Well, the obvious advantage of mindlessly casting Flash Heal compared to canceling Greater Heal is that you're stacking DA. But I agree, if the tank is taking heavy damage then I will rather choose Greater Heal as my filler spell. But I don't cancel it. Though these days I'm not tankhealing much anymore anyway. Shieldspamming the raid most of the time ...

Flash is also better for keeping inspiration up ;-).
But the debate flash vs great won't have any definitive answer unless you have a particular damage pattern ;-)

Body and Soul is not necessarily a vital talent, but it has saved people's lives. Helping people move faster out of the raid group with Light Bomb, all while absorbing a small amount of damage is definitely worth it to pick up the talent.

And probably the best thing to socket in a blue socket is [Seer's Forest Emerald]. Adds a small amount of throughput and helps with longevity.

Yeah, those posted numbers are not quite fair because you're applying modifiers to spirit but not to intellect, so your calculated breakpoint for intellect is really intellect after buffs. A reader perusing the post may miss that detail and be misled into thinking they need a lot more intellect than they actually do.

Considering only the substantial raid buffs to intellect (arcane brilliance, gift of the wild, and kings), the value at least should be modified by



For X = 1510 (the gem equivalency), that is 1276. For X = 1718, it is 1465.

Also, assuming 100% I5SR is pretty harsh. There are situations where ooFSR regen is still significant. On the other hand if you assume 100% iFSR, spirit becomes rather absolutely better than mp5 at the above levels of intellect.

I agree that we should be casting something else while we wait for Penance and Weakened Soul. But I don't buy your reasoning behind favoring Flash Heal.

You (and many others here) believe that if you get unlucky with timing pre-casting Greater Heal the tank will get killed before your heal can land so that's why you need to use Flash Heal. But how exactly would this happen? If you are pre-casting and canceling Greater Heal, the worst possible scenario is that the tank gets hit just as you cancel one Greater Heal and start casting the next one, this means that your next heal will land about 2 seconds after your tank gets hit. Assuming the boss has a 1.7 second swing timer, yes it is possible that your tank will get unlucky with avoidance and get hit again before your heal lands, and maybe that hit will kill your tank. But that means your tank just got killed in two hits, and if the boss hits hard enough to kill your tank in two hits (>20k a swing) then you are definitely not the only person healing that tank. The other healer(s) will almost certainly land something (or have a HoT tick or an earth shield trigger) in that window and your tank will survive to see your Greater Heal. If your tank survives that second hit your Greater Heal will land for about 12k on average (including criticals and DA), giving him a decent chance to survive a third hit if he is really unlucky with avoids.

Now lets consider Flash Heal. Your tank gets hit (>20k like before), you see his health dip and react (about 200 milliseconds lag + about 150 milliseconds reaction speed) and start casting Flash Heal (lets say 1.2 second cast). Your Flash Heal will land just before the next melee swing (another 20k), but it only heals for about 5800 on average (including criticals and DA). Now your tank is sitting at almost no HP and you have to rely on the other healers to heal him up before the next melee swing lands, just like if you were casting Greater Heal. Only this time you have to rely on them for much more healing because Flash Heal healed for so much less than Greater Heal would have.

I don't see how the small difference in timing between Flash Heal and Greater Heal is enough to negate the ~1000 difference in HPS when tank healing, especially given that I stacked the previous scenario as much against Greater Heal as possible. If the boss's swing timer is longer, or he doesn't hit hard enough to two shot your tank, or you are not so unlucky that your tank gets hit right as you cancel a Greater Heal, that scenario shifts to favor Greater Heal in a big way. Using Flash Heal just shifts extra responsibility to the other tank healers because you put out less healing.

Also, your second argument for Flash Heal is really an argument for Greater Heal. You say, "I find it very useful to spam Flash Heal a bit to get as many DA stacks as possible." But the key is not how many DA's you proc, it is the total size of the DA you build up on the tank. Greater Heal spam will lead to bigger a DA shield than Flash Heal spam because the size of the DA is directly proportional to the HPS of the two spells. Yes Flash Heal spam will have more chances to proc DA than Greater Heal Spam, but the shields from Flash Heal are so much smaller they can't compete with the DA from Greater Heal spam.

In the Greater Heal section you say "The other healers will almost certainly land something", and in the Flash heal section you say "you have to rely on other healers to heal him up." So basically you're saying "It's good that other healers will land heals when you're casting greater heal, but it's bad that you have to rely on other healers when casting flash heal."

And if you don't see how the "small difference in timing" is significant, then you are probably the only person on this forum who has never had a tank die when you were milliseconds away from landing a Greater Heal. Yes, in many cases the tank would have still died if you'd cast Flash Heal. And in many cases they wouldn't have. I can't say which is more common, but you seem to be assuming that it's the former by a wide enough margin that the latter is unworthy of consideration.

