"...it matters where the paladin is..."

There are a lot of strange assumptions in this thread.

Our goal is for paladins to be able to raid heal. Don't look at the designs for spells that none of you have even been able to try and conclude those mechanics can't possibly allow you to raid heal and therefore our goal can't possibly be met and will therefore be abandoned. It's fine to raise concerns -- that's one of the reasons we announce stuff like this early -- but some of you are trying to get a spell buffed that you haven't even cast yet.

I will say our vision for the AE spell though is not that the paladin runs around constantly, but that you position yourself where you can do the most good. Sometimes that will be back with the healers. Sometimes that might be in the melee. Sometimes you'll have to spread out and your group healing won't be as efficient (in the same way a shaman's group healing isn't as good in the same scenario).

Tranquility is on a very long cooldown. It is not the way druids AE heal. We want to shift it from 5-person group to raid because we'd like to do that with every spell. Having to organize players by arbitrary group is a strange concept since it doesn't actually manifest itself in the real world (in the way distance from you on the battlefield does).

We aren't going to give paladins anything resembling Circle of Healing. One (or two) of those spells in the game is plenty.

Spirit will be a good stat to stack but only to a point. Once you can heal say a six minute boss fight without going out of mana, then any additional Spirit is pretty much wasted. At that point stats like crit start to look pretty attractive because they increase your spell's throughput without increasing the mana cost. Maybe you'll be able to heal someone with one cast, allowing you to swap over and heal another player. In today's healing environment, where a lot of that excess healing will be wasted overhealing, getting a huge crit on a spell isn't nearly as valuable.

We'll have to see how raid healing goes. We might be okay with the tendency for groups to still assign paladins to tank healing because they are particularly good at it. What we want to avoid are those cases where a group feels like they can't possibly keep tanks alive because they lack a paladin or they can't possibly keep groups alive because they have too many paladins.

Q u o t e:
Does this mean there will be changes made to Prayer of Healing?

We'd like to change PoH too. The challenge there is making it not feel like CoH.

Q u o t e:
You seem to be operating under contradictory premises here, GC. On one hand, you're saying "mana will matter for healers in Cataclysm." On the other, you're saying "Players will only want Spirit to a certain point." Players will want spirit until mana becomes trivial, which would violate that first premise. Even if a player has just enough to heal that six minute fight, more spirit will allow a higher HPS because it will allow the use of more spells that are inefficient. While you can argue "crit increases HPS too," more spirit increases HPS in a way that's completely controllable by the player.

Yes, I agree that having high mana regeneration will allow you to use inefficient spells more often. I was reacting against some of the player saying they would just stack Spirit and nothing else because Spirit also allows you to cast big heals or fast heals more often. A hasted Flash of Light is still going to be pretty good in many situations, as is a Flash of Light that crits for a big amount. The numbers should be such that all stats are valuable, not that the guides say "Stack Spirit and all other stats are garbage."

Q u o t e:
Just to clarify: We may be perfectly effectual and good at either raid or tank healing, but the PERCEPTION is what is important here. Perception of a class does matter. And if everyone perceives Paladin healers as being technically weaker than all other healers, it's going to be tough justifying using them in raids.

I agree that perception is a big deal. As I said in another thread recently, WoW players just really hate the thought of another player telling them they're wrong (or even worse than that, the dreaded "sub optimally"). :)

Q u o t e:
Basically blizzard doesn't want Holy Paladins to have a clear cut position in a raid when it comes to healing but they don't want to give us the tools necessary to actually be interchangeable with druids/priests/shamans.

We never said this. In fact we pretty regularly try and encourage you not to challenge our goals on the basis of specific mechanics or spells. ("X is a bad spell for Y, therefore clearly Blizzard has given up on their notion that we can do Y.")

We are trying to further banish the notion that you need X to raid, where X is anything other than "a good player." If you were earning your raid spot because nobody else had the powers that your class had, I would try to improve your personal contribution or find another group.

Q u o t e:
1) If Paladins lose their current standing as OP tank healers then they need to be reliable raid healers
2) To be a reliable raid healer we need to be able to raid heal in multiple situations
3) HH is not set up in such a way as to allow Paladins to heal in multiple situations

I would say it thusly:

1) If Paladins lose their current standing as OP tank healers then they need to be reliable raid healers
2) To be a reliable raid healers, we need to be reliable raid healers.

I don't think your point 2 and 3 follow from point 1.

Q u o t e:
Unless one of the Holy talents is 'you can now cast HH on any target <or on your beacon target> and increases the range by 10/20 yards and the healing done by 5/10%' then HH is just a hindrance for holy paladins.

Cast times, ranges and mana costs are technically a hindrance too, but healers seem to do okay anyway.

Again, it's fine to raise concerns. It's a bit premature to pronounce a spell dead on arrival, let alone an entire goal (specifically that paladins can raid heal better).

Q u o t e:
You should quote the whole entry GC -- if you read the 3 points and the rest of the entry, then it makes sense.

I did. I just don't buy the argument that if there are any limitations on the spell that it's therefore underpowered and likely useless.