I have a priest (not quite 70) a 70 holy pally, and a 70 resto druid. I disagree with the statement that priests should be the best healers, or the most wanted healers. A pally only really has 2 rolls to play, tanking and holy. Dps is not an option, as raids seem to hate them. Tanking: they might be tanking a bit in kara, MAYBE in gruuls and all those t4 raids, but they dont really have a place in ssc/tk/hyjal/BT (with the occasional pally tank, who knows?)So that just leaves holy, thats it. So your saying a pally should only be 2nd class in a raid? If priests suddenly became the ace healer, pallys would be an off-class that the raid would bring one along just for buffs. Even if holy priests arn't the main healer (usually) in raids, they still go along and theres generally around 2 (i dont know what guilds prefer really). At least shadow priests always have a good spot in raids, so thats technically two rolls you could play, primarily though your going to be shadow, but if you want to raid, and your shadow, you going to raid. So pallys only have one good roll in raids, and you stated in your post that you want the priest, along with the well-accepted shadow priest, to be a better raid healer? somehow priests having 2 great raid specs and pallys having 0 ticks me off, next time when you post something like this, maybe you should know about the class your posting against before you start thinking you deserve more.

First off, Pally Tanks may have little use in SSC and TK, but they're damn well nearly required for trash in Hyjal.  A single Ret Paladin is also not useless because you get the benefits of having an extra pally (another Blessing and additional BOPs), but they also offer buffs and utility (like other Paladins can usually judge once and forget it, so they can focus on healing).

I'm also of the mind that the buff to Spirit in patch 2.4 was specifically meant to address the apparent overpoweredness of Shadow Priests.  Up to this point, it's nice to have possibly two shadow priests because you want to have one for the healers, and one for your top casters to maximize DPS.  After 2.4, the need for priests to have a shadow priest drops significantly, and the value of a Holy Priest rises significantly.  Thus, IMO, the optimal priest distribution for a raid is 1 IDS (ABSOLUTE MUST, the buff is WAY too good to give up), 1 CoH (not absolutely necessary, but very nice and adds an enormous amount of utility), and 1 SP (for casters in DPS intensive fights, for healers in healing intensive fights).

I think this was specifically done because it makes Holy Priests the ultimate utility healer, as they have great relative mana efficiency (use more mana than Paladins, but regen a lot more too), they can MT heal effectively (what they lack in spamability compared to Druids and Paladins they make up for with Inspiration, PoM, Renew, etc.), and they can raid heal effectively (CoH and PoM are more effective in some circumstances than a Shaman's CH).

FWIW, I'm not even a CoH priest, I'm IDS (which means 8% less healing on FH, GH, and BH as well), and I almost always top the healing charts, usually by a non-insignificant margin.

Bottom line, a Paladin CANNOT replace a Priest and a Priest can only kinda/sorta fill in for a Paladin, and in some cases they just can't.  Sometimes you need lots of quick heals, Paladins can do this usually for 8-10 minutes, maybe longer. Meanwhile, a Priest CAN do it for short spurts, but they need recovery time.

Believe you me, even as the top healer in my raid, I know I can't replace a Holy Paladin in certain cases, and I'd often much rather have a so-so geared Paladin than a well geared Priest if it means we'd have less than two Holy Paladins if we didn't take him.

And, FWIW, my ideal healing set-up is 2 Holy Paladins, 2 Holy Priests (1 IDS, 1 CoH), 1 Resto Druid, 1 Resto Shaman as the base.  Sometimes you can get by with that, but usually you need a 7th.  So, grab a Paladin if you don't have a third Paladin as either Prot or Ret to get at least 3 Blessings.  Grab a Druid if you have at least three Paladins in the raid and you need either more MT healing or you don't need raid healing and you're somewhat short on Druids and think you may need the Innervate and/or Battle Res.  Grab a Shaman if you need more raid healing.  Grab another priest only if he's well geared and the other classes aren't available, or the need for utility is very high.