That doesn't seem intuitive to me at all. I cast renew a lot basically only on aura fights (blood queen, sindragosa, festergut, bonestorm of marrowgar, twin valks). In these cases, the 5th tick of renew is no more or less likely to overheal than any of the other ticks, except in cases where the aura is reducing in power or going away (festergut inhales, bonestorm ending). This effect is offset by pre-cast renews lasting longer into the aura phase. It seems like, if anything, glyphed renews would overheal more since they have larger ticks.

If there's a fight where everyone takes a fixed X damage per second, and renew heals Y damage per second without glyph and Z with it, then yes, whether or not the Glyph helps depends on whether X > Z and X > Y. I don't think that's the only good use of renew though.

On a lot of fights, there some subset of the raid that takes a bunch of damage, then has time to get healed before it's likely they'll take the next hit. In this situation, you want to heal people up but it's not imperative to do so immediately. This is a not-infrequent situation-- I estimate it happens on half of the bosses in Icecrown. In the latter situation, the whole team of healers are trying to top off the entire raid. A standard renew is more likely to get stomped than a glyphed renew in this situation, in the same way that resto druids do worst on fights where discipline priests do best. Someone else's healing makes your healing less useful. The faster your renew ticks, the lower the chance someone else will see fit to heal your renewed target once they finish healing someone else. For me at least, this is the most frequent use case for Renew.

I assume you're not referring to things like frostbolt volley or infest, since 100% of the raid is rather a large percentage to call a subset. I also assume you don't mean things like bone spikes, blood boil, and vile gas, since while renew is a reasonable way to heal these things, healing them is the eaisest, smallest and least interesting part of healing the fights they're a part of. Could you give examples of what you're talking about? The closest thing I could think of is the ooze explosion on Putricide.

Yes, I'm not referring to Frostbolt Volley (which should be interrupted) or Infest (which should be shielded). If there's large quantities of raid-wide damage, you should obviously cast Circle of Healing and maybe Prayer of Healing. I'm talking about situations where 5 to 15 people have taken a reasonable chunk of damage but aren't in any short term danger. You need something to cast once your Circle of Healing is on cooldown.

Examples:
- On Lord Marrowgore, people take some large collateral hits during the kite phase, especially while bone spikes are out.
- On Rotface, when people get hit by slime spray or an ooze is created on the melee pile and the person doesn't move in time.
- On Putricide when players collapse on a green ooze, when people were slow from getting out of an ooze puddle, or got hit by malleable goo.
- On Blood Council when some players have to reposition or get knocked around and have taken a bunch of damage from moving
- On Lich King during the Phase 1->2 and 2->3 transition

Also, I think the same argument about "healing faster produces fewer overheals" might apply to raid wide damage auras on fights like Blood Queen and Sindragosa, but I'd need to think about it more.

For the record this is all kind of academic, as I don't see a compelling reason to use the glyph. I just don't see a compelling reason to NOT use it either.

The renew glyph reduces the amount of healing renew does overall by about 5%, but it does not affect the healing done by empowered renew. At least this was the case when I tested it. The reason was that the glyph ignores the bonuses from improved renew and spiritual healing.

Now lets investigate the impact of the renew glyph:

To my knowledge the following calculations are correct, please correct me if things have changed without me realising it.

The amout healed by unglyphed fully talented renew is:

Empowered renew: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)*0.15
HoT: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)
per tick: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)/5

Total: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)*1.15

For convenience let (base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15 = RH(sp)

Thus

The amout healed by unglyphed fully talented renew is:

Empowered renew = RH(sp)*0.1875
HoT = RH(sp)*1.25
per tick = RH(sp)*0.25
Total healing = RH(sp)*1.435


The glyph only applies to RH(sp) thus fully talented glyphed renew:

Empowered renew = RH(sp)*0.1875
HoT = RH(sp)*1.5*4/5 = RH(sp)*1.20 i.e. reduces HoT healing by about 0.05*RH(sp) or by 4% of unglyphed value
per tick = RH(sp)*1.2/4 = RH(sp)*0.3 i.e increases healing per tick by about 20%
Total = RH(sp)*1.3875 i.e. 3.5% decreased healing compared to the unglyphed value.

