"able to spam endlessly at that cost."

Which is what the original intent of the healing changes was. It was supposed to be "heal as needed, use huge or fast heal as needed and THOSE will mana drain you if you spam them. ".

We were supposed to be able to never run OOM if we stuck to the standard heal. So good healers used the right tool for the job and paid attention to what was called for. Now, it won't matter how good you are at judging if a big or quick heal is REALLY necessary because even the standard heal is draining you. So instead of healers being able to moderate the drain rate it is a clock. Does DPS have the moxie to beat the healers being OOM or do you let people die to maybe win?

Warlocks, enhance and any other DPS that can self heal win in the second environment.

A DP should never run out of resources doing the simple rotation. A tank should never either. So why is it okay for a healer to run out with the basic heal?

"I was able to spam endlessly without ever running out of mana at that cost."

That was the original intent of Cata healing.
The point was to have all your spells matter in some manner.

Your basic heal could not run you OOM. But it was only suitable for moderate damage with plenty of time available to cast.

Your quick heal was there to get someone out of the red zone fast. It would become necessary if all you used was the basic heal.

Your slow, heavy hitter was a mana hog, but if someone was not in danger of dropping quickly, AND they need a lot of healing, it is the best heal to get them topped off.

AE heals are, well, AE.
HoTs are involved in here as they can slowly heal people so they fall in between the basic and big heal.

Well, now that is gone and instead of having skill matter for knowing when to switch to one of the other heals, you are in a race against the clock. Who needs a boss enrage timer when you can expect every heal to suck down that blue bar more than anything they have to bring it up? "Do I heal that DPS, or do I save that mana for the tank since I am low? Guess the DPS is on his own."

Is a DPS that sits there with no resources fun? Is it okay to have one that can't do a simple rotation without running out?
Is it okay to have a tank sit there unable to do anything because they ran out of resources while tanking?
If the answer is no to those 2, why are healers special?

I loathe healing. Because every time I hear about how they want to make encounters more exciting/fun/dynamic it tends to translate to "hose the healers somehow" and no one minds. So now they make healing more fun by doing what? Oh, making healers the only role in the game that will have limited resources, will be unable to effectively regain resources, and will have to make decisions based on minutes later.

I forsee any DPS with self-healing to be at an advantage in this setting, because then your healers can sit around on their hands for a little while and get some mana back, or maybe cast a few dozen lightning bolts...

(If this double posts, sorry, I have had a few posts swallowed up recently and I am not sure why.)

@Angus

'Which is what the original intent of the healing changes was. It was supposed to be "heal as needed, use huge or fast heal as needed and THOSE will mana drain you if you spam them.'

From what I recall (and I don't believe I have seen someone at Blizzard state that you should NEVER run OOM using a standard heal), it wasn't that you were "supposed to be able to never run OOM" if you used your standard heal, but it was the most efficient of all the heals with the drawback that it is not suited for specific tasks. Fast heal if you need to bring a target up immediately or a big heal to... heal alot. Spamming any 3 spells constantly will run you OOM or overheal. The playstyle they want to ram home in Cata is that healers will have to find efficient uses for heals in respect to their mana.

'So instead of healers being able to moderate the drain rate it is a clock.'

You basically always have, and probably always will have a 'clock' counting down to when you'll be OOM and that timer has always been in the control of the player. It's up to you for what type of heal you use for specific situations which will govern whether you will run OOM in 8 minutes time or 3 minutes time. If you spam fast heals or big heals, you will severely drain your mana pool within a short amount of time. If you spam your 'standard' heal, then you will last longer but the risk of others dieing due to certain situations may increase. If you mix in all 3 in reaction to situations, you'll find a sweet spot in which you'll have enough mana to last you while keeping everyone alive.

'So why is it okay for a healer to run out with the basic heal?'

It's what's going to make healing a bit more interesting. As GC has stated, is a bit more beyond 1 - 2 button healing. Nevermind now having an actual risk of going OOM due to poor choice of actions when it comes to healing.

Personally I've had to heal through BC and WotLK and this direction does interest me, aswell as others that I've talked to ingame that mainly heal. Though I tend to enjoy the 'busy' playstyle (I like playing as feral cat :P )

If you want to read more to understand, try this post from GC

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=21627632910&pageNo=1#6

He has also posted a few 5 or so more times in that thread relating to priest healing, downranking and regen.

The reason they made this change was because the designated middle heal was too good, your big heal is the mana efficient one, the middle heal is your bread and butter heal. The problem was it was too good in most situations.

Mana has to matter to healers otherwise the only other resource Blizzard can make you manage is the global cooldown. If you should play as mana efficiently as you can and your group or raid fails as all healers run out of mana it's the DPS's fault or the tanks fault, either DPS wasn't high enough or the DPS and tanks took too much extra avoidable damage straining the healers mana pool.

I am well aware of what GC has said. I am also well aware that this quote directly contradicts a quote made months ago that indicated that the efficient heal should not run you OOM.

As it stands, I really don't think it will work. Balancing something like this is way too hard to get right in the space of a couple of months. They "don't care about numbers yet" so the numbers have been way off and the final balancing is still weeks away. Without that numbers pass they aren't going to be able to balance this at all well and we will end up with some overly hard times, which is going to kill the amount of healers.

By the time the do get it right, it won't matter. The damage will be done and the lack of healers will be very apparent.