Why are we being forced to use Heal

[AetherMcLoud]

In terms of PVP, I dont use it.

I actually questioned their new mana system in PVP Terms, as there is no way you can be casting that ability in a PVP environment. It's slow, and it heals for half of what classes can Melee, or DoTs can tick, leaving you not only susceptible to interrupt galore, but meaning your target will either die, or you fall behind on healing.
"So fake cast herpderp"
You have now turned a ~2.3s Heal into a 3s+ Heal that only heals for 4-5k. No. Just no.
Which further leads me to Raging on the Beta about my Disc Priest, but thats another story.

That's my concern too. Discipline even has two talents that reduce the cooldown of inner focus and the length of weakend soul upon using greater heal and heal respecively. Both of course completely useless in pvp. As disc in pvp I was mostly spamming flashheal waiting for penance to come up again, while as holy I pretty much never needed to cast a casttime spell. Renew chakra + getting 2 hots (+third from mastery) on people, together with prayer of mending, holy nova spam, and body&soul is awesome right now in pvp.

[davie]

Just wanted to say that using smite in the place of heal, for now, in 25's, makes me very nervous. It seemed to me there's no guarantee that the atonement effect will go to the tank. This obviously depends on what fight you're doing and how much melee you're running. For example, LK during valks it would work since the tank is the only one on the LK, but not at other times. It may be more effective in 10's.

I'm going to experiment with using it mainly to get the archangel boost to healing for clutch points in the fight.

gotta agree here, its a fun talent, but investing 2 points and a glyph in what i cant see being a reliable way of healing in a raid situation just doesnt work for me.

Can still use archangel with smite, 3 quick smites when you can and then hit archangel

[sicness]

Only thing I don't like about it is the speed it casts at. Wish it would be like a medium speed heal between greater and flash...

This is my only beef with the spell. You'd think for an 'average heal' it wouldn't take as long to cast as greater heal. I'm loving the fact that they've essentially brought downranking somewhat back to the game and making mana matter again, it makes me want to actually heal unlike in WotLK.

[Demilune1]

I personally use heal in heroics, its alot easier to try stuff out in there when you are not doing some serious raiding, I don't know if anyone posted this yet, i'm a new 80 with about a 5k gs. Nothing amazing. I realized with the amount of haste I have 2 heals will take away weakened soul entirely so you can put up another pw:s with the talent. Other than that I don't use heal at all, the idea of the talent is very cool but i'm sure it will be changed or become more viable at 85.