Any thoughts on how the new and upcoming changes for 2.3 are going to impact spirit based regen (specifically the 10%/20%/30% talent changes for Druids + Priests)? Personally I calculated that I would get a near 60 mp5 boost (while fully raid buffed/elixers, etc) bringing me to around 300 mp5 while casting. While this is a welcome change I really don't think it's time to drop mp5 gear altogether and make the switch to spirit even though that's what I hear a lot of people are in the process of doing. What are some of the rest of you Druids/Priests planning on doing?
As far as mages are concerned, 10/48/3 builds won't be affected much by the spirit regen talent change, and in my specific case the 2.3 Evocate alteration is a nerf, losing somewhere around 400 to 1000 mana depending on raid makeup. At least I can get rid of my 3 pieces of Spirit switchables. I'm sure if I had better gear I'd be even worse off with 2.3.
Spriest/paladin/shammy presence will be a bigger factor for mages than these changes, which Blizzard at first might have thought were huge improvements. A 100% evocate would have been welcome, or maybe drop the cooldown a few minutes.
If I could consistently wind up with a spriest in my group, it wouldn't be that big of an issue.
On the other hand, to max your evocations you'd need to get a set of +int stuff instead.
They should adapt Evocation to be like Lifebloom, when the spell ends the mage gets 15% of their max mana aswell.
This means you will always get 15% mana from a quick cast/stop cast, and a total of 75% is gained over the duration. It should also bring it more in-line with how much mana was gained previously.
But really now, with my +95 (or so) spirit gained from swapping my weapons and being fully raid-buffed, including spell damage food (which also gives +20) and on top of that being Human, I always, without fail get 100% of my mana bar back when I Evocate in a raid. 60% is a nerf, 75% is a nerf. Why is it so wrong to just give us 100%?
But really now, with my +95 (or so) spirit gained from swapping my weapons and being fully raid-buffed, including spell damage food (which also gives +20) and on top of that being Human, I always, without fail get 100% of my mana bar back when I Evocate in a raid. 60% is a nerf, 75% is a nerf. Why is it so wrong to just give us 100%?
The Evo change is truly _bizarre_ and out of place IMO. It is a mixed message by Blizzard regarding spirit, at least for mages. There are 3 aspects of the mage class that allow us to "benefit" from spirit (whether we choose to use them is another thing): 1) mage armor, 2) Arc Med (buffed to 30% next patch), and 3) Evo. All 3 are (currently) spirit based, thus making spirit a stat that can be utilized by mages, but to suddenly buff Arc Med and "nerf" Evo by going off max mana pool is a contradiction, now we suddenly swap in an INT set of gear for a "regen" action? I'd love to hear the thinking behind the Evo change from Blizzard, it just doesn't make sense to me.
Any thoughts on how the new and upcoming changes for 2.3 are going to impact spirit based regen (specifically the 10%/20%/30% talent changes for Druids + Priests)? Personally I calculated that I would get a near 60 mp5 boost (while fully raid buffed/elixers, etc) bringing me to around 300 mp5 while casting. While this is a welcome change I really don't think it's time to drop mp5 gear altogether and make the switch to spirit even though that's what I hear a lot of people are in the process of doing. What are some of the rest of you Druids/Priests planning on doing?
what would be your casting mp5 in spirit-gear vs mp5-gear assuming 30% regen? if the difference isn't that great, why not go all spirit? it also benefits Innervate and Tree Aura.
I'm speaking only for healers now, not for damage dealers.
While I agree that mana potions are much more important than they were in vanilla wow, I strongly disagree with the attitude that it is absolutely required to chain-pot every two minutes.
It really depends on the class.
When I raided SSC on my lock it was never an issue. Using mana pots simply upped my DPS and saved GCDs.
Now that I've switched over to a shadow priest I have to burn 3 or more SMPs or GDSs in most fights otherwise I'll end up wanding something to death for the last 15%.
It's absolutely ridiculous that I return 15,000 - 25,000 mana to myself and each group member during each encounter yet I still need to chain-pot otherwise I'll be oom well before my next fiend timer is up. I was spoiled on my lock :\
Perhaps its intention was that by dropping spirit (as its not needed for Evo) they would not loose much MP5 given the 15% extra from the passive regen?
It's absolutely ridiculous that I return 15,000 - 25,000 mana to myself and each group member during each encounter yet I still need to chain-pot otherwise I'll be oom well before my next fiend timer is up. I was spoiled on my lock :\
Ah one of few downsides for being a spriest. I'd gladly take this downside for being every mana-users' best friend. Besides, the raid has everything to gain by innervating me and buffing my dps as much as possible because it immediately reflects on my party as well.
