The Death Knights

Always remember to heal responsibly and most of all, have fun. :)

Regards,
Kattan

HEALING PRIESTS AND RAIDING

This is a rewrite of the previous priest compendium from the Elitist Jerks website (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t23790-p...compendium_v2/), which drew from two previous threads that are linked there. It is concerned primarily with healing priests.

Random Terms Used
OO5SR : Outside of the 5 Second Rule
I5SR : Inside of the 5 Second Rule
PoM : Prayer of Mending
PoH : Prayer of Healing
CoH : Circle of Healing
IHC: Improved Holy Concentration (talent, Holy tree)
HpM: Healing per Mana, a measurement of efficiency

I. SPEC
Q: What spec should I be as a healing priest?
A: This is much more complicated to answer than in TBC. With WotLK, Discipline has been made a (mostly) viable raiding spec, and with that comes a number of subspecs which are viable and/or possible. I will detail the two primary specs here, and below are some discussion points about the talents you can switch around to get a customized feel.

The first spec is 14/57/0, a heavy Holy spec. Again, you could argue for a possible 6 points moved into Disc to pick up Mental Agility, but you do lose a reasonable amount of throughput to gain that mana reduction talent. You are an excellent raid healer, with a number of effective tools for topping people up. Additionally, you are a strong tank healer with IHC, and have excellent mana regen capacity. If you go deep Holy, you should value spirit higher than if you were Disc, since Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption (SOR) increase the value of each point you gain on gear.

An alternate spec is 57/14/0, a heavy Discipline spec. You could argue for an extra 4 points into Holy to pick up Improved Healing, but it would come at the expense of points in other, interesting things. You are primarily a tank healer with this spec, with powerful Shields to throw around to help mitigate raid damage. Your efficiency in AoE heals is horrible, so try to let other people handle that. If you go deep Disc, you should not value Spirit highly at all, as its only value for you is the direct conversion to regen through Meditation. Without Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption, it is much less valuable than to a holy-spec priest. Argument could be made for gearing like a paladin, valuing Mp5, crit, and haste much higher than spirit. But buyer beware, since this isn’t the “traditional” healing priest spec, you could possibly be asked to spec deeper into the holy tree since the guild may possess excellent single-target healers within its raid arsenal.

Q: Is taking Lightwell worth a talent point?
A: Even with the buffs, it's still not a tremendously strong talent. You can easily pick it up at the expense of a point in Divine Providence or Test of Faith if you are deep holy spec, but it's up to you if you think you will use it enough to be worthwhile.

Q: Should I take SoR?
A: As a holy spec priest, yes. Absolutely.

Q: Should I take inspiration?
A: Yes. There is almost no situation where you can justify losing Inspiration. If you are holy, you need it because you are a good tank healer, and will often be asked to fill that role. Unless you live in a world where you never, ever, ever heal tanks, take Inspiration. It's not an optional talent, any more than Imp PW:Fortitude is.

It should be noted that multiple priests/shamans on the same target will overlap Ancestral Fortitude / Inspiration, reducing personal benefit from the talent. However, the overlap will contribute together toward an extremely high overall up-time, possibly even as much as 95% on tank & spank fights. +25% AC to a fully kitted tank is an extremely significant mitigation boost, and should not be skipped. Besides, what else would you pick up with those talent points? Holy doesn't really have many options, and Disc has even less.

Q: How good is Improved Holy Concentration?
A: Once you get Naxx.10-level gear and begin seeing raid-buffed crit rates above 20%, it's extremely powerful. With 6/6 in HC+IHC, 20% crit converts to a 9% chance to gain the IHC buff. This means that approximately 2/11 of your direct healing spells will be hasted by 30%, and 1/11 of the same will be completely free. Additionally, by the end of Naxx.25, it is possible to break 30% raid-buffed crit, which continues scaling the benefit this talent provides.

Q: Holy Reach - yes/no?
A: It's really not necessary now that CoH is smart-targeted and raid-wide. You can take it if you wish, but you will sacrifice throughput or regen talents to get it (usually Test of Faith is dropped to 1/3). Alternatively, you can drop 2/3 from Improved Renew to pick it up, since Renew is much less useful in WotLK, at least until extremely high gear levels.

