Some actual numbers if anyone prefers it to the warlock handwaving I did above. (the numbers below are for my spec/gear obviously. Early T6, 0/21/40.)


I get ~1700 mana from a lifetap (1658 sitting in shat, but I'm not raid buffed, so rounding up). Shadowbolt costs 420 mana, casts in 2.5 seconds. That means I get 4 shadow bolts for every lifetap, or 1.5 seconds of total lost dps to do each 10 seconds of dps. That ratio used to be worse, when I had less than my current +shadow.

I run 1500-1700dps on spank-and-tank fights if I have a spriest to limit (not eliminate) the time lost to lifetap (the 1700 is including bloodlust.)

I also act as a 441/tick (3 seconds) dot on myself that needs to be healed. <3 HoT's.

Technically some of that time isn't 'lost' time, since I can tap when I move. But on most fights if you pay attention to where you're going to be or are careful to stay away from people, you really don't have to move nearly as much as you think, and the majority of my taps are definitely when I don't have to move, or I don't move far and still waste a bunch of time on the gcd.

It'd take a 2000dps spriest to make it so I don't have to tap or pot. So basically, I can immediately turn any non-lifetap mana regen into more dps up to a mana regen limit we're not going to hit in current gear/talents.


When I mana pot, I regain an average of 2400 mana, saving me 1.4 lifetaps, or 2.1 seconds -- just a little under a free shadowbolt every 2 minutes. It's an incredibly small dps increase, but it lets me keep dps'ing when it's unsafe to lifetap, or when I know I can move+tap later and save the gcd. I also like Super Rejuv pots, because I can hit them and regen both health and mana, it's made the T6 fights a lot easier as a destruction warlock (who doesn't have a dark pact option to avoid a 1700 hp hit.)


Mages evoc for 8 seconds out of every 8 minutes, and the rest of their mana recovery is external (spriest) or doesn't require a dps hit because it's not on the gcd. However, when they're OOM they have no choice but to wand (or to change how they do the fight to consume less mana.)

Hunters used to be able to fd/drink, although I think they cannot anymore, and they tended to choose not to -- but I don't know how that worked out in the "time lost versus mana regenned" metric. Their OOM fallback is also worse if they don't have enough mana regen for whatever reason (autoshot only.)

I think it's a little silly that people are saying "If you didn't have to chain chug you'd only take one shadow priest!". Well, OK, so what if we only took one shadow priest? My guild generally only takes one shadow priest (due to staffing issues rather than an ideological opposition -- considering shadow priests are probably the most desirable spec/class in the game I don't think they need to worry about being wanted), and it goes straight to the healers. So I'm not getting a shadow priest and yet I'm still chain potting. This state of affairs is not changing the desirability of shadow priests -- the presence of shadow priests in raids is controlled pretty much entirely by their availability.

Further, arguing that more than one shadow priest should be taken in the first place is a bit unfair because shadow priests are just one spec out of 27 in a raid of 25. Taking 0 shadow priests is acceptable in the same way that taking 0 ret paladins, 0 arcane mages or 0 marksman hunters are also acceptable choices.

Comparing taking no shadow priests to no mages on Morogrim is not really a fair comparison as mages are a class, not a spec. Assuming you aren't raid stacking, you'll have 2-3 per raid. Besides that, I'm sure five warlocks could handle the AOE as well as three mages and two warlocks could. There is no alternative to a shadow priest (besides, to an extent, a resto shaman).

It's nice to see that Blizzard are buffing mana regen/longevity in general, but for mages at least the changes are ineffective. 30% in combat mana regen would be nice if any decent mage spec could include it. The vastly improved mana gems would be incredibly handy if we weren't forced to spec out of Clearcasting to get Icy Veins. The spirit on our tiered sets (and even some non tiered items) still goes to complete waste.

