Well things finally caught up with me and I have respecced by beloved ret pally to holy. My guild is constantly short on healers and my druid does great as a tank and DPSer so I had to respec to fill in an obvious hole. My ret gear is in the bat cave waiting to be brought back out when whoop-@ss is called for.
I ramshackled a lot of gear together from the AH as well as buying the new Crusader's gear sold at five rep vendors (Sha'tar, Lower City, Honor Hold, Keepers of Time and Cenerion Expedition) to create my new healer:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hydraxis&n=Zirk
I know there's Dllbrt's guide to Holy Paladins, which I've been reading to get caught up, but I still had a few questions...
1) What are the minimum holy paladin Kara stats?
2) I made my build to be strong with healing, but I balked on a lot of the softer talents like imp Lay on Hands, Aura Mastery and etc. in favor of more defensive minded talents from the Prot tree (up to and including BOK). Would like some input on this especially if you've tried this build before.
3) What should I improve on, and in what order, to be more raid-viable?
In any case, I was very impressed with the healing capability of the holy tree. Spamming flash of light forever is awesome, and even when soloing, they pack a wicked punch with Judgement of Crusader, followed by Consecrate, Seal of Righteousness, Judgement of Rightenousness, and of course the beautiful Holy Shock.
It's not kill-em-all fun of ret, but I can get used to this.