Q: Mental Agility vs Divine Providence?
A: MA effects all instant cast spells: CoH, PoM, Renew, PW:S. Divine Providence effects the cooldown on PoM, and the throughput (and thus HpM) of CoH, Binding Heal, PoH, and PoM. I'm ignoring the benefits to Holy Nova and Divine Hymn because they really aren't important spells for a serious raid healer. Overall, Divine Providence offers more bang for your buck in terms of 5 talent points. However, in terms of pure efficiency, MA wins. Reducing the mana cost of spells is always a higher HpM gain than increasing the healing done by those spells. A 10% reduction in mana cost is a 1.1% gain over a 10% increase in healing done, in terms of HpM calculations (1.11 vs 1.10).

Q: What talents are low priority, or somewhat useless now? (for PvE)
A: Silent Resolve. Blessed Recovery. Focused Will. Blessed Resilience. Reflective Shield. Searing Light. Unbreakable Will. Improved Divine Spirit. Improved Mana Burn. Martyrdom.

To a lesser extent, Improved Renew, Spell Warding, Healing Focus, and Lightwell should be first on the chopping block if you're looking to drop talent points out of a tree.

Q: What's with Surge of Light?
A: SoL is awesome. It's a new "must have" talent for holy priests. With our crit climbing to unheard of levels, you can easily get a SoL proc on every single CoH you cast. For raid healing, it's amazing to be able to cast a 6 target 2K-per-target CoH, then get an instant cast mana-free 4k heal on whoever is lowest. The only down-side to it is that it's still on the GCD, so you have to watch your timers carefully in the midst of CoH spam in order to get it off effectively without losing too much time. A good aura mod (like PowerAuras) can help immeasureably in this regard.

Q: What are the must-have talents for a Holy priest?
A: IHC, Serendipity, Guardian Spirit, and obviously Spiritual Healing. Guardian Spirit is remarkably good for a 51-point talent; you have to spend a lot of points to get it, but its usefulness cannot be overstated. Serendipity is the holy equivalent to Rapture, and is again a tremendous talent, and IHC has to be seen to be appreciated. The haste and mana return benefits are extremely strong.

Note: Meditation is still required for both specs. It's stupid, but Blizzard has stated they are aware of the problem, and we may get the monkey off our backs sometime next spring. Think positive thoughts.

II. REGENERATION
Q: How do I take advantage of OO5SR regen?
A: If you are holy, use Inner Focus, IHC, and Surge of Light to easily 'cheat' the 5SR. Stacking spirit makes more sense in this case, especially since Spiritual Guidance is still a powerful scaling factor.

Cheating the 5 Second Rule
Priest OO5SR regen is all about cheating the 5 second rule. Blizzard's 5 second rule is currently set so that upon completion of a spell which costs mana (the critical factor), you enter a 5 second period (I5SR) where you regenerate mana at a reduced rate. This rate is dependent on your talent choices (Meditation = 30% regen I5SR), but every priest will have this, so it's a moot point.

Given that priests gain so much regeneration from spirit, the typical difference between a regen tick I5SR and OO5SR is approximately 2x. It can range from 2x on the low-end (Mp5-heavy gear) to 3x on the high-end (spirit-heavy gear). In any case, a tick OO5SR is worth a minimum of 2x I5SR.

So how do we cheat the rule?

Firstly, Inner Focus is a guaranteed way to exit the 5SR, since it makes your next cast "free" of mana, and hence does not trigger the rule. Typical sequence is something like:
top up your tank target
wait 2 seconds
hit Inner Focus
start /stopcasting GH:9 until heal is actually needed
start a new heal -- when it lands, you re-enter the 5SR

You can do exactly the same thing with Improved Holy Concentration, which should be somewhat easy to do given that ~ 1/11 casts will proc IHC now. Stopcasting is still valuable in WotLK!

There are a couple of useful trinkets that help contribute to this type of play. One is the old-but-good [Earring of Soulful Meditation], which is unfortunately eclipsed in WotLK by the lack of spellpower. However, there is a direct replacement, available from Gothik in Naxx.10, called [Spirit-World Glass].

