• Daboran

Having moved from Resto since WoW launch to Feral in TBC, I really didn't realize how much potion chugging has become part of the game until recently, when listening our guild healers mentioning that they need "another 300" Mana pots made.

I remember really struggling to make my mana last the whole of our first Chromaggus kill, stacking mp5 gear, making sure I timed fsr ticks, equipping a high spi staff and keeping myself in combat for the duration of Innervate (before they fixed the regen bonus stacking). Ok, so that might not turn on a dps class, but it gave me something to occupy my mind other than whack-a-mole.

It's got to stop. No really it has. If the only problem you ever have with mana is forgetting to take a pot then something is badly broken.

 

Furio

As a Warlock, I can assure you that mana is only a concern in so far as we have to waste GCDs to Life Tap/Dark Pact. I'm almost always grouped with a Shadow Priest. Consequently, I'm afforded the ability to chain chug Destruction Potions for many encounters. That said, on any encounter where the healers are extremely stressed and I must AOE excessively (only Solarian thus far for my guild), I, too, have to resort to chain chugging Super Mana Potions to maximize my efficiency. On encounters with multiple AOE phases, though, using a Super Mana Potion to save 2-3 GCDs can be a life saver. At the very least, if a warlock is not using Super Mana Potions, then s/he better be using the potion cooldown for something else productive.

With regard to the difference between mana regen in Warlock specs: only Affliction can be self-supporting without healer mana to enable Life Tapping.




I'm assuming the Soulwell came before (without) a Water Well because of the Soul Shard mechanic. Without Soulwells providing 10x Healthstones per Soul Shard it would be impossible for a raid to be provided with healthstones past the first several attempts on a boss. As balancing raid encounters evolved to require assuming a raid has access to and uses every available consumable item, then creating a mechanic for Warlocks to pass out Healthstones at a reduced Soul Shard cost was a necessity, not a luxury as a Water Well would be.


Weaving the original topic with the current paradigm for encounter balancing, it's obvious that the easiest way to lessen the burden of mana users chain chugging Super Mana Potions was to largely trivialize their cost; this was done in 2.1. The decision to avoid reworking regen models (or simply increasing the amount of mana-regen by devauling spirit and Mp% in the item budget) in 2.1 strengthens the conclusion Blizzard is comfortable with current potion mechanics. While many, many raiders bemoan the necessity of chain chugging, perhaps those same raiders would do well to remember that Blizzard must balance the core mechanics around not only raiding, but also around the outside world, 5-mans, and PvP. Certain mechanics may verge on being broken in one area of the game, but yet work exceedingly well throughout the other areas. Given the diverse nature of the game's offerings, I would be extremely surprised to find any mechanic that universally "works."

 

Schneeb

If they nerfed mana pots then shadowpriests would just get another raid spot, they are probably overpowered at the moment but they help keep a balance of sorts.
They also made them alot cheaper to craft and 2-a-day from skettis makes them almost 'priceless' when the decision comes to chug them after losing 3 healers or another extremely mana intensive situation.

 

Kallisti

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.

Well, I have only seen four bosses of SSC yet and not killed one of them (but i strongly believe that it's not because of me , but because of time investment and dps/focus), but I heared many times that those bosses, Mag, Gruul, Nightbane (pre Nerfnerf) required Restoration Flasks (pre Nerf) _and_ Pots.
I'm sure some will now blame me for not knowing the end-game and that everything is absolutely different there, but I have also heared the same people saying the same things about content that I know by now.

Whenever I used a Restoration Flask, i _never_ had to use a single mana potion, even if i did twice as much overheal as usual.

Watching videos of some high-end-guild-healers, I often see the healers just spamming heals, regardless of overheal, barely cancelling any heals (hello Awake).
While I understand that damage spikes become more and more challenging (I have seen Tidewalker and even Gruul or Malchezaar (especially in twink runs with undergeared tanks) demonstrate this quite well), I do not think that simple heal spamming is the ultimate solution.

Imho most of those, crying about pots, just need to improve their style of healing. We use Healers Assist (the incoming heal list of course, remove that stupid emergency monitor thing please) to prevent overheal and to create some sort of "silent communication" between our healers. Depending on the fight, our overheal is in the 10-25% range (druids less, paladins more, hots vs. spam). Yet we have no strict healing assignments and do simple crosshealing, except for a few fights and conditions (e.g. 1 healer per Magtheridon Channeler tank).
We are quite young as a guild, so maybe that is also a reason of our solution, because after two months your healers don't know each other perfectly enough to prevent overhealing in an efficient manner without any addons.

