Okay, color me confused here.

You see, I'm a Discipline priest on my main, and have a Healadin alt. I find the concept of non-stacking bubbles a non-issue. Why? During boss encounters, when I throw my 25k+ Power Word: Shield on the tank, that bubble is generally gone quickly. Divine Aegis creates an absorb shield for 30% of my critical heals, and aside from some unusual encounters (ie: Smite-based crits on Phase 2 of Halfus), those shields are rarely larger then 10-15k.

Or to put it in another perspective, World of Logs now reports any Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis (or Illuminated Healing) terminating due to duration limit as an overheal value. On Halfus 10N this past week, I experienced 1.4% overheal with PW:S and 4.3% overheal with the stacking Divine Aegis this article is jealous about. A healadin in the same raid experienced 17.1% overheal with his Illuminated Healing. And while shields accounted for a combined total of 38.5% of my overall healing for that encounter, Illuminated Healing only accounted for 7.5% of the healadins.

Now, my guild does not have a paladin that regularly raids with us, so it's potentially possible that I may have tossed shields onto the tank the healadin was assigned to, and those shields took priority over the paladins. it would require more research then a quick glance at the log provides to determine.

However, the point I wish to make has already been described. That the shield does not stack is a relative non-issue; the non-stacking variant of the shield already overheals for more then from a similarly geared Discipline priest, while at the same time providing very little effective healing. Further heals on the target already extends the duration of the Illuminated Healing with whichever shield value would be higher. Being able to stack that to larger values would just increase the amount of overhealing the ability provides.

So I disagree with the fact that the Illuminated Healing shields don't stack is the source of Mastery's weak value to Holy Paladins. I believe the effect itself is just too weak when the other secondary stats provide a larger benefit in healing effectiveness. In fact, Crit Rating might provide a larger benefit for Mastery then Mastery Rating itself does, as a critical heal helps produce a larger Illumated Healing shield.

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