WotLK talent/ability speculation

[Concillian]

Was it the 2.4 spirit changes that pushed priests over the top for you? A certain priestly Lurker was telling me he felt that way. *cough*vor_lord*cough*

That pushed it over the top, but priests did get a lot of help since that time.

meditation / intensity buff helped MP5
T6 content happened and made priests useful for CoH
2.4 happened with the massive regen buff

These allow priests to gear significantly differently. At the time they were wanting MP5 gear, because spirit was clearly not as good. Since the buffs, you have a variety of gear available, with spirit being preferred, but regen so good, you can almost ignore it as a stat and just go for +heal and +haste, which scales priests healing abilities quite well actually.

At the same time paladins saw the nerf bat a little.

When TBC first came out, they could not run OOM, and that was their big advantage. Well now most healers cannot run OOM, so it comes down to flexibility and paladins are definitely not flexible. Priests, who have the most number of tools available have begun to stand out.