Mana Regen: the last broken mechanic? - Page 20

Mideci · 05/23/08, 7:14 PM

Um, maybe "restore mana" is a special ability that you can't also use with mana potions? Like, you know, "use this if you want, but then you can't also drink a mana potion".

Let's not get too carried away.

RpgWizard · 05/23/08, 8:24 PM

Originally Posted by Mideci

Um, maybe "restore mana" is a special ability that you can't also use with mana potions? Like, you know, "use this if you want, but then you can't also drink a mana potion".

Let's not get too carried away.

"Restore Mana" is the "spell" that is cast when you use a Mana potion. You can check any WWS to see that.

thorin5 · 05/23/08, 11:05 PM

It's also the 'spell' associated with Luminous Bluetail, so it wouldn't be unheard of for it to be an effect associated with something other than a mana potion, but then again it's the exact same 'spell' for the fish as it is for a standard Mana Potion. So it could go either way at this point.

Viking Penguin · 05/24/08, 1:32 AM

Originally Posted by Uglesh

I just can't believe that they would put "Drinking mana potions inflicts Mana Sickness, draining all of your mana after 1 min" on one potion and not the others... especially one that only restores less the 800 more mana.

The only way that Mana Sickness would work is if ALL potions had it, or the ones that do need to be MASSIVELY benefical to the point that you would give up a possible chain chug of just lesser potions.

Maybe it's on a separate cooldown.

Mideci · 05/24/08, 5:38 AM

Originally Posted by RpgWizard

"Restore Mana" is the "spell" that is cast when you use a Mana potion. You can check any WWS to see that.

It is now. And Circle of Healing now affects 5 targets and has no cooldown. It's completely unreasonable to conclude definitively from the datamined information that this is the same restore mana effect and that drinking a mana potion is essentially a death-to-your-mana-pool effect. But feel free to believe that it is. I mean it might be, but we have no way of knowing this at this point. If it is, then those who hate mana potions have gotten their wish and potions are gone from the game effectively and alchemy has become unbelievably terrible.

Prinsesa · 05/24/08, 6:55 AM

Unbelievably terrible? You might as well have said "Unacceptable slap in the face!" I don't know about you, but regardless of what happens to mana pots, tanks will still be chugging down Ironshields and Elixirs of Major Fortification, casters will still drink Destruction pots and Elixirs of Pure Death/Light, and melee will still be using Haste pots and Elixirs of Relentless Assault, or whatever their Northrend counterparts will be.

Alchemy is one of the four professions whose product will always be in demand regardless of how advanced a server's population is. Raid drops and PvP gear replace Blacksmithing weapons, Tailoring gear and Engineering goggles eventually, but the need for pots will always be there, barring another massive change in mechanics.

RpgWizard · 05/24/08, 7:15 AM

Originally Posted by Mideci

It is now. And Circle of Healing now affects 5 targets and has no cooldown. It's completely unreasonable to conclude definitively from the datamined information that this is the same restore mana effect and that drinking a mana potion is essentially a death-to-your-mana-pool effect. But feel free to believe that it is. I mean it might be, but we have no way of knowing this at this point. If it is, then those who hate mana potions have gotten their wish and potions are gone from the game effectively and alchemy has become unbelievably terrible.

It is much more likely they are changing mana potions with the changes to caster itemization having more spirit, the changes to shadow priests, and the changes to BoW and JoW. Obviously we are to be getting our mana regeneration from something other than mana potions and think it's a great change as long as they couple it with a change to other consumables such as Haste potions, Destruction potions, Ironshield potions, etc. If we replace popping mana potions with some other type of potions, this change will be a failure.

Anedris · 05/24/08, 3:57 PM

People need to stop defending the current consumable system because changing it "would kill alchemy." Alchemy will be fine - there's always going to be some consumable that raiders use, and it's a good bet that alchemy will make it. Plus there's BoP trinkets (yes, Blizz could make a new one that is both good and has an effect that doesnt' rely on chugging pots), transmutes, and optional new stuff someone could make up. Keeping alchemy worthwhile is not hard, and it does not require the current mana potion model (which, as has been repeatedly argued, is dumb - not because we're all cheapskates, but because unlimited mana due to pushing a button every 2 minutes is unimaginative and boring).

