Upcoming Changes to Mana Regeneration

[Nefertem]

I reckon this will affect various caster classes, but its mainly for healers

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down â€" classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.
 

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
• These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

Source

[kregoron]

Mana is overrated anyways, just hit em with your stick!

[Arcticfire]

yeay gratz to that, my mana regen sucked already anyway!

[TeaLeaf]

Some added info:

[ITEM]Soul of the Dead[/ITEM] finally dropped from Sapphiron last night and surprisingly few people wanted it, so I was lucky enough to pick up a trinket I have wanted for a long time, here's why I wanted it for my resto shaman:

It provides a 900 mana refund proc with a 45 second internal cooldown.
The proc rate for the mana return is 25%.  I'll say that again, TWENTY FIVE PERCENT!
That means depending on how quickly you proc the trinket after cooldown it is the equivalent of 80-100 MP5.
In the subsequent Kel'thuzad fight (5 minutes) it returned 5,400 mana to me which is about 90 MP5.  This is MASSIVE regen.

With the upcoming mana regen changes, consider it!

TL.

[Nefertem]

Only dropped once for my guild, and lost it to a pally, but yes, I definately want this trinket on my shaman

And congrats TL

[Jim]

hehe, that is a nice trinket, other possibility is getting tailoring and getting the ... (cant remember exactly) but something like darkweave embroidery on ya cloak, chance on spell to give 300 mana i think

[TeaLeaf]

Darkglow Embroidery
4 sec cast
Requires Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate
Reagents:
Ebonweave, Eternium Thread
Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, giving you a chance to restore 300 mana when you cast a spell.

You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.  Requires 400 Tailoring to use.

The proc appears to have a 60 second internal cooldown which makes it worth 25mp5 if you're happy to give up the haste enchant that would otherwise normally be on your cloak.

TL.

[Luminance]

Like shamans have good healing over time spells, we have one, and it aint worth waiting 10 seconds to get clearcasting and 5 seconds full mana regen :S
Ah well if they really get healers in sinc with eachother, I guess it will be beneficial for priests, since they'll get the least amounth of nerf-ish