I have not seen any fight in the game so far where you would surely run out of mana without pots, if you heal efficiently.

My Equipment is full epic, but only on Karazhan level. Fully raidbuffed (no pots or such) I have about 1800+heal, ~240mp5 regen while casting, ~470mp5 regen while not casting, 500 spirit and 10500 mana, if I remember correctly (currently not at home).

Lifebloom as tree druid costs 170 mana. If i try to keep up Lifebloom on someone, I am giving up my 5 second rule mana regen, since i have to cast every 6.5 seconds (latency safety) and never receive a tick of full mana regen, except when i take a healing break.

Still, with 240mp5, i'm able to keep Lifebloom on two targets without losing any mana at all. Now, in a real fight there are phases where you keep up only 1 lifebloom and phases where you keep up 4 lifeblooms, so I'd say the average case is more in the 3 lb / 7 sec area, which means that I lose about 1500 mana per minute. It still takes 7 minutes until i'm OOM.. Then there is innervate which puts me to full mana again if I switch to my 20 spirit enchanted nightbane staff which pushes my spirit to 600.. That means I can heal about 15 minutes without using any pot, maintaining 3 lifeblooms which is about 2000 hp/s, if all targets lose life.

In reality, you want more safety margin, so you add in rejuvenation to the tank and occasional regrowth / swiftmend casts, removing one lifebloom. Still, I can definitely maintain enough mana for the average 6-10 minute fight in TBC.


These calculations of course only matter as a tree druid. But there are several situations where I would definitely leave my tree, at least pre 2.1 (when lifebloom did not stack), to heal spikes. Gruul after 6-7 growths would be a good example, where I just switched to Healing Touch spamming.

Still, using Healers Assist, proactively healing and cancelling spellcasts early enough, I can maintain less than 20% overheal with 3-4 paladins in the raid and 3 second casttime per heal, if I want to. Sure, if I know i CAN spam heals to prevent the tank to die in the 0.5-1seconds when i just cancelled a heal and started casting a new one, I would do it and even pot to create safety margin.

BUT I think it is not necessary. If you time your heals well (watching the mob's swingtimer and have a feeling for incoming damage) and arrange well with your other healers (heals hitting in 0.5 second periods), imho every healer can come down to 15-20% overheal which basically means that you are able to heal everything without the requirement of massive consumable use.

All these assumptions are based on using your most efficient heals. You should have a hpm ratio of 1:8 or higher (well, lifebloom has 1:25-1:30, that's insane, but it will never tick 24/7, so it's a bit theoretical). Flash heal will of course make you OOM, regrowth is only efficient if the hot part ticks, paladins should not spam on targets which are not likely to receive more dmg in the next seconds when those already have a hot on them ticking (grid and perfect raid can display this wonderfully).
If you multiply your mana pool including mana regen with that ration, subtracting overheal, you come to a calculation like (10000 (base mana) + 30000 (250mp5 over 10 minutes) + 15000 (2x Innervate)) * 8 (HPM) * 0.8 (let's assume 20% overheal, including hots).
That's 55.000 * 6.4 = 352.000

Show me WWS where your healers have to heal more than this in a 10 minute fight.


A lot of this issue comes down to addons and I can really recommend every guild to try Healers Assist + Grid/Perfect Raid, well configured (remove HA emergency monitor(!), display your own hots _and_ hotstack in grid) and to talk to your healers, trying to improve their performance and to make them work more together. Healing is not about being #1 on the overall healing done meters but about working together as a team and not interfering each other when trying to keep the raid alive.


Add in Feral innervates, Shadow Priests and Mana Tide (not mentioning Resto druids innervating themselves and Shadowfiend for Priests) for even more safety and additional regeneration and I personally come the conclusion that chain-potting is definitely no absolute requirement for healers, it just creates even more room for safety, for inefficient fast heals and for the learning phase on new encounters. With enough practise, timing, knowledge and concentration, you can imho still do almost all content without potting.

Yeah, I'm telling you to l2play or better: to l2playtogether and l2communicate.

 

moowalk

I don't disagree with anything you say.

But spamming heals (hello awake) and using consumables can't be worse than cancelling heals. And that one time that it's better might stop your tank dying.

