Healing assignments are quite interesting. The key is to not only know your healers, but the strengths of their classes as well. I make healing assignments quite often in my guild in conjunction with a Resto Druid friend, and here's what I would add:

RESTO DRUID

their main strength lies in their ability to stack Lifebloom on multiple tanks. Have your tree druids make a macro that looks like this:

/cast [target=x] lifebloom

and make x any four people who are likely to take damage in the fight. Trinket at the start and use these macros sequentially for the entire fight without stopping. This is the highest possible healing output that a tree can do.

In situations where there is only one tank, a Resto Druid can make use of all his HoT spells - Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth and become an incredible tank healer that is on par or sometimes even greater than a Paladin.



RESTO SHAMAN:

Resto shaman are the best overall raid healers. Not assigning resto shamans to raid healing is a waste of potential. Granted, there are fights where the raid does not take a lot of healable damage so you may want to assign a resto shaman something else to do, those fights are few and far between. Chain Heal is a super efficient multi-target healer's dream spell.

Saying you bring a Resto Shaman to the raid for totem buffs is inaccurate. You bring them for chain heal. Totems and Heroism are just added bonuses, even if they didn't have those you would bring Resto Shamans anyway because Chain Heal is such a godly spell.


HOLY PRIEST

Holy priests are probably the most complex healing class in that they have multiple ways to gear, spec, and play. There are two primary styles, however, and you should really know the difference between the two and also which of the two the priests in your guild fall under.

The first is a heavy spirit build without circle of healing, but an incredible amount of mana regeneration power. These priests are best assigned to specialty healing or tank healing.

The second is a build that grabs that awesome 41 point Holy talent: Circle of Healing. This build doesn't really come into its' own until your priests start getting some serious +healing gear, but once it does it is incredible. It requires you to set up the groups in your raid in a special way, but once you do that you'll never look back. Under optimal conditions where all five people in a group are taking damage at once, Circle of Healing will outperform even Chain Heal by 33%.


HOLY PALADIN

Once heralded as the "best" healing class at the beginning of TBC raid content, at the Black Temple level, Paladins IMO are probably the most limited healing class. Their primary spells are Flash of Light and Holy Light, and they are both single target heals. With that, there's really not very much you can assign them to do other than tank heal, so make sure you do that.

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