I read the thread and it seems that spell warding vs. divine fury is a discussion everyone is tired of. But I checked the disc specs of everyone posting in this thread on the armory, and I observed many different combinations of points in spell warding, divine fury, healing focus, and improved renew.

Is there a reason improved renew and healing focus aren't included in the cookie cutter spec?

Ever since I made the transition from Holy to Discipline a couple months back I've been a huge fan of stacking Intellect. I gem Brilliant King's Amber and my trinkets are Talisman of Resurgence (128 Int) and Tears of the Vanquished (84 Int). This strategy has been working great for me in regards to my never ending supply of mana as I sit at just under 31k unbuffed and nearly break 36k in my 10M raiding guild's raids.

However, when we stepped into ICC the other night it seemed as though my infinite mana had finally met its match when my throughput was not enough to keep the tanks alive during the first boss! So, I've considered making the complete switch to geming and trinketing for SP, but after doing some quick math I wasn't too thrilled about what I saw...

If I went all Runed Cardinal Rubys and two easy to get SP trinkets (Lets say 111s) I would gain 475 SP and lose 432 Intellect!

While the trade off doesn't seem quite balanced to me, I was hoping to gain some insight from some more number savvy Priests out there. My regen is great; I never run out of mana, but as a tank healer I feel like I should get some more throughput.

Thanks for the input!

It's pretty simple. You only need enough mana to not run out of it over a full fight, given things like shadowfiend, potion, Hymn of Hope, Mana Tide, and possibly Innervate. Anything beyond that is wasted and should be throughput.

Personally when I go Disc I don't even notice my mana bar, it's such a non-issue. I'd never gem for mana as Disc.

Right Right. I've been considering making the change for a while now. I suppose one of the main things that has held back my transition from Intellect to SP is that I haven't had a very reliable 2nd healer in quite some time, so I've commonly had to pick up some slack in the healing department so I always liked the extra mana as a buffer.

But alas it may be time to both re-gem and recruit some new blood!

I find people saying this same thing over and over, and it seems to get accepted as just being true. I have to say that I don't quite agree, particularly as disc(because of shield spamming). You can ALWAYS cast more heals, and a fight can always take longer or people take more damage than usual because of mistakes.

I actually like to compare the idea that you don't need more mana to the idea that if you down a boss before the enrage timer you don't need more dps. Yes, technically you don't, but more dps means a shorter, safer fight with a larger margin of error. More mana means you can cast more heals for a safer fight, and last through a longer one.

You can? During an ideal fight are you often standing around with nothing to cast? I'm not. There's always shields to cast even if no one's taking damage. So no, you can't just "cast more heals." And even with real, actual, non-stop casting, I don't run out of mana as Disc. Not even as Holy these days with all of the regeneration options.

On the other hand, if you cast Hymn of Hope, you also lose time to cast heals - If you are really casting heals through the whole fight, then you should probably not use the time to caste the Hymn. I personally dislike the Hymn because it's to stationary and the time can be used for something better (like shielding) instead of casting the Hymn since Mana has not really been any issue for my group at all.

But even if you use Serendipity and GHeal, the benefit of Divine Fury is reduced since you'll gain ~0.2s additional casttime for 5 talent points (0.5s gain multiplied by 36% faster cast = 0.18s). So using GHeal with Serendipity is an argument against Divine Fury, as far as I am concerned.

Are you honestly saying you can never find an opportune time to pop Hymn of Hope? If that's the case you are failing to manage your mana properly.

If you do get in a situation where you are dangerously low on mana but can't spare many GCDs, pop shadowfiend and channel Hymn of Hope for a single tick. That will almost certainly hit you with the +%mana buff which will greatly increase the returns from your shadowfiend. If you're really strapped and can only spare a single GCD, just pop shadowfiend. Shadowfiend alone provides tons of mana. If you really can't spare even a single GCD, pop a mana potion until you have a window of opportunity to use Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope.

But again, I've got a stock pile of mana potions in the bank and I rarely need to pop a shadowfiend during a raid to keep my mana up. I fail to see what situations in current raiding content would require a Discipline Priest to stack intellect.

Edit: And if "Mana has not really been any issue for [your] group at all." then why would you ever stack intellect? Stack spellpower, crit, or haste depending on your playstyle and enjoy the higher throughput.