Taking Advantage of Shadowfiend:
If you've played priest for long, you've learned to hate our stupid mana regen pets. They're slow, they randomly attack the stupidest things, and they generally return a variable amount of mana that is undependable. Despite this, they're the only game in town, so we're stuck with them.

If you are using your shadowfiend in an environment which has constant AE damage you may want to macro in a /target Shadowfiend, /cast Power Word: Shield, as the shield, while costing mana, can often save the life of your Shadowfiend and restore 2-3 more ticks of mana to you.

Note that the shadowfiend mechanic has been changed in WotLK to restore a set percentage (4%) of your total mana per hit. This means your theoretical restored mana from a shadowfiend is ~ 40%. Since the fiend is affected by Windfury Totem, you will actually get ~ 12 hits, but with a typical miss percentage. Checking logs, so far it appears that 11 to 14 hits is completely reasonable, so anywhere from a low of 40% to a high of 60%.

III. DOWNRANKING
Q: Is downranking spells still viable?
A: Nope. Nonexistent. It's done. Dead. Finished. Kaput.

Blizzard changed mana costs of all downranked spells to be the same as the maximum rank. There is no reason whatsoever to use anything but max-rank of every spell you have. This helps slightly with bar bloat, and hurts tremendously in our granularity of heals.

IV. RAIDING AS A HOLY PRIEST
Q: What spells should I typically be using?
This is a tough question. Every fight is different. I'll try to give an idea of different roles, and how each one uses our unique spells.

Tank Healing: Renew, GH:9, PoM, Flash:11, and occasionally PW:S. Basically, keep a GH in the pipe all the time and bounce a PoM off your tank every cooldown. Occasionally set up a regen nap by using PW:S+PoM, with cast-cancelled GH:9 following. If you are on the move, hit the tank with PW:S and PoM to smooth out damage as you run -- instant casts are what make us better than paladins for some healing duties. Use them.

Raid Healing: predictable damage can be healed, assuming the group is setup properly, with PoH and CoH. Be aware that CoH is less HPS than PoH, and if you *really* need to heal up a group, CoH may not be fast enough. If the damage is periodic, and you know you'll have 10 seconds before anyone will take damage again, use Flash Heal (with the Glyph). Flash Heal is actually (assuming you top someone up and proc Serendipity) more efficient than Renew in WotLK, and gets the healing done much sooner.

If you are clearing trash, and there is a lot of random AE damage coming your way, use whatever you have to in order to keep the raid alive. Trash (except for HS) is an example of a time when HpS is far more important than HpM. It's extremely rare to run out of mana on a 3-minute trash pull, so screw efficiency -- heal the raid. Keep people alive.

V. CONSUMABLES
Food: [Cuttlesteak], [Spiced Wyrm Burger], [Tender Shoveltusk Steak], [Mighty Rhino Dogs], or Firecracker Salmon. Or perhaps you'll just click on a Great Feast or Fish Feast that one of your guildmates drop before the boss, getting a plus spellpower buff.

Oil: Nerfed, no new oils available
Flask: [Flask of Distilled Wisdom] is the best option, followed by [Flask of Pure Mojo]; or Flask of the Frost Wyrm.
Potions: [Runic Mana Potion] is the obvious 1-use consumable. If you want to elixir up instead of flasking, good choices include [Elixir of Mighty Thoughts], [Elixir of Mighty Mageblood] or [Elixir of Spirit] for Guardian, and [Elixir of Deadly Strikes], [Guru's Elixir] or [Spellpower Elixir].

In WotLK, potion “sickness” was implemented, which limits your use of a consumable potion (Haste Potion, Runic Mana Potion, etc.) to one per combat cycle. What this means for healers is that we get “one” Runic Mana per boss fight. Now, Runic is a fair bit of mana, but you only get one, so use it wisely.

VI. GEAR
Rules of Thumb
Stack haste up to 10%. Think hard about whether you need more than that, given raid buffs and talents.
Pick up as much intellect as you can. It's always valuable.
Spellpower is always good.
For holy, 9 spirit = 4 Mp5, ignoring spellpower gains entirely. Given spellpower gains, a 2:1 ratio is acceptable.
For disc, 5 spirit = 2 Mp5, with no spellpower gains. Convert cleanly, and make your decision.
Crit is always valuable, although less so once you break 25% raid-buffed (diminishing returns on ilvl points spent).