I thought the comparison of mana to energy, with rogues not being able to spam their attack, was an interesting one. Energy here is a pacing mechanism, where you have to time your attacks in such a way as to make the most use of a small energy pool that regenerates extremely quickly. Mana is unfortunately not like this at all - its sole purpose is to dictate the maximum length of an encounter (for DPS classes at least, as we can't really downrank or not cast for five seconds on purpose to get regen back the way healers can when less healing is required). Any move that would make mana more like energy (or rage) and their more tactically interesting mechanics would be a welcome one.

This highlights the flaw in mana as a whole - whilst rage and energy provide choices and consequences during gameplay, mana only has any real meaning once you've run out of it... and if you've run out of it you generally don't have many choices for getting it back. This forces all the "interestingness" of mana to take place before the fight, as you scramble to calculate such "entertaining" statistics as your mana consumption per second compared with your mana gain compared with the length of the fight compared with your total mana pool whilst rogues and warriors do this on the fly during the fight itself.

I also thought the suggestion of making mana pots like Last Stand in that the mana is lost after a certain period is a good one, as it would make mana potions items of last resort, as they should be. Unfortunately, I seem to recall Gurgthock first suggesting this some time during Naxxramas... it seems Blizzard does not want to go that way.

Again, as a warrior, maybe I'm not understanding why in the world people are still constantly complaining about having to "chain-chug" mana pots. Clearly they aren't creating such an imbalance because only a small portion of the population has access to them (like the old flasks). Mana potions aren't expensive or terribly hard to get... so whats the problem?
Right now guilds are progressing through content at an acceptable rate based on the current set of mechanics. While yes for MAXIMUM damage you might have to use consumables.... WELCOME TO THE CLUB! How many Ironsheild/Healing/Haste/Rage potions do you think I might have to consume?? The answer is that I actually don't have to consume any.... I just choose to in an effort to maximize my ability to do my part.
They have made several "tweaks" to regen that I feel was a reasonable compromise.

I look at the comparision this way.... a warrior with no rage is left with just white damage. A caster with no mana still has a wand! Yes it's much lower DPS then casting but I can't chain Mortal Strike for 8 minutes either.

The current direction of mage mana regen is a bit puzzling... with the evo change, it almost feels like they should just make mage armor and arcane meditation give a % of your intellect as mp5 and abandon spirit for mages...

It really feels like Blizzard doesn't know what it wants to do with int and spirit though, they keep giving classes talents that benefit them, but without a clear purpose useful in all situations (stam, strength for classes that want it), or a balanced variety of effects that differ in power by class (agi), int and spirit just seem... lacking. A moderate boost to the crit benefits of int, an mp5 conversion factor, or a damage/healing conversion for intellect would all make sense to me, and would be tweakable by class... similarly, the 5sr probably should be changed to be 20-30% mana regen while casting for all classes to buff spirit, with class talents boosting this further or being revamped to do other things, and/or adding damage and healing conversion for spirit. Base stats shouldn't be utterly useless to the classes they are intended for without a talent being taken, talents should just make them more useful as they do for, say, survival hunters - agi is REALLY good with survival talents, but it's not a waste of itemization points for other specs, though it might not be ideal.

Edit:

About the only thing that really compares for a warrior is chain chugging ironshield pots on a fight that's likely to squish you as a tank otherwise. Healing pots are a reactionary thing, and the dps pots offer a minor bonus to overall dps, and rage pots can help smooth rage generation, especially for a tank wearing high avoidance gear - mana potions are, for a number of classes/specs, the difference between being able to do something, and being a waste of a raid spot because they can't sustain their damage/healing for an entire fight. Put another way, a warrior gains at least as much damage/tanking ability from a tier of gear upgrades as we do from chugging pots - for casters that have high mana usage, a tier of upgrades does as much as it does for warriors, but if they try to stop chugging pots they still can end up OOM and useless rather easily - they may not need to chug as MANY pots in the same content if the better gear increased their regen, but the pots are still close to mandatory on fights of any significant length.