Ah one of few downsides for being a spriest. I'd gladly take this downside for being every mana-users' best friend. Besides, the raid has everything to gain by innervating me and buffing my dps as much as possible because it immediately reflects on my party as well.
you know, i've always hated IV'ing dps casters. they have so little spirit that i feel like it was a waste. IV to them is 50% mana and if i IV'd myself, i'd get 90%.
And shadow priests. I need to bring this up again because of all the talk about shadow priests skewing the mana management game. I am a shadow priest and can say that while you might not have to chug mana pots because I'm in your group, I do. Gruul and Magtheridon are 3 mana pots minimum per kill for me.
As far as mana pots go it seems like affliction locks are the only ones that don't have to chain pot (usually). So that is something to consider when talking about limiting the effects of mana pots. It will hurt the longevity of shadow priests, mages, hunters and other mana users without affecting warlocks who are able to dark pact and life tap.
This is so true. I find as a shadow priest that I end up using somewhere around 50 super mana potions in a single BT clear. Comes out on average to be 35ish pots every single raid night. Mana potions on korgath run around 15g for a stack. That, combined with my stringent need for nightmare vine (30-40g a stack, used in my flasks, oils, and elixirs), and I easily spend 100g a night in simple raid consumables and repairs (especially when doing new content). That's pretty much equivalent to doing 10 daily quests, every single day. On top of that I'm farming my food for about 10-15 mins a day.
I honestly don't think it should take a 90 minutes farm session EVERY DAY to participate in a 4-5 hour raid (not every single day). Even the extra money I receive from the days we don't raid ends up getting invested in enchanting and gemming my new gear (about 1 piece a week between pve and pvp).
Reading this makes me feel strangely better. I normally raid on my rogue but lately have joined our 2nd team on the s priest. I drink Super Manas like water and thought it was because I was just stupid.
Now, I learn I have no choice.
The Meditation change is of course going to help, but since we've been talked out of spirit gear for so long, it's not going to help too much.
Mana regen is an odd topic, simply because it varies so much from class to class. I really don't have any mana issues on my Priest, even without a Shadow Priest. I use 1-2 Mana Pots per raid at a maximum, and that's typically only when something goes wrong.
It's very hard for a Priest to go OOM using single-target heals when you start getting in the 350-400 mp5 while cast range, especially when you have significantly higher OO5SR ticks and even moreso once you get the Earring of Soulful Meditation. (One small break in casting, such as the add spawn time on Solarian, breaks between waves/earthquakes on Morogrim, movement time across the arena on Al'ar/Karathress, slow phase points in Vashj, etc. can result in an obscene amount of regen.) That much mp5 coupled with snart Inner Focus, Clearcasting, Earring, and Shadowfiend usage pretty much makes mana a non-issue unless you are literally spam-casting GH7 for the entire fight.
This is even without a Shadowpriest group... being in a Shadowpriest group I find it hard-pressed to go low on mana unless I pretty much forget to use any of my regen tricks or Shadowfiend cooldowns.
On the other hand, I know that our Shadowpriests have to chain chug pots like mad. We raided for just shy of 4 hours last night, and one of our Shadowpriests was remarking that he used 13 mana pots. I used 1--because I was a noob and used my Shadowfiend at the wrong time and had to get gibbed by poison on Vashj P3. (I decided to be nice and send him 3 stacks that had built up in my bank after hearing it, too!)
It also seems like Paladins have gone to the opposite side of the spectrum that they were at before, having severe mana issues unless they heavily use pots. On our Vashj kill last night, there were 3 healers almost identical in effective healing done at the top of the chart, being myself, a Paladin, and a Resto Druid. I used 1 mana pot and no other forms of regen--discounting my gibbed P3 Shadowfiend, which would have replaced the pot usage. The Druid used 1 pot and 2 Innervates. The Paladin used 4 pots--this is even with him getting ~3.2k mana from other people healing him through Spiritual Attunement, Spellsurge on his weapon, restore mana meta gem, and heavy FoL usage. All 3 of us have very similar gear levels, so...really feels like Paladins have gotten the short end of the mana regen stick recently.
Spirit is an odd topic, because I see as a Priest that it is insanely good at balancing out my mana pool with OO5SR tricks and breaks in combat. The lack of notable OO5SR regen for Paladins is probably a big reason they have mana issues compared to Priests, despite the fact that Spirit is generally viewed as a lackluster stat. MP5 is nice, but usually not enough to sustain over a longer period.
My personal opinion is that it should be made "possible" (by design) for a healer to heal an entire fight without significant mana issues so long as they use whatever optimal mana regen strategies they have available to them as a class. After all, you don't WANT people going OOM. It's not fun, it usually means wipes, etc... so it should be possible to avoid. Pots are a bad solution simply because they cost money/time to get. Really, IMO, core class or raid-based skills should provide the toolset needed to maintain longevity without the need to chug mana pots.
