Look! I'm going to do this all scientific like! Maybe if my thesis advisor runs across this, she will be proud instead of holding her head in her hands.

INTRODUCTION

Awhile back, Matticus did a little test in an effort to determine which bubble absorbs damage first, Power Word: Shield, or Divine Aegis. If I understand his methodology correctly, he essentially cast Power Word: Shield on himself as well as Divine Aegis, committed suicide by way of Molten Colossus, and examined his Combat Log to see which faded first. He tried this in various combos, proccing Divine Aegis first, and also using Power Word: Shield first. His conclusion was a "first come, first served" method. In other words, the bubble first cast/procced will be the first absorption used.

There was a comment on his post that suggested this might be inaccurate due to the way the combat log functions. I'm not really an expert on computery things, but I tend to agree with the commenter - when multiple effects occur at the same time (such as all your buffs fading when you die), the combat log has to have some order in which to list them that do not necessarily make any contextual sense. I.E. I'm not sure if this really determined which absorption works first, because everything drops off at the same time when you die, and is listed in a somewhat non-sensical way on the Combat Log. You can see this yourself if you ever note that your Combat Log may say you gained Spirit Tap before listing that you have slain a mob.

So I tried to test it too. I'm not as cool as Matt though, I didn't use Molten Colossi... I used various mobs around Icecrown while I did some dailies.

METHODOLOGY

I tested this by running around screaming wildly at mobs, standing around stoicly as they beat on me, helping them along with Shadow Word: Death, and tracking the results. Anytime Divine Aegis dissipated by timing out instead of by being fully absorbed, I threw out that result.

As a side note, self buffed, Shadow Word: Death is usually enough to make a Penance-procced Divine Aegis dissolve.

RESULTS

Both test versions were performed multiple times.

Test 1:

• Power Word: Shield first
• Divine Aegis second
• beat myself up (a la house elf)
• Divine Aegis dissolves via absorption
  
• Much much later, Power Word: Shield disappears

Test 2:

• Divine Aegis first
• Power Word: Shield second
• beat myself up (a la house elf)
• Divine Aegis dissolves via absorption (not by timing out)
• Much much later, Power Word: Shield disappears

CONCLUSIONS

Based on my not-really-very-scientific-either tests, it appears that in every scenario, Divine Aegis is used first for absorption.

However, I don't have any super fancy awesome addons that tell me how much absorption is left on each shield, so the alternative conclusion is that whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left is the one used first.

Ideally, this would be the best way for the absorption priority to work - the bubble with the least amount of absorption left gets used up first, thereby preventing it from being wasted.

DISCUSSION

The main reason I suspect this is NOT the case is due to the inability to cast a new Power Word: Shield on someone that is "less powerful" than the one they are currently wearing, even if the current remaining absorption value is lower. This is in response to a question I posted yesterday - if you've ever received the "a stronger spell is currently in effect" error message when trying to bubble someone, you have run into this scenario. When you cast your first bubble on them, your spellpower was higher via a proc, or buff, or something like that, and therefore your bubble bigger. When you go to cast another bubble on them before the current one has expired, but after weakened soul has fallen off, you are unable to do so because now your spellpower (and therefore your bubble) is lower. It doesn't matter if there is only 10 hit points worth of absorption left on your target - it uses the original value of the bubble to determine priority.

The system is not currently "smart" enough to recognize this, most likely because it doesn't do a very good job of tracking the remaining absorption value on a shield. Therefore, "whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left" is most likely NOT the first one used, because I don't think the system recognizes that.

Feel free to leave me your thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, and results of any tests you perform yourself in the comments. I may try this again with some better addons to validate the potential alternative conclusion. It's a bit tricky, because you have to be very careful with the timing.

I'm so excited! My first email request for aid! It was like a little christmas gift in my inbox, and I giddily unwrapped it, squealing the whole time.

Yes, yes, I'm a dork, shut it.

So! My first emailed question was from a holy priest who was looking for help with some problems she found herself having with mana regen. As someone a bit new to the whole raid healing thing, she sent me an email with the following request.

