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Lesser Healing Wave is 60% of the cost of Healing Wave but only heals for half as much. And that's just base. Being the slower, stronger, and more costly spell, Healing Wave gets more bang for every point of spell power and every talent point in the Resto tree. Healing Way alone cancels out the LHW glyph and then some.
It doesn't matter whether or not your mana pool can support it. That's not the issue. It's still just not worth using over Healing Wave in most cases.
Unless you just enjoy being inefficient.
With the 20% glyph it has a place in the ******** and any shaman who doesn't think so doesn't know their class every well.
With my current set up, including crit calculations and healing way procs, the rotation: RT/LHW/LHW heals for an average of 19,694 which comes to 12.12 hpm.
It gives me 4900 heals per second, uses 2022 mana per five seconds and I can spam it non-stop for 49 seconds until OOM.
RT/HW/HW heals for 28,531, 12.28 healing per mana, 6628 heals a second, and consumes 2698 mana per 5 seconds. All seem better until you get to the fact that I can only spam that non-stop for 36 seconds until I'm OOM.
In a longer fight where I need to heal less for longer, using LHW makes sense.
Healing Wave without tidal waves proc, with AA is going to heal an average of 10,703, for 12.27 heal per mana.
Lesser Healing Wave with AA and ES is going to heal an average of 6,285, for 12.02 heal per mana. And is going to land in 1.34 seconds for me, instead of 2.23 for HW.
There are numerous times where I need to toss a fast heal on a tank and riptide is on cool down. In those cases, LHW is the ONLY correct choice. It is fastest, most efficient heal for those cases.