Blizz Considers Replenishment Mandatory?

There seems to be a problem here. Blizz feels like mana regen is a bit trivial but players (especially healers) think that they’re regen is awful without replenishment. Amidst this ongoing debate, I find the following statement by Ghostcrawler a bit disturbing:

We consider Replenishment mandatory. What I mean by that is we assume that you have Replenishment available to your raid. It is technically possible to go without it, but you will need to overgear the instance or otherwise compensate for it in other ways.

That doesn’t mean we will or will not nerf Replenishment. But we don’t want it to feel optional (assuming you are in reasonably challenging content) and nerfing it too much might have that effect. source

I know he qualifies it and he does say “raid” but I still find that statement a bit wrong to assume. Mana regen is mana regen whether you’re in a raid or simply in a 5 man group doing dungeons. In raids, especially 25 mans, it’s safe to assume you’re have replenishment because you’re bound to have at least one guy with it. But as the groups get smaller, the chance is bigger that you won’t have it since there are only a few classes with it. Mana regen is a problem you’ll have whether you’re in a 5 man or a 25 man since it uses the same mechanic throughout the game. If replenishment is their solution, then there’s a big problem here.