I got on the PTR a few builds ago and played a bit with heals right there at the trainer. I just wanted to see what the new stuff felt like and get an idea for how things compared, at that point, to live. One of the things I noticed, and this may have changed by now (I've not seen any discussion on it) is that the mastery boost of adding a hot to your direct healing spells, was applied with renew. I assumed it was because of the initial application from Divine Touch. And it lasted for as long as renew was on the target.

Now while I will readily admit it could have been a glitch in the build, it might be that with Divine Touch, the initial burst markes Renew as a direct heal and this will go forward. In which case, more free heals which are a good thing.

Along this line of thinking, though. I've never really worried about it until now (and it's not the kind of thing you can test on yourself) but is Prayer of Mending considered a HoT or an AoE? I'm pretty sure it's not considered a direct heal, but what IS its classification in regards to all these assorted boosts?

I agree that there's not a lot of places to put the points from divine touch. As I see it, lightwell is going to be required (imagine that), but there's a little wiggle room between divine touch, serendipity, body and soul, and spirit of redemption. Personally, I'm not a big fan of improved death, but I *am* a big fan of body and soul. Serendipity is one of those "wait-and-see" things. On the beta, I'm not getting a high enough proc rate from Surge of Light to feed serendipity just from procced flashes, so while I like the talent in theory (topping off a tank with flash-flash-gheal has some elegance) I'm worried about the overall mana cost in practice.