#79 - 2010/09/19 04:54:59 AM
As others have pointed out, we nerfed all of the medium heals.
Very early in beta, some healers were freaking out about running out of mana. To counter this, we made the medium heals really cost effective. We probably overdid it, because more recently, healers were able to handle almost everything with just that one heal. We want it to be part of your package, not your whole package.
We gave Replenishment to Restoration because we took it away from Survival hunters. It didn't make a lot of sense for a non-mana class to offer mana. We want to make sure Replenishment is easily available, though to be fair it is about half as effective as it was in Lich King.
Keep in mind that we're not super concerned with healer mana efficiency when not in a group. Fights are pretty short when you're solo and there are a lot of breaks. What I'm getting at is we're not super concerned with how you perform when self-buffed, so long as you're functional. We're more concerned with how you perform when group buffed, since all of the most rewarding endgame content requires groups.
EDIT: We did not nerf Replenishment this patch. It has been lower, relative to LK, through all of beta.