I thought the stats offered were relatively realistic, but I am very confused by the ones you give here. If you are unbuffed 31% crit and 16% haste then I don't see how your buffed crit could be 50%.

You should get 5% from either moonkin aura or an elemental shaman and then whatever additional crit you get from bonuses to your int, which could hardly give more than 2%: 69 (from arcane intellect with mental strength) + 60 (from mark of the wild with mental strength) + 10% of your total int (from kings, probably won't exceed 200) < 329. 329/166.66 ~ 1.97. So you should get 7% more crit from raid buffs, bringing you to 38%.

On the haste side you should get 3% from improved retribution or moonkin aura and 5% from an air totem. But these things apply multiplicatively, so your haste will be 1.16 (base haste) * 1.05 * 1.03 - 1 = 25.45%.

I agree that 30% crit is low, but it's closer to the mark than 50%. And you'd have to actually go pretty far out of your way to avoid getting 25% haste. Since with 5% and 3% haste from buffs and 6% from talents you only need 1.25 / (1.05 * 1.03 * 1.06) - 1 = 9.04% haste ~ 296 rating to achieve it. In fact, if you are showing 16% haste on your sheet (which does not add in enlightenment) then your actual haste in a raid is probably around 33%.

You are welcome to plug in any numbers you want. Unfortunately the profile link to your armory page is coming up empty so I can't plug in your exact stats. I agree that 30% crit is on the low end of the scale for a good raiding disc priest, but 50% crit like you say? You can't go from 31% crit to 50% with buffs. You get 5% from Moonkin Aura or Elemental Oath, plus 3% from Focus Magic if you are lucky, plus about 1% from Blessing of Kings and Gift of the Wild + Arcane Brilliance. So maybe 9%? That gets you up to about 40%, not 50%.

There is nothing wrong with adjusting those numbers to more accurately reflect one's raiding stats, but to think that slight changes to spell power and critical strike chance will somehow invalidate the entire calculation is simply incorrect.

Of course no priest just spams Greater Heal or Flash Heal, nobody was arguing for that. Everyone knows to utilize Penance and PWS in addition to FH and GH. And of course in a perfect world we would compare the full arsenal of spells at each healer's disposal with exact usage in terms of percentages and as a function of time, but let's be realistic. None of us have that kind of data collection available to us. In lieu of such a comprehensive appraisal it is certainly worthwhile to compare individual spells if those spells make up a significant portion of the players healing. And unless you can provide some kind of data and/or math to back up your assertion that a Holy Paladin and a Discipline Priest have "roughly equal" single target HPS, you can't just throw that statement out there with no math/data to back it up.

Of course Greater Heal vs Flash Heal is very talent dependent, that's why I clearly stated talent assumptions in my math. The Divine Fury vs Spell Warding trade off has been widely debated on these forums, and it's clear that for Holy Priests most people favor Spell Warding. But there has been much evidence posted showing just how minor the effect Spell Warding has - many AoE effects and other things hitting you at range are actually physical, not magic, and even the ones that are magic only have reductions on the order of several hundred HP. It is not a no-brainer decision for a Discipline Priest. I agree that without Divine Fury, Flash Heal is superior in HPS (albeit only barely), but you are wrong in asserting that it changes the HPM of Greater Heal, it has no affect on that.

If you never run out of mana while raiding then sure, Improved Healing is not something you need to take. But if you are never running out of mana then maybe there is more you can be doing during each fight. Unless, of course, you are already chain casting the entire time, but then I would be curious how you never drop below 50% mana.

The 50% was a typo, it's ~40%, and most of the time, I don't have access to both haste buffs. being able to plug any numbers into your equation is useless because the method of comparing HPS between the 2 classes is fundamentally wrong- all it proves is that holy paladins have higher HPS when constantly spamming a single target spell without a cooldown as opposed to disc priests.

If you think it's unrealistic to compare hps from all spells, why do you think comparing the hps of single spells is acceptable when no healer heals that way? I base my judgement of the single-target hps of both classes being roughly the same based on looking at WOL logs from my guild and others over quite a period of time- that's far more realistic and accurate than the math equation you posted which calculates the higher hps spell should a healer have only one spell binded.

Maybe in your opinion spell warding isn't worth taking, but I disagree. And so far I've found that most raid damage is magical- the only physical raid damage that I can think of right now is Freya's ground tremor. A few hundred hp might not sound like much, but it adds up to a lot of damage mitigated over time, helps keep the strain off healers and there's loads of times where my hp has indeed dropped extremely low. It's invaluable for fights where combos can occur, which is pretty much every hard mode. Maybe it doesn't matter if you're only doing normal modes, but when it comes to hard modes, the choice between Divine Fury and Spell Warding is extremely clear.

FH is lower HPM than GH because of the -15% cost from talents and -10% cost from the glyph. The HPM/HPS benefit may not sound like much, but it does add up over time, like the damage mitigated from spell warding.

