Downranking heals

I'm always trying to improve my game play, which mostly means becoming a better healer in World of Warcraft. As I have two priests now, one level 60 with lots of epics and one level 55 with a mix of green and blue items, I can compare the stats of the two. And surprisingly stats like intellect, and the resulting health and mana, of the two priests aren't significantly different. When I compare the bonuses from gear, the main difference is that with the epic gear I have a lot more bonus to healing, nearly 400.

Now when researching that a bit closer, it turns out that a healing bonus depends only on the casting time of a spell. Any healing spell that has a normal casting time of 3.5 seconds gets 100% of the bonus. A 1.5 second spell gets only 42% of the bonus. Gear and talents that shorten the casting time do not reduce the bonus. And surprisingly casting a lower rank spell does not reduce the healing bonus either.

Thus in the last raid I used Heal (Rank 4) a lot. With my bonuses it heals about 1250 points, as much as my highest rank Flash Heal (Rank 7). But the mana cost is much lower. With heal I get just over 6 points of healing per mana, while Flash Heal only gives me 3.5 points of healing per mana. Due to my gear Flash Heal has a casting time of 1.4 seconds, and Heal one of 2.5 seconds. So Heal is noticeably slower, and when the damage is coming faster, I need to switch to another spell. But for most of the raid using the lower rank Heal spell was fast enough, and made my mana last a lot longer. I'm also using the highest ranks of Flash Heal and Greater Heal sometimes, when the situation requires it. But for now the downranked healing spell has become my main healing tool.