Hello there Pious Parishioners, Is the 41 point Holy Talent all that good? I feel like a 41 point talent should heal a lot more than 250-274 damage, even if it is aoe. If I am missing something blatant let me know.
It's useful for high end raiding where there's alot of AoE damage, factoring in your bonus healing by that point it will often heal for ~1000 per target with independent chance to crit so it's not entirely bereft of utility.
From what I've seen from the Alpha notes for WotLK and if we choose to accept they'll end up in the actual game as they currently stand both CoH and Holy Nova are getting a big boost to their healing power, although a cooldown is being introduced for CoH.
The thing you're missing is that there are multiple ranks of Circle of Healing. The level 70 version heals for considerably more, particularly factoring in its +healing coefficient, which is better than you might think.
CoH is very useful in certain raid encounters. Although I prefer the overall utility of 23/38, I will not deny that CoH makes for some very nice numbers in some fights.
You know how prayer of healing just seems to jump us to somewhere high up aggro lists? In a way its nice that CoH is a small-ish heal, otherwise if we spammed it, it'd only cause aggro problems. As CoH is, its the perfect heal for some situations, so it really depends what content you're playing.
Ive noticed it really kicks off in 25 man raids. You might never use it in 5 and 10mans though, but the improved +healing might still be worth taking this tree.
I really like imp ds for 5 mans, either way priests are really good for heroics.
And yah, you def want to have at least one CoH healer before you pick up a imp ds priest for 25 mans, its really really good.
At one time I had an oddball spec which included both holy nova and COH. Holy nova is fun for AOE mobs, especially if you are the only one who has AOE. GO GO priest FTW. COH is great. I use it all the time for AOE damage. Several 70 instances give you the opportunity to use it.