I think Garak touched upon the points I wanted to make as well. There's nothing strategic about the choice to pot at all. The choices being offered here are basically, you either mana pot or you suck. I don't see how's that a good set of choices at all. It's almost like the choice between enchanting/gemming your gear or not.

At the end of the day, potting is just a mindless, brainless game mechanic that offers no strategic choice whatsoever. Take my class, for example. For me, 3 super mana pots are equivalent to almost 1 evocation. Fully buffed, it's around 7200 for the 3 super mana pots and around 8000 for evocation. The alternative is using evocation and 3 destruction pots. Well, 3 super mana pots and not having to evocate beats that handily. In fact, using destruction pots isn't even half as effective.

And when you use, say, 3 mana pots in a 5-6 min fight, you don't even know if you needed the first 2. Unlike dps pots or ironshield pots, mana pots used proactively don't do anything until you need the mana later on. If the random targetting system of some boss' abilities decided to target you for all sorts of stuff that stun, sleep, kill, force you to move, etc., then you might've not needed to pot at all. It's not much of a strategic choice if you're using something just to get the timer rolling, without even knowing if you'll need it later or not.

This point is worth further consideration. Hunter mana regen is not a problem exclusive to 25mans; it is equally glaring in 10mans, 5mans, and especially while soloing. It is obviously not reasonable to assume a hunter has JoW up in all of these situations. There is a problem here.

The suggestion that healer classes get better options than just mana potions is a good one, but it's also a problem for DPS classes. As others have mentioned, virtually every mana-using DPS spec also depends on mana potions as they are so ridiculously overbudget compared to the alternatives. It's a simple matter of comparison:

• Super Mana: 100mp5, +40 more with stone
• Haste - 50 haste rating
• Destruction - 0.25% crit and 15 spelldmg
• Insane Strength - 15 strength

Just a basic comparison shows that mana potions are 200-500% overbudget compared to similar potions (which are generally much more expensive anyway). It's simply a problem of a lack of intelligent options. The situations in which your cooldown is spent on anything other than a mana potion are generally exclusive to classes which don't have a mana bar to begin with.

Potions need to be rebalanced, with a combination of nerfs to mana potions, buffs to alternatives, and the introduction of viable options for every class, healers especially. A potion like "increases healing done by 1000 for 15 seconds" would literally be comparable in power to existing super manas, and would obviously be a powerful and useful option in emergencies and/or combined with CDs. "400 spell haste rating for 15 seconds" would be equally outstanding, especially given its effect on the GCD.

Arguably, the potential exists for Hunters to have a functional regen mechanic in Aspect of the Viper. If it's a worthless piece of crap (is it?), that's really a balancing issue more than a design one. Leaving aside Improved AotH, it allows you to trade an incremental amount of stats for some regen, on the fly. If the mana regen were to actually allow full sustainability, then in aggregate terms it would put hunters on a similar regen model to warlocks of sacrificing some DPS for infinite endurance. The details change in sacing nuke time vs sacing AP, but the principal holds.

My dear... No, I don't think I should be able to work to my fullest potential alone, but to my most basic potential. That is using basically nothing but Steady Shot. But even at that we fail unless we get an outside source of mana. Alone = Steady Shot; outside source of mana = extra special shots and abilities. That's how it should be. And that would make the synergy somewhat more equal in worth.

Basically you argue that if a fight drains healers of mana, bring more Spriests and Druids for Innervate. Nice... Options be damned. Don't you see we are highly constricted?

Synergy = better together than the combined efforts alone. Well Feral Druids offer me 5% crit, a very good thing, but if I run out of mana that is plain lost potential right there. Then the synergy is to a great extent wasted as I don't use those 5% extra crit at least to some extent (Steady Shot), if not completely possible to max (using more expensive harder hitting specials).

Mana is about managing the pool, but as it is I'm stuck between using or not. There is no managing as I'm running the lowest I can before Autoshot AFK.