I wouldn't really care if they put mana pots on a significantly longer cooldown timer in order to balance out the lack of "needing" them to maintain manapool. Realistically, I don't think anyone would complain, so long as they had tools for managing without them.
(Another, related note about the next patch... the Meditation and Arcane Meditation changes, while mostly the same, don't actually have the same effect. All PvE Priest builds get Meditation, regardless of spec. However, Arcane Meditation is 1 Tier below Meditation on the tree, meaning that it is not practical for Fire or Frost builds to get. So, in essence, this change only affects one of the Mage specs, rather than all 3...which is really too bad, since Fire has huge mana endurance issues without a Shadow Priest.)
Their solution was clearly to just make pots cheaper and more plentiful (see the TK-specific and SSC-specific pots). It's still a clumsy mechanic, but Blizzard seems to have made up their mind not to revise the system from the ground up.
I've gone through 40 super mana pots in a single day post-2.1. I barely even question the expense at this point, though that's clearly less than an ideal state of affairs.
I've gone through 38 super mana pots with chaincasting gems and evocation and even getting innervate in one evening of raiding aswell in SSC >_< Sad thing? I paid 25g a stack for those manapots.
The whole mana mechanic is one gigantic mess, with pots and everything. It's supposed to be a somewhat limiting resource originally. I still remember having healing rotations in BWL so a third of our healers would get to regen in long fights like firemaw/chromy/nef.
Sadly the way how consumeables work forces you to just look at mana as an infinite resource and if you do not have any, you fail/lose.
The situation for spriests is fairly bizarre atm, even in silly farming content that we just smash regardless of how overgeared our raid is, I still need to pot almost as much as when I got there the first time. For healers things are going to get a bit better with the 15% more mana regen/buffed Water Shield. I think/hope that Paladins get their 100% mana back from crits restored again, to make up for the buffs that other healers got.
That should stop the chain potting for them a bit at least.
Anyway, the whole mechanic 'mana' is fundamentally broken/degenerate, nothing else to say about it really. I dream of the day they finally remove mana and give casers rogue-like energy. That would be a huuuge rework for them though. Fine tuning the regen process and the spell costs so that you can not mindlessly spam your max rank nuke/best heal without ever running into issues would take quite some time and I doubt they have that for somethign that 'works' as it is.
Still, the game would be better if mana got replaced by something more suitable. Or if just the pots would be removed. Spriest mana costs would have to be reworked then but honestly I think all other classes can be fine without pots (or pots on a 5 min timer so that you really only use them after a mana burn or whatever).
It would mage spriests a bit too vital maybe, but along with tuning spriests mana costs, just tune mage's costs (especially fire and arcane) as well, and it's fine. Spriests are important anyway and a raid without any at all will be less powerful, just like a raid without a warlock would have a problem.
Currently the amount of overheal I see in our (and other raids on WWS) is just sickening me. Back in the days I was pissed when I had 30% overheal. Nowadays 50% seems to be the norm. Honestly, who cares as long as you don't have any mana issues?
Could go on rambling about this for hours but well, I don't see any improvments happening so I'll just continue being a sad panda and chug those pots.
The Evo change is truly _bizarre_ and out of place IMO. It is a mixed message by Blizzard regarding spirit, at least for mages. There are 3 aspects of the mage class that allow us to "benefit" from spirit (whether we choose to use them is another thing): 1) mage armor, 2) Arc Med (buffed to 30% next patch), and 3) Evo. All 3 are (currently) spirit based, thus making spirit a stat that can be utilized by mages, but to suddenly buff Arc Med and "nerf" Evo by going off max mana pool is a contradiction, now we suddenly swap in an INT set of gear for a "regen" action? I'd love to hear the thinking behind the Evo change from Blizzard, it just doesn't make sense to me.
On the other hand, I imagine most mages are still going to be rocking the gear with no spirit and using molten armor, while chugging potions like there's no tomorrow. No matter how much they buff spirit.
Anyway, the whole mechanic 'mana' is fundamentally broken/degenerate, nothing else to say about it really. I dream of the day they finally remove mana and give casers rogue-like energy. That would be a huuuge rework for them though. Fine tuning the regen process and the spell costs so that you can not mindlessly spam your max rank nuke/best heal without ever running into issues would take quite some time and I doubt they have that for somethign that 'works' as it is.
Still, the game would be better if mana got replaced by something more suitable. Or if just the pots would be removed.
I think all of this is basically true. I think it's inherently obvious at this point that *the least* they need to do is nuke mana potions from orbit (or at least chain-chugging of them) and retune from there with the current model. The whole chain-chugging mechanic is and always will be too powerful for long fights, by definition, for as long as mana is looked at as a finite, static resource that gets gradually exhausted as in-combat time moves forward. It really does annoy me that their proposed solution seems to be making them more plentiful (although they don't make them cheap so much as give you more ways to obtain them, and more types to clog your bagspace with).
