So, I'm pretty new to healing 10 mans for my guild, because I used to run my hunter in raid until we became shorthanded on healers. Luckily I've got a pretty pro team of carry healers, and I serve as the dps switch - Holy MS, shadow on offspec.
Now, I'm pretty familiar with spell priority, how to maximize my efficiency, etc. I've worked out all the spell synergies: how to best conserve mana while spiking single target heals, how to raise my aoe throughput without being wasteful, etc. I think I have the basics down.
My healing team consists of a resto druid (on tanks) a resto shaman (on raid, buffed significantly now - but he was good even before the buff!) and myself on raid as well.
I know that it's better to be in chakra: sanctuary, if the situation is appropriate. By this: if my PoH's will overheal less than 20% in the immediate future, chakra:sanctuary gives me my best HPS and HPM. That is, if I know lots of aoe damage is incoming I switch to Sanctuary. Maintain an active mending, PoH spam with Circle on CD, sparing renews for raid evening, bind to trigger serendipity when I need to spike. PoH and CoH though lose their edge on Heal when Prayer will only land on 3 targets (sans overhealing).
So this is when I want to be in Chakra: Serenity. OFC Serenity chakra has abysmal throughput, and the more you wish to ramp it up the worse mana efficiency becomes. HW:S on cooldown, Renews only on tanks or kiters (8 ticks or more/refreshing once makes it worth it) as each one you can maintain is a free 1+k hps. But other than this efficiency is horrible for any kind of sustained throughput: the only moment when it becomes ALMOST acceptable to use Serendipity for healing spikes is under the HW:S crit buff.
Please tell me if my reasoning is solid here.
Anyway, my real struggle is to anticipate when it's appropriate for which chakra, and arrive there in advance. I often find myself in wrong chakra right as cho'gall begins his furious roar, and mending has only 2 charges left (oops ). In this situation I have to switch chakra quickly and spike to keep up. Wasted mana is bad
I'm hoping we can develop a list of triggers (hints) for when heavy AoE is inbound.
Things I know:
Magmaw: Mostly single target damage to raid, not enough AoE for Sanc to be effective until Lava Spew. Is there a hint as to when this is coming?
Omni: If magmatron is up, C:Sanc for sure. If electron is up without magma, and my group has good mechanics there isn't enough AoE for C:Sanc
Malo: Pretty easy. C:Serenity for blue/green phase, and enrage phase. C:Sanc for red. This one I think I have down.
Chimaeron: Feud should be PRECEDED by a HW:Sanc, so I need to be in chakra early. But how can I tell whether an inbound massacre is about to trigger feud? Or do the rest of you just wait until the bot goes offline? I need to be in C:Serenity until the feud.
Atrem: Since this is mostly a mechanics fight with mostly avoidable single target damage, I stay in Serenity. We're solid on atrem.
Bot: ermmmm, I'll edit these in soon but please feel free to enlighten me ><
So now, I'm ready to be told how wrong I am on all of these counts. My hps is unreliable, sometimes at the top of the list and sometimes way below par. So obviously i'm doing something wrong.
Armory:
us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackrock/zakaluka/simple
Right now I feel mana limited too often, so Spirit is my secondary stat focus. Probably at this ilvl as I get better at using my mana I should start re-emphasizing haste. But until I feel comfortable with my manapool, Spirit will be my top priority.