Sigma
The goal of
Spirit of the Crane and
Rising Thunder is to enable a playstyle that incorporates melee attacks while healing, for those who desire it (note that Holy Paladins have some similar ablilities and talents, and much of this discussion applies to them as well). We intend for you to be able to use these abilities naturally in dungeon and raid content, without being unfairly punished for being in melee range. However, the Mistweaver situation in Warlords, where the spec is never targeted by a wide range of abilities (even though, the vast majority of the time, it has no need for such treatment) is not one we're happy with. Our goal is to be more judicious about exactly which encounter abilities, if targeted at Mistweavers or Holy Paladins, would preclude playing the spec as intended.
For example, a Chain Lightning or Void Zone targeted at a random player with no warning will wipe or seriously disrupt the group if ever targeted at a person in a melee clump. If you can get targeted by it, there is no option but to avoid being in melee at any time during the encounter. Mistweavers and Holy Paladins should not be targeted by these sorts of abilities.
On the other hand, imagine a debuff that requires you to move away from other players for a short time or move to a certain location. In many cases, we exempt melee DPS from such abilities not because it would wipe the raid, but merely because reducing their effectiveness to near-zero for many seconds would be overly frustrating. We are much less concerned about asking Mistweavers or Holy Paladins to respond to these kinds of mechanics, because they can still use most of their abilities and be reasonably effective while briefly out of melee. In these cases they'd simply be handling the same mechanics that other healers were required to handle.
In summary, choose these talents on alpha like any others and use them as you'd expect, and feel free to report any situations where doing so causes problems that you have no way to avoid.
------------
A few other things:
--We are planning to revise
Sheilun's Gift, as we agree it is rather bland.
--
Essence Font should be reasonably effective on as few as 6 targets. Tuning is still in progress as always, but the current version should slightly exceed unbuffed
Vivify in terms of throughput and efficiency at around that amount (and if not, we'll take a look at that). It will only get relatively stronger from there as the number of targets increases.