Originally Posted by
tibbee
If you are comfortable with your regen, sure you have the option of reducing the amount of Spirit that you have. However, you also have the option of rectifying the situation by
(1) Using a higher HPS spell selection and be more aggressive. Until you are at the point where you can pretty much spam Chain Heal and/or Greater Healing Wave (possibly healing Surge, but that is completely unrealistic) in between Healing Rain/Healing Stream Totem cooldowns, you can make use of more regen. In most cases, keeping the regen and using more spells and more effective spells does more for HPS than dropping Spirit and making the spells you cast hit harder (because of the typical profile of overhealing, etc).
(2) Extra mana is not the end of the world. Fights aren't 100% predictable whether during progression or on farm, and "normally" having 20% mana at the end of a fight can quickly turn to being OOM during the burn phase if things go sideways. There is value in being able to prevent wipes and having a reasonable reserve
(3) Factor in the effect of Mana Tide on the other healers in your raid. If stacking Spirit is at all close in terms of throughput to dropping it for INT (and I contend it is better most of the time), you should stack it past the point where other healing specs drop it. The amount of Spirit you have effects the amount of MTT regen for all of your healers, and especially in a 25 man raid, the extra regen and throughput it brings given to 5-7 healers will normally outweigh any personal throughput increases you could achieve by dropping Spirit.