"It sucks, but other classes have it bad too" is not a compelling argument.

And comparing a warrior with no rage to a caster with zero mana is completely perplexing to me.

I ever considered the chain-potting a solution for a low quality equip, and i abused the chain-potting system until i got some equipment upgrades, since i were raiding at lvl 60 so now at lvl 70. You, all, should remember the really broken mechanic concerning the heal-deranking. So, what's the difference nowadays? Well, a lot of difference. They removed the broken mechanic to replace it with a lesser stress for healers in farming for pots (daily quests, Shadow Priest,
mana regeneration model reworked for Druid-Priest-Shaman in 2.3).
Every improvement on my gear tends to stretch the time i'll need to drink a pot. Same at lvl 60.
I don't think the infinite-mana-mechanic is really an issue for raiding and i don't think it's really an issue. The wipes comes along ever with chain-potting. So, where's the problem? Lesser stress for having right number of consumables on bags and enjoy the high-end raiding: this is the WoW i like.

I really think you fail to understand or acknowledge the complexities involved in the situation. Many guilds and many players will be successful regardless of how flawed the game mechanics are; it's human nature for people with competitive personalities to squeeze success out of the constraints of any game they play. That people can be successful has nothing to do with whether the underlying mechanics for that success are sound or can't be improved.

And prior to the change in the latest patch, a mage who isn't chugging mana potions was losing a ton more than 5 fireballs every 2 minutes.

For healers the situation is different but certainly not better. Unlike DPS classes, the strategy a healer uses in any given situation depends highly on the mana outlook. Knowledge of the fight, the raid makeup, the group configuration, etc. all determine how conservative a healer chooses to be with mana. That's part of playing a healer. So should a healer find themselves out of mana and that results in a wipe, that's a tremendous amount of psychological pressure to "perform better" by using a mana potion at every cooldown, to be successful in future attempts. When they really need that mana, it's too late to use the missed potion cooldowns that would have awarded that mana. Given that such a large part of healing is effective mana management, it's just not reasonable to dangle a gargantuan 140 mp5 buff in front of them at all times, and daring them to not use it. It's too large, and basically always will be too large in the future unless they take a firmer stance on them. It's just a harmful, unenjoyable mechanic.

I wouldn't be opposed to removing all potions of that nature, including Ironshield potions (especially Ironshield potions, in fact) and Haste potions (but at least these can be justified as providing a buff that can be applied intelligently with other cooldowns to maximize its effect). Nevertheless, mana potions stand out as the most profoundly irritating of that type of consumable.

Uglesh, I believe the argument is that chain-chugging pots is often the difference between ending a fight at 0 mana and having 0 mana halfway into it.

A Warrior that gets a bad streak of dodges and ends up getting rage starved is just unlucky, and is likely to recover in the long run - your DPS output dictates your average rage output, it's simply a matter of spending it wisely as it arrives.

A caster has no such luxury - once you run out of mana, your DPS takes a nosedive. Sure, you could wand, and if the boss has Judgement of Wisdom you might even get some decent regen out of it, but the damage difference between a Warrior waiting for 3-4 autoattacks before restarting his Slam rotation and a Mage wanding to get a couple Fireball's worth of mana back is as stark as night and day.

It's not about popping a Haste potion to squeeze out 20-30 more DPS, it's about popping a mana potion to maintain your 1000+ DPS spell rotation a couple of seconds longer. Casters aren't chain-chugging pots to get a little more juice out of their characters, they're chugging pots just to get by.

I think Blizzard balances encounters around abilities and consumables. Can we all agree on that? That for the most part Blizzard is made up of competent developers who know the game better than anyone here? Anyone remember how bosses suddenly got easier when they did the consumable rebalance, and they weren't assuming everyone was flasked + potted in their calculations?