When you gem SP, you mainly want to be a raid Disc healer throwing shields left and right. However, since you said that you are a Disc tank healer, you might want to gem/gear the Holy Paladin way (Int/Haste/Crit/SP). If you feel like you are not getting enough throughput, just swap out 1 Int trinket for a SP trinket (Solace would be optimal). But it seems like you are on the right track with gems.

Though you don't get the SP from Intellect like a Holy Paladin, you will certainly be able to spam FHeal/GHeal to an extent before you need to use your Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope/AT (Belf FTW)/Mana Potion.

I would definitely change your Disc spec to grab Divine Fury and Improved Healing to speed up your GHeal and reduce the mana cost. Drop Focused Will for the 3 points you will need for Improved Healing and go 1/2 Grace since you are tank healing which 50% proc will be more than sufficient. Also, I would take Revitalizing Skyflare over any other meta for the additional 3% healing crit effect which is amazing for getting extra DA procs.

Personally, I don't like Disc priests as MT healers. We do have tools that allow us to MT heal, but I feel that we are much stronger at preventing overall incoming raid damage than just sticking on 1 target. But, if I were to MT heal, that is what I would change.

Maybe I need to clarify: I would rather stack intellect than being forced to use the whole Hymn of Hope. Of course the Hymn has it's use, but as long as there is a way to have enough mana (meaning the regen options are used correctly), I would not want to use the Hymn of Hope.
Obviously in Situations like Mimiron or Yogg-Saron where you have clear phase changes that give you a small break, using Hymn of Hope is the correct choice - I just wouldn't impair the time I can use to heal in favor of casting the Hymn.

For me personally there have been two main reasons to put in some intelligence gems: One is the double use for discipline and holy: I did not want to switch every part of my gear when I switched to holy - raid healing, and as holy I was having some issues with mana when spamming Holy Nova or Prayer of Healing.
According to my estimations it would be better to be able to cast some more PoH instead of adapting my holy playing style and since spirit is not that good for discipline, I opted to gem int and gain some crit and some flexibility.
While it might be subpar for one of the two talent trees, I see intelligence as a good choice in pieces that are used in both trees.
The second reason might be slightly less convincing: I have a paladin friend with whom I heal a lot, and I we developed a little game to see who would have more mana. This is not a question of what stat is better but rather a question of playing a little game and fooling around; just as tedv says: It's possible to beat even the more difficult encounters while not optimizing every little thing. The most important part is having fun while doing that

It seems every fight has an opportunity for you to do this.

ToC examples:
Beasts: Gormok -> Worms -> Icehowl
Jarax: After 1st set of infernals, healing is generally in a lull
FC: After 2-3 NPCs are down
Twins: During a light/dark shield, the extra mana can help others as well as yourself
Anub: Burrow phases.

I don't think you should necessary disown HoH. Its a great ability if used correctly. Practice finding opportune times because in every fight, there is a healing lull that you can take 5-6 seconds to gain back mana.

We are a 25-raid casual guild, with 2 raids per nights. On off-night, there is often 10 man raids, on voluntary bases. That means that we don't have optimized or stabilized groups. I can be with 2 druids, as well as with 2 paladins. I can be also required as dps.
For that reason, I choose a flexible holy / shadow dual spec. I took most of the "I can try to tank heal" talents, including divine fury and 4/5 empowered healing. When I'm raid healing in 25, these are nearly useless. The choices were not mandatory talents (spell warding / desesperate prayer / healing prayers / blessed resilience / body and soul : I can find use of them, but I can raid without them), and these GH-talents are useful when healing the tanks (or helping for it) in 10s. I can definitely remember tank-healing on heroic beast in ToC10, and that was tough enough.

I know I could be disc + holy specced. But I wanted to be able to dps sometimes (at least for questing), and my guild find use of my dps off-spec (some of our healers have a PvP off-spec, or no stuff for their off-spec). I could also be disc + holy, but when I'm required to raid heal as disc in 10s, bubble spam is not sufficient, and the flash heals I can throw feel very weak (partly because of the lack of grace).

Although I agree with your spec changes I do not agree with the gemming changes. Like stated many times before 'if you dont have mana issues or if you still have mana at the end of the fight then you're (A) doing something wrong or (B) Have too much mana for your healing style. I can't really relate with disc priests who ever say that they have a mana problem. I'm gemmed mostly SP and SP/Int and have not had any problems with mana. I come very close to 3400 Spellpower as disc (Raid buffed) (which is comparable to a geared holy priest). Shields absorb more and heals hit harder, all the same time having enough mana to last the encounter. I still believe that SP is the way to go, Priests have so many mana regen options with HoH, Mana pot, and Shadow Fiend. If used correctly you should never have a problem with mana.

