Since the start of Cata for Holy Priests, like many of the other healing classes, those go-to wrath spells we use to spam, such as Flash Heal, were considered emergency spells, and people sort of looked down upon you if you used Flash Heal a lot throughout a fight. This was all essentially because of the high mana cost for flash heal, and so on.
My question is this: I was with my guild in raid last night, working on a few heroic fights and I ended up using flash heal, quite a bit for some of the encounters. It wasn't like my top spell used or anything, but since the first of Cata, I had to make myself break the habit of using it from healing in Wrath. I changed my spec up the other day for holy and specced into Serendipity, having missed raiding without it, and getting the speedy PoH's off and the occasional speedy GH whenever tanks dipped too low or a dps was in danger of dieing, it was really nice getting to use Serendipity again. I'm just wondering should I be using the spell at all though, flash heal I mean? I guess I should go look at some of the higher progressed holy priests on World of Logs, and see what their spell rotations are looking like for heroic fights. Think I will do that after I make this post . . .
It just seems like "heal" becomes totally useless with the amount of damage going out in heroic encounters. Like the damage is happening so fast, I can sit and try to cast heal on a person taking damage, but another healer will most likely beat me to it, so then I just overheal. Like I'll be assigned to heal the raid, and for the fights we were working on: Magmaw Heroic and Maloriak Heroic, I was in sanctuary chakra state majority of the time, so of course I was using PoH, CoH, PoM, and the occasional renew here and there, and keeping it ticking on tanks . . . but anytime I ever saw one single dps taking damage, flash heal was the best thing to go for instead of just regular old heal. Plus I found myself using flash heal on single targets, to get the speed boost poh when the entire raid was taking damage, or damage was going out sporadically.
Sorry if I'm rambling, just trying to figure this out. I know flash heal was frowned upon for using a lot during fights at the start of Cata, but is it okay to start using it more once you begin working on heroics and have a much better mana regen. Plus we have two resto shammies in our raid healing, so two mana hymns, plus a disc priest, and me the holy priest for mana hymns, etc etc.
Also, I find that its really hard to keep up with Resto droods now on the healing meters. The resto shammies even seem to be more competitive now. I know this is a good thing, because hopefully Blizz is finally figuring things out for the healing classes, but it still makes me feel somewhat irked when I can't keep up with resto shammies and resto droods on encounters, even if the healing difference is very very minimal. Are holy priests suppose to be able to keep up with them??
Uuuuugghhhh I think I over-think this stuff sometimes . . . ?