To Spam or Not to Spam

I've been focusing a lot on the healing role on the blog lately and wanted to write something more general today. Then I saw Matticus's post about how spamming is a healer's most important skill and I had to address this.

I don't quite know where Matticus is going with this. I think telling people they need to heal by spamming is a bad idea, considering how things are about to change in the next patch.

Ghostcrawler made a post about the goal being to make healing less spammy.
Our goal in 3.1 is going to be to heal only when it is needed, not just letting it land because it won't matter if we overheal anyway because mana isn't an issue.
I get the feeling that if we just spam heals like we have been used to in 3.1 that we'll run OOM fast.

I've been trying to practice restraint now, which is difficult after playing a discipine priest for the last couple of months. I use incoming heal indicators now on my Grid, so if I see someone's already getting a heal I'll cancel mine. I focus more on instant heals or my fastest casting ones, so I can get my heal landed before someone else gets a chance.

Priests are lucky to have Prayer of Mending, which costs mana for the initial cast, but after that it can keep bouncing around the raid healing up others for no additional mana. It is one of the reasons I can stay near the top of the meters.
Ghostcrawler alludes to giving us more spells like this, ones that are more interesting and dynamic.

It isn't that I'm depending on OOFSR regen, it is more like I'm depending on not running dry in the first place. With this playstyle, the nerf to spirit shouldn't affect me as much. It is only there to remind me to manage my mana while in the FSR, because my only option of getting mana back in 3.1 is going to be through Replenishment and my Shadowfiend.