As for running out of mana, I don't know how it's humanly possible for a disc priest to run out of mana, and no, there's nothing more I can do to spend it faster beyond what I'm already doing. Raid buffed, I'm sitting at ~30k mana. Shadow fiend and hymn of hope (yes, I know hymn doesn't always restore the mana to me) return large amounts (50% and 12%), and when timed right can be used twice per fight. Being a blood elf, I've got arcane torrent (6%), which I can use 3 times a fight minimum. Of course that's not counting rupture, replenishment, inner focus or the mp5 I get while casting.

If there's long phase changes on the encounter like Mimiron, well, the mana pool is even more endless- every beasts fight finishes with me on at least 90% because I'm just standing there getting ~1k mp5 ticks while he's deciding who to charge or standing with his face in the wall. I've started to gem blue slots with Glowing Dreadstones when I want the blue socket bonus for survivability and on fights like Faction Champions, I've started to replace the FH glyph with glyph of dispel for the extra healing since mana is such a non-issue. Thinking of changing my luminous gems to reckless/potent as well.

Trimmed so this doesn't turn into a wall of text:
If you think the comparison is fundamentally wrong then why complain about details in that very comparison? Again, if you want to gather the large quantities of data from many different sources and put together the spreadsheet to make a more thorough comparison, I would be the first one to thank you. And no, looking at World of Logs reports from your guild and your friends guild does not count. Anecdotal evidence should encourage you to investigate something, not act as proof of a conclusion.

I won't deny that Spell Warding can be very useful, but I'm not convinced it's worth throwing away one of my best tools for. Not being able to ever utilize Greater Heal is a big tradeoff.

I'm not sure what to make of your next paragraph, it seems like you are arguing for Flash Heal over Greater Heal based on HPM and HPS, even though both of those metrics favor Greater Heal. My calculations took into account both the Flash Heal glyph and Improved Flash Heal talent, and still Greater Heal had a slightly higher HPM (although they were so close as to be essentially equal). Your argument actually comes to a conclusion in favor of Greater Heal, not Flash Heal.

If you are running at 30k mana raid buffed and never come close to running out of mana, you might want to rethink your gearing/gemming. There is no reason to use gems with +Intellect, or use regen trinkets, etc, if you never come close to running out of mana.

Of course, if mana is no problem at all then that would really favor heavier use of Greater Heal anyway. It's significantly higher HPS, and the mana cost doesn't matter if you are swimming in mana so why not use it? Of course, like TheDoctor mentioned, there is the issue of heal spacing, but that is another argument.

It's really not that Greater Heal has poor value, it's that you're highly unlikely to fit it into it's full potential versus other healers so why bother using it at all when right next door is a survivability tool. In hard modes staying alive is everything. In 25s there are generally lots of healers and healers (holy paladins) better suited for tank healing that will always beat you to it. Considering how tanks operate in high damage situations, the heal that snuck in between a few un-avoided hits is far more important than the one that topped him off. Flash heal has the better opportunity to be that heal.

I don't agree when it comes to discipline. The only reason a disc priest has so much worse HPS than a paladin is because of the mitigation we provide. If your greater heal crits and overheals the tank when he's at full hp, you should be pretty happy because you just gave the tank inspiration and a pretty substantial shield. If you also have a legendary mace (yeah I feel it's a waste to use Valanyr when I'm disc) you'll be pretty happy to use gheal just to pump the mitigation into the tank.

I honestly don't feel that flash heal does the job in 25-mans if you start comparing it to what a FoL or LHW does. Also the shield feels too small for it to be worth it.

We keep reading about all the disc priests here only using flash instead of gheal and at the same time boasting about how they never go oom and that they only gem int. I think you're gimping yourself with that mind set, when you can be going crit and haste for max mitigation instead (as tank healer).

If you want to be as well rounded as possible, spell power is by far the best stat to gem and go for. SP gives your shields the most bang for the buck, while crit is useless and int is overrated.

I feel as though the only way you are allowed to say you don't run out of mana, and are justified in doing so, is if every single raid member is alive at the end of the fight. I, too, have >30K mana raid buffed, and I frequently spend it. Yeah, I suppose there is some overhealing going on, but you might just be saving someone by casting a heal when you have time to.
Don't just stand there not casting anything. Be pre-shielding people. That's our job.
But, for the record, I don't think we should be doing all that much "healing" anyway. Our job is to focus on the mitigation, and I will frequently shield the raid if I have time while tank healing.

Because I'm a relatively new poster, I'll post my armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory

And a couple parses:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Have we decided that it IS worth it to break 4pc T8.5 when two T9 (lvl 245) are available?

Depends on your role and also on the fight at hand. How awesome PoM is depends on the fight at hand. I definitely would put a lot of thought into it for Heroic Twins.

I broke the 4pc rather quickly. Once I had 3 iLvl245 items, 2 of which were T9 set pieces I broke the set. It is really difficult to notice the change is SP... Mathematically, I took a hit though it didn't negatively impact my performance. Once I got the iLvl258 Flowing Robes of Ascent it wasn't really even close from an overall perspective.

If I currently had the set bonus I would be +70hps or so but I would have quite a bit less regen. In the end the trade of is worth it for me.

