G, that was fun! lol

If they change COH, this will be the 6th 'restyle' of how priests heal in raids

1. 40 man MC days - Priests had a heal rotation,  when you went LoM another priest stepped in and began healing while you let your spirit regen you.  Druids had to spec to innervate, innervate CD's were popped when healing got tough for certain periods of time. Pallies kept up the raid.

2. Shadow priests were discovered.  I was told to spec shadow for 5 mans and run with a druid.  I kept the majority of healing up on a 5 man while the druid would stop Dps from time to time a pop off a heal if things got tricky

3. Hybird healing increased because of lack of healers.  Other healing classes get situational spells that push the role of the primary healer in game to secondary.  Pallies, master of fast heal, druids master of hots.  Priests role in a raid was to preload big slow heals and stop casting when they were not needed.  Because of the other casters in raid, the actual landing time for these big heals to be needed was only during these 'high burst damage' to the tank in boss fights.  G heal was constantly beaten by multiple druid hots and a couple plaiie heals on the tank.  Lets say tank suddendly dropped 7k health from a crushing blow - priest g heal was loading and at 30% ready to cast - in the next two seconds hots would tick from a couple druids and 2 pallies on 'raid heal' would flash him.  Now the tank is at -2k health by the time the gheal goes off.    This reduced h priests on the meters to at best middle of the pack unless they overhealed constantly, forcing them to pot pot feind (which bliz says 'not as intended') - This method of priest utilization caused priests to start losing raid spots because they did not appear as efficient 'on the meters'

4. Late game content finally brought priests back in the raid with CoH. Once again making them seem valuable because of the huge amount of AoE damage in some Boss fights and in lots of trash pulls.  This game design by bliz put them back on top of the meters and opened raid spots back up for them.  Many times a CoH priest  was a must for some encounters. 

5. In their infinate wisdom, Blizz buffed CoH TWICE.  First by increasing it's output from using more of your +healing as a modifier.  Then as if it wasnt 'good enough' (reminder CoH priest was allready on top of meters), they made it 'smart' too. Now, it's face roll healing.  I dont even have to pick a group to use CoH on - I just cast it on myself over and over again and it picks it's targets

6. Now, from looking at the new changes to the Disc Priest - it looks like a disc priest is the ultimate MT healer.  However, most of the efforts of the Disc Priest in this role will never show on a meter.  Reduction of damage to the MT, reflection of damage to the tank, stablilization of damage to the tank, 'oh shit' button for the tank.  It's very possible that a disc priest will be very good placed on the main tank, perhaps with only one raid druid running HoT's on him.  However, this contribution of a Disc Priest on raid will NOT show on the all important meters.  This will eventually cause loss of raid spots again because the job of the disc priest can be done by a few other members of the raid.

It appears, from what I'm reading that raiding just inst going to be as difficult as it was in the past.  If Blizz tuned content to require massive dps - forcing raids to being less healers, this could insure a Disc Priest spot for the MT, releaseing more healer spots to be filled with dps classes.  But because of previous actions, players have rolled hybrid classes, not to play as a hybrid, but to play as a full time healer. 

When CoH is nerfed (and I'm convinced it will be) our spot will be as a Disc priest, and we only need one in Raid.  A couple months/weeks running in that position - showing up as 5-8th on the meters, will eventually cause even the most open minded guild to look at other ways to heal the tank. 

The days of 'not worrying about overheal' MAY be behind us.  Overheal = wasted mana and mana has been made much more precious in wotlk.

I've healed during each of the above priest play styles and managed to be valuable to a raid in some manner each time.  bottom ine, I guess we have to wait and see what happens.  Blizzard has created this monster.  Blizz has also said that the 'next great thing' post wotlk is a total revamp of 'how healing is done'.  While I admit, I miss alot of fights because I'm totally focused on 'moving all the bars to the right' - but if they make healing simple, I dont think i'll enjoy it nearly as much.  I play healers in games because I like the challange, the responsibility of keeping others alive and helping a raid succeed.  If this 'edge of the seat excietment' goes away... I might as well re roll rogue