Circle of Healing for a Holy Paladin ?

Ok no, we're not going to get a new awesome raid healing ability, sorry. It's just an interesting project launched by Miss Medicina that you can follow on this page.
She wrote a questionnaire for all healers to give some of their views about their class and healing in general in raids (mostly).
Looks like Almaster from Lux Legis tagged me and as I liked reading other healers views, I'm adding mine :)

First a short introduction to my healing team. I have 3 lvl 80 raiding healers, they have very close gear, mostly because I use badges to gear all of them more than raid loot (not that I don't like loot but I really don't run for it unless nobody wants an item).
My experience with each of them is different though, I've played Shazalyn, my Holy Paladin, since the beginning of WotLK (was prot before) and I've hours and hours of raiding with her.
My Discipline Priest, Syriel, has seen a good bit of raiding too, and she's the only one with which I've been able to finish Yogg (which I really really want to do again). But Discipline priests are rarely used as they should (and always perform poorly on recount), so I only raid with her in friends groups where I can play as I like (aka I don't end up having to raid heal as disc ...).
Velours, my Restoration Druid, is the one I have the less raiding experience with, and the one I have yet to really get used to. I'm sure I could get better at rotations and awareness with her, but druids are so strong with a spellpower built that she's more my "lazy heal" character :P

Now, my Holy Paladin is the character I've played the most, and the one I started this blog with, so I'll answer with her.

* What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Shazalyn, Holy Paladin is my main character and healer.
* What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Mostly raiding, normal 25 Man & 10 Man, a little bit of 10 Man Hard modes (I love that).
* What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Holy Shock, instant, fairly strong, has lots of synergy with Flash or Holy Light if you crit with it (which is expected if you have an old crit build like me).
* What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Paladins don't have so many healing spells, we're not druids. I can't see a healing spell I don't use at least a few times in a boss encounter. Probably Judgment of Light if I'm not the only paladin, I'll judge wisdom and let the protection or ret paladin judge Light.
* What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Endurance and healing spam. Paladins are probably the best healers to maintain a constant influx of relatively strong heals for a long time on a target, and very strong heals for a fairly good time. That's also what makes them kind of boring to play sometimes :P
* What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
No raid healing spell, we can raid heal ok with the new Beacon of Light, but all our heals are single target and we're hence very limited by the gcd. Mobility is also a big issue for paladins, you have to learn the timing of fights and your positioning more than any other healing class, because the more you have to move, the less you heal.
* In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Paladins have always been tank healers, and still are best suited for that. Even though 3.2 made us less crappy at raid healing, which is very nice for 10-Man.
* What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
That's a very hard question. Sadly Paladins don't really go well with other healers, it's more a question of raid assignment. Though I usually like to have another Holy Paladin with me, I tried a ToC10 with 3 paladins, it was really not the best thing. Have raid healers with you will be much nicer. The thing is we have very few instant heals, and even with add-ons like Incoming Heals, we still end up overstepping other healers. Only solution is to have confidence in your other healers and have good healing assignments.
* What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Any other healer when I try to raid heal. And with the 3.2 Beacon of Light we should be raid healing all the time as we heal the tank at the same time. So we end up overlapping raid healers, that are often more effective and faster than us, much overhealing and probably some frustrated druids & priests & shamans ... The thing is, if we don't spam the raid, we spam the tank. It's the same for us so it doesn't cost us any more mana, but I'm sure it annoys other healers.
* What is your worst habit as a healer?
Not keeping my judgments up enough on bosses and not using my cds enough, I'll like the T9 bonus.
* What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Feeling powerless when people stay in the fire and die ... not that I can do anything but seeing people die and not being able to ever save them is frustrating.
* Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
I think that PvE healing balance is ok right now. Not that I think all healing classes are as fun to play, or as good for all fights, but overall it's ok.
* What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Recount is fairly decent for a paladin now that Sacred Shield is a single target spell. I still advise world of logs that can cope with bubbles & absorption. All in all, if the raid worked, if your tanks didn't die too much, well you did your job ok enough.
* What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Holy Paladins are fairly simple, they've always been tank heals and I think that's what most people expect of them. Now few people realize how much a toolbox we are. Hands of Protection / Freedom / Salvation ... are great tools that little people think to ask for.
* What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Timing. Paladins can't heal on the move, and the first heroics in GT4 or Utgarde Pinnacle are going to be real tests for a new Holy Paladin.
* If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
I try to really use all the tools I have, so I'm fairly balanced between Beacon, Flash and Shock. I try to limit my use of Holy Light now, nerfed Illumination and int makes it much harder with my "limited" gear. Overheal is high, but that's inherent to the Beacon that I maintain at all times. I have mostly an int/crit build so yes my crit will be over 45% in raids and I like it for my Holy Shocks.
* Haste or Crit and why?
Before 3.2 I would have said crit (and int) without question, until you reach about 40% unbuffed. Now crit is much less useful for mana regen and you will need some mp5 or alternate mana source (trinkets & the like). Haste is really increasing your hps, so yes, balancing both will be good.
* What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Resto shamies are the only one I've not played at 80 in a raiding environment, but I'm going to start one soon :P
* What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid (and Grid_Raid_debuffs for raid frames), Decursive (cleansing tool), Classtimers (with focus frame to keep up Beacon & others at all time), Pitbull (character & target & focus & target of target frames).
* Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Spellpower to 2000+ first, then int/crit/haste/mp5. Haste being the only one that won't help for mana regen but that will partly reduce your mobility issues.

