPS, but a large affect on sustained HPS.

So you could plug in + x spellpower or + y haste or + z crit and see what it 'bought' you in for each spell. Then we could stop arguing stats and start criticizing each other for using (or not using) certain spells.

Well there are two ways to attack this problem.

- How does haste impact the cost of a given spell?

This should be quite clear. The cost of the spell does not change with any stat, haste included. FH costs what FH will cost and likewise with other spells.

- How does haste impact the casters ability to spend mana?

Haste compresses the cast time and thus increases each spells CpS (Cost per Second) which you will find used in my spreadsheet. The CpS of a spell is the fastest rate at which you can burn through mana using that spell. Now if you want to say because the CpS of a spell increases that haste increases the rate at which mana can be utilized that is clear. What it doesn't say is that it negatively impacts regen.

Regardless of how fast you can spend mana the rate of regen will be consistent, with the exception that faster casts could impact marginally Holy Concentration. Because your mana regen doesn't reduce correlating haste to a reduced regen is NOT appropriate. You could correlate haste to the fact that at a given regen and spell composition you can only sustain casting for a shorter period of time. That is given that your need for HpS actually increases though or you are merely spending mana faster for additional overhealing.

That is true; please amend "a negative effect on regen/mp5." to "a negative effect on available mana pool".

I understand the theory that overall damage is a static and therefore if someone increases their HpS for a portion of the fight they should be able to compensate by decreasing their casts (and therefore mana consumption) at another portion of the fight therefore creating 'on-demand' throughput without an overall increase in mana consumption over the course of the encounter. 2+2=4 and 3+1 also = 4. I get it.

However, this is the same perfect world were the boss dies just as you go OOM, having judiciously utilized your fiend, potion, and other mana regening procs and abilities. It doesn't often happen that way. Most people that are stacking haste are doing it to cast more spells. More spell casts increases mana consumption. Now this imbalance is likely masked by the practice of many people of stacking regen for progression content. Since they have excess regen to begin with, adding haste has no downside. They do increase their mana consumption with the added haste, but they already have the excess regen to handle it. This really only proves that they were imperfectly geared in the first place.

Constantius made a comment (a couple months ago) about haste being useful for hard modes because he was already using every available GCD. Therefore, more haste=more casts=more mana consumption. I think this is the most common scenario.

Reading posts on this board I am often reminded of the old joke about a math professor trying to get his students to visualize the definition of a limit. He has a female student and a male student standoff 20 feet from each other and halve their distance relative to each other every second. At one second they are 10 feet apart, at 2 second 5 feet, etc. Mathematically, they will never touch, which is the theoretical point of the demonstration. But as the male student wryly points out, “In about five seconds we will be close enough for all practical purposes."

Theory is important, but don't let it keep you from making good decisions.

Howdy folks I have read the forums for advise on how to improve my healing output. My current guild feels my current healing is lacking, per the "Healing Meters". Until recently, my Holy Priest has had no difficulties in being on the top 3rd of the meters, now I am apparently on the very bottom.

Some folks suggest I re gem for Haste, other suggest for Crit, much like the flavor of these forums. Here is my current armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory

I am assigned as a raid healer (go figure), My heals normally consist of Flash Heals, to get 3 stacks of serendipity and to get Inspiration on at least one of the tanks, not to mention Holy Concentration on myself. If I am expecting raid wide heals, then I save serendipity for POH, if not then I sue it for greater Heals. I do use POM on the tanks every time it is off cool down and renew.

I am looking for suggestions on what I need to do to improve my healing output. Thanks in advance for any suggestions

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

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.

So, this thread is really big with an enourmous amount of information in it. Is the starting post still accurate? I've specced according to the linked builds, but saw a couple of pages further some claims were being contested, so how do I know its still "safe" to follow the post?

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.

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.