Rough goals for the end of Naxx.25 are to have 2600 spellpower, 25% crit, and 10% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR. Assume full raid buffs when factoring in your progression toward the goal.

VII. Gems
Q: What gems should I be using?
A: Spirit/Int gems are valuable, as are pure Int gems. Spellpower is always a logical choice, and the mixtures available of spellpower/int and spellpower/haste make mixing and matching your gems trivial to accomplish. So long as your gems involve crit, spellpower, intellect, spirit, and Mp5, there is really no completely wrong answer.

Metagems
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond]: the most useful, and easiest to equip, metagem. A 45-second ICD proc that restores 600 mana, and 21 intellect to gain crit and regen make this the best metagem available.
[Bracing Earthsiege Diamond]: basically useless. 25 spellpower is meaningless compared to the 2000+ we will have raid-buffed, and the reduced threat is as useful as a solar-powered flashlight.
[Ember Skyflare Diamond]: decent metagem, probably second choice to IED. The 2% intellect ends up giving more int after you break 1155 intellect raid-buffed, which happens early in Naxx.25. However, the proc on IED is worth a conservative 50 Mp5 that you do not get back from ESD, making IED significantly stronger in the long run.
[Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond]: this is an interesting gem. The Mp5 isn't anywhere near as strong as IED or even ESD, and the increased critical healing doesn't add that much throughput. Might be slightly superior to BED or ESD for throughput, but if so, just barely.

VII-B. Trinkets

Profession-Based Options:
[Figurine - Sapphire Owl]: an excellent JC trinket, definitely worth wearing for a period at the start of the expansion.

25-man Raid Drops:
[Soul of the Dead]: very good trinket, if oddly placed as not *really* regen, and not *really* throughput
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]: more of a dps caster trinket, pass to them
[Forethought Talisman]: highest possible spellpower, but useless proc; the jury is still out on this.
[Living Ice Crystals]: decent Disc trinket; weak for Holy

10-man Raid Drops:
[Spirit-World Glass]: amazing trinket for Holy, meh for Disc.
[Majestic Dragon Figurine]: again, decent for Holy, meh for Disc.
[Je'Tze's Bell]: awesome trinket, and in 3.0.8, BoE!!
[Embrace of the Spider]: don't even think about taking this trinket. If you want one, buy the badge option.

Badge / World-drop / 5-man Drops:
[Futuresight Rune]: quest reward from the final quest in Dragonblight, it's a nice replacement for Earring of Soulful Meditation
[Tome of Arcane Phenomena]: drop from The Oculus
[Soul Preserver]: drop from Old Stratholme
[Talisman of Troll Divinity]: drop from heroic Drek'tharon keep
[Spark of Life]: heroic Halls of Stone
[Forge Ember]: heroic Halls of Stone
[The Egg of Mortal Essence]: good trinket, although arguably not the best for priests. Definitely worth getting if nothing else drops. Since badges are easy to get, grab one, and see how much you use the haste proc. If you use it, this trinket beats Forethought. If you don't, it doesn't.

VII-C. Enchants

Head: [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries]; available from Kirin Tor (revered)
or [Arcanum of Blissful Mending]: available from Wyrmrest Accord (revered)

Shoulders: there are [Greater Inscription of the Crag] and [Greater Inscription of the Storm ] available from Sons of Hodir (exalted) and [Lesser Inscription of the Crag] and [Lesser Inscription of the Storm ] Sons of Hodir (revered).

Cloak: [Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Wisdom] or [Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Haste]
or
Darkglow Embroidery (tailor only)

Chest: [Scroll of Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]

Bracers: [Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Superior Spellpower] or [Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect]

Gloves: [Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower]

Pants: BoE spellthread [Brilliant Spellthread] requires Argent Crusade (exalted) for a tailor to craft or [Sapphire Spellthread] requires Kirin Tor (exalted) for a tailor to craft.

