That's the way I did my first heroics when my team hit lvl 80.

Instead of buying gear and stuff like that I just made 2 resto shamans, 2 ele shamans and a protadin tank.
With green gear and 17k HP fully buffed tank I was able to down practically all the heroics without problem. The extra healing and absolutely no mana problems (2 x resto shaman mana totems) did excelent work.

Then I switched to a tank, a healer and 3 elementals. Have bind a LHW --> tank on the elementals and when the healer needed some backup the 3 extra LHW did the work.

Then after the tank got properly geared I started running around with 4 elementals and rarely needed a 4 x LHW in heroics, even on boss fights. 3 x healing totems + 1 x mana totem + judgement of light were enough passive heleaing for my tank.

Not sure how will that work in 4.x patch because I have stopped playing since before the patch, but I guess you will find the same mechanic and progression because Blizzard cannot change that much the usual way instances are done.