There, I said it, Holy was so much more fun in BFA. Glimmer was a super fun playstyle, Santicifed Wrath/short CD Holy Shock was much more fun than Awakening, we did better damage (soloing as Holy was much less painful), and we had Fast-Cast Holy Light.
In fact, BFA Holy Paladin was probably the best that Holy has ever been.
It makes me sad to think that we may never have that playstle again (since Classic BFA may never happen / is impossibly far away).
Ehhh for my money, I liked healing in MoP/end of Cata the best, and in terms of soloing, I liked our design the end of Cata the best.
Probably that’s because…
Wait a minute…I feel like I’ve done this rant elsewhere in this forum some time in the last few days, and your name looks really familiar; will I just be repeating what you’ve already read if I start talking about why I liked Cata so much?
It’s true, we run in similar circles 
It would be cool if Blizzard put two talent paths for Holy in the game. One MoP/Cata-style, one BFA-style. Sadly I don’t see that happening. If the druid talent trees are anything to go by, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of customization that will be feasible. Too many base abilities have made their way into the talent tree, not enough in the way of interesting stuff.
Personally, the MoP-style damage toolkit was awesome, however, because of PVP power not scaling damage for healers, I couldn’t use it at all in PVP. The MoP-style PVE healing was okay, but it was kind of tame/less engaging than the BFA-style healing.
One of the reasons that I like that base abilities made it into the talent tree is because that lets me pick up other specs’ fundamental abilities—I’m personally hoping Hammer of the Righteous and Templar’s Verdict are shallow in the class tree, since I’d like them for soloing.
One of the thing I got good feedback on (usually it’s all negative feedback and you have to guess what’s good based on what isn’t being said to you) is how my ideal trees created real playstyle choices between casting and melee.
And I made it a point to mention that, just because the numbers don’t favor Glimmer in Shadowlands doesn’t mean they won’t favor it in Dragonflight. I made sure Glimmer made it into my ideal trees!
I remember that I forgot to put Sanctified Wrath in my ideal trees, though, which was pretty stupid of me: that’s the talent I’m using right now! I was thinking of putting it in an octagon with Avenging Crusader on the left-hand side of the Holy tree, but now I’m thinking: shouldn’t Sanctified Wrath be in the class tree, instead?
I’d like to think these questions aren’t off-topic, and that, if this kind of discussion has even a chance of it helping the devs get a fun playstyle you like in the game, then it’s worth pursuing.
I’m good with this for the class tree; not for the spec tree (like Druids have to talent to get Ironbark, really?)