Edit: Math was wrong. See posts below.

If I recall correctly Paladin healing still has an innate 50% threat reduction. As such, Righteous Fury will bring your healing threat to 72.5% of the norm (1.45 * .5) for other healers. So as roanexavier pointed out, only untanked mobs should ever bother you.

Other healing classes actually prefer to skip their -threat reduction talents for this reason. The only time mobs are going to come after you is if no one is tanking them at all, in which case all -threat talents do is change which healer is in trouble.

Partially false, see: this post

The overall point still stands, of course.

Even though RF gives 67.5% aggro (compared to other healer's 50%), I have used it with no issues in Ulduar. Armor is mostly worthless for a non-tank in PvE, so you should always have RF up (and the talent too). The other advantage of RF is if a healer does pull aggro (due to tanking issues), you would pull it instead of the Priest and perhaps you can take a hit or two, while the Priest may not.

Me and my guild have recently been attempting some Thorim hardmode, and I was wondering what healing style is optimal for that fight.

We run with a setup of 3 healers (2 paladins, 1 druid) and the problem is that tanks die during the switch when one gets unbalancing strike. How should my timing for HL in that case be? Just ignore the target that will get Unbalancing Strike altogether? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I also generally do Thorim hard as Holy with a Priest helping out (twice as Disc, twice as Holy).

I focus on tank, throwing a Beacon up and tossing some off heals if too many folks opt to sit in a blizzard for the first handful of stacks, after which I just keep Sacred Shield up on the current tank and precast Holy Lights as needed, overheal spamming as later stacks build up. I'm also listening for a call on vent for a failed taunt so I can BoP the tank that still has aggro with Unbalancing Strike. Throw in the occasional Aura Mastery when multiple folks in the raid dip from frost, and it's a consistent one-shot.

Three heals might draw the fight out the point that it's not easily healed, as the stacks on Thorim are too high, allowing even a non-crit to wreck a tank. It might seem intimidating to go to two, as the hits get pretty big if the fight runs long, but remember, Thorim doesn't hit hard early in the fight. Shorten the fight, and it's much easier to heal.


Related to the Righteous Fury discussion:

I switched from 51/0/20 to 54/17/0 after getting my 4pcT8 and I'm quite a fan of it, partly, to my surprise, due to Imp. Righteous Fury. I came for the improved shielding and stayed for the extra threat!

It took me a week to actually remember to turn Righteous Fury on, but aside for the obvious draw of damage reduction on big AOE phases like Mim p2, it's helped quite a few times in ensuring if a tank screws up, I get any loose adds. With 22k armor I can take a couple hits more than the other healers in the raid, allowing me to grab the mob and "nicely" remind the tanks to take it off my hands.

Imp RF has not provided a threat boost since 3.0 so you don't gain any threat from going that deep down the tree, only a little mitigation.

Well, the talent doesn't increase the threat from RF but when you have the talent you are much more inclined to actually have RF on you while healing to get the 6% damage reduction.
I think that is why they refer to extra threat, since without the talent you would not use RF at all.

Pure Int is highly likely to continue to reign supreme. It provides slightly less raw regen as mp5 does assuming you DP every 2 minutes (more mana if you DP on cooldown), but it still increases your maximum mana which mathematically has a lot to do with it's strength as a stat. It has definitely gone from being absolutely overwhelmingly best stat to simply being our best stat, though.

Whether or not we're going to gem for socket bonuses depends on what those socket bonuses are and what colors the sockets are. If Blizzard continues the trend of giving us U/R sockets with spellpower bonuses I fully intend to continue ignoring them and putting in straight Int. If they actually start giving use yellow sockets or give us stats other than spellpower as socket bonuses things could change up -- blue sockets will be pretty low sacrifice to get, what with mp5 being nearly as good as int just put a Dazzling gem in there for nearly the same effect. Red sockets will continue to suck though.

I made a healing guide for Algalon.

YouTube - Paladin healing guide for Algalon

Any comments on the tactics are welcome.

Nice guide. Our guild is also wiping on Algalon so any suggestions might help us.

My questions are:

Though you are raiding with 4pc t8 and not 4pc t7, you are using a crit orientated healingspec. Is it also possible to heal through this encounter with a sacred shield spec (51 - 20 - 0) or are you risking to go out of mana?
In our last attempt, I tried meeleing the mob for some SoW procs. It is in fact movement heavier because most of the cosmic smashes are landing in the melee camp. Is it a good or a bad idea and is pursuit of justice needed for that?

Yes, meleeing alagalon is not a really good idea. Anyway you can stay near a black hole in order to enter as fast as possible when algalon begins his cast because while inside you can melee adds and often proc 1 or 2 sow (yes it's not amazing but that's still 2k+ free mana !)

And as Diamondtear already said you can do algalon with 4pt8 & a 50/20 spec without any issue (that's what I do each week in 10 & 25 men); sacred shield is pretty nice on that fight. Anyway I also did the first kill (25 men) while wearing 4t7 and a 51/0/20; but mana was more an issue due to my stuff, now i have no mana problem even with that spec/stuff.