This thread is making me think that I am doing something wrong...I use renew all the time. During just about any fight I will be throwing out renews, and hitting Gheal rank1.

For priests...

1. Most of the time the target is healed before renew finishes.
2. Much of the time the target has renew on it, thereby making it a waste of time to check the target's buffs.
3. If I'm not terribly pressed for time(like on Huhuran pre 30%, sub 30% I have to use flash heal because I usually get stuck with the my-guild-got-me-200-NR-but-I-use-dps-gear-on-huhu-instead-to-boost-my-epeen rogues), I can just use HealR2 which is faster and more mana efficient than my highest rank of renew.
4. If it's a fight where players NEED to be full health(Anub'Rekhan), I can't dick around with renew.

If I do a Strath or something where I'm the only healer, I'll bust out renews on everyone then go pop a zombie up the ass with the large end of my benediction. But if I'm in a raid I'll rarely cast renew for the reasons above. In AQ40/BWL it's been mostly about HealR2, but in Naxx so far, man, I need to flash to keep up with the damage. I use greater heal on Raz at least, but that's 2-3 casts inbetween my MC duties.

Another thing to note, is that either way you do it, Renew is just a minor spell compared to our other healing. If you were to be the main healer of a tank, and the only one to renew it, your renew healing might account for 10-15% of your total healing.

With sort of a side comment that hasn't been touched on -- a big deterrent to HoT usage for me was a bad UI that only showed 8 buffs on a target (standard Nurfed). The Nurfed alpha can show up to 16, though, and this made a huge difference because I could ACTUALLY SEE IF THE DAMN HOT WAS UP THERE. I'm sure there's a million UI's that show that sort of stuff that I just wasn't aware of.

As far as HoTs themselves go, they play an important role in two fights, obviously -- Lethon and Maexxna. Any of those fights where the whole raid gets stunned or banished or webbed and the tank is just sitting there helpless getting beat on. Other than that, I just try to make sure renew's up on the MT, but it usually gets overwritten with a rank 10 (which I don't have) and it doesn't matter.

I used to have a macro that checked for a Renew on the target and cast if it wasn't found. I'm surprised that kind of macro isn't more common.

I'm not a healer, I'm my guilds MT. These are just thoughts that struck me reading this post.

1. But if your target is the main tank, that renew helps on further hits, does it not?

2. Maybe an assignment for non-MT healers could be done for HoTs in a case like this.

3. Don't take them. Damage meters shouldn't really be a factor in the raid, IMO. Huhuran is meant for casters to unload, and rogues to sponge. If they can't fit their role in a fight, don't bother.

4. No argument there. Fun (albeit buggy) fight though.

Bocheezu: if you're liking Nurfed's UI, but not the unit frames, I'd suggest Perl Classic (same looks, but shows 16 buffs iirc).

Renew should be up on every tank all the time. But most of the time the person being healed is not a tank. Assigning non-MT healers responsibility to HOT specific people may be a good idea. Or even saying that if a priest is in a group, you are not to renew the members in it.