Infinite mana usually occurs when you have a replenishment buff in the group. It's more likely to occur in 25 mans though where you have several buffs + replenishment and your mana pool is high.

It seems like the best way going forward to handle mana regen is to always make sure you have the replenishment buff and stack int since the buff is based on a % of your mana pool. I'm only half joking on this.

It's funny how everyone is complaining that raids are too easy and instead of Blizzard making the raids harder they nerf the mana users. So when 3.1 is released people that have cleared all the content will have to go back to progression on Patchwerk because all the mana users (healers/dps) are OOM.

Again, I half joke on this one, I'm sure Blizz won't nerf us to the ground - but it kinda sucks to have to completely re-gear a toon because stat mechanics are changing.

Honestly, it's really strange. While I was gearing up, my fights--heroics, raids, whatever--were always a dps vs. mana race. The most important question was, would they kill it before I went OOM? But at some point, it just stopped mattering. I remember our third or so Sapphiron fight... where I had struggled endlessly before, that time I looked up at Saph's health and saw it at 40% while my mana was at 70%+. Huh? There was no in between. Mana went from being a problem to being infinite, with no comfortable zone of, say, the boss dying when my mana was at 20%.

I have mixed feelings about this. I remember how hard it was to keep mana up despite shadowfiend/mana pots and even the occasional hymn of hope, and I wonder how new healers are ever going to survive... but at my gear level, I can see why this is needed. Mana just isn't something I have to care about anymore. I MIGHT use one mana pot per Naxx run. Maybe.

The last thing I think of, though, is that healing seems to be the only job in the game that's still extremely stressful. Dps just hit buttons with more attention and fervor if they need to down something faster; maybe they'll change their music and be hunky-dory, and I say that as a healer with a fairly experience dps alt, so it's not a shot at their job; without them, the bosses wouldn't die. Tanks, well... they hold the mob's attention, but they have their set rotations and might blow some cooldowns if they see themselves getting low, but otherwise their lives are in our hands. Healing requires concentration, feverish button mashing and/or clicking, and attention to lots and lots of detail. It would be nice if they would let me relax once in a while and not have to worry about my mana.

Healing is the only thing that requires immense skill or attention anymore, and while I like that I can say I know what I'm doing, I sometimes wish I could sit back and listen to music/watch TV with the rest of the raid.

Healers certainly take skill, but at the same time, saying that tanking (and DPS-ing to some extent) require no skill is pushing it. Straight up tanking is easier than before, with increased AoE tanking capabilities and higher threat generation, but for any non tank-and-spank fight, the tank has to know what to do, where to move, when to use cooldowns, etc.

Yea this si really gonna hur tme as a holy pally. Our typical raid has 2 holy pallies and 1 resto shaman, 1 warrior tank and 1 dps warrior, 2-3 mages, 1 rogue and 1 dps dk. We have no replenimshent in core raiders and the closest we have isnt' even 80 yet. Blizz has quoted a dozen times to bring the player not the class but now making so we have to tell some of our raiders sorry but we have to bring this undergeared person so we can have replenishment, now this goes against blizz stated when they put the expansion and is going against what they market for months about their changes to classes just to go back to the old way of life.

I didn't say dps and tanking required NO skill. Just somewhat LESS. And I stressed attention span as an equal issue. Don't misquote me and start a thing about it, stay on topic. :)