They are actually addressing the complaints to some extent about how weak their hard-casting feels in 11.1:
Continuing the discussion from Undermine(d) Development Notes:
but they’re also nerfing lightsmith which was their strongest hero tree I think.
As far as the weapon discussion goes, I would have just bought a cheap green int weapon off the AH while leveling if I was playing holy occasionally. The main stat loss of using a non-int weapon is huge. Setting loot spec to holy while playing prot works too if you already had a decent prot weapon.