And now I have to tag two people, always hard to do when you're late in the bandwagon .. hum ... bandcircle ? Let's give tags to two people that I like to read then.
Averna @ Nerf This Druid
One of my best druid references since Resto4Life closed.
Coriel @ Blessing of Kings
A long time Paladin blogger that I always enjoy reading.

Go to the main circle page and give a look to other healer answers, that's often reassuring and interesting, if not fun ... like this way too pink one.
Have fun healing and keeping all these little green bars up :)

Lay on Hands change (again ?)

In this forum post Ghostcrawler explained that they didn't intend to prevent Holy Paladins to use Lay on Hands on paladin tanks. I really think this change is pvp intended and that they didn't think about all the implications at first, though as discussed in my previous post Protection Paladins are still screwed, but they're considered as too strong right now so it was expected.
Here is the remedial change to this nerf, so that Holy Paladins don't feel like they nearly lost one of their tool (our best "oh sh*t" button) when healing a tankadin :

Sanctified Light: This talent now also has a 33/66/100% chance to prevent Lay on Hands from causing Forbearance when Lay on Hands is used on others.

Considering how many times LoH saved my tank (perhaps he would have survived with only a Holy Shock, but LoH sure is reassuring). I'm happy to not have to worry if I'm healing a warrior, or a paladin.

It seems that deep Holy will more and more be the biggest "toolbox" of any healing tree. With the changes to Sacred Shield and now Lay on Hands, more and more is pushed down there. It won't change much for us in term of gameplay, but I sort of feel it shows how much "problems" the uniqueness of the paladin class is giving Blizzard right now.

Valithria Dreamwalker

The Dragon Who Loved Me.
from the memories of an Icecrown raid healer

Ok, that's a completely silly and cheesy subtitle, but I can't help. That's probably the first fight in the history of WoW that puts healers in the center of the stage. Yes, during that fight the goal is not to kill something, but to heal a captured green dragon.
My healer friends, we will have to bring back this mighty dragon from 50% life to full while our raiding brethren will protect us from the enemies assaulting us and trying to prevent our task.
Isn't that so cool to be the one that will decide on the length of the fight ? Yes you've read correctly this fight is not a DPS race, it's a ... Healing Race !

Let's come to more details. Valithria Dreamwalker is the first boss of the Frostwing Halls of Icecrown Citadel and is encountered before Sindragosa. She starts the fight at 50% life, you will need to heal her while killing the adds that will spawn to stop you. Once the dragon is back to full health she will destroy all remaining adds and teleport her (and you) out of the citadel effectively ending the fight.
During the fight players can use portals created by Valithria to switch to dreamstate, and alternate plane where dreamclouds will spawn. These clouds will regenerate your mana and greatly increase your healing for a short time, you can then get out and bomb heal Valithria before going back in there. While some healers (and a few dps as the clouds have to be destroyed to give buffs) will rotate between healing & regaining mana, the rest of the raid will have to deal with all the adds.
There are 5 kinds of adds. Glutonous Abominations will be especially dangerous as they'll spawn Rot Worms when they die (8-10 in 25-Man) that will melee their target (for about 5K) and can easily OS any character that is not a tank if they gang on him. But the key of the fight will be Suppressers, a class of adds that cast a strong debuff on Valithria reducing all heals on her by 10% and effectively making the fight longer as long as they're up. In 25-Man there is 6 Suppressers per wave when this fight was tested on the PTR.
You can find some details about the abilities on the wowwiki page, or the MMO Champion page (with a nice video of the fight).