Now that the numbers are down lets move on

Ignoring overheal unglyphed renew sacrifices 1 GCD (1.3s) and heals RH(sp)*1.4375 over 15 seconds. i.e. casting a renew gives you ~0.0958*RH(sp) HPS at the cost of 8.67% of your casting time.
Glyphed renew sacrifices 1 GCD and heals RH(sp)*1.3875 over 12 seconds.

This is ~0.1156*RH(sp) HPS at the cost of 10.83% of your casting time.

Thus the question of whether the renew glyph helps or is dependent on whether that 2.9% of casting time that you lose is worth ~0.02*RH(sp) HPS.

Using the reasonable value of 10k for RH(sp) that is about 200HPS at the cost of 2.9% of casting time.

In realistic terms renew only really competes for casting time with flash heal or serendipity gheal. The HPS of flash heal ignoring OH is something in the order of 4.5k HPS so 2.15% of casting time costs about 130 HPS. For gheal its about 170-180 HPS.

Hence ignoring overheal in any situation where you maintain a small number of renews (2-3) ticking at all times during the fight you can expect the renew glyph to be worth between 30 and 70HPS per renew. This is going to be reduced if OH for renew is greater than FH/GH. If the renews are consistently getting clipped then the value of the glyph will obviously increase.

In a situtation however where a larger number of renews is maintained, then refreshing them is likely to interfere with casting of CoH or PoM and hence since CoH and PoM take priority, that means lost ticks. If a renew falls of for 3+ seconds then the glyph will actually result in reduced healing

Let us now consider what happens if you maintain the maximum number of renews possible. I.e that means casting PoM and CoH as soon as possible then renew in between, in 18 seconds you can expect 3 coh and 2.5 PoM just about, i.e. 7.15 seconds, leaving 11.85 seconds to be filled by casting renews or approximately 9 renew casts every 18 seconds. If there is no tick clipping (i.e. you only cast renew on someone who does not have one) all renews will provide their full number of ticks in 18 seconds and since 9 unglyphed renews heal for about 0.315*RH(sp) more than 9 glyphed renews, the renew glyph will actually reduce your HPS.

Thus the renew glyph is beneficial only when

1) When there is enough free casting time to maintain a certain number of renews and being able to maintain more is not beneficial
2) There is extensive renew clipping

This is basically true in fights where a small number of renews is constantly maintained throughout the fight and you have enough free casting time between CDs to do so.

The renew glyph is a loss of HPS when the reduced duration results in loss of more than 20% of potential renew ticks.

This basically happens in fights where its beneficial to maintain as many renews as possible and not clip them e.g. mostly when there is constant raid wide DoT damage or a large number of individual dots.

So far I have excluded overheal to highlight some important features of the glyph. However overheal can change things drastically.
The renew glyph increases in value if the early ticks provide more healing on average than later ticks due to overheal and in any situation where the damage heals by renew exceeds the value of an unglyphed tick.
The renew value loses value when the proportion of renew healing provided by emowered renew ticks increases, when overheal is more uniform between earlier and later ticks and when the damage healed by renew is below the value of an unglyphed tick.

Hence is it not valid to assume that the renew glyph is a gain in HPS. It can be a small gain, but depending on the circumstances and casting style it may also be a loss of HPS

On the contrary I would expect the value of the glyph to go down drastically in such fights. Raid wide damage auras means that maintain many renews and not cliping them is beneficial and it also smooths out the amount of healing per tick between earlier and later ticks. In addition if glyphed renew loses a tick because a heal got there before the renew tick you lose 25% of the hot healing compared with 20% for the unglyphed renew

Question for you guys:

My guild has been trying for weeks now to down the Blood Princes on 10 man. The last time we did it, we one shotted it, but now, for three straight weeks we keep wiping on the boss. The reason is that the person tanking the shadow orbs is getting hit for like 80K, even though he is grabbing the orbs right when they appear. We have a pally tank tanking the other two bosses and the other pally tank holding onto the orbs. We've dodged the vortexs and we keep that one orb floating in the air. I've even made sure to not use my PoM, just in case it jumps to the tank with the shadow orbs and crits, creating a bubble and removing the stacks.

Is there any advice that you would have?

Thanks!

Serntus

Is this a bug I'm supposed to know about? I heal our 25 man orb tank (dk) on this fight all the time and last week we even got the orb whisperer achievement. I know nothing about DA removing stacks. I've certainly seen DA proc on him as well.

