Advanced Topics in Priest Play

[Xanthix]

Are you sure PW:S generaltes half aggro vs other heals?  It seems like throwing a shield on something regularly causes its attackers to switch to me, even in groups/situations where heavily healing doesn't usually shake anything loose.  Maybe shielding something reduces the shieldee's threat?

As for point 3, does PW:S get any benefit from the protected one's armor, dodge, parry, block, etc?  If not, then it's even less mana efficient than the raw numbers suggest, whenever the target isn't so debuffed that it's taking more than raw damage.
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It sounds like this information came from this WoW forum thread about healing and aggro. A priest has been doing lots of testing to determine actual aggro rates. She includes her testing methods as well.

Some of the conclusions regarding PW:S:
- PW:S generates half the aggro per point of damage prevented compared to heals
- PW:S does take armor into account
- PW:S does allow warriors to generate rage when being hit

Some of the other very interesting findings:
- Healing X HP generates about half the aggro of doing X damage
- Aggro does not decay over time
- Overhealing causes no additional threat, only actual healing done does
- Fade works by removing X threat, then returning it when it expires. It does not affect the threat of heals cast while Faded
- Healing someone does not necessarily cause aggro on all mobs

This last point is very interesting to me - supposedly healing person X will only cause aggro for mobs who have X on their hate list. So if a warrior is tanking 3 mobs and a rogue is tanking one, healing the rogue should only cause aggro with their mob, not the other three (assuming that the mobs were pulled seperately). Also, self-healing should only cause aggro for mobs that the priest has made himself known to (it, the mobs whose targets the priest has healed, and the mobs the priest has attacked).

This has some very interesting ramifications for priest play, and group play in general. Not all of the findings may be 100% correct, but I think it is a good start for testing.