I just wanted to throw a few tips out there on raid healing from my perspective (paladin). A good part of healing is instinctively knowing where to heal, and even to pre-queue up heals at time (you develop this with practice), but that isn't the entire story. IMHO, there are a few tools and strategies which can help take you to the next level.

Mana conservation - I put this first as I really think it is the most important. Some of the fights we are doing now are very long, so conserving mana to last the duration is critical and stacking your gear with MP5 can really help. Progressive potting becomes quite important on the long fights; drink that first pot when your mana is down to 70%, don't wait until you are out. Over healing happens, but the goal really should be to minimize this, one huge tool being the Visual Heals mod which Gleja has also mentioned.

Macros and mouse-over healing - This really is the biggest secret to quick response. If you are clicking a target then moving your mouse to your bar and clicking heal, you lose valuable response time. I have updated the wiki with all of my paladin macros, but here are the most important ones, and they are easily adaptable to any healing class.

These 3 macros are bound to keys 2,3,4 for me. I mouse-over a target in my raid frames and just hit the 2, 3, or 4 key for flash heal, holy heal, or cleanse. The macros each do one of four things in this order:

1. casts on who you are moused-over if it is friendly (including group/party icons)
2. casts on your target if friendly
3. casts on the target of your target if friendly (nice for healing whoever has current mob/boss aggro)
4. casts on yourself

# showtooltip Flash of Light
/cast  Flash of Light;  Flash of Light;  Flash of Light;  Flash of Light;

# showtooltip Holy Light
/cast  Holy Light;  Holy Light;  Holy Light;  Holy Light;

# showtooltip Cleanse
/cast  Cleanse;  Cleanse;  Cleanse;  Cleanse;

Gear - for holy paladins, you want to focus on Intellect, MP5, Crit, and then healing in that order. IMHO, spirit has absolutely no value for paladins so avoid it. Good targets to reach as we head into ZA are 9500+ mana, 1600+ healing, 90+ mp5 while casting, and 15%+ holy crit. Even with the 60% illumination nerf several patches ago, crit still plays a major role in our healing and mana return. In my last guild I helped to shift the focus from crit to mp5; once you start stacking mp5 and get to the 90+ level while casting, your sustainability improves dramatically on long fights.

Buffs - for a paladin, I like to focus on MP5 and Intellect buffs, with healing being my 3rd priority. Lasting the duration and having enough mana are really key, so things like Superior Mana Oil, MP5 food, and the Elixir of Major Mageblood are huge.

Mods - there are a few mods which really help a raiding healer/paladin. You need a good raidframe for mouse-over healing, and it is critical that it shows debuffs so you can cleanse them quickly (I use sRaidFrames with oRA2).

The next very important mod is Visual Heals - this mod shows you how much of the targets health bar your heal will fill, and you can also see incoming heals from other healers (think mana conservation - you can cancel your heal if other heals are incoming).

For Paladins, I really encourage you to get Pallypower for buffing. This mod is great for keeping track of buffs for each class including timers, and when in a raid it really shines; anyone promoted in the raid can configure all paladin buffs in a grid format. This removes all of the confusion which often happens as classes make buff requests.

Other key raiding mods I use:
Omen - Multi-mob threatmeter. Helps you to anticipate who is about to pull aggro, so throw them a heal.
RatingBuster - Shows you the actual % that a rating gives you when looking at gear, and also shows the delta for relevant stats between your current gear that the one you clicked on.
Recount - Healing/Damage meters. This mod really is awesome and helps you keep track of where you fall. At the end of a successful raid, healing or dps are usually fairly close to each other in stats. If you are far behind the pack, use Recount to see what spells others are using and how often they use them.
DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) or others - these types of mods are hugely important so you know when a particular phase in a boss fight is about to happen.

Thank you! I was hoping you would write something like this.

Ok, through asking you and gleja about healing stuff and doing a lot of figuring out on my own, I've actually pretty much gotten to the above post before you posted it. Go me! *pats self on back*

That being said, I notice that I overheal a lot and the only time I EVER have mana problems is when I'm non-stop spaming Holy Light which is usually only in crisis-mode or real bad phases of certain boss fights. I can pretty much spam Flash of Light and never run out of mana. I need to get a healing counter to figure out what this means- I can't really tell if I'm being inefficient or if I just am sucking at healing and the other healers are picking up the slack or what.

Also, is there are way I can contribute to DPS? I mean, as Holy we sure don't do much, but over a 5-10 minute fight, even that is a contribution. I don't know how many times we've wiped on a boss with only 2-3% health left and I wondered to myself "I could have done 2% damage over 5 minutes".

Ok, through asking you and gleja about healing stuff and doing a lot of figuring out on my own, I've actually pretty much gotten to the above post before you posted it. Go me! *pats self on back*

That being said, I notice that I overheal a lot and the only time I EVER have mana problems is when I'm non-stop spaming Holy Light which is usually only in crisis-mode or real bad phases of certain boss fights. I can pretty much spam Flash of Light and never run out of mana. I need to get a healing counter to figure out what this means- I can't really tell if I'm being inefficient or if I just am sucking at healing and the other healers are picking up the slack or what.

Also, is there are way I can contribute to DPS? I mean, as Holy we sure don't do much, but over a 5-10 minute fight, even that is a contribution. I don't know how many times we've wiped on a boss with only 2-3% health left and I wondered to myself "I could have done 2% damage over 5 minutes".

VisualHeal, or Pitbull, will help alert you when you're about to overheal. SW Stats can give you a chart of Effective Healing, which will show you how much overheal you did.