Now, right now in 2.3, they probably assume you have the following in your raid:

2 Shadow Priests
2 Shamans (of various specs)
2 Paladins (most likely holy)
2 Druids (feral or tree).

That's 2 VT's, 2 Innervates, BoW, and mini totems (maybe tides) at a minimum. And I'll say if you aren't bringing at least 2 of those classes, it's your fault you run out of mana.

I don't understand the Shadow Priest argument. They restore mana, that's why people like them. Not because they do mad damage without a threat wipe. Because by putting one in your Arcane Mage group, they actually become a viable Mage spec. You think that's a coincidence? You think Blizzard doesn't understand the regen metric in their own game?

The only fights my raid does where I still worry about potting is Na'jentus and Kaz'rogal. And I've only been Disc for 2 weeks. From KZ back in Feb to BT / Hyjal now I was 23/38. The only time I would drink pots was on the first 2-3 kills of a boss, after that our collective awareness, buffs and gear removed that necessity.

I think it's expected that you run out of mana during the learning phase of a fight. Isn't that the point? If you're still running out of mana on the majority of fights then I'd suggest you're doing something wrong. Cause I never get complaints from my DPS and I rarely see it on my healers either.

So if, as you say, potions are essentially unnecessary, why can't Blizzard just remove them from the raid game? It's a broken game mechanic in a raid environment, and moreover, it doesn't affect all classes equally. It's not worth keeping a broken concept in the game just because it "makes learning fights easier", which was exactly the crappy argument that people were trumpeting back when you could stack flasks and elixirs to high heaven for every fight. They fixed that, so I don't see why they keep band-aiding mana regeneration.

Super Mana's can't be judged as just a few extra fireballs. A mage may have a bit more than 9k in their mana pool. A Super Mana could restore up to 3k. Over the course of a fight, a mage could restore his entire mana pool just from chugging SMP's. It may be 5 extra fireballs every 2 minutes, but that's a substantial amount when he can cast a maximum of 40 in that time. Those SMP-fueled fireballs will make up a significant amount of his total. You also have to figure in additional Clearcasting or Master of Elements procs, adding yet more mana for fireballs.

But the bigger deal with Super Mana's is simple. OOM ends raids. It doesn't matter that down the line somewhere you'll have mana again. You're only good for as long as you can sustain your casting. This is really obvious with healers, of course. It doesn't matter that a minute down the road you'll have the mana to cast heals, because the tank bit it about 5 seconds after your bar went empty. But it matters for DPS casters as well. If I run OOM at the 4 minute mark, it doesn't matter that I can regen from Wisdom or that at 5 minutes I can use another gem, because at 4:30 we were overwhelmed by the adds that weren't being dps'ed down, or we spent to long in phase x and the healers were left without enough mana. Where chain-chugging's difference comes is pushing the time-of-OOM farther into the future.

Here's a few points non-mages miss about mages at the T6 and probably high T5 level as well:

1. 1xScorch/8xFireball is our highest dps rotation. It's higher than arcane blast spam and higher than 2xFireball/1xFireblast. Even if we have infinite mana, it's still 1xScorch/8xFireball. That's what we're doing right now and that's what we'll be doing with infinite mana. Having infinite mana is not going to be the boost some people assume it will be.

2. Limited mana only makes sense if, for example, mages can actually outdps other classes or come close to it if our mana holds. Assuming infinite mana for mages, highest theoretical mage dps at the T6 level is around 20%+ behind rogues and around 10%+ behind hunters/warlocks (even ones that have to lifetap). I really believe Blizzard is balancing caster dps assuming mana always holds for the duration of an encounter. Having to give up 15 points in 2.3.2 to grab arcane meditation in the arcane tree is too much dps talents to give up on already lackluster dps.

I think it's a little excessive to say that casters want infinite mana. Rather, from an old discussion in the 2-cycle method of spell selection, one should ideally end the fight with 0 mana. However, one of the difficulties with this assumption is variations with raid performance.