Boots: [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality] or [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit]

Rings: Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower (enchanter-only)

Weapon: [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower] or [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Intellect] or [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Spirit]

Last Modified: 9/16/2009 11:22am
Contributors: Kattan

Easy Link
BBCode Link: [guide=Priest]Priest[/guide]
URL: http://deathknights.dkpsystem.com/guide/Priest

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[size=12]Always remember to heal responsibly and most of all, have fun.  :)

Regards,
Kattan

HEALING PRIESTS AND RAIDING

This is a rewrite of the previous priest compendium from the Elitist Jerks website (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t23790-p...compendium_v2/), which drew from two previous threads that are linked there. It is concerned primarily with healing priests.

Random Terms Used
OO5SR : Outside of the 5 Second Rule
I5SR : Inside of the 5 Second Rule
PoM : Prayer of Mending
PoH : Prayer of Healing
CoH : Circle of Healing 
IHC: Improved Holy Concentration (talent, Holy tree)
HpM: Healing per Mana, a measurement of efficiency

I.  SPEC
Q: What spec should I be as a healing priest?
A: This is much more complicated to answer than in TBC. With WotLK, Discipline has been made a (mostly) viable raiding spec, and with that comes a number of subspecs which are viable and/or possible. I will detail the two primary specs here, and below are some discussion points about the talents you can switch around to get a customized feel.
 
The first spec is 14/57/0, a heavy Holy spec. Again, you could argue for a possible 6 points moved into Disc to pick up Mental Agility, but you do lose a reasonable amount of throughput to gain that mana reduction talent. You are an excellent raid healer, with a number of effective tools for topping people up. Additionally, you are a strong tank healer with IHC, and have excellent mana regen capacity. If you go deep Holy, you should value spirit higher than if you were Disc, since Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption (SOR) increase the value of each point you gain on gear.

An alternate spec is 57/14/0, a heavy Discipline spec. You could argue for an extra 4 points into Holy to pick up Improved Healing, but it would come at the expense of points in other, interesting things. You are primarily a tank healer with this spec, with powerful Shields to throw around to help mitigate raid damage. Your efficiency in AoE heals is horrible, so try to let other people handle that. If you go deep Disc, you should not value Spirit highly at all, as its only value for you is the direct conversion to regen through Meditation. Without Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption, it is much less valuable than to a holy-spec priest. Argument could be made for gearing like a paladin, valuing Mp5, crit, and haste much higher than spirit.  But buyer beware, since this isn’t the “traditional” healing priest spec, you could possibly be asked to spec deeper into the holy tree since the guild may possess excellent single-target healers within its raid arsenal.

Q: Is taking Lightwell worth a talent point? 
A: Even with the buffs, it's still not a tremendously strong talent. You can easily pick it up at the expense of a point in Divine Providence or Test of Faith if you are deep holy spec, but it's up to you if you think you will use it enough to be worthwhile.

Q: Should I take SoR?
A: As a holy spec priest, yes. Absolutely.

Q: Should I take inspiration?
A: Yes. There is almost no situation where you can justify losing Inspiration.  If you are holy, you need it because you are a good tank healer, and will often be asked to fill that role. Unless you live in a world where you never, ever, ever heal tanks, take Inspiration. It's not an optional talent, any more than Imp PW:Fortitude is.

It should be noted that multiple priests/shamans on the same target will overlap Ancestral Fortitude / Inspiration, reducing personal benefit from the talent. However, the overlap will contribute together toward an extremely high overall up-time, possibly even as much as 95% on tank & spank fights. +25% AC to a fully kitted tank is an extremely significant mitigation boost, and should not be skipped. Besides, what else would you pick up with those talent points? Holy doesn't really have many options, and Disc has even less.

Q: How good is Improved Holy Concentration?
A: Once you get Naxx.10-level gear and begin seeing raid-buffed crit rates above 20%, it's extremely powerful. With 6/6 in HC+IHC, 20% crit converts to a 9% chance to gain the IHC buff. This means that approximately 2/11 of your direct healing spells will be hasted by 30%, and 1/11 of the same will be completely free. Additionally, by the end of Naxx.25, it is possible to break 30% raid-buffed crit, which continues scaling the benefit this talent provides.

Q: Holy Reach - yes/no?
A: It's really not necessary now that CoH is smart-targeted and raid-wide. You can take it if you wish, but you will sacrifice throughput or regen talents to get it (usually Test of Faith is dropped to 1/3). Alternatively, you can drop 2/3 from Improved Renew to pick it up, since Renew is much less useful in WotLK, at least until extremely high gear levels.