Mideci · 05/24/08, 4:17 PM

Let me be clear, alchemy is already terrible. It's a lousy profession. At least the trinket is a nice perk. With the de facto end of mana potions, I can't imagine anyone wanting to have alchemy on a main character. As my priest has had it since essentially release and has bothered to get every recipe in game, dropping it for something useful is going to be a painful change. But unless something very new and exciting comes along, drop it he shall. Already, he can't make potions, since he's elixir spec and having a non-speced alchemist make things is pretty dumb (except transmutes perhaps which is too streaky and hard to have done by someone spec-ed). So TBC made alchemy bad with the consumables nerf and then the spec-ing, which meant you could either make potions or elixirs. Lich King means, well, we'll see.

Raised · 05/24/08, 7:48 PM

Originally Posted by Mideci

Let me be clear, alchemy is already terrible. It's a lousy profession. At least the trinket is a nice perk. With the de facto end of mana potions, I can't imagine anyone wanting to have alchemy on a main character. As my priest has had it since essentially release and has bothered to get every recipe in game, dropping it for something useful is going to be a painful change. But unless something very new and exciting comes along, drop it he shall. Already, he can't make potions, since he's elixir spec and having a non-speced alchemist make things is pretty dumb (except transmutes perhaps which is too streaky and hard to have done by someone spec-ed). So TBC made alchemy bad with the consumables nerf and then the spec-ing, which meant you could either make potions or elixirs. Lich King means, well, we'll see.

Define a "good" profession then. Pretty much every profession has one or two items that are best-in-slot (Or bonus things like Ring enchants and BOP gems) and not much else for the discerning end-game raider. The one exception is Leatherworking drums, but that's already seen as a borderline broken mechanic that probably will be fixed come WotLK.

If you're arguing marketability, again, every profession has 1-2 money items (Weapon Enchants, Leg Armor Kits, Metagem Xmutes) and not much else.

Alchemy arguably has the biggest variety of markets right now (Elixirs, Pots, Metagem Xmutes). Partially losing one of those markets isn't the deathblow for the profession.

• Nisu · 05/24/08, 10:28 PM

Can we please stop the crying about Alchemy being useless? We've got a best-in-slot healing trinket, a fairly good damage trinket, 20g a day minimum just by sitting in your bank, and large number of high-demand elixirs and flasks. Show me a profession that has noticeably more benefits? Every single crafting profession has a best-in-slot item and a couple of minor perks (ignoring the arguably broken drums in their current state), and making mana potions not chain-chuggable will not suddenly kill alchemy.

I'm personally a fairly big fan of the potion change if it goes through in combination with the class-based regen changes, having to actively manage your mana with a mana potion "emergency button" is far more intersting than clicking the potion button every two minutes.

Wander · 05/24/08, 10:57 PM

I'm personally a fairly big fan of the potion change if it goes through in combination with the class-based regen changes, having to actively manage your mana with a mana potion "emergency button" is far more intersting than clicking the potion button every two minutes.

The thing is, mana regen itself is a stat that actually scales faster than exponentially; a fixed, finite (though large) amount of it will eventually enable an infinite amount of casting; and realistically, a fixed, finite, and reasonable amount of it will provide functionally infinite casting (say, fifteen minutes of chain-casting, which is functionally infinite for any fight application).

Although increasing base spell costs keeps up with it, it doesn't change the fundamental truth of the stat, and this is why a free 100mp5 on top of your gear via chain-chugging mana potions is so incredibly powerful. They can't really nerf the returns of the potion; each potion needs to return a certain amount of mana to keep up with large mana pools and spell costs, so that the momentary benefit of a potion remains relevant. It's the consequence of chain-drinking they need to fix, which the mana potion change would do; however, I feel it's a clumsy and inelegant change.

Mana regen, I think, should be redesigned; all MP5 should be removed from the game, and SPI should no longer grant mana regeneration directly; instead, these two stats should be reworked as a "Discounting" stat; while MP5 would be a direct "Rating" stat where X Rating reduces spell costs by 1%, Spirit would be a less-potent discount and simultaneously grant a secondary effect along the lines of increased +Damage and Healing.

