What ever happened to spiky tank damage...

60K damage in less than a second sounds as if you aren't handling some of the fight mechanics right. No tank could realistically be able to survive that and no healer would realistically be able to heal that.

Now, healing is going to be tough on some of these encounters. This is not Halls of Stone. If it takes a few weeks to beat some of the Icecrown bosses, that's not the worst thing in the world. You might have to gear up a little or look at your normal healing strategy. We see a lot of the same complaints about Northrend Beasts when that content was new, but of course players figured out how to heal through that too. Just make sure you aren't calling every situation in which your healing is being challenged excessive, unpredictable burst damage on the part of the bosses.

Q u o t e:
Actually, Gormokk was bugged and was gaining parry haste when he first came out. >_>

The parry haste didn't help certainly, but I think a lot more of it had to do with raids trying 3 tanks or otherwise paying attention to the debuff stack. Some tanks who had managed the fight essentially posted "You guys are doing it wrong" and a lot more guilds were then able to get kills.

Q u o t e:
GC yes some of the damage is predictable. but what i am confused is why you stated (i am sorry i cannot find the post) that you wanted to reduce spike damage and increase what i would say is smart healing, where you might choose to heal a dps over a tank that has a HP deficit of ~10k or so.

You're talking about a couple of different time lines here. Healers choosing the most efficient heal for the job isn't going to happen until running OOM is a greater concern. That's not something we're going to be able to fix for Icecrown.

Lowering avoidance for Icecrown did allow us to lower boss damage though. If you think it's high now, imagine what it would be if every swing that did connect (since fewer of them would) hit your tank that much harder.

Q u o t e:
I'm not sure you know what spike damage means, it's not simply another way of saying lots of damage. If a boss connects on every swing and hits for 50k every time, that's not really spike damage. That's just a lot of damage. If the tank has 80% avoidance, now the damage he's taking is extremely unpredictable. That's spike damage.

Yes. It's tough in a game with so much community-created jargon, but this is what we're talking about when we are addressing spike damage. We didn't say and don't want for the harder Icecrown fights to be trivial to heal. They are there to challenge players who want a challenge. If you don't enjoy being pressed that hard, then just be a little patient.

Q u o t e:
Ghostcrawler, Im not sure if its because you play a healer that your vision is this, but most of the hardmodes fight I've done have been healing intensive in order to provide the extra chalange.

There are healer challenges, sure, but I don't think it's fair to say the fights are only challenging because of healing. Deathwhisper puts pressure on the tanks to manage adds and the ranged dps (typically) to switch at the right time. Saurfang asks a lot of the ranged dps (typically) who have to kite and kill the adds. Festergut requires a lot of dps in addition to challenging healing. Even Marrowgar requires the whole raid to pay attention to fire and whirlwinds and to focus on spike victims.

As I've said before though, I like healing because of the challenges. Healing gets boring fast IMO when it's trivial to keep everyone up, unless you just like the accolades of being a healer. (DPS on the other hand can still be fun on easy fights because you can try and see just how quickly you can get the kill.)

Just for the record, I play healers, tanks and dps. I PvP too.