Now about tactics, my guess will be for the Valithria healing squad to switch to dream state when a wave of adds spawn, buff and regen there until the Suppressers have been killed by the raid and come back to heal Valithria with full mana and the healing bonus while not being hindered by the Suppressers healing debuff on the dragon.
Now for the classes, I think Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids will probably be the healers assigned to Valithria if you have enough of them, while Shamans and Priests will probably stay on the raid. Why ? Because their single target spam healing is probably the best of the 4 healing specs, though very mana intensive, hence the use of the dreamstate plane. Holy Light spam and Nourish spam (whith full hots active) will be hard to best.

It really looks like a very interesting fight and I'm really eager to try it, especially in 25-man where the number of adds can turn the fight from controlled to hectic in a few seconds ^^

New Lay on Hands & PTR build 10747

Patch 3.3 - PTR Build 10747 has hit on the Test Realms as you can read on this link to MMO-Champion news.
You can read the details from the Blues here. For us about the latest news that I talked about on October 28th, little remains from the first wave. Were they too quick to announce untested changes ? Were we vocal enough to make them reconsider ? I don't know, but the big nerf of Sacred Shield has been changed to a removal of the Flash of Light combined hot effect (that is now limited to deep Holy), and Lay on Hands is still usable on yourself, even if it now shares a CD with our other big lifesaver tools (so it only hurts pvp mostly).

The last changes that I discussed are now these on the last build:

• Flash of Light no longer heals for an additional 100% over 12 sec if the target has the Sacred Shield effect.
• Lay on Hands is now affected by Forbearance and can now be cast on self again - Heals a friendly target for an amount equal to the Paladin's maximum health and restores 1950 of their mana. Once healed, the target cannot be targeted by Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Hand of Protection, or Lay on Hands again for 2 min.
• Infusion of Light now causes your Flash of Light to heal the target for an additional 50/100% over 12 sec.

I have no problem with the change to the hot effect, and very little with the slight nerf of Lay on Hands. They will nearly only affect ret pvp builds that, according to Blizzard, were too strong on the survivability side. As you know I'm a big PvE fan, for me WoW is a bad PvP game and other games around are much better suited for PvP (Warhammer or Aion anyone ?) so I don't PvP in WoW or very little. Hence yes, I'm pretty happy with this reversal.

My first Icecrown review later this week. Have fun and thank you for reading.

afg for 2 weeks

Just to keep you informed I'll be away from the game for 2 weeks, as my job is sending me away until mid-November. I still have a few things to post, I'll try to find some time for them.
And for my guildies here and there, see you when I come back :)

Btw I'm very enthusiastic for IC ... can't wait to try the new bosses as for now all that I'm looking for are Ulduar hard modes (I love the Iron Council 3 levels of difficulty).
More on that soon, go take a look on MMO Champion if you want some spoilers about the first IC bosses.

Protadin ... To the Ground, Baby !

Ok, who doesn't already know that fateful sentence from Ghostcrawler at whatevercon after the release of WotLK and the ret paladin OP period.
Now it's all about protection paladins, or mostly, and Lay on Hands suddenly becoming too op to live. You can find the changes in the last patch on the PTR on Mmo-champion.
To sum-up here they are :

• Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (Up from 6 sec)
• Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
• Infusion of Light now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 sec.
• Aura Mastery now lasts 6 sec. (Down from 10 sec)

There is a "balance" to the Sacred Shield nerf, but only for deep Holy Paladins (read not the arena spec).

• Infusion of Light: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 seconds.

This is added to the Divine Guardian / Sacrifice nerf, as you can read on his blog, the Suicidal Zebra explains the 80% nerf of the Sacred Shield for prot paladins.

It's clear that PvE protection paladins are the most affected by the Sacred Shield & Lay on Hands nerf. Holy Paladins regen via Glyph of Divinity will also be affected when they were casting Lay on Hands on themselves.
And now all paladins can't self heal themselves in arena/bgs via Lay on Hands.

