(Priest) Healing 101 ... aka Why I Hate Flash Heal

Servers are down, I can't sleep, and I'm twitchy about priests whouse spells that empty their mana, so here's Healing 101.

Spells and how much health you get for each mana point spent
Keep in mind this is based on my +heal.

Circle of Healing -- 405 mana -- Instant
Heals 5 people for about 1k each
1 trg = 2.47 HP gained / mana point spent
2 trg = 4.94 HP
3 trg = 7.41 HP
4 trg = 9.88 HP
5 trg = 12.35 HP
4 trg + 1 crit - 13.58 HP (plus the lovable armor buff)
2 trg + 3 crit - 16.05 HP (rare, but adds up considering how often I use CoH)

Flash Heal -- 470 mana -- 1.5s Cast
Hits one person for 2.5k ====> 5.32 HP

Greater Heal -- 701 mana -- 2.5s Cast
Hits one person for about 5k ====> 7.13 HP, [ 11.63 HP on crit ]

Renew -- 405 mana --Instant Cast
Heals for 3.5k over 15s (700 a tick) ====> 8.64 HP

Prayer of Healing -- 1255 mana -- 3s Cast
Heals each person in your area for 2k - 3.5k ====> 7.97 - 13.94 HP

Power Word: Shield -- 540 mana -- Instant Cast, 4s cooldown
Absorbs 1265 damage ====> 2.34 HP

How many times can you cast on a full bar, and total amount healed
My mana bar unbuffed is around 10k. Assuming Global Cooldown is 1.7 seconds and pushing aside mana regen and procs/crits of any kind, I'd be able to cast:

Circle of Healing -- 24 times in 41 seconds for a total of 120k (24k per person)
Flash Heal --------- 21 times in 67 seconds, 52,500
Greater Heal ------- 14 times in 58 seconds, 70,000
Renew (diff trgs) -- 24 times in 41 seconds, 84,000
Renew (one trg) ---- 24 times in 400 seconds, 84,000
Prayer of Healing --- 8 times in 37 seconds, 80,000~140,000
Power Word: Shield - 18 times in 102.6, absorb 22,770 damage

From this alone it's obvious Flash Heal is not the way to go.
Flash Heal = 3.2s (cast + GCD) for 2,500
Renew = 1.7s for 3,500
Greater Heal = 3.7s for 5,000

If they're solid, you can keep em up with Renew. Instant cast, plenty of time to regen.
If they're decent, they can afford to take another hit to make full use of a Greater Heal and you have more non-casting time to regen.
If they're squishy, spamming Greater Heal lets them take 17,500 more damage.
If they're suicidally squishy you'd better start timing pots/Shadowfiend/Inner Focus early and pray for the best.
If they aren't stiff enough for your to cast a heal at them, you'd have better luck finding another group.

In Event of Emergency ...
In times of desperation I use something like: Renew > Bubble > Prayer of Mending > Greater Heal. If there was AoE damage while I was doing that, I finish with a Prayer of Healing instead of gHeal. Let's compare numbers. Renew + Bubble + PoM = 5.1s, 1335 mana, 2.1k healed from renew, 1265 from bubble and 1k heal from PoM if bubble drops.

Panic Casts + Greater Heal = 7.6s casting, 2036 mana used, 9365 healed.
Same amount with only Flash Heal would take about 12.8s, 1880 mana.

Panic Casts + Prayer of Healing = 8.1s casting, 2590 mana used, 5665 healed to one person, and 2k*4 to your group
3 Flash Heals on the single target +1 more to everyone else brings to total to 22.4s, 3290 mana.

>>> Conclusion -- Single target spamming you'd take twice as long as someone who actually knows how to use their skills and your tank is probably dead. Trying to catch up with group damage one by one, you'll probably lose one or two people and use 50% more mana. It would make you a lazy button spammer with a tiny mana pool. Go reroll a healadin.

Now ...
If you see a priest constantly using Flash Heal, smack em. They could've healed that same 52k with 10 Greater Heals and still had almost 3k mana to bubble/heal you.
If they're using Flash Heals "just for the lil trash pulls", smack em for needless drinking.
If they're using it to push a pally's heals into overheal and dominate the heal meters and there's no danger of OOM wipes, give them a pat on the back.

lol