I prefer a less variable mechanic for limiting fight length - enrages or stacking debuffs.

There's a very simple reason for this: if you base the fight length solely on mana, then the fight can run indefinitely. Just stack more healers. If healer mana is the limiting factor, then once you reach the point where healer regen is equal to healer expenditure (via incoming damage), the fight IS endless. Essentially, using mana to limit fights gives them the potential to be limitless.

Consider Heigan, in Naxxramas. Many of us remember raids that were decimated by the Safety Dance, only to watch a duo of healer and tank remain endlessly whittling his health down. I remember several times where the fight ran for 15+ minutes, with the dead bodies clamoring for us to "just die" so they could get back up and do something. With mana being the only deadline, once the healer was only healing two people, the damage was easily manageable. Fun, right?

Other factors can be more easily controlled. Stacking debuffs or hard enrage timers set a specific deadline. Doesn't matter how well you can deal with incoming damage; if you can't kill the boss before the deadline, you're done.

I'm 100% for replacing mana with active models. At that point, the healers aren't playing a double game by also defining the limit (or endlessness) of the fight. The whole point is whether you're strong enough to heal the damage.

Whoops, I forgot. People went into the healing game because they liked being fancy egg timers.

My bad.

I would love to ditch spell plate - I made a paladin entirely to start picking up the unwanted spell plate, which is a ridiculous reason to make a character - but doing a strength->spell power conversion for paladins would be imbalanced, especially for PvP. It's been said before: it would make it too easy for holy paladins to both DPS and heal.

I personally prefer a "make holy pallies wear mail" solution. Blizzard's response is that paladins "wear plate for lore reasons," which confuses me, since Blizzard has shown time and time again that they are fine with ignoring lore when gameplay demands it.

@GerardthePriest
"...but doing a strength->spell power conversion for paladins would be imbalanced, especially for PvP. "

Is it somehow imbalanced for a resto shaman? A healing priest? If not, why the difference? I'd argue that there's less of a chance for holy pally since one would have to be in melee range, which healers try *not* to be.

Many of the abilities are not baseline. I'll likely not have Templar's Verdict, or Divine Storm, or a haste reduced CD on Crusader Strike, or many other things in MoP that make me do effective damage. Hard casting Exo is a surefire way to run mana dry.

@GerardthePriest
"It's been said before: it would make it too easy for holy paladins to both DPS and heal."

Monks, dude.

That said, seriously, there isn't anything wrong with being able to fulfill two roles at once. Tanks can tank and dps at the same time, why shouldn't healers be able to heal and dps at the same time? Disc priests already can, in a manner of speaking.

Holy Paladins used to be able to - it was called the Shockadin spec and it was incredibly fun to play. Not because it was somehow OP, but because the gameplay was really flexible and engaging. Balancing my damage output with keeping people alive was super exhilarating. It felt like my Paladin really was wielding the Light to his fullest potential. Of course I can't do it anymore because of the spellpower scaling of Exorcism in 4.x, but back in the day it was right and good and I loved every moment of it.

In Cataclysm, way too many players have fallen into the trap of thinking that since so-called "Hybrid" classes can no longer properly fulfill their true roles as hybrid classes, they never should be able to. Blizzard has openly stated that they wish to see more actual uses for a class's ability to do two different things without completely sucking at either one. ( as evidenced by the Druid 5.0 talents )

Holy Paladins used to be the shining example of what it means to be a hybrid class, and while that playstyle is currently floating face-down somewhere off the coast of Northrend, its legacy remains and there are many many among us who would see it rise again to its former glory.