Q: Mental Agility vs Divine Providence?
A: MA effects all instant cast spells: CoH, PoM, Renew, PW:S. Divine Providence effects the cooldown on PoM, and the throughput (and thus HpM) of CoH, Binding Heal, PoH, and PoM. I'm ignoring the benefits to Holy Nova and Divine Hymn because they really aren't important spells for a serious raid healer. Overall, Divine Providence offers more bang for your buck in terms of 5 talent points. However, in terms of pure efficiency, MA wins. Reducing the mana cost of spells is always a higher HpM gain than increasing the healing done by those spells. A 10% reduction in mana cost is a 1.1% gain over a 10% increase in healing done, in terms of HpM calculations (1.11 vs 1.10).

Q: What talents are low priority, or somewhat useless now? (for PvE)
A: Silent Resolve. Blessed Recovery. Focused Will. Blessed Resilience. Reflective Shield. Searing Light. Unbreakable Will. Improved Divine Spirit. Improved Mana Burn. Martyrdom.

To a lesser extent, Improved Renew, Spell Warding, Healing Focus, and Lightwell should be first on the chopping block if you're looking to drop talent points out of a tree.

Q: What's with Surge of Light?
A: SoL is awesome. It's a new "must have" talent for holy priests. With our crit climbing to unheard of levels, you can easily get a SoL proc on every single CoH you cast. For raid healing, it's amazing to be able to cast a 6 target 2K-per-target CoH, then get an instant cast mana-free 4k heal on whoever is lowest. The only down-side to it is that it's still on the GCD, so you have to watch your timers carefully in the midst of CoH spam in order to get it off effectively without losing too much time. A good aura mod (like PowerAuras) can help immeasureably in this regard.
 
Q: What are the must-have talents for a Holy priest?
A: IHC, Serendipity, Guardian Spirit, and obviously Spiritual Healing. Guardian Spirit is remarkably good for a 51-point talent; you have to spend a lot of points to get it, but its usefulness cannot be overstated. Serendipity is the holy equivalent to Rapture, and is again a tremendous talent, and IHC has to be seen to be appreciated. The haste and mana return benefits are extremely strong.

Note: Meditation is still required for both specs. It's stupid, but Blizzard has stated they are aware of the problem, and we may get the monkey off our backs sometime next spring. Think positive thoughts.

II.  REGENERATION
Q: How do I take advantage of OO5SR regen?
A:  If you are holy, use Inner Focus, IHC, and Surge of Light to easily 'cheat' the 5SR. Stacking spirit makes more sense in this case, especially since Spiritual Guidance is still a powerful scaling factor.

Cheating the 5 Second Rule
Priest OO5SR regen is all about cheating the 5 second rule. Blizzard's 5 second rule is currently set so that upon completion of a spell which costs mana (the critical factor), you enter a 5 second period (I5SR) where you regenerate mana at a reduced rate. This rate is dependent on your talent choices (Meditation = 30% regen I5SR), but every priest will have this, so it's a moot point.

Given that priests gain so much regeneration from spirit, the typical difference between a regen tick I5SR and OO5SR is approximately 2x. It can range from 2x on the low-end (Mp5-heavy gear) to 3x on the high-end (spirit-heavy gear). In any case, a tick OO5SR is worth a minimum of 2x I5SR.

So how do we cheat the rule?

Firstly, Inner Focus is a guaranteed way to exit the 5SR, since it makes your next cast "free" of mana, and hence does not trigger the rule. Typical sequence is something like: 
top up your tank target 
wait 2 seconds 
hit Inner Focus 
start /stopcasting GH:9 until heal is actually needed 
start a new heal -- when it lands, you re-enter the 5SR

You can do exactly the same thing with Improved Holy Concentration, which should be somewhat easy to do given that ~ 1/11 casts will proc IHC now. Stopcasting is still valuable in WotLK!

There are a couple of useful trinkets that help contribute to this type of play. One is the old-but-good [Earring of Soulful Meditation], which is unfortunately eclipsed in WotLK by the lack of spellpower. However, there is a direct replacement, available from Gothik in Naxx.10, called [Spirit-World Glass].