Of course, I also feel that +Damage needs to be reworked into a "Spellpower Rating" system to preserve damage ratios between spells (DPS equivalency doesn't cut it in my book), but that's a discussion for another thread.

Lezwyn · 05/25/08, 7:14 AM

Originally Posted by Wander

Mana regen, I think, should be redesigned; all MP5 should be removed from the game, and SPI should no longer grant mana regeneration directly; instead, these two stats should be reworked as a "Discounting" stat; while MP5 would be a direct "Rating" stat where X Rating reduces spell costs by 1%, Spirit would be a less-potent discount and simultaneously grant a secondary effect along the lines of increased +Damage and Healing.

This is only different from simply increasing regeneration if there is no way to gain mana in combat, which to me feels clumsy as the moment you're out of mana you're effectively abilityless.

Northerner · 05/25/08, 7:23 AM

Originally Posted by Wander

The thing is, mana regen itself is a stat that actually scales faster than exponentially; a fixed, finite (though large) amount of it will eventually enable an infinite amount of casting; and realistically, a fixed, finite, and reasonable amount of it will provide functionally infinite casting (say, fifteen minutes of chain-casting, which is functionally infinite for any fight application).

Although increasing base spell costs keeps up with it, it doesn't change the fundamental truth of the stat, and this is why a free 100mp5 on top of your gear via chain-chugging mana potions is so incredibly powerful. They can't really nerf the returns of the potion; each potion needs to return a certain amount of mana to keep up with large mana pools and spell costs, so that the momentary benefit of a potion remains relevant. It's the consequence of chain-drinking they need to fix, which the mana potion change would do; however, I feel it's a clumsy and inelegant change.

Mana regen, I think, should be redesigned; all MP5 should be removed from the game, and SPI should no longer grant mana regeneration directly; instead, these two stats should be reworked as a "Discounting" stat; while MP5 would be a direct "Rating" stat where X Rating reduces spell costs by 1%, Spirit would be a less-potent discount and simultaneously grant a secondary effect along the lines of increased +Damage and Healing.

Of course, I also feel that +Damage needs to be reworked into a "Spellpower Rating" system to preserve damage ratios between spells (DPS equivalency doesn't cut it in my book), but that's a discussion for another thread.

The thing is, it is all (on the dps side) based on an assumed infinite mana system.

Healing has recently broken that as well but dps has been based on near 100% mana for a long long time. I mean that non-mana dps can and does out 'burst' mana dps and thus its all fucked up. Take from that what you will, I see nothing but sorrow.

Mideci · 05/25/08, 7:41 AM

The alchemy trinkets are good because of the mana potion benefit. If mana potions are effecitvely gone, the alchemy trinkets are not good. To be further clear, if you are elixirs, you can't sell potions as the potion spec people tend to sell them below your cost. And please, no one chime in and explain you farm your own herbs. If you do and you sell the potions, you could've sold the herbs. The only price for herbs that matters is the AH price. If you are potions, the same problem exists. Alchemists are already pigeonholed into one or the other thanks to the "benefit" of specialization. The profession brings no gear other than the trinket, which apparently is headed for the scrapheap, unless there is some radical new trinket, which I can't really imagine, but I suppose we'll see.

Tailoring, enchanting, blacksmith, engineering and leatherworking are "good" in that they've conveyed meaningful character bonuses for appreciable portions of the expansion. Jewelcrafting's trinkets have been pretty so so, but it's profit have been decidedly better. Gathering is a gold mine, period. So, I'd say up until the recent trinkets alchemy has been the worst profession in The Burning Crusade. Made that much worse by those of us perfectionists that went through 2000-10000 combines trying to "proc" the last flask discovery.

Mideci · 05/25/08, 7:43 AM

Duplicate, deleted

PSGarak · 05/25/08, 1:07 PM

Again, we're talking about revising mechanics for the expansion. The current trinkets will become outdated anyways, and their successors could quite possibly boost the effect of elixers and/or flasks, not to mention giving more (actually useful!) alchemist-specific potions/buffs.

lairpie · 05/25/08, 2:42 PM

The SSO alchemy trinket is actually arguably the best in slot second trinket (behind memento) for resto druids even if you're not hitting mana pots unless you're afraid of death and thus using battlemaster's.

