Correct. I debated on if I should do it that way but I decided it is a mana back on cast for each spell so it might as well be part of the mana cost.

I was in the beta and kept asking for them to make water shield add another orb for every orb consumed and had several pages of those posting who agreed with me but it seems bliz didn't agree. I still hope they basically make water shield act like static shield so the only reason water shield would be consumed would be the random boss abilities and the like that would trigger it.

I have given it some thought but I haven't decided on a good way to include water shield refreshes into other calculations.

Have you compared this to Nourish? Nourish has a bigger base heal, and a similar 20% increase. Yet, LHW scales slightly better. I'm unsure how it will fall out once all the druid talents are considered, but I think Nourish will be competitive.

[Hateful Gladiator's Totem of the Third Wind] might the the relic of choice.

I was wondering where the LHW totems were. They are all PVP.

There is a [Savage Gladiator's Totem of the Third Wind] that seems far more likely for the non-PVP centric shaman to get (Arena points from Wintergrasp aren't hard) and of course, a Deadly version that is for the heavy PVP people that has more spellpower than both of the other two.

Is this ~15% more HPS over glyphed LHW including TW? Seems like the max HPS combo you listed (RT->HW->HW->CH->HW->HW) would output much more than +15% HPS over glyphed LHW spam.

I'd love to be able to skip Healing Way, but the other Resto Shaman I raid with (10 man) insists we'll need it on fights like Patchwerk.

Nourish
2100 SP
26% crit (+5% from moonkin) (this is 16% lower than shaman due to shaman talents)
15% haste

Base = (1883+2187)/2 = 2035
Base w/ hot = 2442
2442 + .810 * 2100 = 4143 (.81 coefficient from the druid WotLK preview thread first post)
4143 * (1 + (.95 * .31)) = 5363 (1.5 * .3 = .45, so 195% crits, like shaman)
base cast time = 1.5 / 1.15 = 1.3
avg cast time = 1.3 - (.5 * .31) = 1.145
5363 / 1.145 = 4683 hps
mana cost = 3796 * .18 * .9 = 615 mana
5363/615 = 8.72 hpm

So I'm showing the average LHW (inc crit) at 6622 for 5044 hps and 15.84 hpm. I guess it'd depend on your definition of 'consideraby', but 250 hps is a decent margin. If the druid isn't stacking crit, I'd guess the margin would be wider (but I'm too lazy to theorycraft it since I didn't build a spreadsheet).

As for the totem of the third wind, it's definitely the choice for this style, as mentioned in the OP. I did a heroic with an ele shaman and was surprised at how much SP ToW provides. Managed to get up to 2318 SP with a feast food buff from another member of the party. 2400 SP LHWs (I use the old nagrand LHW totem) and a 3k earth shield on a geared tank are ridiculously overpowered for strat and violet hold. Add a mixology frost wyrm flask and an s5 totem, 2700 SP LHWs appear to be within easy reach. With 2t7 and my current crit rate, LHW would be just over 20 HPM on a glyphed target, which seems...high.

The 15% HPS is NOT including TW. You can check my spreadsheet (which reflects my stats but...), but those HWs are at about 7k hps versus 5k hps for LHW spam. With healing way stacked, those go to 9k HPS. The problem with both those HW numbers is that they do not take overheal into account, which will cut both the direct HPS and well into the AA numbers. While I tend to not get a lot of overheal on LHW crits, I get enormous overheal on HW crits unless they're the emergency NS+Tidal Force variety.

As for needing it on patchwerk, I didn't need to go beyond LHW spam while taking care of the hateful tank in naxx 10 on our first (and very slow at 5:45) kill by myself. We've been running 3 healers (me, holy priest, Holy Shock/JotW pally for replenishement) for safety since we're learning the fights and I've taken to being the switch healer on subsequent attempts and try to keep Ancestral Fortitude+Riptide up on both tanks. It _may_ be necessary to drop into HW cycles if you're trying to solo heal the MT below 20% but I haven't had to try. No clue about Naxx 25, we don't have 25 80s yet.

I for the most part like the new healing style, and I believe we will really start to shine as healers once they have nerfed Priests and Druids. The only problem I currently find with our healing co-efficients is that we are heavily reliant (In regards to putting out a respectable HPS / HPM) on having ES on the target you are healing, otherwise LHW is quite a poor spell in comparison to all the other 1.5 second cast time spells; the same is obviously said for HW without 3/3 HW, which I believe gives us the worst 'long' cast time heal.

I'm not so sure on AA at this point in the game either, I have yet to see a raid encounter where it would be worth investing in the talent; however for PVP it's obviously an amazing talent.

I am a little confused as to what direction Blizzard are taking the class as 'specialist', or whether they have made every class a Priest in weaker form :P

This is only true if you look LWH mana cost as metric. Every point give of crit rating give same value of mp5 equilevent. All mana regen stats work like this. When you reach point where regen == burn rate you can heal infinitely long. Expect even at 100% crit you can't do that.

I gave the methods discussed in this thread a try last night in heroic naxx. Regretfully, I had some logging issues that prevented a good WWS parse, but I will fix that with a follow up tonight. Here is a parse from a heroic halls of lightening I ran just prior to raid, however.

Wow Web Stats

I'm sitting at 927 INT, 22k mana raid buffed, 1980 SP and 25% crit self buffed, 150 MP5 in 5SR, and about 15% haste.

Anecdotaly, I felt like this method was much more solid for reliable tank healing. I also felt my reaction time to party/raid healing was much faster. I didn't quite beat out our resto druid, but I was markedly closer. Additionally, I felt like my mana use was much more in control on patchwerk (healing our bear MT). It was much more reliable than spamming CH and hoping I don't run out of mana before dps can bring him down.

I'll have to make sure to get a good log sampling for this weeks raids and review the results to compare. I'm generally LHW spamming randomly damage targets and tanks in a raid, keeping up Earth Shield, and Chain Healing where appropriate (we run melee heavy so that helps me out on the meters a bit). If I'm casting Healing Wave, it's only when Tidal Waves is up and most of the time it's a Riptide->HW->HW combo for semi-emergency healing. Timing Riptide, Chain Heal, and Tidal Wave setups is a dynamic that I'm finding incredibly fun.

I'd suggest using Razuvious as a benchmark for HPS and so on. With such high HP pools that the MC'd tanks have your going to get very little over heal. Obviously for real world situations this is pretty useless but its still valuable.
Also are you guys throwing in chain heals at all or just using riptide to proc tidal waves?

Ill give this a crack tonight on Patchwerk and Razuvious and see if i can link some wws for the fights.

I'll second this anecdotal evidence. We ran with a two healer setup for 10-man patchwerk (myself and a resto druid), and not only was neither tank in danger, I ended with 60% mana using glyphed LHW and the resto druid ended with 80% mana. Unless 25 man Patchwerk presents a greater challenge, I don't see any reason to spec Healing Way given the current content.