Holy… Pallys, Batman!

With the last round of changes to holy pally mechanics, overhealing became even better than before. However you must still choose a playstyle first to decide how you will gem/enchant.

A Flash of Light spec will need  about 575 haste rating (or more), a ton of crit and lots of spell power. Int is unimportant. You can beacon the MT, and sacred shield the OT, and spam FoL (HolyShock whenever its up for infusion) on the OT at all times and neither tank will ever die. Mana is not an issue. Even if the OT is at full health beacon heals the overhealing part onto the MT.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sVAzgr0sVz0tgdxZVcbx:IbTVMc

As you can see there is no benefit on using Holy Light, no glyph, no grace. Excellent for raids as you have 2 improved blessings. Wisdom > Kings for you on this spec.

A “Holy Light” (just to give it a name) spec needs about 500 haste,a bit of spell, lots of crit and lots of Int. Since INT provides with all 3, Int becomes a very good stat. The thing is from talents, and kings, and other buffs, your raid buffed Intellect will put you up to par on stats with another pally who hasn’t gemmed/enchanted for Int.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sVA0gM0sVu0tgdxZVcbx:dwTVMc

this is an example of a spec. The idea here is, if you are healing a single target: sacred shield and FoL spam, holy light every 8 seconds or so to keep the Light’s Grace buff up (This is why this playstyle is mana intensive). Kings > Wisdom for you on this spec. 10% of 32k mana is 3.2k mana, replenishment and divine plea will return a lot more mana. Save your avengers wrath for pesky moments when damage is going all around and you just hit divine plea.

to compare, Fol spec throws out 4k (8kcrits) heals every 1.1-1.2 secs. A Holy Light spec throws out 12k heals (20k crits) every 1.4-1.5s (average on 2.2k spell holy pallys with 550 haste). FoL pally can keep up 2 (up to 4) targets up with no problem, using divine favor+holy shock on emergencies (Hs crit + instant FoL) doesnt really have to worry about mana, can use divine illumination at 50%. the HL pally can keep up 6-8 targets alive, using Holy shock EVERY time its up (to increse HL crit), has to use (if horde arcane torrent first) divine plea as soon as he hits 70% mana, and divine illumination the second time he hits 70% mana, can have severe mana issues if he doesn’t micromanage his mana. Having a bigger mana pool eases up on that job.

Both pallys will over heal. Overhealing is not an important mechanic as it once was. Read Beacon of light tooltip if u dont believe me. The benefit of being able to overheal is that you can start casts and not do stopcasting. Pallys will always overheal, it is the way to counter heal mechanics against hot classes. When damage hits, a hot will tick and heal automatically (without need of response from a player) while you start casting your heal, no matter how fast you are you can’t beat it, so overhealing will always be present. Managing mana to allow to overheal while

keeping everyone alive

is the really important issue. It doesn’t matter if you were lowest overheals if you let someone die from trying to cast a heal that would just top off that person. Downranking was eliminated and this is now the case. Also fights now come with much more predictable damage, and more fast paced damage phases.

The best pally is the one that using a generic spec like:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sVA0gM0sVu0tgdxZVcbx:dwIVcM

can heal anything or in any style using ALL of his tools. (not just Fol, beacon, HoLight, and Holyshock). Managing mana and using hand of protection, freedom, sacrifice (bubble yourself first), dispels, moving around sacred shield, hand of salv, or even for those specced into it divine sacrifice (again bubble first) or aura mastery, makes a real holy pally. The utility a pally can bring is immense, but most just focus on just 1 or another spell. A holy pally can even taunt from afar and buy a few seconds for MT to recover (bubble), aoe stun undead, hammer of justice, they can even remove a debuff like impale (gormok first boss northrend beasts toc10)