As Rhidach is saying on his blog, I can't eat this change is not mostly arena/pvp related. And it severaly screws-up protection paladins ... and all levelling paladins btw.

It's been several years since we started saying PvE & PvP abilities should just be made different (as it's already the case for potions/food/etc...) so that PvP changes aren't that hard to balance if you take PvE into account (and vice-versa). But no, this is probably too much work ... sigh. Well done Blizzard.

edit :
In this post Ghostcrawler announces they reverted the Lay on Hands change ... but he's not promising anything about them not changing it again. Stay tuned for more paladin nerfing news.
And yes it's qquing but such changes are so deep towards the PvE balance that they can't just go silently. We're learning to play a class, we're fighting for spots in raids, esp as paladins were not good at all during the end of BC, either for tanking or healing or even not that good at dpsing. So we won't let our efforts go to waste without a fight, that's all.

Down with Yogg Saron

So I finally killed Yogg Saron (normal 4 watchers, no uberness here) this weekend. I'm a bit sad that it happened on my disc priest before my paladin, but I'm really happy to see the end of this epic fight. Yogg Saron is, for me, the best fight of Wrath up to now, it's 3 very different phases, there is a lot to do for everyone, and especially in 10-Man none is allowed to fumble as we can't tolerate one death or we won't get the enrage timer.

It's really hard to find enough motivated people to finish Ulduar now, but I happened to get lucky on my priest server. I got invited in a guild group extending its tag when they were on Yogg, they wiped on their first night and we wiped again all night on last Thursday. This Saturday, we went there again with nearly the exact same group, everyone knew the fight and we downed Yogg on our second attempt of the night, only our third time on Yogg phase3.
I was the healer of the brain team during phase 2 which is a lot of fun and rush (you don't have much time to think and I fumbled my first brain phases on Thursday). We barely killed him before the time limit though (only 15s remaining) and our tank had 6 adds on him at the end and survived (I love to heal good tanks).

All I can say is that I really like this encounter. It's original, well designed and it reminds me of C'thun :)

I used the BossKillers guide to prepare my raid nights, and it really helped me to not be surprised especially in phase 3 when these guardians hit to hard on the tank (thank you Pain Supression during the last seconds of the fight).

Rhidach's Heroic ToC guide

Not mine, I don't have enough gear to seriously try this one, but a complete and very detailed guide. It is specially tailored for protection paladins but full of tips readily usable as a holy paladin. just go read Rhidach's blog post on How to defeat heroic 10man Trial of the Crusader.
I seriously point you to this one, there are so many tips for a paladin that I didn't think of (not playing prot enough these days) I'm ashamed of my gameplay :P

Thanks a bunch Rhidach :)

Update note 20th November: I've compiled a more complete list, including Rhidach's guide, you can find it on Trial of the Grand Crusader (ToC Hard), Guides & Tips Collection

Waiting for IC ...

I don't know about you but I'm seriously waiting for Icecrown Citadel. Not that I've finished
all the content, I've yet to see Yog Sarron die, but that requires several evenings on Udluar and most people don't spend that amount of time on this raid anymore. Too much "free loot" on ToC (normal) or Onyxia or Lolaron to motivate much people about Ulduar.

I still think Ulduar is the best raid from WotLK up to now, despite it being too big, it should have been split in two raids as it was done all along BC. I still have some friends motivated by Ulduar hard modes and we're trying them from time to time, usually one or two nights a week when we are lucky enough to make our suicidal squad (Auriaya with all cats is a crazy fun mess of a fight to heal). If I find ToC hard mode mostly a "gear check", Ulduar hard modes are, at least for some of them, very entertaining.

The first news from the next raid Blizzard is giving us are starting to appear, and the first boss was tested on the PTR these last days (report on Mmo Champion). It doesn't seem super hard, as least on paper, I hope the normal/hard mode gap will be lower then ToC, and my wish is for hard modes to contain more abilities, more strategy than just be a gear check put over a normal difficulty boss.

I guess we'll all see that in IC, hopefully not too long from now, but even more hopefully nicely tested and balanced.

Raid Healing for Holy Paladins post 3.2

This post ended being much much longer than I thought at first when I started it. But I was always adding new views and after a few hours it got quite gigantic. I organized the ideas so that you can pick up what you're interested in or find back some points more easily after reading the whole thing. I'll try to post better inputs on some parts of it later in separate posts if I can find some time for that.
Now let's start with the beast.