Apect of the Viper is decidedly viable for T6 (even discounting the T6S2 bonus), that's because it scales with stats. At lower gear levels it is not really viable. Even raidbuffed I don't keep a minimum of mana and will have to skip every second cast at best. That is hardly comparable to Warlocks who are fully selfsufficient if allowed to Drain Life to regain the lost HP (and in the case of Affliction the DoTs remain active and DL extremely efficient).
Besides Viper only really work when it really hurts, so I can't just change aspects earlier.

Btw sorry about the double posting, but Garak got in between reading and responding.

That's just silly. That would be like arguing that rogues should have infinite energy to use their class abilities and that warlocks should be able to spam shadowbolt forever without having to lifetap/lifedrain in between to regain some mana. If you run out of mana what's stopping you from popping aspect of the viper and autoattacking for 30 seconds? I mean, if you're BM specced you'd even do some reasonable kind of damage unlike an OOM mage who is just stuck to wanding for 120 dps.

If you run out of power, you need to regain some of it somehow; casters go wand and sit out of fsr, rogues do white attacks while their energy regenerates and warriors try and take some damage to get some rage. Why should hunters be different?

Not really. If every class would be self-sustaining forever the only classes that would matter would be warlocks, rogues, tanks and some sort of healer. The reason you take SPriests for example is so other classes can be at their top efficiency without having to hold back or pause to regain mana.

Indeed. With a SP you can keep up whatever rotation you use without ever running out of mana. Without one you have to stop to regen so you're less efficient. I honestly don't see your problem; casters have been dealing with running oom since forever and rogues have been dealing with "safe energy for kick" for just as long.

Why you think hunters should be different is absolutely beyond me.

Now, if you would be specced SV and had tons of rogue gear to stack agility in a favor of Int and Mp5 (you know, as you're supposed to do as SV), you'd have a point about running oom, but that would be more about itemization than the actual mana problem. Now, you are actually BM and I have never heard a BM hunter complain about mana - and I raided a LOT.

Also, given that you are in dungeon blues and welfare badge epix I can safely say you have no clue about playing a hunter in a raid environment. Simply put - you are dead wrong.

I actually DO have a BM hunter alt, but given that I find them mindnumbingly boring to play I never went beyond Gruul with it. I never ran into mana issues thanks to proper pot use. One would imagine that with proper gearing up in the tier5/6 content mana becomes LESS of an issue simply because your regen and base pool improves with gear whereas your consumption remains the same. The Zangarmarsh PvP trinket actually fills an excellent role here.

Take note that this whole discussion is originating from the fact that KraxisSingular is complaining that he isnt self-sustaining without manapots. That is, honestly, a stupid complaint when there are SO many ways to regen mana available. I'm merely responding that expecting to be top efficieny for 100% of the time without an outside source is naive.

I don't see mages in this thread complaining they can't spam arcane blast for 6 minutes straight no?

Actually, as a t6 shadowpriest I ended up farming Dark Runes in Scholomance because I ran out of mana on council all the time. You have any idea how often that stupid Paladin resists spells?

Moot, really. Brutallus is 6 minutes. If you can't manage your manapool for six minutes you don't belong in Sunwell. Who gets replaced on Brutallus are all but one shadowpriest because they're hard-capped at ~1600 DPS.

One could argue that the dps potential of rogues is limited by the energy regeneration speed. I'm quite sure spamming Sinister Strike forever would do a lot more damage than current rogue cycles. Therefore, rogues are limited as such, but it is generally accepted as a class mechanic. Playing a rogue is all about optimizing your finishers which are linked to CP's obviously and therefore ultimately tied to the speed with which your energy regenerates. Sure, it's a different mechanic, but it has limitations.

Similarly, being a mana user means you have to manage your mana so you can actually do stuff. Mages spend time Evocating (while doing zero DPS) and Warlocks spend tons of GCD's lifetapping where they could have been critting 9k shadowbolts instead.

