Mana Changes Would be Fine If Mana Regen/Healing Existed
To be honest the mana changes aren't horrible in regards to the concept, the issue is that there's nothing to compensate this overall loss of mana. If the game introduced more ways to restore mana or actual mana regen on items (aren't there only like 5 items that have mana regen? and all of them are on support items) and the mana pools on ALL the champs were lowered (instead of just mages), then that would actually make players have to think about spending mana wisely and thinking of it as an actual stat rather than just "get one item and no more mana issues".