100% agree. Ive been gemming 23SP in every upgrade from ToC/ToGC 25, putting me around 3450SP raid buffed (get some Holy Priests! :P). The gear in ToC level content has TONS of int on it, I'm sitting around 32k mana raid buffed. Really no reason to gem for it when you get to that level. Heroic Solace and Plea helps, but using Hymn and Shadowfiend on every fight, sometimes a mana pot, I rarely go oom.

If you're tank-healing, and you don't have any mana trouble, then you want to gem for throughput. This includes spellpower, but also haste and (most likely marginally) crit, which are also great stats to tank-heal.

I personally don't use Int as something I stack. However, I do suggest stacking Int if one is MT healing until their is balance between throughput and regen for the player. This is why a Disc MT healer should be stacking Int until they either (1) Are not running out of mana every fight or (2) realize their need for stronger heals.

Priests that are using 232 or lower gear will need the extra Int until they have that mana pool. In high end gear, I do agree that SP is the way to go once that mana pool works for that player.

I'm curious if anyone has had a chance to play around with [Althor's Abacus] yet. I've gone throught the loot lists and for the most part found it to be pretty straightforward....except for the issue of trinkets. I currently have [Solace of the Defeated] but was never lucky enough to get the 245 version. I'm not sure if I should get the Abacus when it drops or continue to farm for the 245 Solace. Unfortunately my guild uses dkp so I need to be smart about what I bid on. I don't want to waste my dkp on the Abacus and find out later that it's not a good trinket. I would appreciate any info on this.

Not all DKP systems are the same, so whether or not it's a smart purchase is difficult to answer without more information. It's a bit like saying, "Buy a car costs me money. Which car should I buy?" The answer depends heavily on the relative prices. Both trinkets are clear upgrades from the Pandora's Plea you are using now.

My intuition says that [Althor's Abacus] will beat the 245 Solace unless you are running out on mana, as it has way higher throughput. It's almost certainly the better long term option. As you get more gear upgrades, throughput matters more than mana longevity. But if your options are Solace for 5 points versus Abacus for 100, I'd take the Solace.

Dual Solace looks to me to be by far BiS, also in ICC. Though I can't find the quote now, [Althor's Abacus]'s proc seems relatively useless. It heals a random target, so most of the time it'll just overheal when you don't need it to. Even though it has more spellpower than Solace, Solace is still very over budgeted. Meaning if you have dual Solace, you can probably skip a lot of spirit/mp5 gear, thereby adding more haste/crit for more throughput. If you have any intellect gems at all right now, Solace seems like a no-brainer. Even [Purified Lunar Dust] seems better than [Althor's Abacus]. Same thing again, a little less spellpower, but lots of mp5.

It procced twice for me on Saurfang.

I'd say good pvp trinket, but I wouldn't take it over a Solace.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Name of the spell is Echoes of Light. It appears to be affected by some of my talents AND my crit rate. It was regularly critting for over 10k when I was Holy. I am not sure if this means it procs Divine Aegis as Discipline.

Points of interest: It likes to target Mirror Images, Shadowfiends, DK Ghouls, Shaman Elementals, Warlock Imps. Nice use of an ICD when that happens.

This dropped for us in our first clearing as well. We gave it to our Resto druid and I think that it greatly benefits them more so than Priests since they are HoT spamming the raid. Going through the logs, it seemed to be about 5-6% of his total healing which is greater than the 2-3% the previous poster stated on his Saurfang encounter.

[Althor's Abacus] will be useful for Holy Priests (Circle of Healing anyone?) more so than Disc priests, but I do believe it I will keep my regen SP trinkets until I am geared in most 264 for more throughput.

So, go Solace/Purified Dust IMO.

Don't discount the [Sliver of Pure Ice]. Especially when the heroic version of it will likely restore ~2000 mana every 2 minutes and probably near 200 spellpower.

The nice part about the clicky mana regen over the passive mana regen is you can use it when/if needed. Passive regen on trinkets is great but there are times where I find I just wish I could squeeze out another 'chunk' of mana.