There is a reason that healing gets its own section. Despite the fact that we have only two healing spells and no heals over time, paladins are some of the best single target healers in the game. Given the right gear and talent spec we can match or surpass the healing of a priest with no real loss of our incredible longevity and survivability. When in a large scale group or raid you will have two possible roles. If you are a main healer you will be focusing on targets that take lots of damage like a tank. In this case you will only want to focus on your assigned target and let the other healers focus on the other players. If you are not main healing you will be back up healing. Here you will be backing up the main healers by covering all of their main targets and some of the other groups as well. By throwing in a back up heal the main healers won't have to heal as much and will save mana and reduce threat. First let’s cover our two healing spells. Holy light and Flash of Light.
Healing Spells
Having only two healing spells really does limit our ability to heal. But it also means that we only have to worry about making two decisions. The difference between your two healing spells is their casting time, mana cost and the amount they heal. Holy light has a 2.5 second casting time and heals a lot. Flash of light on the other hand has only a 1.5 second casting time and heals a little bit, but has much greater mana efficiency. Most of the time you will be using flash of light. This will help you keep the tank topped off on health and save you mana. If they take a very big hit and are at less then fifty percent HP you should switch to Holy Light to bring them back from the danger zone. These rules apply to both main healing and back up healing except in back up healing you will need to focus on several targets at once.
Healing Strategies.
When healing in a party there are two things to remember. Unless you are specced completely for healing you will rarely have as much mana as a priest so you will need to conserve it whenever possible. Your primary attention will want to be on the main tank and the frontline fighters. If you are in a

small group you can usually decide who should have healing priority by yourself. But in a raid you should talk to the other paladins so you can pick members to focus on. That way everyone won’t overheal the rouge and let the warriors die.
When things first start off Flash of Light is usually the best choice. Pace yourself by casting this at set intervals depending on how much damage the enemy is causing. If things get really bad though its time to switch over to your Holy light spell. The casting time may be longer, but it heals a much greater amount of damage and benefits more from your +Healing. During a battle if your teammates are all very low on HP your chances of losing people increase and your chances of survival decrease.
Increasing Your Healing
The primary way to increase your healing is to upgrade your gear with +Healing modifiers and stats like intelligence. Another good way to increase your healing is with Blessing of Light. Putting this on a target will increase the healing they get from paladin heals. (from any paladin, not just yourself) It will end after a set amount for Holy Light and Flash of light but it is incredibly useful, indescribably so for boss fights. Finally, Paladins have a unique ability when it comes to healing with regard to critical heals. Heals can crit just like magic spells and increase the amount of healing that person gets. But with the Illumination talent your critical heals will cost 60% less mana. . In patch 2.1 there was a rather heavy nerf to this approach but there are ways to work around it and keep your mana efficiency high.
Mana Efficiency
The thing that separates paladins from other healing classes is their mana efficiency. When trying to keep a single target alive paladins will almost always be able to last longer than other classes. The key to this was gaining back mana through the Illumination and Divine favor talents. This meant that paladins needed to stress spell crit instead of mana per five gear like other classes. In patch 2.1 Illumination was nerfed rather heavily by reducing the amount of mana you got back to 60% from 100%. To get around this you will need to stop focusing as much on spell critical strikes and focus more on mana per five gear.

A well equipped paladin should aim for about twenty to twenty five percent spell crit. This is untalanted and with dungeon, heroic and some Karazhan gear. The nerf has effectively reduced your spell crit when it

comes to Illumination by forty percent. So your twenty percent crit chance has been reduced to twelve. Your job is to replace that missing eight percent with mana per five gear. Before the nerf one percent spell crit was equal to 7.5 MP5 in terms of mana regen. So in order to make up for the nerf you will need to add an extra 60 MP5 to your gear. If you have more than twenty percent spell crit, for every extra one percent add an additional 3 MP5.
60 extra MP5 by itself is not so bad, but in the process you might lose some of your spell crit. When you take away from your spell crit pool you will need to add on some extra MP5 to compensate. After the nerf one spell crit is equal to 4.5 MP5. This means when you take away one percent from your spell crit pool you will need to add on an extra 4.5 MP5. Or for every 5.5 spell crit rating you lose you will need to add an extra 1 MP5.
Even with these steps it will be hard to regain your former level of healing. Until you have had time to run numerous instances to re-gear you should invest in some consumables. Mana oils, Mana and Mageblood Potions are very good while raiding, but rarely worth the expense in an instance. You should also look into mana restoring enchants for your equipment and comsumable enchants like spell thread. If possible you should also look for gems that include +Healing and MP5. On a final note the nerf has finally made Divine Illumination a worthwhile talent. If you have gone full holy then it is worth one extra talent point.