The set bonus is important only if you are solely raid shielding. If you are tank healing it drops below 50% uptime and loses a lot of its value and on fights like IC that you have to time PW:S and not spam it on Weakened Soul removal it's even worse. It's impossible to get 125 raw Spell Power(assuming 50% uptime)from 5 pieces though the Int, Crit and the tiny Spirit increases make up for it.

The set bonus is very good regardless of your role. Parsing my own logs over many different encounters it is the equivalent of 151 spell power.

But I think people are also undervaluing the new set bonuses. I know we were all hoping that the 10% more to DA would bring it from 30% to 40%, but currently DA hovers around 20% of our total shields+heals, so 10% of that is 2% more healing, which is far from nothing (I feel bad for the holy priests, but the bonus is actually good for us). Similarly, if Prayer of Mending is even 5% of your total healing the 2-piece is a 1% bonus. Even if the 4-piece on our old gear was straight up 250 spell power that would only be a 4-5% bonus. The new set bonuses definitely seem like a downgrade, but not a massive one, so the increased stats will easily cover the difference and then some.

This is incorrect, for what it's worth. I've gained 250 spellpower since entering ToC, replacing my tier gear. Partially this was going to epic gems, I'll admit, so if you wanted to gem your T8 with epic gems, the number drops down to about what you said was impossible, ~ 125 spellpower.

[Boots of the Servant] ->[Sandals of the Mourning Widow] (+59 spellpower)
[Raiments of the Iron Council] -> [Flowing Robes of Ascent] (+32 spellpower)
[Conqueror's Shoulderpads of Sanctification] -> [Zabra's Shoulderpads of Triumph] (+8 spellpower)
[Conqueror's Leggings of Sanctification] -> [Pants of the Soothing Touch] (+15 spellpower)
[Conqueror's Gloves of Sanctification] -> [Zabra's Gloves of Triumph] (+14 spellpower)

5 items, 128 spellpower gained. Admittedly it relies heavily on the 226->258 nature of my boot upgrade (*really* needed those), but it's doable so long as you have at least one slot that does that jump. It's especially notable if you have a lot of 226 items left from Ulduar. I was fortunate enough to get 239 helm, cloak, bracers, gloves, belt, and trinket, and in those slots the upgrades tend to be +10 spirit, +10 intellect, +5 crit, +/- 2 spellpower. If you're in that boat, then it may not be possible to gain 125 spellpower from 5 slots.

But if you're in that boat, you broke your 4-piece already anyway.

At the beginning, it is said "Metagems--- Primary choices... Selection based on whether you need more regen or more throughput.
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] - The highest regen meta available until extreme levels of Int. A 45-second ICD proc that restores 600 mana and 21 intellect."

This is the one I'm currently using... my question is, what is the definition of "extreme levels of Int"? And if you achieve this number, which is the recommended one to switch to?

Hey, moving aside from the tier bonus discussion. I was just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the new trinkets, ie what would ur wishlist look like and why?

I believe the math said that over either 3000 or 6000 intellect, Ember Skyflare was better for regen. I don't remember the actual number, but it's definitely unobtainable right now. Once you have that much intellect, you are better off with Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond for extra throughput.

Thanks for the maths, even if they could maybe be more accurate according to the other posters here.

But I've been thinking about something that -as far as I know- has been missing in the GH/FH discussion : the extra 10% crit you get on tagets below 50%hp thanks to the 3/3 Improved FH talent. Did you include this data in your maths ? If not, a good starting point could be to assume that the healing target is indeed below 50%hp 40% of the time on hard hitting bosses (I think that they are the relevant encouters to compare GH and FH).
I would do the maths myself if only I knew how to do it

The combination of Solace of the Fallen + Solace of the Fallen heroic should be very hard to beat for both regen and throughput right now. Seems a little overpowered compared to the rest of available trinkets, so maybe this will be patched in the future, but nobody knows. At the moment you can equip both versions at the same time and the mp5 buffs stack (if I'm informed right, I don't own the heroic version, yet).

As best I can tell, this is by intent. Our raid got both copies of Death's Demise and tried them out-- you can equip both and use both buffs. The "unique" tag only refers to that specific item id, and the heroic version is not the same as the non-heroic.

If they would patch in that you can only have one copy of a trinket (normal or heroic, but not both), what would the most desirable trinket setup be then? Solace of the Fallen (heroic) + what?

I'm personally thinking there might be a future patch that removes the ability to have both, but maybe I'm simply being pessimistic. At any rate, I'd like to be prepared.

Although I've seen this done once (and that was 4 years ago -- and it should be noted while they removed the ability for people to acquire 2x [Shard of the Scale] people who already had two were allowed to keep them and wear them*), I think it would be a pretty douche move to tell people who already have two they can't use both.

Personally I would pair it with Pandora's Plea (for tank healing) or Spark of Hope (for raid shielding), but I also don't have Meteorite Crystal.

*It wasn't until BC (I believe) where the trinkets became Unique-Equipped as opposed to just Unique).

[Solace of the Fallen] + [Show of Faith], unless you really need regen. In the case of regen, the two above-mentioned options are good.