First off I was wondering if there is any form of chart or something that would show me roughly how much of my mana would regen in combat over X amount of time with X amount of intellect and spirit, I'm not so good at maths but I would like to know roughly how much extra mana I had available per fight excluding raid abilities or cooldowns, an example would be like how world of logs shows regen from abilities.
One of the reasons why this sparked my interest is because in my mind my own mana pool is finite, what I start with is all I have not including cooldowns, rapture, or raid regen, I have virtually no passive regen when compared to other priests due to my low spirit count of 1145 http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nitro/advanced but still I find I can do my job and have mana left over even on progression fights in 10 man heroics.
I should say before raid healers start saying its not possible that my guild 2 heals most bosses Disc Priest / Resto Druid, and that I am tank healing and spec-ed for it, I have no doubt that full time raid healers may require more regen.
When firelands began I seen the lack of spirit cloth gear as a challenge, I was hoping that mana was going to be an issue again like it was supposed to be this expansion, but it turned out you always had enough mana regen even with the low drop rates. So looking for a challenge I went and started dropping all the spirit I could bit by bit till now where I am at the point that I can't physically drop any more spirit without ditching tier items or rep ring and still I feel like I have enough control over my mana to heal most fights.
In my case for my spec, role, and play style mana doesn't seam to be much of an issue and hasn't reduced my ability to heal either after all if I don't run out of mana then the reduced points in spirit roll directly over into haste, mastery, and crit.
I have some logs from 2 to 3 weeks ago if you want to take apart my healing but the recent ones are not worth looking at due to guild / raid issues... lots of fails even on normal
Shannox HC
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/h...e/?s=658&e=936
LR HC
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/h...?s=2056&e=2388
Alys HC
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...?s=2417&e=3273
Domo HC - this is a single healer fight isn't it? I'm not atonement but I did dps anyways.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...?s=7853&e=8299
Raggy normal
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...?s=6637&e=7064
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...=10730&e=11126
So I suppose the question is, can this style of playing with very low spirit and more conservative healing but higher main stats match that of a standard build during an Heroic encounter or any encounter for that matter.
Throughput vs regen, and more controlled healing vs the ability to cast more. Two sides of the same coin which is better?