Paladins and Druids to get a Lift

[Kevin]

Yeap, using Greater heal is dangerous because of the reasons you listed, but it can be quite useful in two situations:

1) The mob does relatively weak and constant DPS, without significant bursts.

Example: Golemagg's dogs, Domo's Elites, Sulfuron's range attack, early stages of Garr.

2) The tank has very high life, due to gear or buffs (probably 8k+). Easier achieved by alliance rather then Horde, thanks to the Blessing of Kings. Then the buffer is much bigger and you can afford to use slower heals.

Point of note here is that Greater heals do have another weakness. Certain bosses like to do either interrupts or high damage attacks, so that one will interrupt their heal. If this happens often, lesser heal is more reliable, since interrupting a greater heal stops 2.5-3k of healing, while interrupting a flash heal only stops 1-1.5k.

So with high enough buffer you can use GH, albeit you still probably need to use FH on bosses that like to cast certain spells randomly (Geddon comes to mind).

What we do if we try to take advantage of Greater Heal efficiency is we mix it. Some healers use Flash Heal, others use Greater Heal. At some point the healers can switch, or usually we just get the priests that are flash healing Innervated, and keep going. Between Innervate and CT_Raid, the healers won't run out (unless something is killing them, but that is a different story and problem!)
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Your druids are a "natural" fit to the greater heal spot and depending on how you set up the healing my be filling that roll anyway. I know I do when I heal with my druid in Molten Core or Onyxia. Regrowth will lose so much of the benefit of the HoT and is such a mana hog that my healing touch (which is pretty much greater heal) is the spell of choice. I will land a few here and there on the tanks and see flash heals get interrupted. Just a thought, let your druids heal like druids and keep them and the priests happy as well. :) And yep my innervate will usually go to a priest, though I do have more spirit than some of the priests I've raided with, but I also have a smaller total mana pool than them as well (though generally more HP). So there are times when I get the innervate but that is rare in the big raids.