That raises an interesting point, because I had the opposite problem: my shields were absorbing too much and I didn't get enough Rapture procs for comfort , so I switched from Solace to Spark of Hope for the last 3 tries and it "felt" a lot better.
Now I know that it's hardly a lot of data, but if someone wants anectodic evidence: Logs
Tries 1-2 are holy, 3-13 are disc with double Solace and 14-16 are witch Solace/Spark. In the former setup I had an approximatly average of 1:1 mana return from Rapture and Replenishment (which I'm using as a reference point) while it was more like 2:1 in the later setup.

So in short: It might be worth it to adjust your spellpower level to the point where your Power Word: Shield absorbs just a little bit less than Infest hits for. I haven't seen Phase 3 yet, so I can't say if the additional absorb is worth the missing mana returns.

Infest hits for 9425 to 10575 shadow damage, reduced by 10% from resistances and 3% from Renewed Hope we're at 8200-9200 (also depends on the class), so the "sweet spot" is probably around 8500 absorb.
I don't know how much spellpower that exactly is because the formula in this post returns 3589, while rawr tells me around 3770. I guess than can be easily tested though, just watch out if most of your shields are consumed by Infest or not.
For hardmode it obviously doesn't matter anyway.

I find it hard to understand how people are having mana problems in phase 1. This is a very long fight (10+ minutes), all mana regen sources will be useable multiple times. If you're going oom early in the fight, just use your fiend. You'll get to use it again later. The only time I could imagine running oom is shortly before my second fiend is up, but I save my mana pot CD for that time, and fit in a HoH if I'm able to.

All that cheesing rapture will do is allow you to delay the first fiend. You'll still run into the same problem of going oom before the second fiend is available. I don't think cheesing rapture is a very smart idea in p2/3 since it hurts your tank healing and life saving abilities, which are needed in those phases.

Covering the raid with Shields to negate Infest isn't cheesing if it's the best way for your raid to handle the mechanic. I'm sure some healing teams handle the assignments differently, but we have most of our healers covering the tanks, leaving the Disc Priest to do most of the heavy lifting against Infest. Using roughly your stats, and with only 1 rapture return every 15 seconds, you can spam shields for a little under 2 minutes with your shadowfiend before running out of mana. However, If you are able to get 10 Rapture procs every 30 seconds you can spam shields for ~4.5 minutes before running out of mana. 17 procs or more creates and infinite mana situation.

He actually casts infest after p1, so it's useful for most of the fight.

You can do a lot to conserve mana for LK. First off you can save a ton of mana pre shielding 2 groups before getting into combat. Phase one all you really need to do is shield one group and PoH another. Phase 2 is the only time you really need to shield spam 2 groups but that's only when everyone's spread for defile. When the Valks hit you can go back to a PoH. Hard mode will probably end up being a different story but just playing smarter I went from mana starved to bloated. That's was without any innervates, mana tide, or nice things like a solace. (25 man obviously)

I understand your argument that regardless of when you use fiend, you are often going to have a time when mana is an issue before the fiend comes off of cooldown. However, I still don't see harm in using downranked PW:S in P1 to cheat rapture. I understand during other phases as the encounter becomes more hectic, downranking PW:S is simply foolish. However, going into Phase 2 I personally would prefer to have near full mana as well as my fiend up, which I am hoping cheating rapture will allow. This would allow me to pop my fiend towards the start of phase 2, and possibly have it up again after the transition to Phase 3.

I have no gotten past phase 2 myself due to a very limited time frame this last reset, so I am unsure on when the phases change on average, but I would assume popping fiend towards the start of 2 would allow it to be up towards the last minute or two of the fight.

Taking spellpower gear off is severely gimping ones ability to heal. I would only consider doing it if it were say, swapping from a throughput trinket to Spark of Hope. Downranking a spell for phase 1 is simply tanking advantage of a mechanic disc priests have available to them.

I'm just coming back from LK tries and have to admit that the idea of using a regen trinket wasn't that great after all, because even with Spark my Rapture didn't proc multiple times. I guess the 2 tries on Monday were statistical flukes and I doubt it's worth it to reduce the Spellpower down even more.
I'm just letting my mana regen during the phase change, use Hymn there and use the first Fiend halfway into phase 2, then he's ready when phase 3 comes, as someone already stated.
As for Prayer of Healing on one group: theoretically great, but in our tactic we're a bit too spread to really utilize that, so I'm just shielding 3 groups + tanks.

I didn't make any gear changes or down rank any spells for Lich King 10m. If you can juggle your cds, you can keep yourself floating in enough mana to survive the fight. I mainly kept the entire raid shielded throughout the fight. Here is my detailed juggle:

1. Pre-shield the raid before the pull
2. Use PI on yourself and Arcane Torrent everytime they are up. (I would stagger PI and AT at the beginning of the fight by using PI first and then following up with AT as soon as I could take the extra 6% without going over 100%.)
3. Use your fiend before the first transition.
4. Use HoH during the first transition.
5. After that just keep using your cds as they come up.

Did anyone else find it somewhat freeing when they were picked up by a valk and you could just watch your mana pool regen? =)

Here is the log from our 10m kill. I'd welcome any advice or pointers.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I actually experimented a bit with mana regen during P1. There is really no need to use any regen in P1 (at least for me). I let the other two healers manage the tanks, and they both left P1 with about 85-90% mana. I spent P1 shielding for infest and cleansing the disease. If you start your first shield EXACTLY 6 seconds before the infest cooldown, you can get shields on all 8 non-tank members in 10man before the cast finishes, and they will last through the next infest, proccing ~5k in rapture. The exception to this is I believe the fourth infest, in which the cooldown for infest finishes 12 seconds before a shambling horror, and delays the cast for ~3 seconds for some reason. To combat this, I would preshield the raid, and then reapply shields starting 6 seconds before the second infest, and then 3 seconds before the 'fourth infest CD' is up according DXE.

Using the above shielding I fully took care of Infest and was leaving P1 with at the least 80% mana. This leaves PI available for one of your caster DPS.

YMMV, I roll with a lot of spellpower in my gear an I am not sure how much one could drop to still cover the second infest fully.

I have just read the blue-news about the T10 4pc:


When I have read that, I had two thoughts...the 1st was "hey that is nice" the 2nd "oh s***, now I have to get the 4pc set"

I just wondered how much SpellPower would that be equivalent and how much % SpellPower gain would it be.
I tryed to math it out, can please somebody check, if I have done right?



I have calculated SpellBaseAbsorb+SP*SPcoeff = untalented Absorb

adding talents:

+ 40% SP gain through BT (directly added to the BaseCoeff, 0,8057+0,4= 1,2057)
after that, I have added IPW:S, FP and TD multiplikativ, max rank of course

I am not sure if the FP/TD bug is still live (so calculated *1,09 instead of *1,04FP*1,05TD
( In my calculation I have assumed, that it is fixed an calculated with *1,04*1,05)

thank you for helping

Ouch. I didn't even think of this. I hope blizzard changes this, otherwise I guess I should start putting together a holy set for fights where I am expected to raid heal (I hear renew spec has evolved to something just shy of spectacular in ICC). The buff also slightly diminishes disciplines need to provide players with a larger effective 'HP pool', giving disc priests two short sticks. Buffing traditional healing spells over our shield, paired with the fact that our utility of 'increasing ones HP pool' will be less and less needed.

Combined with the fact that next patch we will be losing our Penance 4pc for a 4pc that benefits shielding, this is quite upsetting.