Taking Advantage of Shadowfiend:
If you've played priest for long, you've learned to hate our stupid mana regen pets. They're slow, they randomly attack the stupidest things, and they generally return a variable amount of mana that is undependable. Despite this, they're the only game in town, so we're stuck with them.

If you are using your shadowfiend in an environment which has constant AE damage you may want to macro in a /target Shadowfiend, /cast Power Word: Shield, as the shield, while costing mana, can often save the life of your Shadowfiend and restore 2-3 more ticks of mana to you.

Note that the shadowfiend mechanic has been changed in WotLK to restore a set percentage (4%) of your total mana per hit. This means your theoretical restored mana from a shadowfiend is ~ 40%. Since the fiend is affected by Windfury Totem, you will actually get ~ 12 hits, but with a typical miss percentage. Checking logs, so far it appears that 11 to 14 hits is completely reasonable, so anywhere from a low of 40% to a high of 60%.

III.  DOWNRANKING
Q: Is downranking spells still viable?
A: Nope. Nonexistent.  It's done. Dead. Finished. Kaput.

Blizzard changed mana costs of all downranked spells to be the same as the maximum rank. There is no reason whatsoever to use anything but max-rank of every spell you have. This helps slightly with bar bloat, and hurts tremendously in our granularity of heals.

IV.  RAIDING AS A HOLY PRIEST
Q: What spells should I typically be using?
This is a tough question. Every fight is different. I'll try to give an idea of different roles, and how each one uses our unique spells.

Tank Healing: Renew, GH:9, PoM, Flash:11, and occasionally PW:S. Basically, keep a GH in the pipe all the time and bounce a PoM off your tank every cooldown. Occasionally set up a regen nap by using PW:S+PoM, with cast-cancelled GH:9 following. If you are on the move, hit the tank with PW:S and PoM to smooth out damage as you run -- instant casts are what make us better than paladins for some healing duties.  Use them.

Raid Healing: predictable damage can be healed, assuming the group is setup properly, with PoH and CoH. Be aware that CoH is less HPS than PoH, and if you *really* need to heal up a group, CoH may not be fast enough. If the damage is periodic, and you know you'll have 10 seconds before anyone will take damage again, use Flash Heal (with the Glyph). Flash Heal is actually (assuming you top someone up and proc Serendipity) more efficient than Renew in WotLK, and gets the healing done much sooner.

If you are clearing trash, and there is a lot of random AE damage coming your way, use whatever you have to in order to keep the raid alive. Trash (except for HS) is an example of a time when HpS is far more important than HpM. It's extremely rare to run out of mana on a 3-minute trash pull, so screw efficiency -- heal the raid. Keep people alive.

V.  CONSUMABLES
Food: [Cuttlesteak], [Spiced Wyrm Burger], [Tender Shoveltusk Steak], [Mighty Rhino Dogs], or Firecracker Salmon.  Or perhaps you'll just click on a Great Feast or Fish Feast that one of your guildmates drop before the boss, getting a plus spellpower buff.

Oil: Nerfed, no new oils available
Flask: [Flask of Distilled Wisdom] is the best option, followed by [Flask of Pure Mojo]; or Flask of the Frost Wyrm. 
Potions: [Runic Mana Potion] is the obvious 1-use consumable. If you want to elixir up instead of flasking, good choices include [Elixir of Mighty Thoughts], [Elixir of Mighty Mageblood] or [Elixir of Spirit] for Guardian, and [Elixir of Deadly Strikes], [Guru's Elixir] or [Spellpower Elixir].

In WotLK, potion “sickness” was implemented, which limits your use of a consumable potion (Haste Potion, Runic Mana Potion, etc.) to one per combat cycle. What this means for healers is that we get “one” Runic Mana per boss fight. Now, Runic is a fair bit of mana, but you only get one, so use it wisely.

VI.  GEAR
Rules of Thumb
Stack haste up to 10%. Think hard about whether you need more than that, given raid buffs and talents.
Pick up as much intellect as you can. It's always valuable. 
Spellpower is always good.
For holy, 9 spirit = 4 Mp5, ignoring spellpower gains entirely. Given spellpower gains, a 2:1 ratio is acceptable. 
For disc, 5 spirit = 2 Mp5, with no spellpower gains. Convert cleanly, and make your decision.
Crit is always valuable, although less so once you break 25% raid-buffed (diminishing returns on ilvl points spent).

