Removing Blue Buff's Mana Gate?

Hello,

I'm curious if there's ever been a (public) discussion or consideration of removing Blue Buff's mana regeneration component? Principally, I feel a lot of mana and mana regeneration based itemization/design choices are somewhat choked by it. Really high cost mages, for instance, tend to be 'mana free' with Blue Buff + 1 Mana Item (e.g, Athene's, Morello's, etc). Yet, when Blue Buff is gone, their mana management chokes as a consequence of not having it.

So this problematic relationship of 'really strong' and 'constrained strength' crops up and down based purely on a single buff's location. AD Carries aren't constrained by Red Buff in nearly the same manner, for example. Very effective and nice to have, but a critical resource management system isn't bent over backwards for it.

I largely envision a removal of the Blue Buff resource regeneration component to mean all mana/mana regeneration items would be adjusted to compensate. There would be incentive to build double mana items, for example, to achieve a more consistent 'high mana' strong point, possibly at the cost of defensive stats/damage/other utility.

Given how this does affect mana-based junglers, I muse with the idea of increasing smite mana return and large monster buff mana return to compensate. Blue Buff itself could take on any number of properties, though I wonder if something defensive (a regenerating shield, HP regeneration, etc) might suit it. A sort of opposites relationship, where Red Buff is offensive and Blue Buff is defensive. An issue arises with that in defensive, non-blue based junglers become stronger from that focus shift. Perhaps, then, it is not so easy to remove, but I'm curious about ideas on the subject.

Thank you~