Paladin Healing as it is now.

[shoju]

This makes some sense if you aren't using a prot pally in your raid/heroic but if you are you are trading 8% crit for 3% healing and an AOE cooldown in place of your single target one. Good for trivial damage but not hard hitting raid bosses which is really the paladin's specialty. It's worth an alternate spec for when your prot pally or ret pallly does not show up and/or you need that specific cooldown.

The thing is, the 8% crit from Ret is overkill. It's not needed. So even if you do have a Prot paladin in the raid, You then still have

5% through put from Divinity
extra Cooldown through Divine Sacrifice + Divine Shield
double duration Sacred Shield, + more absorption from Sacred Shield
Personal Damage reduction for AoE effects

Trust me, this is quickly becoming the most popular spec for raiding holy paladins. The ret Crit build is overkill, and the prot build (even when you have a tree druid or prot paladin) gives more throughput, and more utility to the healing.

I don't understand what you mean by losing a personal Cooldown. Holy trades absolutely NOTHING but 8% crit for this build. The benefits far outweigh the losses.


EDIT:

Most Ret Paladins are moving away from the 5/11/55 Spec. DS + Dsac is just not easy for them to pull off and still do damage in hard modes, while Aura Mastery gives similar mitigation through Aura doubling on fights like Hodir, Mimiron, Vezax.

DS + DSac is 2 GCD's + making sure that you don't wings within 30secs of needing the cooldown.

AM is one button press, 0 GCD's, and has similar benefits.


EDIT:

I went and did a check of a nice sample of Holy Paladins in top tier raiding guilds. I looked at holy paladins in 7/12 top guilds in the world.
Premonition
Juggernaut
Ensidia
Vodka
Blood Legion
Inner Sanctum
Might

Out of their ranks of 80's, there were 46 Healing paladins. This was determined by being able to search for them in a 7 day cache. (They had to have logged in the last 7 days in a heal spec)

Of those 46,

35 of them were specc'd in a healing throughput (54/17 or 51/20) format.
10 were specc'd in a crit format (51/5/15 or 51/0/20) format.
and 1, well, I just don't know what to make of their healing spec. VERY different.
This means that there has been a shift in the healing spec based upon gearing. 76% of the 'top end' raiding paladins who heal are moving to a throughput based healing spec.

Before I respecc'd prot, I was 51/20/0. I stopped using a 51/0/20 build because at some point, there is just too much crit. I was sitting at 42% crit self buffed on holy spells not counting Sancitified Light which ups the crit of Holy Light and Holy Shock by 6%. It was too much crit. When I end a boss fight at over 75% mana, That means that I have room to make adjustments in the spec so that I can gain more througput and tools.

Most Holy Paladins are approaching 2500 spellpower, 40% Holy Crit, and 25k mana by now raid buffed. BiS T9/HM geared Holy paladins are going to be pushing 3100 Spellpower, 46% Holy Crit and 30k Mana raid buffed. With these levels, 8% more crit isn't serving any logical purpose except to say:

"YAY! I finished the fight at almost full mana!"

By switching to the prot build, you will still not go OOM, and you can provide much more to the group.