As to your question, are the orbs taking damage and disappearing? Or is he getting hit through their protection? A combat log would be nice.

Havoc12,
I don't see Twin Disciplines nor Blessed Resilience.

I'm not 100% sure myself about the formula, but as far as I tested, it would be something like this:

Total Renew = (base + spellpower x 2.16) x (1+ 0.05 + 0.15 + 0.10) x 1.03 x 1.15
1 Renew Tick = (base + spellpower x 2.16) x (1+ 0.05 + 0.15 + 0.10) x 1.03 / 5

In game with 3771 spellpower and 1400 base heal on renew, I get ticks of 2558.

Feel free to correct me.

Edit: I first misunderstood what you meant by spellpower contribution.
contribution = spellpower x coef = sp x 1.88

Hi all, I have recently read several forum posts on the eu and us boards and have grown rather despondent with the attitude of the developers towards priests. I would like some assistance in drafting a forum post back, and before i post on the EU forums i would like if possible people could check my maths. First up i wish to make a rebuttal to "Flash heal is fine" and thus prove it is worse than both nourish and lhw.

Brief overview of research and what i wish to prove

My opinion is that priests abilty to heal a single target is inferior enough to warrant a patch to fix it as soon as possible. I will attempt to present proof that in a 25man raid situation priest single target healing is so bad that it is not worthy of consideration as a viable strategy.

Methods used

I have gathered the data for the base healing, coefficients and total percentage healing modifiers of spells with a cast time of 1.5seconds from an addon called Dr Damage and then inserted them into a mock up model of a healer that has 4000 spellpower and 15% crit before talents. I am aware that different classes will gear for different things, but all will have a roughly consistent progression in spellpower (if they choose to) and likely will have base 15% crit. The value obtained at the end of it all is the amount of healing done by the spell in question in a set period of time. Ie if you cast this spell fo 1minute, what is the weighted value of healing done the spell will achieve.

Assumptions

In this model I have assigned the caster a base amount of spellpower, 4000 and a base amount of crit 15%. I realise that the numbers for both crit and and spellpower will vastly vary from this in an actual real world scenario, but that is a choice based upon gearing and thus all casters could if they wished exercise the abilty to gear in that manner, they cannot choose to talent differently. I have also assumed certain glyphs will be used (Nourish, Lhw) and certain spells will be kept up (Rejuv, Eathshield, Pw:shield), in any situation where i assume the presence of a spell on the target, it is a spell thats Healing per cast time is higher than the 1.5sec spell of the caster and thus would only be of benefit to cast. I further assume that mana is not an issue.

The numbers

Druid - Nourish = 13474.92

Average Base Heal - 2238.5
Coefficient - 0.873, +3492sp (5730.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 152.80% (8756.20)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 110% (9631.82)
Critical strike chance - 42%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 139.9% (13474.92)

Shaman - Light Healing Wave = 9568.08

Average Base Heal - 1738
Coefficient - 0.906, +3624sp (5632)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 139.90% (7501.44)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 100% (7501.44)
Critical strike chance - 29%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 127.6% (9568.08)

Disc Priest - Flash Heal = 8777.40

Average Base Heal - 2254.5
Coefficient - 0.807, +3228sp (5482.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 120.20% (6590.18)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 106% (6985.60)
Critical strike chance - 27%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 125.7% (8777.40)

Holy Priest - Flash Heal = 8299.81

Average Base Heal - 2254.5
Coefficient - 1.007, +4028sp (6282.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 120.20% (7545.28)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 100% (7545.28)
Critical strike chance - 20%
Critical strike effect - 50%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 110% (8299.81)

According to my data which does not include 2piece set boonus as yet but can be added easily, Both shaman and druid will comfortably outheal a disc priests flash heal spam on a single target. Of course this is a base line model equipping haste gear should make them all scale identically, equipping crit gear will lead to the holy priest falling away a bit.

Thanks in advance for any comments people have on the comparitive scaling of these heals.

I aggree with your overall idea, as priests aren't good for single target healing, but you focus on flash heal and skip so much.

First, all those classes gear and gem differently, resulting in crit, haste and spellpower values that will not match your calculations.

Second, you ignore a lot of "weaving" effects (in your example it's pure mindless spam), like serendipity, tidal waves, etc...
And do not take fully into account the benefits of some talents. Most notiveable examples would be Ancestral healing (does not necessarly heal the tank), Divine Aegis (less overheal and increase effective health), Living Growth (less overheal), and maybe more...

