priest healing questions

The OP was asking about priests, I tried to answer.

I don't know about holy paladin so I won't continue trying to explain why they will never go to another raid with me again.
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Yeah I wouldn't get into too much grief about healing assignments. A loose arrangement is a much better thing than getting uptight over who heals what, if anything an tank healer who's forced to focus only on THAT tank (periods of extreme burst notwithstanding) is either wasting time not casting or one of them is undergeared.

While it's true assignments can skew numbers (FLK would have been an example, healing the Shaman tank vs healing FLK's tank from the start), I think the biggest difference comes from outgearing. Once the tanks and/or healers start outgearing the place, a tree is going to dominate meters and the others are going to have more overhealing, that's just the way it is.
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I might be able to help a bit on this subject. Along with my pally tank, I also spend a substatial amout of time in raids healing with my priest so I'm pretty familiar of how the mechanics work.

First off, a priest/druid combo is a great healing combo. We have plenty of trees in our guild and it is seldom that I step into a raid without at least one.

The thing about druids, when they are healing properly, will have very little overheal because thier hots stop healing when people are full health. Same thing goes for our renew, it just doesn't heal that much becuse druids hots usually keep raid members topped off. Stick to keeping renew on the tank and let the druids hot the rest of the raid.

Now, I've played disc since 3.0 came out so that is what most of my gear is oriented to. Event though I don't have spirit stacked like some other holy priests, I can spec over to holy and still not have mana problems in my disc gear while still having plenty of healing to go around. I'll focus on a holy rotation because its what the op was asking for.

The trick is to use your procs and make some fancy uses of the 5sr.

Holy priests have a talent called surge of light that sometimes gives them a free flash of light on spell crits. Usually one coh has a few crits in it and you normally get this proc every time you cast coh. So, whenever there is raid damage, hit a coh on the raid and then use your "free" flash of light on whoever needs it, then if its not horrid raid damage the druid hots can finish the healing on the raid and you can go back to spot healing or MT healing.

another thing to think about is getting out of the 5sr when you can. One easy way to do this is to use inner focus after a clearcasting proc. This is 2 "free" greater heals(or whatever spell you need) thats allow for your mana to continue to regen a a higher rate for a bit. Timed properly and you can gain 3-5k mana without losing out on much healing time.

Finally, priest healing(any spec) is about being able to utilize the large selection of spells at our disposal. Always keep POM bouncing around the raid(its a huge amount of healing on fights like sapphrion or maly when there is large amounts of healing going around). Using binding heal whenever you take damage is very mana efficient, and try to limit the use of pws except in emergency situations(disc priests pws is just so much better anyway, leave it to them). Even using desperate prayer when you have a chance will add 2-3% to your healing.

A priest will always have more overhealing than a druid because we have more direct heals, but a properly played holy priest will have about as much effective healing if the healers are doing thier jobs properly(not stealing heals, etc). As some of the other posters have said, don't take too much merit in the healing meters. Druids are often on top of them, but that doesnt mean they don't have weaknesses also(heal aggro...) Also, if you have ever seen a good disc priest in action, they are usually about 10-15% less healing than those same druid healers yet your whole raid is still alive in the end of the encounter and you tanks heart never had to skip a beat the whole fight.

glad for all the posts as i barely know more than the basics of the healing classes. i'll be running a wws tomorrow when we raid naxx and post it here so you can get a better idea of what's going down.
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Beacon is awesome as long as
Amount healed on target >= (Beacon damage taken/casting time).

It's not math. I am just bored to write sentences today. It gives more security when you help healing damaged players. You still need to go back to single target.
While raid healing (10 man) it's less useful as target are switching over and over. Just like in war, you don't choose who will take the bullets.
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beacon is situationally OP. it's not for every fight. A holy paladin isn't any "less" a holy paladin because beacon isn't used... If one target is taking damage, they should heal that target - paladins can put out the most healing consistently chugging out holy lights on one or two (with beacon) targets, but that doesn't mean they should be sniping raid heals.

While a paladin *can* keep the tank up by flashing the raid, it's not the safest practice (beacon wears off, target healed isn't in range of the "aura" beacon puts out, target is overhealed) in progression content. Right now, due to the simplicity of the content, healers have gotten hella relaxed...a mantra repeated over and over on EJ is "just because you CAN doesn't mean (come ulduar etc) that it's the best" - people arguing "i can keep up the tank with just flash of light! why are you guys spamming holy light" with no numbers = me spamming the report button >_<

anywho about the priest...work on communicating assignments better and advise them to work on their mana regen ^_^
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Do you all lack any common sense whatsoever?

You all seem to be arguing from the utter ludicrous assumption that I've claimed that I keep the tank up with only bacon and nothing but bacon.

The concept isn't very hard

Step 1) Set up your UI so you can properly keep track of the duration and range of beacon, through for example grid.

Step 2) If the tank is on high health and raid member is on low health and raid member is in range of tank then heal raid member instead of tank.

In the end beacon will be roughly 20-30% of your total healing.