Priestly Diversions

[Lissa]

Blizzard overhauled the Holy tree in the open beta patch, making the tree suddenly very useful.  I suspect that what you've read is old information or information written by crotchety inflexible people.  There is some variety to builds, but generally they come down to a Holy-Discipline spec or a Shadow-Discipline spec.  In short, Holy-Discipline is far and away the best for group and instance play.  Shadow-Discipline spec is best for solo and PvP situations.  As I am an addicted instance runner, I spent most of my time Holy-Discipline speced.  Remember, though, that you can retrain talents if you're willing to put up the cash, so don't be too worried about trying something that you fear you might regret later.
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Well, Holy still needs some work to make it really worth going more than 10 to 15 deep. Discipline, on the other hand, is very worth going 21 deep into. Prior to launch, a lot of Priests got talking on the Priest board about what would be a good setup for a Priest now, I came up with something like the following (a good number agreed with me on it too):

Holy Tree
Improved Renew (5/5)
Spiritual Speciality (can't remember, the name, but the one that gives +10% to healing spells, 5/5)

Shadow Tree
Spirit Tap (5/5)
Black Out (3/5)
Improved SW:P (2/2)
Mind Flay (1/1)

Discipline Tree
The decreased chance of stun talent (5/5)
Improved PW:F (2/2)
Improved PW:S (3/3)
The one that decreases the cast cost of instant spells by 10% (5/5)
The one the increases mana by 10% (5/5)
Inner Focus (1/1)

This will complete the Talents at 51 and leave you with 9 points to play with going toward level 60. You can pick up the reduced threat from healing, Improved Mana Burn, or what have you with those 9 points to tailor your character to the way you want to go.