That discussion is here. The consensus is that the purpose of healing is to reduce the probability of player death, and the probability of player death increase as health decreases, therefore a heal delivered at lower health is more valuable than topping off the last few hundreds Hit Points.

Perhaps this hypothetical addon could also "penalize" a healer who takes too long between casts due to indecision or inattention. As far as not being able to distinguish the healer who fails to move from the fire, that is true of every healmeter existing now.

I do agree the concept of a healmeter that weights heals by approximating their actual reduction of the target's % chance of dying is hopelessly complicated and probably unattainable. But it's a neat thought and an admirable ultimate goal.

Alright, well it has been awhile since I have posted on these forums so here it goes. I recently got back into raiding and I'm having some trouble with something. I raid as a holy priest in my guild and I am trying to work renew into my healing. I know that it is a very good spell but on fights where I don't like to waste a gcd I cant find the right time to cast it always. I have been told that it works very well with procing SoL when you have impowered renew. I guess my question is when is a good time to cast it to maximize the chances of it procing SoL so that I can still keep the "rotation" of keeping Serendipity up so i can AoE heal effectively. As it stands right now I try to throw a renew in usually when i have 2 stacks of serendipity up hoping that i can get a crit with renew to proc a SoL. Any thoughts or how other holy priests use renew and when they use it.

Could you clarify what you mean with this: "but on fights where I don't like to waste a gcd I cant find the right time to cast it always". I assume that you're talking about fights where the load on you as a healer is very high and that you need to spend every GCD in a meaningful way? In that case I would recommend you prioritize your spells as follows:
PoM on cooldown
CoH on cooldown
SoL proc up? SoL flash
Renew people until PoM or CoH comes off CD
Repeat

Actually though, I'm not so sure I'd favor the SoL flash over renew, as the healing it provides is substantially lesser. I suppose it's better if someone needs a heal really quickly though. I wouldn't worry too much about serendipity with the way damage works now. PoH is not really seeing much action these days.
Basically, if you choose to go the "renew route", as many holy priests do now, renew becomes your main single target spell instead of FH, so I don't understand how it could be seen as "wasting a gcd". But maybe I misinterpreted you a bit.

I really think the outcome of such a tool will be bad. Should someone get this done in a nontrivial way that includes a plethora of relevant factors, nobody will understand how this tool works. Healers and raidleaders will look at it and rate down perfectly good healers. You won't be able to discuss results - you will always get said: "well, yes, the tool already compensates for this, you know". And without literally investing hours for a single fight, you won't be able to verify results and see why you got a lower magical number.

Don't say people will be too intelligent for this to happen - witness GearScore idiocies running rampant on many realms.

Yes a lot has definitely changed since Ulduar, where PoH and keeping serendipity stacked were the main concerns of a holy priest. Not so much these days. Like I said, both PoH and FH (albeit in a lesser way) have kind of taken a backseat to CoH, PoM and Renew.

Serendipity and hasted Prayer of Healing will still be good in a few fights in Icecrown, where the majority of the raid takes near lethal damage and needs to be topped up evenly before dying from an otherwise non-lethal amount of damage.

Lady Deathwhisper's Frostbolt Volleys, Festergut's Pungent Blight, and Blood Prince's Empowered Shock Vortex are times where a Holy Priest can still deliver some life-saving burst healing. To a lesser extent, Serendipitied Prayer of Healing can be used as a viable counter to the Lich King's Infest. However, for the majority of fights and the majority of damage patterns don't see much use for Prayer of Healing, and we're left wondering what to do with this occasional Serendipity stack from our Surge of Light procs.

So in terms of priest healing now days it is all about rolling renews and using PoM and CoH when they are off cooldown to put it simply I guess? As for serendipity now days it is there as a skill used to level out healing with PoH when it is needed but not to be used every moment it is at 3 stacks.

ok, well crazy thought from left field. Looks like alot of holy priest are hardly using the serendipity adn PoH...so could these 3 points be used elsewhere?

Example, throw them into disc tree to get 2 points into mental agility which saves mana on instant casts which are the spells the renew holy p is using now....PoM, Renew, CoH, sol FH's...

or 3 points into Empowered Healing for additoinal bonus on the FH's?

Pretty much, yes, that is the way to go. Now on the timing issue 'now days', if you ask me these days came out the second CoH got a cooldown, just took a while to sink with people. Lets see how long it will take Blizzard to figure out that our T10 bonuses are useless...

I tend to rarely use my serendipity charges, hasted PoH on predictable raid dmg is the only situation or a weak-hasted-GH.

The 'counter' argument on 'hasted PoH' is, if you know that a raid dmg will be coming you are probably better off layering renews and saving CoH on the second it hits. CoH being a smart spell will prevent the lowest targets being 'instant-death' of any follow up damage. By the time gcd + poh are being casted it ends up being wasted.

Concerning Dreamwalker, I am toying with a purely throughput spec for this fight specifically (heroic mode on the horizon.)

Something like this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That completely removes points from regen talents, and puts them into throughput talents. The playstyle of it will mostly be keep renew on the target, flash using SoL procs, and GH as the main hasted nuke. PoM and CoH on the raid where applicable.

The glyph choice also goes along with this spec, faster renew (hand waving) is more healing over the fight (as more renews can be cast, and none of them are overheal.) Guardian Spirit glyph for the obvious reasons, and CoH for the raid output.

Questions: Has anyone noticed CoH hitting Dreamwalker, and/or PoM bouncing to her? (The PoM is just a curiosity, it won't be bouncing from her.)