There is a difference between "just a hard boss you have to learn" and "a hard boss that is abusively difficult to heal as a certain class no matter how well you know the encounter."

This discussion was in the holy pally forums for two reasons:

1) No AoE heals
2) No HoT's

Having either of those tools at your disposal makes this encounter orders of magnitude easier. I don't care how creative you get with Bacon, it's still incredibly difficult for a pally to heal since Bacon as a skill is fundamentally broken. You can't put Bacon on the tank and expect to heal the DPS with Holy Lights because if they're not low you're not getting good heals on the tank. But you can't just use Flash of Light either because teh tank takes more damage than that.

When the AoE is coming, the entire group takes DoT damage from moving away from the boss, and a Paladin can't heal that damage efficiently and still keep people alive through the Arc Lightning that is about to rape you because you all ran to the same place (which he tends to cast IMMEDIATELY following the nova when you're all grouped up.)

A single Chain Heal, Circle of Healing, or Wild Growth gives the healer the breathing room he needs following the nova to get back into a position where the tank can be healed without the DPS dying. Lifebloom stacks, PW:S, Riptide, and Renew applied early or while the group is running from the nova also make a huge difference.

Paladins complain about this fight for good reason. Blizzard designed our class to be amazing tank healers and not much else. All the other healing we do comes from good players adapting to the shortcomings of the class and working around them. CoH priests can faceroll through this fight. Holy Paladins come out of it sweating and shaking with 2% mana left.

THAT is what makes this fight hard on Holy Pallies, and THAT is broken.