I think mana really should be more of an energy bar, albeit one that lasts longer and regenerates more slowly, maybe on a 60 second full-bar regen time for most classes. Along with more clearly delineated high- vs. low-mana-cost skills (i.e. emergency/burst skills eat more deeply into your mana, sustained skills leave you near neutral). Some flexibility in regen stats, with some classes relying on regen stats while others might have it built into their casting model (i.e. shamans get mana returned from attack power). Rather than energy and mana being completely different, I think energy should feel like a quicker form of mana use.
But this is something Blizzard has said they don't want to see. More specifically, they've told players not to expect mana to turn into an energy bar. Of course, it's not clear the extent to which they don't want to see this happening, because I think any improved model they arrive it is going to be more energy-like, just because the current model is so stupid and broken, with many classes having such a poor mana outlook that they have no option but to chug potions and/or get jammed into a shadow priest group.
If they do decide on a much faster regeneration model, then shadow priests and shamans will be more of a thing of "okay, I get to use more of my burst abilities for this fight" scenario, which probably won't drastically increase damage so much as give a small edge (i.e. a mage including fire blast in their rotation where they otherwise wouldn't). And I think that's a good thing.
But it would be a drastic change, and it might be the sort of thing that they're holding off on for a sequel. Who knows how many more expansions they have planned.
On the other hand, I imagine most mages are still going to be rocking the gear with no spirit and using molten armor, while chugging potions like there's no tomorrow. No matter how much they buff spirit.
Evocation should simply restore 100% of your mana bar (25% for each tick). That way it gives the best Mages exactly what they get now, and buffs the little guys. It's not OP at all - after all, it's still an 8 minute cooldown.
Evocation should simply restore 100% of your mana bar (25% for each tick). That way it gives the best Mages exactly what they get now, and buffs the little guys. It's not OP at all - after all, it's still an 8 minute cooldown.
Probably, but then again, I'm a big proponent of mana flowing like water :/
Evocation should simply restore 100% of your mana bar (25% for each tick). That way it gives the best Mages exactly what they get now, and buffs the little guys. It's not OP at all - after all, it's still an 8 minute cooldown.
Nothing. I'm upset that we even have set bonuses at all that deal with Evocation. But if you insist, just reduce the cooldown of it - just like 2 piece T3.
It also seems like Paladins have gone to the opposite side of the spectrum that they were at before, having severe mana issues unless they heavily use pots. On our Vashj kill last night, there were 3 healers almost identical in effective healing done at the top of the chart, being myself, a Paladin, and a Resto Druid. I used 1 mana pot and no other forms of regen--discounting my gibbed P3 Shadowfiend, which would have replaced the pot usage. The Druid used 1 pot and 2 Innervates. The Paladin used 4 pots--this is even with him getting ~3.2k mana from other people healing him through Spiritual Attunement, Spellsurge on his weapon, restore mana meta gem, and heavy FoL usage. All 3 of us have very similar gear levels, so...really feels like Paladins have gotten the short end of the mana regen stick recently.
Paladins have always had pretty junky regeneration. Efficiency used to make up for it, but high efficiency combined with the universal sources of regen (mana potions, shadow priests, Mana Spring/Tide) made Paladins absurdly capable of healing indefinitely. When a Priest gets a few OO5SR ticks, it's huge. When a Paladin does, it's minor.
It's also rather irritating, because even with nerfed Illumination, there's still usually more benefit to just biting the bullet and chugging pots with stacked spell crit than picking up heavy mp5. It costs more, but you usually heal just as long or longer.
On the other hand, healing Paladins with a Shadow Priest make other classes look ridiculous by comparison. It's hard to run out of mana without doing stupid things. With that in mind, it's hard to talk about how much more regeneration Paladins need. We're probably at the point, however, where the Illumination nerf could be undone - other classes are having their regen buffed, Paladins have only their efficiency.
It seems like a pretty good time to revive this thread (again). Mages and hunters are both getting some major, major changes to sustainability in this patch, and druids and priests got a very hefty to boost to their long term mana regeneration in 2.3. Technically, raids with a Ret paladin should have no issues keeping Blessing of Wisdom up, so that's certainly a bonus
However, some classes still have issues, including moonkin and shadow priests. Those classes are still stuck pre-chugging mana potions. Healers are still stuck pre-chugging mana potions if they want to guarantee performance in any scenario where mana longevity is a moderate concern.
How close is Blizzard to being able to definitively phase mana potions out of the raid game?
10/04/07, 3:57 PM
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