I spent a fair amount of time looking for a fix for this and tried different things with no luck. I noticed that I do NOT see the battery drain issue if I am connected to WiFi. I did something very simple and it seems to actually be working so far.
I went to Settings > Data Usage and scrolled down and clicked on Google Play Services. I scrolled down on that screen and checked the box “Restrict background data”.
Prior to doing this I could literally see the % Battery Drain from Google Services (Settings > Battery > Battery usage) noticeably increase in a matter of 5-10 minutes when I turned off WiFi. After doing this one simple thing, 30 mins later the % drain from Goggle Services has actually DECREASED, probably because my Screen % went up from checking the battery drain stats. I also noticed no activity from the mobile data activity icon after doing this, where as before it was showing a fair amount of activity.
Hey, if it doesn’t fix it for you it’s easy enough to go back and uncheck that check box in the event it breaks an app, but so far, so good.
If it matters, I have an LG G2 and did have try reinstalling the latest version of Google Play Services (8.4.89) prior to doing this, but it made no difference.