KraxisSingular simply disregards these mechanics and pretends they are no loss of DPS whereas him skipping Steadies and running AotV is. Let me tell you this - in my old guild, we had this Destrulock that could, at the level of progression we were at at the time, dish out ~1100 DPS. One day he ended up in my (SP) group and he would be ~150 DPS higher just because he didn't have to lifetap.

A mage evocating for 15 seconds could have been casting 6 fireballs instead which is about 19k damage. Over a 7 minute fight that's 45 DPS lost because of that one evocation.

How is this ANY different than a hunter doing a less mana-intensive cycle while running AotV to regen a bit? Heck, as a BM it's your pet doing half the damage ANYWAY which reduces the effect even more.

No... they are a time sink! People who can spend more time in the game amassing consumables, enchants, gems, rep rewards, badge gear SHOULD have an edge. Otherwise there would be little reason to do much other then raid. NONE of these are manditory... but as i said, you will have to spend a lot of time farming each teir of content before moving on.


Speaking to those who are talking class specific... Just remember that "solo" viability is something completely different then a raid environment. As a prot warrior my solo viability sucks as much as anyone's... but i get by just fine.

DPS classes almost always have an option when they are OOM. Granted it is a huge drop in DPS... but that's the downside of poor mana management. There are plenty of group synergies that are available in a raid... not to mention the fact that you can gear or spec a variety of ways. It's been said over and over that people have a CHOICE. If they CHOOSE to burst through their mana pool then that's THEIR problem and THEY have to deal with the consequences. This isn't a mechanic issue as much as it's a lack of knowledge issue. So much of the raid game is about finding ideal compositions within your party. Guilds that fail to recognize and use this are only doing themselves a disservice.

I would agree that there should be more options for potions... but that's a whole different issue. Tweaking will continue and I think we should be happy about that. Making wholesale increases to passive regen would cause huge balance issues and trivalize certain classes/abilities/talents.

Nope, not mana pots. Their power is such that they have to be taken into account when balancing raid encounters. It's not having to spend a lot of time farming each tier. It's actually more like skipping an entire tier, and then some. 100mp5 is nothing to sneeze at. It's the equivalent of 375 stamina or 292 spell damage in terms of item budget.

Even comparing it to the best potion, haste, it has 5x as much item budget. Your argument would only hold true if mana pots restore 360-600 mana instead of 1800-3000.

Simply misinformed opinion. Mana Potions are required in every single situation basically if you want to min/max to any degree for your healers. That is the reality of the situation at the moment. Alchemist Stones only reinforce this requirement.

There needs to be a general overhaul of the entire spirit/mp5/mana regen mechanic for WOTLK, on top of a complete and sweeping change of consumables, where Mana Potions are nerfed, or other Consumables are buffed to compensate for the disparity.

I would *love* to have options. I shouldn't have to have mana potions bound to a hotkey, but I do, and I hit it every 2 minutes pretty much instictively now - espescially as a class with no passive regeneration abilities.

Don't confuse "min/max" with the general mechanics. If anything, the min/max people should be happy to have these in the game simply due to the relative power.

I take serious issue that chain chugging is NEEDED. Lets look at it from the start of raiding in TBC. After punching through 5 mans to get the gear, people go into Kara. Up to this point there was really no NEED for potions, except a couple bad pulls or a chain pulling tank. In Kara you would likely start by bringing 3 healers and would slowly progress through the dungeon. With a decent group config and 3 healers there is no need to do anything close to chain pot. After several weeks the group might now have the gear to go 2 heals and a Spriest... keep farming more gear. Now you can go with just 2 healers. See the progression?? Slow... HELL YA... this would take months... but it's probably fairly realistic for a good chunk of the server populations.

25 man's have longer boss fights, but again you can bring an extra healer and work that way. The problem is that people are have been running lean on healers because of the use of potions. This doesn't mean they are manditory, it only means that there are more options to build a raid. Nothing is tuned around mana potions.... it's tuned around gear and people not being stupid. Bringing an extra healer at the expense of DPS only means that now you are racing an enrage timer instead of a mana bar... either one is a limiting factor.