Rough goals for the end of Naxx.25 are to have 2600 spellpower, 25% crit, and 10% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR. Assume full raid buffs when factoring in your progression toward the goal.

VII.  Gems
Q: What gems should I be using?
A: Spirit/Int gems are valuable, as are pure Int gems. Spellpower is always a logical choice, and the mixtures available of spellpower/int and spellpower/haste make mixing and matching your gems trivial to accomplish. So long as your gems involve crit, spellpower, intellect, spirit, and Mp5, there is really no completely wrong answer.

Metagems
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond]: the most useful, and easiest to equip, metagem. A 45-second ICD proc that restores 600 mana, and 21 intellect to gain crit and regen make this the best metagem available.
[Bracing Earthsiege Diamond]: basically useless. 25 spellpower is meaningless compared to the 2000+ we will have raid-buffed, and the reduced threat is as useful as a solar-powered flashlight. 
[Ember Skyflare Diamond]: decent metagem, probably second choice to IED. The 2% intellect ends up giving more int after you break 1155 intellect raid-buffed, which happens early in Naxx.25. However, the proc on IED is worth a conservative 50 Mp5 that you do not get back from ESD, making IED significantly stronger in the long run. 
[Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond]: this is an interesting gem. The Mp5 isn't anywhere near as strong as IED or even ESD, and the increased critical healing doesn't add that much throughput. Might be slightly superior to BED or ESD for throughput, but if so, just barely.

VII-B.  Trinkets

Profession-Based Options:
[Figurine - Sapphire Owl]: an excellent JC trinket, definitely worth wearing for a period at the start of the expansion.

25-man Raid Drops:
[Soul of the Dead]: very good trinket, if oddly placed as not *really* regen, and not *really* throughput
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]: more of a dps caster trinket, pass to them
[Forethought Talisman]: highest possible spellpower, but useless proc; the jury is still out on this.
[Living Ice Crystals]: decent Disc trinket; weak for Holy

10-man Raid Drops:
[Spirit-World Glass]: amazing trinket for Holy, meh for Disc. 
[Majestic Dragon Figurine]: again, decent for Holy, meh for Disc. 
[Je'Tze's Bell]: awesome trinket, and in 3.0.8, BoE!!
[Embrace of the Spider]: don't even think about taking this trinket. If you want one, buy the badge option.

Badge / World-drop / 5-man Drops:
[Futuresight Rune]: quest reward from the final quest in Dragonblight, it's a nice replacement for Earring of Soulful Meditation
[Tome of Arcane Phenomena]: drop from The Oculus
[Soul Preserver]: drop from Old Stratholme
[Talisman of Troll Divinity]: drop from heroic Drek'tharon keep
[Spark of Life]: heroic Halls of Stone
[Forge Ember]: heroic Halls of Stone
[The Egg of Mortal Essence]: good trinket, although arguably not the best for priests. Definitely worth getting if nothing else drops. Since badges are easy to get, grab one, and see how much you use the haste proc. If you use it, this trinket beats Forethought. If you don't, it doesn't.

VII-C.  Enchants

Head:  [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries]; available from Kirin Tor (revered)
or [Arcanum of Blissful Mending]: available from Wyrmrest Accord (revered)

Shoulders:  there are [Greater Inscription of the Crag] and [Greater Inscription of the Storm ] available from Sons of Hodir (exalted) and [Lesser Inscription of the Crag] and [Lesser Inscription of the Storm ] Sons of Hodir (revered).

Cloak: [Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Wisdom] or [Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Haste]
or
Darkglow Embroidery (tailor only)

Chest: [Scroll of Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]

Bracers: [Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Superior Spellpower] or [Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect]

Gloves: [Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower]

Pants: BoE spellthread [Brilliant Spellthread] requires Argent Crusade (exalted) for a tailor to craft or [Sapphire Spellthread] requires Kirin Tor (exalted) for a tailor to craft.

Boots: [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality] or [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit]

Rings: Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower (enchanter-only)

Weapon: [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower] or [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Intellect] or [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Spir[/size]it]

$65