Let's assume that the first time you kill boss x, you had to chug y pots and ended with z mana, since the fight lasted n seconds long. By doing some quick math, you figure out that you spent so-and-so mana total. Under these computations, you drink (not necessarily bring) just enough pots to get you to your assumed total. However, two of Hunters have a bad cold and their performance just isn't as good as it was before. Therefore, your calculations are now thrown off and you end up either drinking 2/3 more pots than expected or go OOM 1 minute before the boss dies.

I guess I just really hesitate to say anything is "broken" when you look at the reality on the ground. In the world of Min/Max'ing people will ALWAYS find some way to push themselves (and their mana) right to the very edge. True min/max players might argue that anyone ending a fight with anything more then a couple % of mana is actually wasting mana. Either you need to cast more or use fewer potions. Several people on this thread have stated just that. As they have progressed they are now using fewer and fewer potions.

I've still yet to hear anyone with a half decent idea for how this "broken" mechanic can be fixed. I have heard people stating they should get rid of potions and arguments regarding relative DPS to other classes, but nothing other then an "infinite mana" situation would avoid all the complaints.

I tend to think the solution is one that works with what we have and encourages raid synergy. With all the options out there to regen mana, I tend to believe the root of the argument is perhaps more rooted in the DPS disparity between classes. If that's the case, there are FAR more options to solve this outside of regen.

Actually, it just looks to me like you're choosing to ignore 13 pages worth of this thread and another 50 pages worth of the consumables thread that ultimately resulted in Tigole posting that they were reducing the ridiculous power available through flasks and a host of other stackable consumables. Which you'll notice that nobody complains about now, even though it was technically a nerf at the time. And frankly, nobody with half a clue was complaining about it beforehand either (which is not to say that plenty of people weren't complaining, because plenty of clueless people were, and trumpeting how they felt it was important for raiding to only be accessible to people who were willing to endure significant personal hardship and self-sacrifice).

When the devs put those changes together, they just forgot to remove the 140 mp5 Flask of Mana Potion Abuse, which still remains the most popular consumable, although its cost has been mitigated somewhat by providing a hundred ways to get a hundred different types of mana potions. None of which really acknowledge that it's nothing but a tax on mana-users. They could just as well add 140 mp5 to Arcane Intellect and end up with a roughly similar mana regeneration model for many high-end guilds. It's a pointless cop-out compared to a mana regeneration that stands on its own merits.

Mana regeneration is somewhat unique amongst other types of consumables. A damage-oriented consumable makes the user feel a little more powerful for a short period of time, like you're putting forth a little extra to get a boss down. On the other hand, going out of mana is just not the same thing; when you're out of mana and people in the raid start dying, you start to feel like you really fucked up if you haven't been using the tools available to you. Short of enrage timers, healer mana is typically the primary limiting factor in the length of encounters, and that mechanic creates the pressure that healers feel to push mana potions quite hard (placing the most burden on shamans, then perhaps on paladins making liberal use of Holy Light, then on priests, moving on down to tree druids). I'm not a fan of any of the "use me for every potion cooldown" types of buffs, and I'm not sure why they included them in the game, but among them, mana potions stand out as the most frustrating.

You write off mana potions as just another consumable to get a couple of extra points of damage, but I'll assume from your comparison to warrior rage that you've just never really been in the situation of being out of mana in a raid environment. Rather than feeling, "what can I do, and what can our raid do, to make my mana last longer?", the logical first conclusion is feeling that you should have used a couple more mana potions. That should not be the case. It should involve real decisions, not just about raid synergies (which should be a very important factor), but also about healing patterns and assignments, and about discussing how raid members can avoid damage. Mana potions should frankly not factor into the picture at all, because any scenario that retains current mana potions but is NOT infinite mana will invariably force pressure to use them by healing classes, as a means of avoiding thinking about better strategy. In fact, I distinctly recall a post in a "HOWTO recruiting" thread a few months back where somebody very bluntly stated, "you can really get just about anyone for a healer, just make sure they're willing to chug mana potions". There's already a mana regeneration flask for that (which oddly enough returns only 18% of what mana potion chugging does).