I guess it depends on how you view mana potions.... I tend to see them as a valuable tool that allows greater raid flexibility and class selection. In my guild I have hear VERY few complaints after 2.4 about mana. We tend to run 6 healers in SSC/TK with 2spreists who they are typically in a dps group now because our healers RARELY have to use potions.

Sunwell has a different view of mana potions, in that if you run 8, 9 or 10 healers for Brutallus, an already heal intensive fight - you more than likely won't beat the enrage timer. On twins we run 10, sometimes 11 healers - and I'm still running oom mid P2.

Mana potions are just as optional as enchanting and gemming your gear, speccing something other than 0/0/0, bringing a full 25 man raid, communicating with your fellow raiders. Its a video game, nothing is required and there isn't much consequence to anything. Because nothing is actually required, there's a bit of shift in perception such that things that are just really helpful to the point of making moving forward at a rate acceptable to you almost impossible without them are referred to as required. If you're fine with moving forward at a different rate, by all means, no one expects you to use mana potions, but just as it would be out of place for someone that doesn't play wow at all to point out that he isn't required to use mana potions, its out of place to state that mana potions aren't required just because SSC/TK guilds don't need them.

Furthermore, that's not the point at all. ~30 minutes of dailies buys you ~50 mana potions; no one is really that worked up about spending gold on them. The actual point is that willingness to spend gold and then mindlessly pop 50 mana potions a night shouldn't be a larger determining factor in healing/damage output than a flask, mana oil, 1.5 years of TBC gear or 3.5 years of raiding experience.

This seems like a pretty good summary of the logical fallacy being committed by saying that mana potions are "optional". I was about to post something similar (but probably less convincing!). I like that it highlights the fact that people don't take issue with the minor cost so much as they do the (a) overwhelming benefit they constitute, and (b) the uninteresting usage mechanics they emphasize.

Where the heck did you get the idea that I didn't drink potions? My first posts clearly says I'm drinking Fel Mana like there is no tomorrow. And of course I use elixirs over flasks as there is no mp5 flasks, as well as manaoil.

The point I argued was that it was silly that I could be going that heavily towards gaining mana alone and still not maintain my cycle without any outside mana input. Outside meaning from other players.

Seeing as you went to Gruul, I can safely say I know way more about 25-man raiding as a Hunter. Sure I'm not a T6 raider, but that doesn't disqualify me in any way, or is it so that only the highest 1% of all can comment on this? If this is a pure T6+ discussion please say so, so the rest of us can disregard you in peace.

Mighty Restoration. With that, mana oil and sporefish you're sporting 49 mp5. Add 41 from BoW and you're at 100 mp5 which is what chaining Super manapots give as well. That's not even counting the plethora of mp5 you find on hunter gear in KZ and the tier5 content. On a sidenote, when I was still policing consumables I never saw anything but Relentless Assault and damage food.

Your gear doesn't seem to support that statement tbh. Regardless, one would expect that if I don't have mana problems in Dungeon blues, crafted gear and KZ drops, I wouln't have that problem with t5+ gears either simply because your consumption remains the same from the second you hit lvl 70.

Anyway, I said I went to Gruul as a hunter. With my main I have raidlead my old guild from Karazhan all the way to Gorefiend and never once did I hear a hunter complain they needed a shadowpriest to do DPS. We had zero Shammies in the guild as well, so there was no outside mana regeneration for them. Sure, when the CL went to respec SV I chugged him in a SP group usually, but a BM? No way.

In my current guild, we're taking the first goes at Kalecgos at the moment. We actually run fairly SP heavy, but the hunters are the last ones to get a SP in their group. Yet I never hear them complain either and their DPS looks fine to me. They do usually get manatide tho.

Have you ever actually *played* a mana-using class in a raid environment? I'm extremely skeptical that you have, considering that you keep suggesting that mana-potion chugging is "interesting", and pretending that there are real decisions to make regarding mana conservation.

