Okay, there have been some postings in the druid forum by some players with brains. Admittedly, I'm not at the top of my bracket, but I'm starting to see a trend in the mid-brackets. It seems that resto druids only really became overpowered because of the introduction of arena drinking.

This theory amused me at first because it sounded ridiculous, but after reading more compelling data, it seemed that it may indeed be true. Resto druids were not in the top brackets of 2v2 (or any arena for that matter) at the end of season 1, there were barely any resto druids above 2100. Why? Well, it was because paladin+warrior was the craze to beat, which was impossible as a druid+warrior combo with equal gear. Why? Well, simply because paladins can heal through MS and warrior damage for ~135 average mana.

Flash of Light costs 180, crits half the time it's cast, and when it crits, it costs 90 and heals well over 2.5k. It has a 1.5 second cast time, and paladins have talents that reduce the chance they are interrupted, and have a talent that reduces silenced / school-locked durations in half. So, an amazingly well-timed pummel will only school-lock a paladin for 1.5 seconds, then they can cast again with zero knockback.

Let us compare this to the druid's best heal, lifebloom. When a druid gets lifebloom to a 3 stack, it has cost him 660 mana (a far cry more than 135), and keeping it up costs him another 220 every 6 seconds (another far cry more than 135). On the plus side, Lifebloom doesn't have a cast time, so it can't be interrupted, but silence still hits the druid for the tooltip duration, whereas paladins don't suffer that long.

Additionally, a 3x stack of Lifebloom will heal for 550 every second and cannot crit (except at the end, but if you let it bloom, you've just wasted another 660 mana for about a 2k heal at best, 1.5k more often than not), so in that same casting time for Flash of Light, a druid will heal for ~750 vs. the paladin's 2k-2.5k and used double the mana (if you can keep Lifebloom from blooming the entire match on a 3-stack).

My conclusion is that a paladin's mana efficiency (even before Blessing of Wisdom) is far superior to a druid's. The only reason that paladin+warrior is now losing to druid+warrior is because druids have more escape mechanics than paladins, and can run off and drink water in a corner to try and keep up with the paladin's mana efficiency. This is why we're seeing more hunters in the 2v2 arenas now, they can keep the druids from drinking then entire fight.

What obvious steps can be taken to balance the playing field? Simple, improve the healing efficiency of other classes to be more in line with the efficiency of paladins and remove drinking from arenas.