There's no doubt that healing is extremely mana intensive right now. I guess some people in this thread want to play the "L2P" game and deny it, but it's a fact.
Anyway, to some suggestions:
1) Everyone can't always be topped off anymore. Gotta move out of that WotLK mentality where we can just have healing flying around like a sprinkler. DPSers can just sit at 60% some times and deal with it.
2) Triage is a good thing. This is really just an extension of the first point, but it bears having a point of it's own. Sometimes the tank is getting beat down, the group is taking extra damage from some mechanic that wasn't dealt with properly, the mage can't find the sheep button, the rogue is standing in something bad as rogues are wont to do, and you're feeling like its your job to carry everyone through it...and frankly people are used to the WotLK mentality where you could. But it's not your job. You have to prioritize where your time and mana go, and if that rogue dies to fire because you're keeping the tank up, that's how it is.
3) Get on your group to shape up and work harder. There's tons of CC abilities out there now. Sure, some people will act as though you're not pro enough if you're relying on CC abilities because "you don't need those for trash" but if there's a pack of 4 mobs and you can sheep just one of them....oh look, incoming damage just dropped 25%. Maybe more. A sap and a sheep? 50%. I'm pretty sure most tanks would kill for an ability with no cooldown that reduced incoming damage by that much. Get those lazy DPS out of their WotLK zerg mentality and get them doing their jobs. Your tank and your mana pool will be much happier.
4) Don't be afraid to crack the whip a little. As the healer you're watching everyone, their debuffs, their position, and their health bars. You're probably more aware of everyones situation than even they themselves are. It's ok to tell that Retadin that standing in front of mobs while they're casting Flay is a bad idea. Hell, they might not even know. You're just blowing your mana pool to save them and they may never even be aware why.
5) Heavily prioritize your spell usage. It's a lot harder on your mana pool to run around throwing all your spells out there now. I think we all got comfortable with the WotLK model of almost being able to have "rotations" where we just used everything we had GCD's for. Now - if you're a holy priest for instance - throwing renew, PW:S, PoM, CoH, flash heal, etc around is tempting because we figure if they're there, we should use them. You have to resist that urge, spells are more on a "need to cast" basis now.
6) Don't be afraid of spirit. It's actually pretty useful now, some guides go so far as to say that you should make sure every item you wear is an int/sta/spi/x variant of some sort.
7) Use those mana regen abilities. Try not to have too much of a "rainy day" mentality in regards to things like Shadowfiend and even Power Infusion (read the second part of that tooltip!). They're there, use them. Even in WotLK I'd often innervate myself in the first 30 seconds of every fight just because I knew I'd use the mana and I'd get at least one more innervate later. Unorthodox? Maybe, every one else laughed about it, but oh well. There's no bonus points for having all your CD's up at the end of a fight, and people who use the "but you don't need that if you're good" line are just being ******s, frankly.
Anyway, that's all I can think of for now, and this will all change once we're all decked out in epics. Things will loosen up a lot.
AND my guild had a bet for who could get to 85 first (I ended up 3rd after taking a short nap)