Maybe one of the other healers is going to die in 4 minutes and I'll need to heal a lot harder. But if I count on knowing the fight and don't drink now, we'll wipe in 6 minutes when I run out of mana.

For me it's a little less critical. I can limp along with viper and potting reactively and do about 70% damage (assuming no JoW - god I love our prot pally for that) and unless it's a fight with a real enrage timer I'm unlikely to wipe the raid by guessing wrong about potions early. But healers don't have that luxury (and if multiple healers die, that 30% damage I'm giving up might be the difference as well)

Any time your mana usage over 2 minutes > mana pot gain from a single pot, you've got to pot proactively if you want to be safe.

It also eliminates my ability to choose between health pots and haste pots or anything else.

To get an idea how overbudget potions are: I already posted how long it takes me to OOM without potions - under 3 minutes, with Viper. Using Cheeky's Hunter spreadsheet, which is relatively accurate, I gain around 35 dps using food buffs and a flask. I lose 300 dps going from auto-steady to just auto, which I'll have to do after 3 minutes if I don't pot. That's the issue with pots - they're nearly ten times as powerful as other consumables. For the record, I am sitting at approximately t5 level stats, thanks to badge gear. To get the sort of DPS I'd have if I wasn't potting, I'd drop to a mix of blues and greens. Does this seem to be a problem yet?

And before you go on about raid synergy: this is my lowest mana use rotation. I could easily double my mana expenditure, drop Viper, providing a rotation that would OOM me in just over a minute. This will soak up any mana I get from raid buffs (barring an excellent Shadow Priest, but that's not really applicable due to the obscene power of Vampiric Touch).

Third: I will never finish the fight with 5k mana unless I click autoshot and go afk. I will be OOM by the end even if I chain-pot unless I get excellent group synergy, which means that someone else is doing the chain-potting instead.

This is mainly repetition. However, there's explicit calculation for how good 100mp5 is along with a summary of the combined argument.

The only interesting thing about using Mana potions is playing a class that has other options: Destruction, Haste, Insane Strength, maybe a couple others. If you know for a fact you're set on mana you can use those to increase your performance. But as noted many, many, many times, Mana Potions are equivalent to a much larger amount of DPS as any of those potions if one were to run out of mana. Only once in my raiding career have I ran out of mana by using Flame Caps and Destro potions when some people died late in the fight after I had used those two to up my damage in execute range and ended up wanding after 2%. I know my mana use average and can roughly extrapolate how much I'm going to need and determine when I "need" to use mana potions and gems over DPS consumables.

But for healers? Might as well pot the instant you're down 3k mana, maybe earlier. They're cheap and there's no alternative. The few times I played a healer in MC/ZG I was always the last one OOM since I downrank spammed like a mad fool, but my lower HPS with the same style now would likely be well under the necessary amounts except for certain assignments. I hated using potions but of course popped NDB all the time since I tended to "like" farming it. And on that note, if it weren't for Dark Runes and the additional mana outweighing the damage vs. heal of NDB, the latter would still be used; the fact that either are still used is plain retarded and related to the overall topic here: mana regen for healers is "broken".

Now, there was a time in which Mana Potions were insanely expensive and people at top level content were downing them regularly and complaining of the cost. Now that they're incredibly cheap to make - the herbs are found in every zone - we're complaining more about the fact that we're absolutely required to use them and the cost isn't stopping us, making them non-interesting to use. So the cost really doesn't make that much of a difference, it's the fact that mana potions are able to make up a huge gap in gear as others have pointed out. The base 100mp5...

