Andronikus is Spike... how could you choose anyone else? ^.^

Thundering Blast is a beautiful animation, and I'm far from a min-maxer, therefore, lightning it is for me!

31/7/2 + 1 really, that final point has absolutely no impact on you no matter where you spend it That said, yeah... heal spec > DPS spec

I went DPS till 45 for the faster leveling, swapped to heals for the last 5 levels to really learn it. Since you don't use your heals the same way at 10 as you do at 25, or 35, or 40... it's not like you're losing out on experience with the healing style.

The general rule of thumb is 1% stronger per talent. As such, tier 1 lives up to this: Seeping darkness 3 points for 3% crit (i.e. 3 talent points, 3% more throughput) Haunting presence 6% presence 3% healing (3 talent points, 3% more throughput, and stronger pets for solo as icing on the cake) Fewer casts to keep yourself up means more casts can be dedicated to your tank/DPS. This needs to be lower tiered so that people can sub-spec in to it from madness/lightning. As it is, a 10% boost to your end-tier talent is pretty sweet. Can skip it short term, pick it up when you need to use filler points to get past a tier. Agree it's pretty awful, since Corr gets free consumptions. This is where you pick up Suffusion to move up the tree. 1% crit is 1% throughput, why are you so against it? It also increases your chance to get free consumption. This isn't wow where everyone is always topped off and a crit heal just means overheal. I'd also pick up empty body at this point to move up the tree.

I re-specced, went out without a spec and casted it. I then specced normally, re-casted it, and it ticked for the samea mount, just had 2 extra ticks. The talent is working correctly.

To make sub-trees more appealing (after capping), you need to have meaningful choices in trees other than your primary, that are still useful to said tree as well. For instance- shields in lightning. A healer drools over this talent, as it's amazing for them, so they're encouraged to go down that tree to pick it up. However, if they do, then they won't be able to pick up, say, Oppressing Force from Madness that would give them more utility within the group. Thus, it's an interesting choice. Force Lightning is the most "DoT"-y of the lightning spells. Since a DoT heavy class/spec still needs to have a filler (how boring would it be to cast 2-3 DoTs, wait for them to fade, and re-cast?), it makes perfect since to have Force Lightning as the filler for the DoT tree, as it does it's damage over time.

It was actually very nice to be able to turn it off to help my friend (lvl 12) through a flashpoint...

I'm personally a huge fan of dual specs. While I consider myself primarily a DPS in most games, 99% of the time I'm a tank or healer in parties with my friends/family. I like when it's easy to swap between my "off time" (DPS) and my "serious time" (support). Having to go respec each time my partner and I group up with our friends is a PITA. Basically, I'll still have a dual spec in the sense that I'll have two specs I swap between, but it will be much clunkier in this game then in say WoW.