While imp. reincarnation is cute I just don't agree. First off, yes you really shouldn't be dieing. You can say everybody is dieing on progression, but then everybody is dead and your ankh will mean nothing anyway. As for the mana aspect, (and somewhat the health aspect as well) it is a nice bonus. But you have many ways of getting around it. You generally don't use mana tide or a mana potion until late in a fight, so its likely you will have both available after an ankh.
Lets say you die to something stupid like Malleable goo (I'm sure we have all been guilty of this). You call on vent ankhing and the other healers instantly throw whatever quick heal they have on you basically topping you off within a second. Most deaths after ankhing aren't going to be saved by having 20% more health, such as ankhing into a malleable goo or infest. After that, you can easily get your mana tide down a mana potion popped and if you really need it Innervate or hymn.

Healing focus is pretty important for H LK since any Val'kyrs that pick up warlocks will be shooting you between taunts, which causes pushback. Also Pain & Suffering and Infest pushback are awful.

Imp. Reincarnation should just be in any resto spec in my opinion, because you don't need that 2% mana cost off spells. Really, you don't need it.

Depends on the situation. If you die on most hard modes it doesn't matter, and between the raid there should be quite a few soulstones and combat ressurections available. If you die on something as annoying as Heroic LK, generally one death follows by a quick wipe - even faster if, as we are, a healer dies.

I don't think the 15 minute reincarnation is all that cute. Looking at my logs from last week, I got owned by RNG several times on H Putricide and apart from that, I think I stayed alive most fights with relative ease. It's fun to have the Plague, a Green Ooze targetting you and a Malleable Goo heading towards your face as a Shaman.

i tend to disagree with the people who say that on Dreamwalker, Lesser Healing Wave is the way to go, personally i try to Riptide on her as often as i can to keep Tidal Waves up, for the 30% decreased cast time of HEALING WAVE, and the 20% increase to healing effect. I've found that (with my gear) i can get 3 healing waves off before i can riptide again, so 2 of the 3 are gaining the increase from Tidal Waves. I mean for me there is like a .60-.70 second difference in the cast speed WITHOUT tidal waves (or any other speed boost) being up between Healing Wave and Lesser Healing wave

basically i'm saying that i use Healing Wave instead of lesser healing wave.

I would like to note that bonus healing effects to HW (20%) and LHW (10%) come from the Tidal Waves talent, not the buff, so if you have the talent, the bonus is always there.

In theory using a RT > HW > HW > HW > LHW rotation (yes for this one time it's really a rotation) is the best way to go. But that theory is without taking into account the portals' buff effect.
It seems that a pure HW spaming using RT only when you need to move or inside the portals gives the best results in the end. That result may be pure randomness or could be because of the way the portal buff works with HW and AA. Did some of you already tried the pure HW spam over the RT rotation and had better results with it ?

I think the "optimal" rotation depends on your personal haste rating. For instance, I run a full haste set with 2pc T10 (chest and helm) with the heroic Flesh Epaulets and the Unclean Surgical Gloves. I drop my heroic trauma for a LK weapon, and end up with about 1650 haste self-buffed.

My "rotation" for dreamwalker is then RT-->HW-->HW-->HW-->HW-->RT and it lines up almost perfectly, such that my 4th healing wave is completed right as RT comes off CD. During the GCD immediately following the RT cast, I run to my portal. While waiting for the portals to open, you can go through that cycle another 2 times, giving you 12 HW's between portal phases.

As for the improved reincarnation, I too believe it's a must-have in any resto spec--having an ankh up for every attempt on a progression fight is a huge plus, and the cost for it is virtually nothing--2% mana cost? Unless you are oom at the end of a fight, you don't need the extra mana anyway.

Also, the extra 20% mana and hp is a huge plus, especially in an RNG-heavy environment (h sindragosa, h putricide, etc.) where you can easily get insta-gibbed just trying to ankh. It won't always prevent it, but there are definitely some attempts where that extra 20% has saved me.

I'm taking a hard look at where my gear is going in terms of T10 stats and the current BiS lists, and what I'm seeing is a lot of gear I'd be happy to use in elemental spec.....specifically, where is the mp5? I noticed when I started stacking on the haste around T8 level that I was essentially trading crit for haste. I also started having problems with mana regen. I attributed this to a combination of casting more spells during a fight due to haste and also the loss of mana return from crits/water shield procs. Currently I'm running around 775 mp5 with imp totem or wisdom buff, and I find that I could probably shed some mp5 for 25 mans for sure but some 10 man fights don't use much chain heal and don't have as much mana return. I'm kind of leery right now of trading off a hard chunk of mp5 for crit, in most cases.

Where is my mana return supposed to come from? Is the higher crit rating worth that much more mp5? and does anybody have some numbers to indicate how much crit is worth a certain amount of mp5? Or is it assumed that my off-tier pieces are so good by this point that I can do without the mp5 on most of my gear? I don't have such things as Solace, after 18 Jarraxxus kills on 25 I've seen it drop once and it went to a paladin (sigh). I'd really like to have an idea what I'm getting into losing around 100 mp5 off of my current gear by trading up my last two pieces of T9.5, and also what to expect in the future from making gear choices based on spell/crit/haste instead of spell/haste/mp5.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Trinkets.

Keep trying to get that Solace. Both heroic and normal mode if possible. The top 4 or 5 regen trinkets will be better options than getting mp5 on gear.

The Insightful Earthsiege Diamond, improved water shield. and improved shields also help with mp5 issues. I seem to be dropping my mana tide at around 50% mana on healing intensive fights like Blood Queen. I generally pop a mana pot in the fight but using my tide early allows me to use it again at the tail end of the fight in case a fellow healer or myself is getting low.

Remember there also might be feral druids in the group that can innervate you if need be.

I'll skip CH for now as it's use cannot be guaranteed while tankhealing.