Healing in Raids

[Kevin]

I've never played a primary healer, only a backup healer.  That said, my experiences in Blackwing Lair over the past two days have taught me one lesson about healing in a raid situation: any healer in the raid should be ready to heal any player in the raid at any time.  With that in mind: if you have the mana and time and aren't neglecting a player in your group, I say cross heal as much as you like.  Stepping on people's toes?  Maybe.  But I prefer that over someone getting dead at an inopportune time.
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Point taken, but without running a mod that stops inbound heals on a target that has already been healed you could be looking at wasting chunks of mana. I don't run a mod that stops my heal for me, I'd rather not do that as well.

So are using HoT's and flash heals cross group the better idea and only slapping an healing touch/greater heal if having 2 or 3 land in very close succession isn't going to waste someones mana regerdless of what they may have inbound.

As I mentioned in the other thread and I should have copied over here, I was quite happy when I had 2 people hurt bad in my group and a heal landed on one of them while I was healing the other.

Are there basic strats of, the primay group healer is hitting a squishy first first if 2 or more in that group are hurt so other healers hit the tanks in that group first if you crsoss heal that people have found work better? Obviously with only one priest and 2 druids the priest throwing a bubble up anywhere for an breather is a good thing.

What are ways to not waste each others mana if there is a lot of cross healing going on? I think that is when cross healing is going to frustrate someone the most, when they lose mana because of it. That is also when it is most harmful to the group since you doubled or tripled or whatever the mana cost of the health that someone just got back.

Are there pick-up group conventions for raid healing?

I'm still working on my theorycraft of some ways to set up raid healing but I'm open for ideas, experiences, etc.