Priestly Diversions

[Lissa]

I disagree with you completely.  I had 30 points holy, 21 discipline (enough to get Inner Focus).  The Shadow tree is boolean for me.  Either you're a shadow priest and spend 31+points in it or you should spend nothing in it.  Since literally every priest I saw in the last two weeks of the beta who were involved in high level instances and raid instances had Spirit of Redemption, something that requires a minimum of 21 points spent in the holy tree, I think plenty of others would disagree with you as well.  Improved Prayer of Healing is a godsend considering how much aoe there is at the high levels, and knocking a half second off the cast time on Greater Heal with Master Healer in addition to improving Greater Heal's mana efficiency using Improved Healing makes a huge difference.
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I disagree that Holy has been truly improved to make it worth going that deep. Likewise, the build I listed allows you to do a lot from soloing, to PvP, to instance runs.

As to a couple of those additions, if half a second is that much that you need, then you're not timing your spells right. Also, if Spirit of Redemption kicks off, you're party is already in more trouble than they realize and once you die, the party is likely going to follow you. Improved PoH is nice, but you definitely don't need it to be successful (in truth, I have rarely needed to use it in instances and the only one I haven't ran are the raids and scholo).

The reason I state putting those points into Shadow is for an additional combat spell that can be easily cast early on and the extra 2 ticks of damage on SW:P is very useful.

If a Shadow Priest can effectively heal while having no Holy talents (and just healing in an instance, not slipping into damage mode), they can be just as effective as a Holy Priest, slightly less efficient (which I did in Stratholme). Simply put, the changes they made to Holy lower down are not worth going that deep IMO (and I have tried them and found them lacking).