Divine Spirit vs. Circle of Healing

So I am still rejoicing over the possibility of having 30% mana regen inside of the FSR. (35% with the primal mooncloth bonus. It'll be very interesting to see if they nerf it and make it not stack with Meditation....then I can get out of these ugly ass robes someday.)

However, it still highlights one of the biggest errors that Blizzard has done. It regards the duel-healing trees. Every other class can afford to be a healer sitting at 0/0/61 in their resto tree. We priests are forced into going at least 14 in Disc for Meditation (especially now) and Inner Focus, and at least 18 into Holy for 15% mana reduction on Greater Heal. Most priests even consider 10% increase to healing essential as well, which means 30 points in the Holy tree. I know that I do.

So lets see. 14 points in disc, 30 points in holy. No big deal, right? You can go 14/47/0, and that gives you plenty of room for change. Or if you wanted to go higher in disc, you could go 31/30/0 and get power infusion. And if you really don't care about the 10% healing, 42/19/0 isn't a bad spec, especially for PVP and the changes to Pain Suppression.

All of this would be true, except for one thing. The 21 point talent in the disc tree. Divine Spirit.

Most non-priests don't know that this buff is a talent. Like the paladin Blessing of Sanctuary, it requires 21 points in a non-healing tree.

So wait, I don't hear paladins complaining. This is because the order of blessing preference for a tank goes something like this: Kings, Light (assuming pally healer), Might, Sanctuary. How often do you have 4 paladins in the raid? Sanctuary isn't really an essential buff. Divine Spirit is huge.

It gives 50 spirit. 50 spirit means the following to a priest:
1. 31.25 mana per 5 outside of the FSR.
2. 4.68 mp5 inside of the FSR. (6.25 if you have 3 pieces of Primal Mooncloth)

Now since I'm a human priest with Spirit of Redemption, I get 15% increase to my spirit.

58 spirit means 40.6 MP5 outside of the FSR, and 8.125 MP5 for me with 3 pieces of primal mooncloth.

Since I average 60% of my time in the FSR, Divine Spirit gives me an average of 21.1 mp5. This isn't quite Blessing of Wisdom quality, but it's still great.

Plus, as a priest I get 20% of my spirit converted to damage and healing. That's another 13 damage and healing.

So now you look at the numbers and you say, that's really not a huge deal, is it?

But remember that this is a raid buff. Every druid, every shaman, every paladin, every mage, every warlock, every hunter gets this buff. I don't care if you don't itemize for spirit. If you aren't casting for 5 seconds, you're getting some mana back from your spirit. This is an enormous buff for healers, since spirit is a primary stat of theirs.

So that's the 21st point talent.....but that's not all! Then you can spend an additional 2 points to make the buff increase everyone's damage and healing by 10% of their spirit. Again, for druids and priests, that's another 100-150 +damage and healing. For a mage/warlock, sure it's only 15-20 +damage, but who says no to that? It's huge for tanking paladins, who get threat based on their +damage.

So this is why most healing priests are 23/38/0. I'd love to afford some extra points in the holy tree for Circle of Healing, 2 more points in Empowered Healing, maybe even Lightwell. But until Blizzard realizes that Divine Spirit is monopolizing our talent specs, things need to change.

The problem is, with the change to Meditation, Divine Spirit is actually buffed. Spirit gives us even more mana regen now.

I hope that Blizzard wakes up and realizes that Divine Spirit should be given to all priests, much like Innervate was given to all druids. It's an enormous buff that we can't go without, and it should not corner us into a given spec.