Some players are rightfully concerned that losing mana potions will result in a power reduction to their class, and it would, but even in the near term it would yield a more enjoyable raiding experience. In the long term (and apparently what many participants in this discussion fail to realize), Blizzard would continue to modify class mechanics to ensure that all mana-using classes have the tools they need to be competitive in a raid environment. As they've shown great progress in doing already.

Not that anyone has ever in the life of the game said "I like mana potions!" It's virtually always "I don't think they're *that* bad, and they let me not be out of mana". It's a reasonable concern that removing mana potions would result in a class nerf, but Blizzard needs to move forward anyway.

Well, you're pretty much wrong here, at least speaking from personal experience. As long as I don't get a long string of resists (Illidari Council, you bastards and your shields), and I use a super mana every cooldown, at the t6 gear level with 200 mp/5 or more (including a shaman in my group) I can sustain a full DPS rotation including SWD and MB every CD for much longer than any fight in TBC can last. If I get innervates, I can last infinitely. Unless I'm spamming PWS on random people in a raid on every 4s cooldown (which I use sometimes, depending on the encounter) as well as DPSing, I'm not gonna run out of mana anymore, at least with some T6 mp/5 regen and the new meditation changes.

My main nuke is ~200 mana (sorry can't login to check the exact number right now), and with VT up it returns more mana than it costs. SWP is our highest mana spell, and at ~600 or so, it only needs to be recast every 27 seconds. MB is the second at around 400 mana, and can only be cast every 7 seconds at maximum. SWD at ~350 mana every 12s... you get the picture. Shadow priests really are approaching infinite mana, as we don't really have the high-mana-cost spells to spam like a healing class, or mages, or warlocks. Our nuke is probably the cheapest out of any mana using class. If it cost 700 mana to dps every 3 seconds like greater heal this would be a different story.

As someone mentioned, and I have mentioned, blizzard is clearly expecting at least 1 if not 2 shadow priests in a raid. They also expect that you're smart enough to give them to your healers, mages and hunters.

Another person in this thread has said that my comparison of not bringing a shadow priest (spec) was equivalent of not bringing a mage (class) was poor. Well, let me defend that. Say you bring one frost spec'd mage to Tidewalker, and one arcane spec'd mage. How will their roles differ? How will their DPS differ? Although the difference isn't really the equivalent of bringing a shadow priest vs a holy priest, simply because shadow priests DPS, there is still a difference.

Now lets compare shadow priests to mages on an encounter like, say, Akama. Lets also pretend that the encounter wasn't a joke, and the adds could actually 1 shot clothies instead of hitting for ~2-3k. I feel completely useless now on that fight, and I would moreso if it were hard. The encounter is far too short for my regen to make a difference (who pots on Akama?), and my dps and mana return is far too poor on low hp targets to count for much of anything. I have a fear on a 30s cooldown. Mages on the other hand can polymorph, slow/snare, burst dps, CS, nova and aoe. How much more valuable is a mage on this encounter now (if we pretend it's difficult) than a shadow priest? Infinitely. Theoretically, if the adds on this encounter 1-shot people if they weren't tanked/cc'd, mages would be required, and shadow priests would still be mostly useless.

