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.