It is no news that patch 3.2 changed a lot for Holy Paladins. I have already written several posts on the topic: Patch 3.2 will change just everything ...
You can also find very good analysis of the changes on: Banana Shoulders and Holypaladin.net.

Now what did it changed for me after a few weeks of raiding? Though my experience is limited to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader 10-Man, I think it is enough to see the big changes that 3.2 brought us.
At first I was very worried with the mana regen nerfs, and for a good reason, I was right. But in the end patch 3.2 gave us so much that I'm not complaining at all, as long as you can adapt to a new style. Let me explain my views, and then talk about gameplay changes.

What changed with 3.2 and how does it impact us?

First big mana & mana regen nerf, Divine Intellect was nerfed from 15 to 10% (about 5% total mana loss) and Illumination was nerfed from 60% to 30% regained from the mana cost of the spell that crits (second nerf it was 100% before WotLK). You can also add the small nerf to Replenishment affecting all mana users. On paper a severe nerf to our mana and regen, and in the game too. Depending on how you played, it will affect you more than others. I had an intellect & crit build so it had a strong impact on my regen and I use Holy Lights much more carefully now while I was sometimes "splash raid healing" with the glyph before, which was an obvious overshot but affordable.

Second change of Beacon of Light and addition of a hot to Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light now works with overhealing and has a 60m range, and if you cast a Flash Light on the target of your Sacred Shield it will gain a hot. The Sacred Shield hot is fine, it is not strong, but it is free, doesn't really cost you any global cooldown (though you have to recast a direct Flash Light on your tank here and there) and helps with maintaining a constant healing influx to your tank (the obvious target of your Sacred Shield). Now the real big boy here is the change to Beacon of Light. It was useful before, and helped you to do a bit of raid healing while still covering your tank. It is now very powerful and allows you to become a full (or nearly) raid healer while at the same time being as reactive as before on your tank and able to land one of these life-saving healing bombs at all time. I'm explaining more clearly that in the next paragraph.

Beacon of Light is your new best friend.

The job of a main tank healer is to always be able to react quickly and do his best to save his tank if a damage spike occurs, which you all know is very common in WotLK. Beacon of Light was created to allow you to do some healing on other members of your raid while still healing your tank, *but* you had to retarget your tank in case of damage spike as any overhealing done was not sent to the Beacon (and hence there was no way to heal your tank for 15K but to target him, unless another member of the raid was also injured for at least 15K, and in a 30m range from your tank). This meant some heavy macro building, using right click to target your focused main tank for example. Or some target change delay, and delay is bad when it's an urgency.
Now all overhealing is also transferred and the range is 60m. You don't have to retarget your tank anymore for this 15K healing bomb, and you can even do it while being too far to even be able to target him, by targeting a member of your raid between you and him.
This is such a strong change that I'd say I'm enjoying raid healing again, it's not any more complex than before (even probably easier if you're following the tips I'm giving later on) but you have much more freedom in who you heal, and it's much less frustrating in the sense you don't have to make this Cornelian dilemma of keeping the strong heals on your mt rolling or trying to help with raid healing.

New Beacon require a new gameplay.

Mostly you have to maintain 4 effects at all time now. Before patch 3.2, depending on who you were healing, the Beacon was not always mandatory, and the Sacred Shield hot didn't exist. So mostly it was only Sacred Shield on your tank & Judgement of Light/Wisdom for your raid. Now a Holy Paladin not using Beacon of Light at *all* times is just a dreadful dumb monkey :P It is just too strong to not be used at all times, unless, perhaps, you're completely sure that only the mt will take damage as in some old vanilla boss fights.

So what do you have to maintain? Beacon of Light (B) on your tank, Judgement of Light/Wisdom (J) on the main raid target (if possible each 20s for the raid heal), Sacred Shield (S) on your main healing target (not necessarily the main tank, I will give an example of that), and the Flash of Light hot (F) on your Sacred Shield target. It requires more attention than before and I strongly advise you to use an add-on to track these 4 mandatory effects that I will name the BSFJ effects.

Gameplay by examples.

As nothing is better than examples, I'll give you what I see as the two gameplay configurations we have now, depending on the boss encounter. As you could guess, I assume that as a Holy Paladin you are assigned to tank healing.
So let's take these examples, the two first beasts of the Northern Beasts trio from Trial of the Crusader.

