Healers are going to be rare. Especially during the leveling process until dual specs come in. But even after that, with all the heal-capable classes having gotten huge upgrades to their 'hybrid' DPS potential, and the healing specs being a general "more of the same", a lot of the full-time TBC raiding healers are jumping ship. Especially the ones that were already close to burn-out.

Which isn't to say they *all* will, of course. You'll have some die-hard professional healers, and some very rookie converts of necessity, playing together in the beginning.

I've played DPS casters my entire "WoW Career" thus far (Started with a Warlock, then went to Mage... then went to Alliance and leveled another Mage, and all in the mean-time leveled a UD Priest, and Human Priest) and I'm thinking about trying to play a healer for Wrath. Just to try something different.

We'll see... my Human Priest right now is only level 40, so if I can get him to 58-60ish before Wrath then i'll just ride the wave of Death Knights and (hopefully) quickly make it to Northrend.

There are people like me that simply enjoy healing more than any other role in groups/raids. Not a lot, but there are enough.

Plus, if/when dual specs come out, it will make it possible to level/solo well and still be able to heal.

I think it depends. Healers can now level with a healing spec so I wouldn't be surprised to see more healers that aren't max level. Most in TBC would use some sort of dps spec and then go healing once they reached 70. That's not necessary anymore.

I honestly think I'd be more worried about dps using knockback attacks. If people continue to punt mobs away from the tank, and the tank can't keep agro, they will most likely go for the healer. I doubt many healers will put up with that crap for long and may simply opt not to join groups. Well that's my opinion, I guess we'll see how bad everything gets.

I have a holy priest and a mage; my wife has a holy priest and a hunter. We're planning on pairing them up (priest-hunter, mage-priest) and staggering their leveling through Northrend. The way we figure it, we'll have no problem finding groups who need healers, and we can insist that we come as a pair so that both of our DPS characters are getting runs too. :)