"I don't do much raiding, I'm mostly healing five-mans, but I decided to really go for it and respec for raid healing. I followed your suggested build but I have one huge problem: my MP5 is only 348 during a fight. I don't think my gear is terrible, but I enter ToC-10 and I find myself popping my mana pet before the impaler is down. Heck, even in a heroic I see my bar get hit hard (albeit I mostly see this with under-DPSing pugs). "

(For privacy reasons, I'm not revealing her name, but she reads this blog, so if she wants to step up and say hi in the comments, she's welcome to do so /wave!)

I took a look at her gear and her stats, and the 348 number seemed to come from in "while casting" mana regen, unbuffed. I let her know that there was some tweaking she could do with her gems and replace some items with a bit more crit and less haste, but aside from that, it didn't look like gear was the real problem here. 348 while casting is similar to what I have, unbuffed.

I wanted to pass along the following considerations I emailed to her, because I think a lot of Holy Priests struggle with mana regen in the beginning of their raiding career. People can look at your gear and stats and spec, and tell you to pile on more spirit or intellect, but that's not always the problem. So if you're having mana regen problems as a Holy Priest, and you can't find anything really wrong with your gear, consider the following:

• What sort of buffs are you running with? In a ten man scenario, it can be a lot trickier to get the right raid balance that will give you all the mana regen buffs you would ideally like to have. Because of this, I usually have far more mana problems in a 10 man than in a 25 man. In 10 mans, i have the flask of pure mojo and spicy fried herring for personal mana regen, but I also depend quite a bit on getting a blessing of wisdom or mana spring totem in there somewhere, and always, ALWAYS Replenishment (frost mage, shadow priest, ret pally, destro lock, or survival hunter). The raid makeup may be something that you have absolutely no control over, but take a look at what you've got in your raid mix. If you're running with a pretty steady group, and your buffs will likely always be the same, then you can make adjustments to your gems, enchants, and talents accordingly.

• What are the other healers doing? What is the healing makeup? are you running 2 healers or 3? If you're running with just 2, then you probably will run into more mana problems. If you are running with a pally, are you wasting your mana having to help on the tank too much? If there's a druid, are you spending a lot of mana trying to heal up targets that are hotted when you don't need to? I'm not fond of pointing fingers at other healers when there's a problem, but healing should be a team - if one person is running out of mana, then it's a good idea to talk about it with the other healers to see what changes can be made.

• What is your casting style? I can throw in a couple of pointers on mistakes I've made in the past that left me mana starved, and you can check to see if you are doing any of the following things.

1. Overusing Serendipity stacks - Everytime I see 3x Serendipity, i desperately want to use it properly. But the truth is, if you do this in a ten man you are going to go OOM pretty quick. Dont feel like you have to use it just because it's there. Use a Circle of Healing if you can, because it's cheaper and pretty powerful. You shouldn't need to use Greater Heal at all if you're on raid heals (except for Incinerate Flesh), especially if there's a third healer.


2. Are you catching all your surge of light procs? Unlike Serendipity, the proc for SoL is much shorter, so you have to be sure to use it faster - and you definitely want to use it since it's free! If you find that you're missing a lot of the procs, pick up an add-on like SurgeTrack.


3. Are you bubbling too much? For disc, you can never bubble too much, but for holy, our bubbles arent that great, and theyre kinda expensive too. In a 10 man, the only person I ever "pre-bubble" is the tank when he's pulling, and a feisty mage here and there - if you try to bubble too much, you will end up OOM.


4. How are your overheals? If you run with a druid, check their overheals as well with recount, because often the overheals credited to a druid are actually due to another healer healing over their hots. This is inevitable, and to a certain extent completely acceptable - but if someone has a HoT on them, and they are unlikely to be in any immediate damage, let the HoT do its job. Make sure if you are running with a tree that you have an addon that tracks who has HoTs on them. If you aren't running with druids, are you and another healer often going for the same target? There are addons that will let you know who the other healers are healing (Healbot will do this if multiple people use it), but sometimes you just need to watch them, or have better assignments, or communicate more, that sort of thing.
   

She responded to my email to give me a little update about how things are going, and she mentioned something that I wanted to address as well... but this post has already gone on long enough, so I'll save it for another day ;)