Head, Legs, Chest, Staff: 1 * 4
Shoulder, Gloves, Belt, Boots: 7/9 * 4 = 28/9
Trinket * 2 = .7 * 2 = 1.4
Bracers, Cloak, Rings, Neck: 5/9 * 5 = 25/9
Wand = .3

Total: 5.7 + 43/9 ~= 10.5

...would spread over each item you had evenly be worth (to approximate) 10mp5 on your 4 major items, which is equivalent to 25 of any base stat. If spread over 4 values, as would probably be done on real items, at 6 more per stat, the increase in stat value would be (using log(2)/log(1.5) ~= 1.7 as the power as is suggested by recent items)

(4 * (6 ^ (1.7))) ^ (1/1.7) = 6 * (4 ^ (1/1.7)) ~= 13.6. The increase in ilvl of epic items is 1.3 * stat value, for an ilvl increase of ~17.6.

If spread over 5 stats, you'd get 5 * (5 ^ (1/1.7)) ~= 12.9, for ilvl difference of 16.7. A bit better, but not much.

That's equivalent of more than an entire tier worth of upgrades (13 ilvls) in every single slot! Wasn't the extreme use of alchemy elixirs to buff oneself up to beyond a tier's worth of upgrades the reason that elixirs were changed? Because the 100mp5 provided by potions, and assumed by Blizzard for any level of raiding, is providing the same thing. Additionally, the 40mp5 provided by the standard Alchemist Stone is way off the chart, especially combined with the other stat increases. If the fact that the items have a cost goes into it, then why did they make them so cheap to make?

As it stands, healers trying to keep up need to at very least use potions occasionally, or their raids will be stuck farming the same level of content over an over. While their use will go down for any level of content, potions are absolutely needed to progress. That much would be OK, as would players chain potting in order to make content even more trivial, so long as there would be something interesting about using them. And thus, it is not one particular issue with mana potions that people are having issue with, it's the combination of all the factors.

1) They're incredibly cheap; there's no qualms with using them compared to the cost of repairs, reagents, and other consumables.
2) They provide more than a full tier worth of mana regen (or equivalent) when chain-used
3) There is no drawback to using them other than a 2 minute cooldown that only is shared with healing potions; their mana return is the same regardless of when they are used.

One or two of those would be fine. All three just leads to a stupid and boring mechanic that, with most other regen issues fixed, should be made at very least more interesting. Just making an Insane Healing potion that grants 1000 +heal for 15 seconds would be *something*.

edit: Base stat value of potions is 100mp5 = 250 of a base stat. Haste potions fully averaged would be 50 haste rating, which is equivalent to a base stat (as all ratings are). Now overlapping timers might push it to the equivalent of 100 haste rating, but that's still far lower. Destruction averages to 15 +dmg ~= 12.5 base stat and 44.2/8 ~= 5.5 crit rating, even worse than haste. If haste lasted a minute and destruction the full 2 minutes, they might be on par with mana potions in terms of item budget.

I don't think i've said it's "interesting" so much as saying they are a valuable consumable that allows for flexibility in gear/spec/playstyle.

So you are saying you have the option of increasing your dps if you use consumables?? WOW... I would think you would be happy that there is a tool that permits you to CHOOSE how to play. While loosing 300dps is a lot, it's not a matter of ZERO dps... especially if you spec'd BM. But that's your decision... isn't it nice to have more then one l VIABLE spec??


I'm not trying to convert people, but i'd just like everyone to open their eyes a tad. All the changes people have proposed would only serve to cut off raid group options. Raids would likely have to bring more healers, Spriests would be in huge demand (2-3 minimum), certain DPS spec's would not be viable and everyone would have to find the most effective spec to convert mana to damage or healing.
Mana regen isn't perfect and their is always room for improvement, but remember that Min/Max'ing has meant we have built EVERYTHING in our raid groups around this mechanic. Make no mistake.... unless you remove all consumables, if it isn't mana potions, it will be something else being slammed on every cooldown.

It's only mindless if it's always the same something. What would be more interesting is if you had to make an interesting choice with tradeoffs every time that cooldown was up. Right now, one option is so much better than the others almost all of the time that it's mindless. It would be good if there were no single potion that was always the right choice, if it were actually situational, so anyone who drank the same exact potion on every cooldown was not actually min-maxing.