You're still looking along the lines of "if it isn't optimal to stand in melee I won't!". Again, think outside the box. Just because a fight isn't exactly melee friendly doesn't mean you can't stand with the melee group. Smart melee positioning on fights where it is "suboptimal" (like Naj'entus) allows you to get 9 melee players in with splashes only hitting a max of 3 at a time. If you don't screw up your OT healing on Supremus there is no reason not to be standing on top of him and his obnoxiously large hitbox. Hell on Archimonde we used to have a resto druid stand with the melee for decursing if they got bursted, I don't see why a Holy Pally couldn't do the same thing.

Yeah it isn't "optimal". But it doesn't mean you can't do it.

And remember that Chain casting downranked Holy Lights (Brut) is a thing of the past. With the massive downranking penalties in effect it is pretty doubtful you'll use anything except HS/FoL unless the tank really needs it. I'm positive Blizzard will balance around that.

E: Now that I think of it, on those fights where you just can't afford to take time to swing your weapon there's always good old Divine Plea to get you some mana.

I'm with Toastr here. Just because something is not done now doesn't mean it can't be done in the future. Casts delaying the swing timer instead of resetting it is a very important change in this discussion.

Think about this situation:

Your HS crits, while you wait on the GCD you get one melee swing. You use the instant HL and get another melee swing. Now with a fast enough weapon and enough haste (remember, haste is one stat now) you may be able to get 3 swings in during these 2 GCDs without a drop in HPS. This scenario can occur as often as every 6 seconds (the HS CD). As Toastr said, Priests sit on Clearcast procs to regen mana oo5sr, why is that different than sitting on an instant HL to get an extra melee swing or 2?

That's my point - why is what could be a strong mana regen mechanic for us so situational and potentially ruled out by a large number of raid design encounters? I don't believe any amount of thinking outside the box will make SoW / JoW work for Twins, for example, and a number of other encounters - so saying 'go hit the boss for mana' while shamans got dumped a passive 50 mp5 on water shield doesn't make sense to me, particularly when you can go hit the boss for mana now and Blizzard knows full well in practice that does not work.

I am curious to see what they do on the next pass as well.

The beta forums have little going on in the way of Holy discussion that I see, the changes to prot and particularly ret are so sweeping people appear to be highly focused on those. The one recent post from a raider who has cleared Sunwell mutliple times and pvp'd to Gladiator states that he believes the current state of Holy has some serious problems for pve. It's a good read but people appear to be not too concerned with it.

Well, if that truly represents the future, expect to spend your raid time as Holy standing outside the instance in group 6 rebuffing every half hour, because a Holy paladin is "suboptimal" to a Holy priest as things stand now. I can pretty much guarantee that Blizzard will never buff Beacon to be better or even really comparable to Circle of Healing in a raid context, and we simply aren't getting the kind of toolbox a Holy priest has. Saying things like "nothing will change" pretty much means you might as well get a jump on a new main now.

Having said all that, I believe things will be changing. The changes to combat rating mechanics alone were aimed squarely at shamans and paladins, and are pretty clearly meant to be used by all specs. Refusing to do so for no better reason than "that's the way things have always been" really does mean things won't change, and you'll only have yourself to blame for it.