I leveled my priest IDS, but was recently asked to respec CoH. I have to say, I really like it (maybe it is just something different) and it has been good, I think, for the raid as a whole (We are 3/4 TK and 6/6 SSC and planning our first forays into MH soon as we work to get Kael down.)
Here is
my character sheet:
For the last few weeks I have been playing with the different talents I could take. (5/5 Silent resolve was at the request of my class leader... I was 2/5 when IDS. And while 5/5 still isn't going to help against healing aggro on untanked/cc'd adds, it often *does* mean that the mob might just go after a different healer.... maybe someone with a shield and bubble).
IMO, Silent Resolve is mostly useless. The vast majority of the time, threat is either a complete non-issue (because all mobs are tanked or CCed) or it is completely unavoidable (because something isn't tanked or CCed). Your assessment is correct, in that all it really does is mean that the mob will generally go for another healer, probably another Priest who doesn't have it, or a Shaman who has no threat reduction. Really, this is fairly ideal, because you should have a fair amount of range from the mobs, giving you plenty of time to be aware, and react, possibly get intervened or the mob get taunted, and if worse comes to worse, you can always fade.
The other option is Improved Power Word: Shield. Granted, that's not enormously useful either, but IMO, since threat is seldom a problem, and when it is, it's fairly easily managed, I think even a talent of limited usefulness is superior.
That said, I DO think it's useful sometimes. If you're literally spamming CoH, like can happen in fights like Void Reaver, Anetheron, Naj'entus, etc. threat can start to be a limiting factor. However, IME, a reasonably skilled tank that is nearly equivalently geared can still out-threat me even when I'm really pushing max hps.
On a side note, I was confused that you kept saying 2/5 in Silent Resolve and I noticed that you don't have Inner Focus. This talent is ENORMOUSLY useful. I've mentioned in other threads how to chain it with Holy Concentration and a Spirit trinket like the Earring of Soulful Meditation for maintaining your hps WHILE getting massive amounts of mana regen.
That said, I'd generally recommend 1/5 in Silent Resolve, 3/3 in IPW:S and 1/1 in Inner Focus. If you do find that you're pulling threat off the MT (which really shouldn't happen), then start moving points from IPW:S to Silent Resolve, but only as many as you need. Either way, I've never gone about 4/5 in Silent Resolve, even for very threat sensitive runs (like 2-man healing Bear-mount attempts in ZA) because Inner Focus is just that good.
For *most* fights I am obviously used as a raid healer, and our groups are generally designed both to maximize synergy and to allow for CoH to be useful, though it is, obviously situationally OP and situationally useless. I am obviously asked to tank heal on some fights (as an example, I am generally the healer with the A'lar add group - four melee dps and a tank, all in the same group.... CoH with renew +PoM always on the tank is great for that, switching to GH3/7 once the melee back out so the tank can kill it.)) I recently dropped inspiration to max out holy spec since it seems like CoH spam targets benefit more from the 300 or so extra healing on crit than from the armor bonus of inspiration. After all, it is *usually* magical damage that hits the raid, not physical. Since we have an abundance of boomkins, I get one more often than not, bringing my crit chance to close to 20% raid buffed. TBH, for sheer healing throughput I'd just as soon have a boomkin as a spriest, though I often have both or a resto shammy for mana tide just because we generally have two spriests and three shammies in the raid.
I have to say I disagree with dropping Inspiration. Granted, a lot of damage is magical damage, and as CoH you will be doing more raid healing than MT healing, but it's still a very useful talent. Whenever you DO end up throwing heals on the MT, it saves you, and all of the rest of your healers, mana. Further, Inspiration is the main reason for getting any points at all in Holy Specialization. Priests don't get mana regen, and more often than not, crits mean over-heals. Granted, with CoH, that's less likely, but a couple percent less in crits is hardly noticable, while the extra armor is always noticable.
When I go CoH, I end up with 3/5 Holy Specialization and 3/3 Inpsiration. If I were you, I'd trade 2 points from Holy Specialization and the 1 point in Spell Warding, which is really only useful for PVP or a few T6 fights and with several more points at that, for 3/3 Inpsiration. Otherwise, I completely agree with the rest of your Holy Tree.
It is perhaps important to know that we usually run with two priests (one IDS, one CoH), a tree, two pallies, and two shammies as our healing team.
FWIW, this is pretty much ideal for most situations, at least in T5 content.
So my question is: how vital, really, do you consider Inspiration on a CoH priest? Holy reach, seems essential to me on a CoH build, since if you are going to go CoH you might as well have it improved (rather like going DS without going IDS).... Would it really be better to have 2/5 Holy Spec and 3/3 Inspiration (or more likely I'd take one or two points from Holy Concentration and just pot more... maybe 4/5 Holy Spec and 1/3 Holy Con...)[/quote]
I think Holy Concentration and Inspiration are indispensible talents, and they should never be traded except for very special cases (like when you REALLY need Spell Warding). The most dispensible talent is Holy Specialization, but even that should be maxed out unless you need Holy Reach, and Holy Reach should only be considered IF you're CoH. If you drop points from Holy Concentration and pot more, if you run into a situation where you need more mana and you're already potting, it's hard to squeeze out extra mana. IMO, with the buff of meditation a few patches back, and the buff to spirit in 2.4, you should almost never need to pot, at least with optimal use of your abilities.
Instead of relying on pots set up your gear so you generally don't, so then you can make adjustments as needed. Do you need more HPS? Stack some more +Healing gear versus regen gear, uprank, and drop a few pots.
To put my whole response succinctly, here's what I'd recommend for a general purpose CoH build, and it's not a whole lot different from what you've already got:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?tal=5012300130500000000000233050032300150530051000000000000000000000
I hope that's helpful.