Gormok the Impaler
This is what I call a single tank situation, it can still require tank switching but at any given time there is only one tank.
Focus you tank (use a focus macro with a shortcut to help if there is some tank switching) and keep at all time Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield on him. When the Flash of Light hot goes down, recast a Flash of Light on the tank. Keep the Jugement of Light/Wisdom up on the boss. And now all you have to do is heal the raid and keep the BSFJ effects up.

The two Jormungars
This is what I consider as a 2 tanks situation (if more than 2 tanks are required, you'll need another Paladin buddy to cover the 3rd tank and helps you on the MT), at any given time at least 2 tanks are taking strong damage, one being the MT usually taking more damage.
The idea is to heal both tanks at the same time, using the Beacon. It was possible before, but it's way more effective now. Cast the beacon on the one you are not assigned to as main healer, and the Sacred Shield on the one you will be targeting most of the time (to maximize the Flash of Light hot uptime). Then cast Judgement of Light/Wisdom on the boss and maintain a regular influx of Flash of Light on your target (with the occasional Holy Light if him or your BoL target needs it).
You're set for double tank healing, and with some training and getting used to it you can mostly heal the two tanks from this encounter alone in 10-Man.

But what about mana regen now?

If you follow the gameplay guidelines I've given earlier, you will see that your tank (which should be your main target during a raid) is receiving a strong and regular flux of healing even if you're mostly casting only Flash of Light on the raid. This is a strong change from before, and means that you should be using less Holy Lights (at least in 10-Man, the boss damage being lower).
But even with a more sporadic use of Holy Light you'll see your mana going down, especially as you should be recasting Beacon of Light for sure each 30s now (I'll have to do the math on the BoL glyph as concerning mana efficiency).
As for myself I went back to the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom (5% healing cost reduction) instead of the Glyph of Seal of Light, and I'm using strong mana regen trinkets and meta-gem. I'm still using my int/crit gear and spec, and it still do the job, I have to use mana potions much more often though, and Divine Plea for these 25% mana as often as I can.
My observation from raiding is that we still have a good lasting power, but we need to be much more cautious with our mana. With my two trinkets () and meta-gem (Insightful Earthsiege Diamond) I can regain more than 2000 mana each 50s (du to the trinkets hidden 45s cooldowns), to which I can probably add about 3000 mana each minute (?) from Divine Plea (I rarely can use it for its full duration but I try to use it each time it's out of cooldown). That's about 5 to 6K mana/minute, not bad without counting any mp5 or spirit (haha).

Minimum Mana Use and Healing Lasting Power

Let us give a look to mana costs now. Just to maintain your BSFJ effects during a minute, you have to cast (with a base mana of 4394 for a lvl 80 paladin):
2 Beacon of Light (35% of base mana),
2 Sacred Shield (12% of base mana),
5 Flash of Light (8% of base mana),
and 3 Judgement of Light (5% of base mana)
That gives you a minimum mana cost of about 6240 mana with 2 Flash of Light counted as a critical (40% crit).
So, just to keep up with the spells you need up at all time you will have a MMU per minute of 6240. Divide your total mana by that and you know how much you can last at the theoric maximum (don't be frightened but now you can see how much mana regen we need).
Now to maintain a regular Flash of Light casting, with 40% critical and 1.5s casting time you'll need to cast 20 Flash of Light per minute, which would cost you about 20 * (3/5*1+2/5*0.7) *352 = 6196 mana per minute.
Add this MMU to the FoL spam cost and you have a rough idea of your mana cost in a raid boss fight. Now calculate your mana regen as I did before, and add in your mp5 (and replenishement if you are sure to have it). Reduce your mana cost by your mana regen each minute, and divide your total mana by that. You will have a rough idea of your mana durability in a boss fight.
Ok this is not easy calculus and you don't really have to do it, but keep in mind that you'll use around 12.5K mana per minute probably half your mana if you have an average gear. Yes mana regen will hurt and you'll have to take it into account much more than before.

And for next time

In my next post I will discuss about healing macros and how they can really change your raiding experience as a Holy Paladin. Being more reactive, keeping up your multiple effects more regularly, avoiding wrong targeting when recasting Beacon of Light (which can be really deadly now) ... all of these can strongly change with macros.
Stay tuned.

If you want more inputs on healing post patch 3.2, you can read the guide on Holypaladin.net, it is full of gear & gemming information.