Originally Posted by
Scrod
Blizzard doesn't really seem to care about balancing utility. It's been this way forever with healers. Disc, holy pally, and shaman have had lots of utility for a while, and resto druid, mistweaver, and holy priest have had very weak utility, and it just stays that way, patch after patch after patch. So while the throughput numbers are the same, everyone prefers the three utility specs. This mostly been the case since late Cata, when shammies, which up until that point were a meme spec, got spirit link. You still saw a resto druid here and there in mop, and disc went through some reworks, but shammy, holy pally, and disc have been mainstays for 5+ expansions now, druid has been niche at best, mistweaver has had very brief moments where they became viable but has mostly sucked, and holy priest is forgotten.
Don't expect it to change, just make sure you're playing one of the classes blizz favors.
Right now if you look at shammy versus mistweaver in raids, it's ridiculous. Shammy has spirit link, ankh totem, mana tide which gives the other healers mana, healing tide, and better throughput than mistweaver. Mistweaver has revival, which is awful unless you need a mass dispel, one of the worst tank cds in the game, and is the first healer to call for an innervate because they have no mana. It's crazy and obvious, but they don't care.