Third, blizzard do not balance healers one spell at a time. You have to take into account the whole panel of available spells, and luckily for us (in my opinion), priests have the most. Even a discipline priest healing a tank will have non-negligeable healing numbers on PoM, penance, PW:S.

Now you can question blizzard's pve goal for the priests (I do think we could use more attention), but as it is any balanced healing team takes 1+ of each healing class.
If you simply want to shine on Dreamwalker, I guess you should forget the idea and stick to raid healing. :P

In short: Yes, flash heal sucks in comparison with a lot of spells. I also wish it didn't, because it's a critical spell at some point.
But you have to keep in mind that buffing it would probably mean nerfing something else like PoM, Penance, or whatever... Blizzard have their own balance priorities.

The trouble with your model is its conclusion. You can't possibly argue that paladins are the worst single target healers ;-)
I know that paladins don't spam Flash of Light, but holy light. But disc. priest don't spam flash heal either : they use Penance (most likely the best single target heal of the game with short cd), they use PW:S, they use POM. And they are focused on mitigation also.


Paladin : 7506
Average Base Heal - 842
Coefficient - 0.807, (+3228) = 4070
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - +123.2% (5014) (+12% healing light* +10% (Glyph and Divinity)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 115% (5766) (Judgement of the pure)
Critical strike chance - 30% (5% glyph, 5% holy talent, 5% ret talent)
Critical strike effect - 50%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 115.% (6631)
Multiplier from the IoL hot : 113.2% (7506)

I don't know the exact effect of the hot of infusion of light, but I'll assume that it doesn't roll (but get replaced), doubles dip with instant talents like divinity and Seal of light glyph, and that you get 1.5s/12s = 12.5% of the full effect.
Then the total hot effect is (with sacred shield up 100% of the time) 12% * 110% = 13.2 additional healing.

The whole approach doesn't make much sense. I'm all for number crunching and theorycrafting but picking one single spell out of any healers spellbook and comparing that one with tunnel vision is just pointless.
Especially when looking at the pretty numbers that Druids can do with Nourish or Shamans with HW (try the numbers on that one with the Tidal Waves haste proc up, it's quite impressive ) the assumption that mana is no issue will soon fall apart. Both classes have huge problems sustaining those expensive heals.

If you really want to get a not-completely-useless comparison of a classes single target healing capabilities then you should find the highest HPS healing rotation for each class, calculate the average healing done in a closed cycle and determine maximum theoretical HPS from there. Calculating the mana consumption of that cycle and mp5 usage would also be interesting. I'd also consider comparing that too average raid mana regeneration values (which will be different for each class, raid logs will probably be a good soure) and checking sustainability that way to be pretty important.

I'll start:
Shaman (assume ES is up): Riptide - HW - HW - CH - HW - HW
For the mp5 calculation it might be also worth to take this rotation with LHW instead of HW into account. Pure throughput will of course be lower but it is also far more mana efficient.
Druid: There is no easy closed cycle because of the different HoT durations. However it is pretty easy to get the base HPS from each hot, look at how often it has to be refreshed (1/9 for LB, 1/18 for Rej and 1.2/24 for RG so overall a Druid will have to spend around 22% of his time not casting Nourish) and just fill the remaining time with Nourish casts (meaning base HPS of Nourish * 78% plus the average HPS from each HoT). By the way, ES for a Shaman could be factored in the same way if it's possible to determine an average uptime.
Paladin: HL spam minus all the GCDs required to keep effects up (like the shield) plus those effects
On the Priest I'm actually not quite sure where to put in GHs instead of FHs.

Yup, you make an excellent point, the maths for the other spells is similar, these have been weighted to convert their healing output as if they took 1.5seconds to cast (making a comparison with prior listed filler spells easy):

Disc
Penance: 14397.7
Penance (Pw:shield hasted): 17793.38
Pw:Shield: 12122.02 (it appears that grace has no effect on the heaing done by pw:shield or its glyph if possible please confirm)

Holy
Greater Heal(Serendipity hasted, talented for cast time) 13770.91
Empowered Renew: 16436.10

Shaman
Healing Wave: 11432.14
Healing Wave (hasted Healing Waves): 14861.79
Healing Wave (hasted by healing way +t10): 17834.14
Riptide: 11035.03771

