1st tier: All healers gem spirit
2nd tier: All healers get more spirit from their upgraded tier and collect hybrid gems
3rd tier: All healers have sufficient spirit from gear and are now gemming full throughput (i.e. haste/int/etc)
4th tier: Mana no longer matters, and we're back to square one.

You've got half of the puzzle there. Here's the other half:

Imagine you have 3 heals: normal, big and fast. The big heal is expensive and the fast heal isn't very efficient.

In your 1st tier, healers use their normal heal. The others are reserved for emergencies. In subsequent tiers, their regen is such that they can afford to branch out more into the expensive big heal and the inefficient fast heal. But while that is happening, the encounters are stepping up too. You'll need the fast heal sometimes because the damage is coming in too fast. You'll need the big heal more because sometimes you have to get someone back from the brink in a single GCD. Fortunately, as you approach the final tier, your mana regen is such that you can handle not casting your base heal as often.

The problem currently is that efficiency is a pretty low concern given that if you don't land a heal right this second, someone may die, and your chance of running out of mana is pretty low in the first place. There is every reason to just use the inefficient flash heal. Likewise, health is too low (relative to damage) so the big heal is just overhealing. And someone can probably flash your target up before you finish that long cast.

If you use your efficient heal 100% of the time, then sometimes people will die for want of a quick or big heal. If you use your quick or big heal 100% of the time, then sometimes you will run out of mana. If you use the right heal for the job, you will be awesome and get fat purps.

That was so amazing to be forced to learn how to use Greater Heal rank 4 with the T5 2P bonus, I will never forget that. Is there really any chance to see downranking back?

We want the choice that downranking provided (don't use a big heal when a small one will do) without all the problems of gaming the coefficients of the lower level spells.

I predict that what players will do in practice is use their quick/big heals 100% of the time, gear for throughput, and figure out other ways to get mana.

Other ways = campaign for regen on the forums? :)

I kid. Prior to LK, healers wouldn't use their quick / big heal every GCD. They would even stop heals to avoid wasting mana. We're not really trying to bring back cancel macros in a big way, but we would like for the best healers to be the ones who know when to use the right spell at the right time.

We will be hosting another PvP event on the US realms (Broxigar and Anasterian) over the next few nights! Queue for Random Battlegrounds for your shot to PvP with us!

What: Random Battleground Finder
Who: Blizzard QA
Place: US Servers Broxigar and Anasterian
Time: 7:00PM -10:00PM (PST)
Date: 3/8 - 3/9/2010

(Note: Time/Event is subject to change.)

Why have all of the world bosses been taken out of outlands? where did they go?

They have all gone to a convention to listen to or give seminars.

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, March 9. Maintenance will begin at 5:00 AM PST and conclude at approximately 11:00 AM PST. During this time, all realms and many web services will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience.