Originally Posted by glowacks

If, as you imply, you're not going to be overhealing, why would you not use what has been shown to be the most efficient? Raid healing is the least "reactionary" healing there is; the general goal is to strive to be as efficient as possible such that HPS is high enough and mana lasts through the encounter. Yes, there are exceptions, but they're fairly uncommon and not the real focus of this dicussion. The idea is how best to deal with regular raid damge, whether AoE or RSTS. In the latter, Paladins are absolutely amazing in being able to maintain tank healing while patching RSTS damage, while CoH/WG, even with a 6s cooldown, is great at providing even coverage of raid healing with both minimal mana and time expended. Yes, Shaman are very good at filling in more HPS spread around the raid in a "smart" manner, but the point of calculating AoE efficiency is to assign the best people to do it at first. If it doesn't work then you can try different things, but why start with what you know is less efficient?

Yes, theorycrafting has to be tempered with actual raid situations, but all you have provided is your own anecdotal experiences and personal feelings, with nothing substantial to back it up and from my view contradictory statements.