A Fair Solution To Taric's Mana Issues

Tl;dr: Suggestion at the bottom (in italics).

Taric needs to be mana gated. His kit has relatively low cooldowns with his passive taken into account, and his effective radius can essentially be doubled with another ally nearby; not to mention his ult is one of the strongest in the game. The general overcosting of his abilities is likely due to his passive being taken into account (you are adding a CD reduction and some empowered autos to the ability). I think the flat costs on his W and E are fine as is and gate him early on as intended, but his Q needs serious looking at.

The high cost on his Q (if maxed) is understandable because it is there to prevent the ability being used as a mechanism to shorten his other cooldowns. It's for the most part a reasonable design choice. That said, I do think his Q is too harshly costed for what it offers. All this has done is force Taric players to not max his Q and, rather ironically, use it for the reason Riot tried to avoid.

_My suggestion is to add a mana refund on his Q depending on how many charges are stored by the player (50% refund at full charge). A maxed Q, costed at 140 mana, will refund 70 mana. While it is a significant reduction in cost, it takes a fair amount of time to reach full charge. _

This rewards the player for using the ability for its intended purpose and still prevents players spamming it to access the passive (and by extension, his other abilities).

I feel like flat cost reductions will take him in the wrong direction, but he needs some kind of help at this point.