Druid
Rejuv: 21210.07
Regrowth: 16952.56
Lifebloom(8ticks only assuming stack of 3): 11963.87


Okay so thats the numbers for the missing spells, You can draw a pretty easy conclusion fromt he numbers and thats that disc priests have their work cut out if we rank the spells by type we have the long cd or long duration hots in order of effectiveness

Long CD, or Long Duration effects
Rejuv
Regrowth
Empowered Renew
Pw:Shield
Riptide

The spells benefitting from "weaving"
Healing Wave
Penance
Holy Greater Heal

Filler Spells
Nourish
LHW
Disc Flash Heal
Holy Flash heal

I conclude fromt his that a Disc priest or Holy priest will have an exceptionally hard time healing a tank aswell as Druid or shaman. Every time a Priest cass penance, the Shaman will cast a slightly more effectife Healing wave. Please note that i have not bothered to model Earthliving and Earthsield adding these to the model would push the shaman further ahead of the priests but i do not think it would come close to catching the druid. Although the Holy priests long term spell (renew) is very effective, it is let down a lot by its filler spells, and the woven spell (g heal) not scaling with crit well.

Please note though that this does not model mana. A disc priest will never have a mana issue as long as its PW:shield is being absorbed every 15secs its mana regen is superior to the shamans and druids. That said, the fight will have to go on for a very long time before the druid or Shaman do actually encounter mana issues. And if there is damage ont he raid the shaman is unlikely to run oom.

(If you require the breakdown of the maths for each of the individual spells i am happy to provide it, but it takes up a lot of space so i left it as a sumamry of just end results)

As for how the classes gem to benefit themselves more, this is exceptionally hard to model, but it is also unnescary to do so for my purposes. Rather than try to model it i shall instead attempt to prove that no matter how a Discpriest gems, they will always gain less than another healer gemming in the same manner.

The first and most obvious is Intelligence. at this gear level its unlikely anyone will gem it, but if they do, it is quite clear that the Shaman will gain the most. not only do they gain mana and mana regen, they also gain spellpower.

Haste. At first this seems like it will be good for disc priests, but disc is the healer most bound by cooldowns. it is in fact better off if no one has any haste at all. The higher amount of time spent casting penance instead of flash heal for a disc priest the better. Shamans have a 6sec cooldown which i am sure its worth mentioning but on a single target they do not want to cast their 6sec cd more than once every 14secs (clip last tick to keep up idol buff). Furthermore, because the two other classes have higher coeffecients and much higher crit chances, the trinity of spellpower*haste*crit, means that increasing Haste is more effective for both shamans and druids.

Crit. This is where i come unstuck a little. I am not sure that increasing crit on a druid is actually better than increasing crit on a disc priest, beacuase the druids base crit is so high already it gets dimisnihing returns from crit at a much higher rate than the disc priest. For the shaman its pretty much a case againt hat because it already heals for larger amounts (ie its heals themselves are bigger) it will gain more from 1% crit than the disc priest will.

Spellpower. Again coefficeints and % bonuses are just far too much in the druids favour, they scale so well they will win any race of adding spellpower. Also spellpower is not easy to stack since gear has a set amount on

Spirit. Only the druid scales with it the other two don't.

This actually means two very different things. First off Gemming:

The druid is going to gem almost exclusively spellpower, a little haste to get its haste cap, but other wise all spellpower and ignore crit it already has more than it needs. This also makes it fine for its other main role of raid healing

The Shaman is likely to gem for socket bonuses, Haste or crit are fine (it favours haste) and spellpower is always good, how exactly it gems is upto personal taste the stats are close enough together it matters little, But like haste to around 1k and then spellpower again this gemming also favours its optional mode of healing, chain heal spam.

The disc priest has no option really but to gem spellpower. It has baseline around 250-300 less than every other healer because it lacks an int/spir conversion talent. it reuires 12 gems just to catch up to the other healers spellpower values.

Gear wise you can see clearly the shaman has a distinct advantage over the other two. Every item it euips bar trinkets will have Int on it. int is free spellpower. The druid can opt to equip spirit items to gain extra spellpower (for pure tank healing it also addds mana regen which is sort of needed a little) safe in the knowledge its 50% crit value is not reachable by the disc priest even if the disc priest literally gears pure crit. The Disc priest has no gearing option available. It must take Haste/crit gear, every item with spirit on is less hps, and yet its tier set forces it to take spirit as a stat.