Lets compare a different fight, Solarian. Shadow priests are OK here, but the fight could easily be done without them. The fight is short, and in its current form, there aren't insane healing requirements on silly "arcane tanks" dancing in a corner somewhere taking damage from an infinitely stacking dot as they were before the change. The total damage going out to the raid is minimal so healer mana usage isn't high. A single arcane missile spam during the "tank" phase that can be healed by 2 paladins using FoL spam and a periodic AoE on a long cooldown that does, again, minimal damage unless you let the fight go too long. Which brings me to my next point, the higher the dps your raid has, the shorter the fight is and the easier it is. Theoretically, a single shadowpriests personal damage is far lower than the possible dps of any of the pure dps classes, including mages, therefore bringing a mage over a shadow priest reduces the fight length, and would probably be a better choice. On phase 2, shadow priests have very little to contribute. No AoE, again, targets with low HP that we can do minimal dps or mana return on. No interrupt (for the healers) if we're pure raid dps spec. Any pure dps spec would be much more fitting here, to aoe, to interrrupt, to dps the mobs faster so you can dps Solarian faster.

Unfortunately, fights that require sustained DPS for long amounts of time are abundant in TBC raiding and there doesn't seem to be much variation on that point. This is why shadow priests are so valued. For every Solarian there are 5 Alars. So, perhaps the design of the encounters (long, sustained dps fights) is really what makes the mana regen model seem broken. If the mix of long vs short fights was equal, would the mana issue seem so prevalent?

I disagree. The expansion is a perfect opportunity for them to make a change like that, and it would probably be less significant than balancing content around the higher health pools that resulted from the last expansion. Furthermore, if mana potions are really such a core game-breaking issue if removed, then that's just another indication how much that mechanic need revision. Frankly, I doubt it's that big of a deal to remove them; we're not talking about totally revising the concept of mana, we're talking about removing one aspect of mana regeneration that a lot of people make do without as it is. It would require some rebalancing, but again, that's an opportunity the expansion offers.

This is really frightening to me. It's almost like you're suggesting that if Blizzard introduces something even more annoying than potion chugging, then they won't care about potion chugging anymore. Mana potion chugging will be annoying no matter what other frustrating elements they add to the game. Frankly, elixirs/flasks/oils are all the consumables the game needs. They certainly don't need to add some massive 140 mp5 flask that people are forced to use to be competitive (although it would be somewhat superior than potion chugging, if presented as a strict either/or scenario).

How would popping a +healing potion be more annoying than mana potion chugging? It would give the player more options. More options (especially if some are not required, ala mana pots) is more fun to me, maybe not to others I guess? Not all classes currently require a restoration flask either, its just the best flask for healers.

It seems to me that some want to be able to spam their max rank heals ad nauseum with no care for mana. Removing potions would be boring. No haste, destruction, rage, etc. pots to pop? Sounds boring, not more fun, in my humble opinion. More options for potions because you used your 140 mp/5 flask? Sounds strategic and fun.

I guess there's no point in me responding to this. I've spent more than enough text explaining why I think mana regeneration shouldn't depend on consumables, so if you think consumables should remain the core factor in regeneration then all we can do is agree to disagree.

Also, if the encounters aren't complex enough to be interesting on their own merits, and players have to spend time engaging in complex decision-making regarding how to blow bags full of consumables on every night spent raiding, then that strikes me as a different issue.

It's been mentioned a few times but I'll add my experience and concerns. My biggest issue with Mana potions is that they appear to be designed as reactionary consumables (for those OH CRAP moments); however you are forced to use them preemptively.

For example, you are fighting a boss and you are running 7 healers. Everything is going fine. Boss is at 50% and all the healers have plenty of mana to last them until the end. No one is chain potting because were fine. Healing mana averages around 60%-65%.

But then all of a sudden something bad starts to happen. The raid takes a bunch of damage and you lose your a healing druid and a healing priest and a couple DPS. Your 5 remaining healers now have to scramble to get the raid topped and keep the MT up. Excess mana is burnt getting the raid topped off. The remaining MT healers now need to start casting more frequently and use heals that are less mana efficient (larger). Raid healing is now spread across fewer healers which mean increased mana usage. The boss is now at 40% and at the current rate of mana consumption your healers aren't going to last long enough. You wipe at 15% because your healers went OOM.

