Arena questions - healing

Okay so I'm a tank. I love tanking. I can heal when need be and have a pretty decent heal set (+1100, 15% crit, 140ish regen). my mana pool is a little small around 8k in that set

Here's my question. Our 5v5 arena team is just for fun. We don't really care about rankings and I get my 3 games in each week and get my points. We're planning on breaking up the 5v5 into two teams, one of people who don't care about ratings and one of people who do. I've been considering respec'ing to holy for healing but last night REALLY got me down. Normally we just have fun but I think we all got bummed last night.

We lost all of our matches but 2. Admittedly we were up against a few really good teams and we faced the same team about 4 times in a row but explain something to me.

How is it, even with a pvp holy tree, that a pally can even hope to heal in 5v5? Our heals are too long to cast, and we don't have any group healing or HoT at all. We had two pallies last night healing. Myself and one who is the alt of our other guild tank who *IS* spec'd holy. She assured me that if I had the points in Holy that with my gear I could have done very well but I just don't see it. I would consider it a waste to even pay the respec fee.

In one case one of our mages went down in 5 seconds. Even with both of us casting max rank HL at the same time and no interrupts. I think both of our heals landed and he was dead. I just can't wrap my head around how it's even remotely possible for a holy spec'd paladin to be any use in Arena. Yeah we got plate. Yeah we get uninterruptable heals but it just didn't seem to do any good last night.

I'll admit that ALL of us are way undergeared when it comes to resilience and I'm quite sure that would have helped quite a bit. Our GM is pretty hardcore on the PvP and she's the best hunter around. She's probably the best geared of all of us (a few peices of S2 gear).

I guess I'm just frustrated in that I couldn't see any value I could bring even if I respec'd. Maybe I should work on buying the S1 trying it while respec'd but it just sucked all around.
_________________

Some people call me crazy but I like to think of myself as a freelance lunatic.
Ann Coulter is a Cylon

if your mage went down in 5 seconds...is he NOT frost? cuz...i arena on my mage a whole bunch...and iceblock = win.
i just respecced fire this week though, so we'll have to see how badly i get raped! XD
_________________

Pally healers are ridiculously good in arena. I pay the requisite 100g per week + spell costs for the respec simply because I have more fun in arena as holy instead of prot.

While my 3v3 team probably wouldn't last long against the better teams, we fare pretty well against the average teams (won all but one match this week). Resto druids are hghly irritating in arena until you realise that you can spellsteal their HoTs (even lifebloom). In general, keep imp conc. aura up for the uninterruptable heals + silence resist and make sure you have lights grace going at all times. Macro an "Oh Shit" (DF+DI+HL/HS) for instances when u need a crit heal (holy shock for those times u need an instant heal as a buffer before u get your crit heal on).

Basically, it's all well and good to arena as prot but realistically speaking I feel that I would contribute to the team better as holy. YMMV though.
_________________

Short answer. 5v5 is a team game. It is your job to keep them alive and it is their job to make sure you are able to heal. If the mage dies before you can heal him, bop him, or he can even iceblock then something is wrong. Its not a class issue but a team/player issue.
_________________
Lansky BE Paladin Mannoroth
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mannoroth&n=Lansky