Prot/Holy viable?

[calinass]

I was Prot/Ret, but I met someone from my server today that told me that once geared, paladin healing is some of the most needed tank heals, since you can nearly tank heal two tanks with Beacon OT heal MT.

TL;DR at bottom.

My prot gear is probably equivalent to T9.75 right now, I would like to say. Right now, with my lack of heal/caster items, Im at the gear level of....a fresh 80. Kinda hate that.

Sitting around 900 bonus healing, 16k mana and I believe 14k-15k health. Holy light heals for 7k-8.5k which I believe is relatively small, since I heal for that in my prot spec with tank gear :S.

I have two questions, right now.

I read the wow forum sticky on PvE healing as holy, and I didnt find anywhere that said what my target mana/spell power should be for heroic healing? I asked /2 and they gave me numbers 20-25k for my mana pool. Not too far off from 20k, only 4k mana. Ill ask you all, what should my target pool and spell power be before I jump in heroics? Someone told me my mana pool should be 130% of my health (10k health should be 13k mana)

Being a tank and/or healer are the most demanding roles right now (3rd is range deeps if I recall correctly). Will this make me more likely to get into ICC/ToC, and hopefully Cata raids?

TL;DR ---> Target mana and spell power for heroics? And should I just ditch being holy and go be a prot/retadin in hopes of raiding more?

[Astray]

On my realm, people search for healers a lot. So probably, yeah it will increase your chance.

Tipps:
go prot, go get some nice items out of heroics, when you have some fine stuff to begin with, try to learn healing.

Of course you can heal with 16k mana, but the community usually pretends to be XT-Ulduar "NO NO NO!!!"

[Smittles]

I would tank randoms for days and days on end for enought badges for all of your Holy gear, then get craftables, gems, and enchants, and then learn how to heal in regulars.

[calinass]

I dont really want to spend too much money on my holy OS. I was smart and banked my ret gear just in case I was like ew holy healing. Dropping triumphs is fine for me, but honestly I would never spend money on something that Im not sure on doing. Not sure if thats me though. (Money is a big problem for me, generally always have around 500g-1kg which is around 4-8 gems depending on the gem/day.

@The Fire, I walked into reg UK and got kinda scared. DPS pulled aggro and I wasnt sure whether or not to drop a HL bomb on him or the tank. beacon, I know, but I was still iffy and I chickened and got the debuff.

[Smittles]

I dont really want to spend too much money on my holy OS. I was smart and banked my ret gear just in case I was like ew holy healing. Dropping triumphs is fine for me, but honestly I would never spend money on something that Im not sure on doing. Not sure if thats me though. (Money is a big problem for me, generally always have around 500g-1kg which is around 4-8 gems depending on the gem/day.

@The Fire, I walked into reg UK and got kinda scared. DPS pulled aggro and I wasnt sure whether or not to drop a HL bomb on him or the tank. beacon, I know, but I was still iffy and I chickened and got the debuff.

Practice makes perfect, I would suggest an addon that keeps track of Sacred Shield, Judgements of the Pure, and Beacon so you can moniter those while healing. It helped a lot for my Holy Pally.

[calinass]

Know of any addons that can help? Is it healbot or grid or something specific ><

---------- Post added 2010-07-17 at 11:26 AM ----------

A new update, I tried healing regular UK again with even better spell power, haste, mana (and mp5), all that.
Got up to ingvar, on p1 was fine. p2 when he was rezzed, he did some kinda of AoE roar that one shotted a caster, and brought most of the group to like 10-20% health.
In that, I holy shocked a non-tank, FoLd the other one who wasnt dead, and the tank and FoLd myself. I was also silenced sometime around his second roar which really screwed me over because I couldnt holy shock and heal the group.

In short, how do I put up with massive raid damage in 5mans, and how do I deal with silences?