Ghostcrawler explains why healers won't have infinite mana in Cataclysm.

For the inaugural World of Warcraft developer blog, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street decided to tackle the question, "Why Does Blizzard Hate Healers?" It turns out Blizzard doesn't actually hate healers, but Ghostcrawler admits that they mistakenly gave healers too much mana regeneration in Wrath of the Lich King. He outlines the main consequences of having infinite mana:

• Expensive, fast heals were never a difficult choice. Healers would use the same handful of spells over and over.
• Since healers weren't running out of mana, they made raid encounters more challenging through very high tank or raid damage. This made healing stressful without the reward of making good decisions.
• Talents and stats involving mana regeneration became undesirable and players overhealed too much.
• PvP balance suffered because nobody stayed in a wounded state for long.

In Cataclysm, healers won't have infinite mana. Ghostcrawler hopes players consider this less of a nerf and more of a fun challenge. You can read his comments regarding the change after the jump.

"To be clear, we don’t want healers to constantly run out of mana. We want them to run out of mana when they don’t play well. And we don’t want them to always fail. But we do want them to feel good when they are challenged, and overcome those challenges to succeed. When someone is wounded, we want healers to consider whether to use a slow, efficient heal (because they aren’t in immediate threat of dying) or a fast, expensive heal (because they are). That’s called triage, and it was notably missing from the Lich King healing environment. We think triage will make healing more fun. We’re making this change not to make healers sad by nerfing them, but to make healers happy by making the game more fun for them."

So healers, what are your thoughts on Ghostcrawler's blog entry?