The change is being implemented so as not to change water's PvE effect. Water is used differently in PvE than PvP. It is to recoup between fights, and no one drinks for less than 5 seconds. So, there will be no change in that situation.

PvP is where the change happens. Apparently, Blizz sees it as an undesirable tactic for people to break combat to drink. If that is done too regularly, then drinking water becomes a psuedo mana potion.

No, as a Pally I do short bursts of drinking whilst raiding all of the time. I'll start drinking as soon as I get the leaving combat message and keep on drinking after the fights started as the group's wading it's way through trash all of the time. I very rarely take more than say 10s and quite often have to stop much sooner, it's just a fast top off between frenetic pulls. Other pallys and healers in the group all seem to do the same thing, it just really cuts down on the down time between fights. Maybe the 5s minimum won't make much of a difference, but still it seems like a pretty needless change from a PvE point of view.

Yeah guy, but the point is the "burst".
for the first 5 seconds, you're getting less than pre-2.4

at the 6th second, you get a Burst of mana, which makes up for the lower amount on the first 5 seconds, making it equal to pre-2.4

from then on, it's normal.

At least, that's what I get from the article. I haven't been anywhere near the PTR myself.

It doesn't sound like you do too much Arena because this tactic is used a hell of a lot there. In PvE, I don't think it will matter much if in the end you're getting the same amount of mana in the end anyway.

Still, if it's a needless inconvenience for PvE I wonder if they can just change it for Arena matches or not. Could also be a bug that's been around for a long time but just got noticed due to the fact that it's highlighted the most in PvP.

YES.

If Arenas are the problem, fix Arenas, not the whole game.

Like I've said before; you don't rewire your entire house just because your bedside lamp blows a bulb.

This problem, along with the changing armour in arena problem, stems from them reducing the time it takes to get "out of combat" (which was a buff to rogues and druids).

If it took 10s to get out of pvp combat then it would be much easier to keep people in combat and thus much easier to prevent them changing their armour or ninja drinking.

Messing with drinking is a massive nerf to fast pulling in instances though; as a tank I am often pulling the next mob less than 5s after the previous one died. If it takes longer for the healers' mana pool to get to a level where I am comfortable pulling then it will slow down my pulls. Furthermore as my health bar is mostly cared for by others I nearly always finish fights on 80%-100% health, so the rare times that I do eat between pulls tend to be for only a few seconds to top my health off so I shall be even more affected by this change than most.

There is, of course, a very easy fix.

"No eating or drinking in arenas."

Why this isn't the answer, I can't begin to say, but there it is.

So ANOTHER change to the whole game because of Arena? Really Arena is just making the parts of the game I like much more annoying, you know all the PVE parts. But what do I know? The game is all about PVP now right?

The amusing thing about Blizzard nerfing everyone because of Arena, is that they don't even think that the Arena on live realms is good enough for tournaments. As seen by them setting up special servers with pre-made characters for their 3v3 tournament. They are nerfing the whole game to give one aspect "e-sports credibility" yet have to rig it to run a tournament.

@18 If they want to have all the best players compete with each other, then they have to set up a special realm. The best players aren't necessarily all in the same battlegroup, and it doesn't make sense to ask people to transfer just for a tournament (although there are people who transfer to particular battlegroups for sake of PVP competition).