Rewind this situation and play it again with every healer using a mana potion every 2 minutes to keep there mana as high as possible. Instead of being at 60%-65% 1/2 way through the fight your healers are now 85%-90%. So now when 2 healers die your remaining 5 healers have a much better chance of not going oom before the boss dies.

Basically if you wait to use mana potions until you actually need them... then in most cases it’s already too late. To me that is a big problem.

Also chain potting simply makes things go smoother. If for the last 10% of a fight I can mindlessly spam rank 11 Holy Light on the MT because I have 7000 mana to burn… why shouldn’t I take advantage of that? The alternative is not potting and having 1K-2K mana at the end and possibly canceling a heal at the wrong time only to have an 8K crushing kill the tank before I can recast. I often use a mana pot during the last minute of the fight when I obviously have plenty of mana just so I can help ensure something stupid doesn’t happen and we wipe.

Being able to mana pot like this takes some skill away from healing that I wish didn’t happen. But with the kind of spike damage that exists in these encounters and when wiping at 10% means doing a 15-40 minute event all over again… the choice to chain mana pot seems obvious and necessary.

I’m not sure if there is an easy fix for this. I like the “Last Stand” suggestion. But the encounters would need to be redesigned as most seem to be built around the assumption that healers will be using a steady stream of mana pots. I couldn’t picture doing Bloodboil with 8 healers and not using a mana potion every 2 minutes. Or attrition fights like Azgalor and Gorefiend where you could easily find yourself down 2 healers ½ way through the fight.

Some healers are saying they don’t need to pot… well that’s probably because the other healers are potting and are picking up your slack.

We'll agree to disagree then.

I'm not sure how you can consider popping an optional potion every 2 minutes as a "complex decision" but I guess we'll agree to disagree here too.

Right now, raid performance is significantly upped by simply throwing gold at your healers. Mana potions give an insane amount of regeneration - often enough to nearly double a character's mana regeneration. High-level encounters are currently based around the assumption that you will be chaining the potions.

At the same time, chain-chugging mana potions doesn't give you infinite mana, even in a group with a Shadow Priest. Spamming max-rank heals "all day" isn't an option, mana potions or not. No one wants it to be. Being able to do more than pure mana conservation playstyles without a Shadow Priest and/or Super Mana Potions would be nice, though.

What people want is the ability to remove a 2.5g/minute cost from raiding without crippling their characters. In an encounter where I need to maintain a respectable output for a significant amount of time, mana potions cost close to 5g on my server. Spending almost 3g for every minute I'm engaging a boss is horrible, particularly on encounters like Tidewalker. 25g for potions, more for the flask, more for repairs. Since I tend to be protection specced, I'm at least spared that for most encounters - it's generally just Void Reaver and Al'ar where I end up chaining pots. Even so, the costs are pretty ludicrous for something that it is assumed you are using. Imagine if repairing your gear after a ten minute boss fight, simply from the 5% durability you might have lost from combat or getting hit, could run 25g.

The overwhelming majority of the responses have been calling for a mana regeneration model that allows for somewhere near the same potential as we currently have, but without a 150g / hour cost when bosses are engaged that only applies to mana users. It's nice to have emergency buttons, but we need more that are actual emergency buttons - Stoneshield Potions that reduced incoming damage by 5% for 20 seconds instead of giving "infinite" coverage when chugged. Mana potions that don't essentially give you a flat 140 mana / 5 seconds. Not only is it more interesting when these options need to be saved for actual emergencies, it helps to reduce the timesink nature of high-end raiding by again reducing consumable costs.

As far as combining healing flasks/potions with regeneration flasks/potions goes, what does this really accomplish? You're still spending money to operate at the assumed basic level, only now you can choose between healing and regeneration. More options in a flawed model isn't a fix. "I can improve efficiency or I can improve mana regeneration, both for the same cost with roughly the same effect. Nifty!"