Again, I'm not saying it's correct or incorrect to use either spell in any given situation. I'm just pointing out the flaws in your logic.

You are right that my wording is wrong there. The point I was trying to make is that the reason most people give for favoring Flash Heal over Greater Heal often actually favors neither; I did not mean to imply that it favors Greater Heal.

Of course I have had tanks die milliseconds before my heal lands, but there are better ways to fix that then casting a faster, smaller heal. When that happens I tell myself that I need to react faster, make quicker decisions, and remember the typical damage patterns of that particular boss fight so I have a feel for how much healing the tank needs at particular times (I need to spam when this happens, save my PWS for when something else happens, etc).

When I advocate for Greater Heal I sometimes sound like I believe there is no place for Flash Heal, and that is my mistake. I do love Flash Heal like everyone else and I do use it all the time, but I see people talking about taking Greater Heal off their bars and going 0/5 Divine Fury and I think it is a mistake. Greater Heal is still many times the best way to heal your tank, but people get caught up in all the instant or super fast heals that healers have been given recently (PoM, spammable PWS, Penance, CoH, surge of light FH, etc) and forget how powerful the classic heals are, even if they take more skill to use.

You're assuming all bosses hit at the same rate throughout the fight, they don't. And when spiky damage is incoming, you either choose between 1-2 greater heals at most which might not proc DA or up to 4 flash heals which has a higher chance, regardless of the size. After that hit has landed, I'd rather use the penance I'd have saved rather than use a spell with a long cast time.

At times when you're not purposely spamming to stack DA, Greater Heal also overheals a lot more, which coupled with its longer cast time does negate the higher hps- to me anyway.

I know some healers like yourself almost have an emotional attachment to Greater Heal since it's been a staple spell for so long, but really, times have changed. We don't only use one spell anymore, we get to choose between Flash Heal and Greater heal during each encounter these days. Personally, I like this since I'm a fan of diversity. If I wanted to just spam a single spell, I'd have rolled a paladin.

I don't know where you get your numbers from as well. My Flash heals heal for close to 6k normal and crits for up to 10k not counting DA, when I'm fully raid buffed.

The math stated a few posts back is correct. Your numbers are a little hard to believe though, assuming you're not casting on someone with some kind of increased healing effect.

First of all, If your non-crit Flash Heals heal for "close to 6k", then there's no way they would crit for "up to 10k", because the crit modifier is 1.5, which would be a max of 9k. Second, those numbers sound very high for a discipline spec at this gear level. You would need well over 3k spell power to get 6k non-crit flash heals on the average raid member, even with tree of life aura and grace fully stacked. And while that could possibly be obtainable with current available gear, I don't see it happening with what you're currently using.

I used to be holy 80% of the time, and I'd always use FH on tanks unless I was the only healer on them, or during a heavy damage burst. Now that I play discipline more in Ulduar (mainly because our other priest is holy) I'm coming back to GH, at least for tank healing.

The reasons are mentionned in previous posts (borrowed time, HpS, precasting). The overhealing problem is less a factor as discipline, because our GH are not too big like they are as holy. DA is imho balanced for both, but crit isn't the most realiable mechanism anyway. And on a side note, a GH is a more efficient use of your borrowed time than an FH.

Same as above: I am not saying go go GH. I weave both of them in my healing pattern, and I'm nicely surprised to do so, after all the FH spam I was stuck with in Naxx.
By the way, I rather find it annoying that the GH talents are all in the holy tree. Empowered Healing isn't even a core talent of a holy build in its current state.

On another topic, I'm wondering if people refrain themselves from casting direct heals on the raid, to keep grace stacks intact on the primary target. I personaly don't bother with that, since I "mostly" save penance for tank healing, and doesn't take the grace buff for granted. (Of course I shield or PoH if possible, but that's not always available or efficient). Maybe I'm wrong though.

Surely a large part of the equation for FH vs GH usage is who else is healing the tank?

If you're partnering with a Holy Pally (which I'm sure is far more common than any other combination), I'm happy to leave it to them to provide the raw HPS to keep the tank up from those 20k hits. I see my job being to stabilise the tank by providing a fast and steady stream of heals, and FH spam works nicely for me. Providing higher HPS isn't as important as ensuring that the tank survives long enough for each HL to land.

If you're solo healing or partering with a non-Holy Pally, favouring GH certainly makes sense as your contribution to the total healing is probably going to be larger.

Either way I'm not planning on dropping Divine Fury; when you do need to spam big heals, you need them to be landing as fast as possible.