@Megavolt

I guess you are right, I shall attempt to actually take it a step further and calculate stats based on 264 gear sets being worn, from their changing gemming should not be too hard.

Even on "single tank" encounters (like Festergut), Paladins are the best tank healers.
I guess that your addon already takes into account the base multipliers from the talents.

Actually I very much like your previous post. It's not quite the closed cycle approach I was thinking of but it still is very good.
I also agree on not taking different gemming strategies into account. In the end the only reason why e.g. Druids gem SP is that they are raid healing. A tank healing Druid would have to gem differently to be able to sustain the high mana cost of Nourish. It's the same for a tank healing Shaman: He'd have to stop gemming haste and go for int instead to be able to sustain HW. In the end all tank healers will have to gem int.
One minor correction:
The Shaman will want to cast his cooldown much more than every 14 seconds. The max HPS cycle (as far as I know) is Riptide - HW - HW - CH - HW - HW. Yes, that includes a Chain Heal even for single target healing. The reason is to keep the Tidal Waves proc up so that all the HWs are hasted. Riptide itself will not heal that much but it's needed to give an extra 20% to the CH (which will then hit a single target almost as hard as a HW plus the jumps to melee dps which help the raid healers a bit) and both give TW. The cast time reduction due to TW on the two HW is worth casting Riptide / CH.

There is still one thing I'm very unhappy about and that's party a reason why Druids are doing way too well in your model:
Assigning all casters the same base stats is not valid. Due to talents even with exactly the same gear they will end up with vastly different stats. A Druid for example will have far less spellpower than a Shaman in equal gear due to the fact that he only gets 15% of spirit to spellpower while the Shaman will get 15% from int (which a tank healer will gem) plus the SP from Earthliving Weapon. It's similar for (holy) Priests with the 25% spi->SP conversion instead of only 15% Druids get.

Assuming those gear sets, 5% crit 400sp (warlock) 5% and 3% haste (retri. wrath of air).

Druid (Buffed Spellpower 4256, Buffed Crit 57.36%)

Nourish - 14724.20 Healing, 1second cast time
Rejuvenation - 20283.65, 1second cast time
Regrowth - 21990.97, 1.333 cast time

In a given period of time x
You can cast Regrowth x/27times
You can cast Rejuv x/18times
You must cast Nourish the rest of the time

Total HPS - 15120.70067

Disc Priest (buffed spellpower 3941, Buffed crit 46.33% (pw:shiled glyph 42.33%) assumed t10 to apply 11% healing to flash heal additive with aegis

Flash Heal - 10772.63, 1.0667 cast time (1sec with Pw:shield haste)
Pw:shield - 12362.76, 1.0667 cast time
Penance - 21503.01, 1.422 cast time (1.1379 with PW:shield haste)

In a given period of time x
You can cast Pw:shield x/15 times
You can cast Penance hasted by Pw:shield x/15 times
You can cast Penance (x/8)-(x/15)
The rest of the time you must cast flash heal

Total HPS - 11288.6129

In conclusion in level 264 gear a Disc priest healing a single target appears to be about as 75% effective as a Druid in the abilty to apply healing/absorb damage taken by the target.

I am unsure if living seed rolls its healing if it applies to a target already under its effects. Assuming not. Aegis is nearly 100% effective, whilst their is a reasonable chance that a Living seed will be overwritten by a new crit from the druid before the old one can proc, if you factor in this and assume that living seed is only 60% effective you get the druid dropping to 14240hps. I shall attempt to add the numbers for a shaman tommorrow.

As a disc priest I find PoM on CD aimed at the tank makes a massive difference, which your model doesn't account for.

Also overheal, shields are zero overheal, which again you can't effectively model. In cata however hot overhealing will be lower is bliz go down the path they seem to be suggesting.

I don't quite agree with your "setting out to prove Druids heal more than Priests" way of looking at the problem. You should set out to find the truth, no matter if it happens to validate or invalidate your initial assumption Still like the comparison so far, it's really awesome and I'm looking forward to see how the Shaman is doing. Taking a look at a holy Priest might also be worth it,

A few things I noticed: Not taking PoM into account is pretty big. I know it's not pure single target healing but the raid benefit is simply so extremely huge I'd never skip it. You also forgot about GH and Renew. The cycle PW:S -> Renew -> Penance -> GH will get you 3 hasted casts and should boost the Priest throughput by quite a bit since Renew and the hasted GH have a much higher HPCT than FH.