But, if you don't run out of mana, your target doesn't die and the mob does die, overheal may not be the biggest concern in your life. Mana conservation is important, obviously. But only if you ever run out of mana.

Also, lol Pally DPS.

The only time I would say it's worthwhile to do dps is in a group with several healers who are doing fine on their own, AND the boss is undead or a demon. I was in exactly the situation that you describe on Illhoof the other night, and I was throwing holy shock & exorcise on him as long as no one was sacrificed. I was also trying to put the mana-regen judgement on him when I could for the hunter & lorks & Agnes, so that they could hopefully get some mana back.

Also right at the end of a lot of fights, you have time to throw hammer of wrath between heals. I think that's what it's called... but you know which hammer I mean. Not hammer of justice, the OTHER hammer. HAMMER OF WRAAAATH. I almost always throw it between heals once it comes up.

However, Gleja and Valmarriz were my cohealers that night, and they pretty much had Illhoof covered. When it's just two healers or someone who isn't specced to heal has to be grabbed to heal, I can't really do any dps without getting us killed due to lack of heals.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong because you run out of mana with holy light and not fol; fol is way more mana efficient. If you are using the top ranks of holy light, maybe try downgrading one for a middle heal? I am pretty much set up with keybindings exactly like Jorack, with cleanse, fol, middle rank heal, large rank heal, and it has worked very well so far.

Hey Jorack, do you have any advice on the fights that involve running around a lot, like Aran? Those are the toughest for me since we don't have any hots and when I'm running from blizzard, no one is getting heals from me. (My current solution, 'hope like hell Rastus or priests are there' is not exactly strategically sound.)

Over-healing is easily tracked with Recount as well, but I don't focus on it. Paladins do alot of over-healing, and much of it is attributed to our crit rates (15% base crit typically + 5% holy spells + 6% holy light) means your holy light has a crit rate of 26%, and if you start getting crit buffs, it gets even better. The over-healing I try to eliminate is two healers landing a heal on the same person, and one heal being completely wasted; for this Visual Heals really helps. Visual heals also shows you if you throw a holy light at a clothie with low stam, much may be wasted so you cancel the spell and use flash of light.

With regards to holy light spamming dropping your mana fast, there really isn't much you can do. Some fights need this. The best thing is to make sure you've got lots of mp5 and start to work on your intellect/mana pool. As we progress and pickup gear from ZA and the new heroic badges, this becomes quite feasible. The new gear is very comparable to the few pieces I have from beyond kara and my mana pool is nearly 11K unbuffed. If your +healing is sky-high, consider swapping some +heal/mp5 gems out for +Int/mp5. The dazzling talasite (+4 Int/2mp5) is my gem of choice on Jorack although I've been mixing it up on some pieces for my arena set. Remember that for a holy paladin, Intellect also gives you a bit of +healing. There are a couple of select arena pieces which are worthwhile too, but be careful as arena gear has no mp5. I am using the S2 gloves now as they give me 2% flash crit, and next week I get the S2 mace which I do sacrifice 8mp5 for, but it is going to add crazy stam, int, and healing (423 +healing, yikes).

As for dps, I only do it if nobody is taking damage and I'm bored, or if we are in the last 5% of a boss and the general mood is chaos. ;-) The new healing/spell damage is very nice, and critting holy shock or judging seal of righteousness actually has some value, but they do cost mana, add threat, and set off the global cooldown which means a delay for that next heal you might need. I avoid being in melee range as most BC bosses/mobs have some sort of aoe or melee damage. I usually buff myself with wisdom (49 mp5) and I can heal like mad without the need for salvation with most tanks. I might start drawing aggro if I am causing damage as well.

As for fights were we have to be mobile it can be tough; shade and nightbane are both good examples. I'll often switch to flash heals here and hope the other healers can help out with the bigger heals while I'm moving. If things are looking bad for the tank or a particular person then I bubble and get that big heal off before I run. This strategy is particularly important for Nightbane; when everyone is feared and the tank is going down, bubble is what can save the party so you get a heal off.

Healing really is a constant triage situation. For me, I concentrate on the tanks, then myself, then other healers, and then the rest of the raid. And admittedly I watch the damage meters so that the top dps'rs get my healing priority; keeping the top dps folks alive means the boss dies before I run out of mana. ;-) If the entire raid takes a big aoe hit, I bubble, heal the tank, heal myself, and then start raid healing. Don't save your bubble for that emergency that might not happen; start using it more so that you can delay heals to yourself and keep the tank alive.

No lie on that crit buff talk, when I have moonkin aura in my group I crit like a freaking BEAST. It's just crazy madness.

I definitely need to work on using bubble more than saving it. Saving it doesn't do me any good if I'm dead, and there are definitely some times when that's happened.

Also going to check my gems and see what I've got in the way of mp/5 gems. I know I've been preferring those over the +heal ones in general, but I may have a +heal enchant I can switch out for mp/5. We do suck it up like sponges.

Thanks again for all the advice!

O If things are looking bad for the tank or a particular person then I bubble and get that big heal off before I run. This strategy is particularly important for Nightbane; when everyone is feared and the tank is going down, bubble is what can save the party so you get a heal off.

I SAW that! You did that on Nightbane the other night and I remember thinking to myself that that was a really heads-up play.

I like learning new tricks, it makes me feel simultaneously smart and stupid.

Not that I really even freakin play anymore... but shaman healing is a lot like pally healing. You got big heals and you got not so big heals.

It's flipped around a bit for shamans though as our big heal is far more efficient than our little heals.

plus, cookie shield.