Yes, until the alchemy trinkets, alchemy was almost inarguably the worst profession to have on a main. Sure, its nice to have on an alt or a friend, but that was it.

Anedris · 05/25/08, 5:10 PM

I think you're supposed to be helpless when you run out of mana. Just like you're dead when you run out of hit points - it's something you have to make sure doesn't happen through intelligent selection of your abilities, use of cooldowns, raid assignments, and so forth.

As Garak said, the current trinkets aren't relevant to a discussion about what Wrath will be like. They can make a new one that gives 500 healing and look, alchemy will be awesome again! (I'm being silly but the point stands - it's not hard to make a profession worthwhile.)

lairpie · 05/25/08, 7:43 PM

More to the point on profession value, no matter how good mana potions are or aren't alchemy is only worth having if it provides some sort of useful bop raiding benefit anyway, so nerfing mana potions doesn't really affect much.

Shakes · 05/28/08, 12:37 AM

I think a possible mechanic of how they could change it already exists. PvP drops combat, and hence allows you to drink, after 5 seconds of no active role in the combat. What if they reduced the power of the passive regen stats, and instead allowed you to drink after a certain time (not necessarily 5 seconds) in PvE too?

I think if fights were balanced around it, it could be workable. After all, taking a break from healing for a period of time (waiting to flag you as OK to drink plus time spent drinking) is not without cost. It's a reasonable tradeoff, where you probably have to coordinate with other healers when you're going to do it so someone picks up the slack. And if you take damage just before you were about to drink, it was all for nothing.

Prinsesa · 05/28/08, 4:38 AM

@Shakes: That was already tried in early Beta, when people were allowed to drink in-combat. What happened then was that in 5-mans, people would tend to bring 2 healers, who could afford to be inefficient as they wanted, because they always had the second guy to pick up their slack once they went OOM.

I'm not necessarily saying it couldn't work, since the drinking mechanism then was anytime as opposed to only after 5 seconds, but it seems like you'd need to jump through a lot of hoops and gimmicks to prevent people from just stacking tons of healers.

Either have so much AOE damage that healers wouldn't be allowed to drink (hence putting us back at square one) or put an enrage timer on every fight so 1 tank, 1 DPS, 8 healer raids couldn't hack it.

Anedris · 05/28/08, 6:55 AM

Well, in raid content most encounters that would be trivialized by stacking healers if they could drink in combat would already be trivialized by stacking healers if they couldn't. Bear boss, for example, would be really easy with 2 tanks, 1 DPS, and 7 healers (would take forever though). I think every other boss in ZA has an enrage mechanic of some kind however, so they would all be impossible.

It is probably a greater concern in 5-person content both because there tend not to be any enrages and because drinking is a greater advantage to undergeared healers (since a t6-geared druid or priest probably regenerates more mana standing around than healer in dungeon blues gains drinking... though of course drinking stacks with spirit regen so the t6-geared player would still gain an advantage from it). 5-person content is already so easy though, it doesn't strike me as a big deal.

I don't really know as it's necessary though. I kind of think it should be possible to run oom and then be helpless. The mana bar is much more interesting to me when there are consequences for squandering it. (Having to sit down and drink is, of course, a consequence, just a lesser one.)

Actually, now that I consider it, one thing this would do is help the mp5-based healers (paladins and shamans) to catch up to the spirit-based healers a bit on fights with gaps in the action (Illidan being the prime example, though outside of maybe p2 I don't think anyone really has mana issues on Illidan), which would be a good thing I think.

PSGarak · 05/28/08, 4:09 PM

When you think about it, the only functional difference between waiting 5 seconds to have to drink, and the current 5-second out-of-casting rule, is that you have to stand still. It's not an exciting mechanic, nor is it strategically very different than the regen boost you already get for not casting (even non-SPT classes, post-2.4).

Zee · 05/28/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

It's not an exciting mechanic

Quite an understatement.