Another thing to think about is Power Infusion. Using it on yourself for maximum throughput is possible and should be taken into account.

For the Druid you might also want to consider (glyphed) Swiftmend, it can occasionally replace a Nourish cast and has a higher HPCT. As tank healing glyphs I'd use Rapid Rejuvenation (so Rejuv will be used x/12 and not x/18), Swiftmend and Nourish. It might even be worth it replacing either RR or Swiftmend by the Glyph of Regrowth and clipping the last RG tick for 20% more overall healing on the spell (meaning total healing done by it increased by 20%, reduced by the lost tick and cast time is x/24 instead of x/27).

I think the Priest gear setup needs a rework, too. All items are packed with spirit and many are lacking haste. As far as I know (correct me please if I am wrong there) a tank healing disc Priest will avoid spirit and stack items with crit and haste instead. I'd swap almost every non-set item you got there. Taking legs, helm or chest as off set to avoid the spirit that comes on the set item and to get a crit/haste item in that slot also seems like a good idea (since those slots offer the highest stats, meaning the biggest difference for an off set item).

I couldn't find it in your previous posts: Do you assume full raid buffs for everyone? Both the Priest and the Druid get +6% healing done on their spells from the ToL form / Paladin aura, you don't only count those 6% for the Druid, right?

@Kalistra:
Since we are talking about maximum throughput overhealing is irrelevant. In any practical raid situation you are right, Priests will give a higher effective health to the tank for spikes but that's really hard to properly theorycraft so neglecting it in calculations and just keeping it in mind for any practical purpose is valid in my opinion.
It's similar for Pain Suppression: Druids just don't have anything like that and it will actually make a difference in many hard mode fights, the best example probably being Festergut.
Another thing to keep in mind is Inspiration. That buff is pretty huge and Druids or even Paladins just don't have it. With the things I wrote above taken into account I'd expect the gap between a Priest and a Druid to be extremely small. Even if the Druid has a minor advantage I'd still prefer a Priest on my tank because of Inspiration and the practical benefits of a higher effective health.

These are good examples for important things left out. They show why this entire discussion is doomed. For healing class comparisons, we always need to take into account all aspects for the comparison to be meaningful. Unfortunately, this is too complex to be feasible.

So we try to restrict the scenario. While doing so, we always end up with a scenario that is far too narrow to be of any practical relevance. Like in this case. Where is the practical relevance of single target HPS while disregarding everything else? Yes, Ms. Dreamwalker. This discussion so far doesn't even handle "single target tank healing". In addition to the examples you mention, topics like overhealing vs effective healing and healing granularity (sigh) need to be taken into account.

After all, the purpose of tank healing isn't to provide HPS. It's to prevent a tank death. Quantifying the likelihood of a tank death per healing class is about the only meaningful thing to analyze here. And just because we're not able to do that doesn't mean a far simpler approach will still answer a meaningful question.

I suggest we take a step back and ask:

What - exactly - is the question we are trying to answer here and what practical use will the answer have?

While I find idd the difference between hps of a druid and the hps of a disc priest on single target a bit too hard to evaluate due to the usefullness of mitigation, the discussion would still stand up incase of comparison with shamans - who provide the same 10% reduced dmg buff.
In the end for me its not usefull to know if i can put up more hps than another class, but if the hps i can put up as a disc healer is enough to keep a tank up in any fight in current end game encounters with the aditional note that most fights 2 tanks take similar dmg and if shamans/druids can find a decent rotation to keep up with that, for disc the options are more limited.

Is your assumed crit % including talents that only affect nourish and regrowth? Because, even if it does, my resto druids in my guild would hit

Druid 1: 46% raid buffed crit on nourish/regrowth
Druid 2: 43% raid buffed crit on nourish/regrowth

Your 57% seems a tad high considering that most resto druids are now preferring items with haste over items with crit and avoiding crit items outside of the 4pt10.


And, as others have said, comparing a healer that heals and provides inspiration to a healer that does not is silly. A healer that provides a tank with inspiration would have to heal less to keep the tank up (while solo healing) compared to a healer that does not provide the effect.