 

Kallisti

I'm doing it myself occasionally.

But it's not a MUST, especially not on farmcontent. That's what i wanted to say.
So imho there is no reason to complain, since it's just an option to make it easier.

 

moowalk

Yeah I get your point. Personally I'm feeling comfortable enough with HKM and kara kills to start cancelling heals and drop down to combat pots

I think it will remain part of my progression boss methodology though. That's all that matters isn't it?

 

Mem

Though I might derail this a topic a little bit: on some encounters at least tanks are still in a pretty similar situation. Whereas elixirs and flasks were nerfed pots such as stoneshields or ironshields have been buffed relatively. If I feel that keeping me up is too difficult (like Morogrimm where the burst damage sometimes is really tough) I will chainchug armor pots as well. And yes, I have to keep them on CD in order to keep it safe.

To be honest, I feel that this is a price we have to pay for raiding. I wouldn't object to a nerf to potions across the board (except for health potions which are pretty underpowered and don't scale at all with gear) if this is reflected in correponding changes in PVE encounters. Furthermore I don't expect any major redesign of the mana regen mechanics since this will affect the PVP metagame as well (remember, Arenas don't allow consumables) and this will become even more difficult to balance.

 

zepi

Deep destruction with pet sacrifice is easily self sustainable with manapots assuming that you are willing to take the few percent dps-loss.

 

◊ Shalas

Soulwells were nessesary because healthstones are unique and take a soulshard each. Standing around conjuring food/water before a raid certainly isn't fun, but it's a lot better than spending (significantly more) time farming soulshards before a raid, followed by several minutes of conjuring and passing out healthstones before every attempt. The fact that prior to soulwells no one bothered to give healthstones to the entire raid for anything but Loatheb, while no raid would ever consider not having the mages give out water despite the much lower benefit from mage water shows pretty clearly which was a bigger hassle.

 

BeeLz

As I see it spirit is just too expensive in itembudget for mages.
Some priests are stacking spirit and they do great, mages who can have 45% regen while casting and can spend quite some time outside FSR aren't stacking spirit.
Why? Because we can't sacrifice spelldamage, hit and crit for spirit. I'd love to raid with 500 spirit raidbuffed and a 17/44/0 build but to aquire that, a mage will need to drop loads of damage, hit and crit, Which simply isn't worth it.

 

BeeLz

I agree, there's a difference though, once you outgear the encounter there's no need to ever pop a stoneshield pot. Mages will need to continue potting if they want to do decent damage because their mana pools barely go up when their gear advances.

 

tedv

I'd suggest the real reason is that healers can get some time while not casting for spirit ticks, but there's almost never a reason for a mage to not cast. To a mage, spirit is, "really not what I want, but at least it's not totally useless".

Honestly though, I can't think of any class for whom spirit is the best stat to stack given current item budgets, even holy priests, so that's a sign spirit isn't doing enough.

 

snape

As a Mage, I know that I wish I had more Spirit - and I'm a heavy proponent of Mage Armor, even though it's really not "in vogue" anymore. You either use Mage Armor and save <some> mana, reducing the need for SMP's (and gain the occasional luxury of a Destruction Potion), or you use Molten Armor, making you need SMP's, and not getting the occasional luxury of a Destruction - just to get 3% more crit.

It seems that the two Armors are "balanced" this way as raid buffs, and I usually lean to the Mage Armor side, but many Mages still go with Molten.

For the Mages that do use Molten, Spirit is crap for them. But for the Mage Armor Mage...Spirit's not so bad. And just remember that every 10 Spirit = +1 dmg (from Imp DS).

 

Bandagraph

I have a holy/disc priest alt that I play in Karazhan sometimes, and I agree with you completely. The current regen mechanics of priests are a lot of fun. I'd say at least 40% of my satisfaction from playing this character is managing my mana through a long fight using canceling for 5SR ticks, clearcasting procs, inner focus, and bangle (brilliant design).

That said, it is a shame that through chain potting and shadow priests you can essentially neglect mana gearing/management. It seems kind of like playing a tank if hunters had a 10 second misdirect cooldown. I understand that in the current raiding situation chain potting is necessary for max efficiency, but making the pots cheaper definitely doesn't make the classes more interesting to play.

 

BeeLz

A mage can spend quite some time outside FSR with smart use of arcane missiles and clearcasts. 45% spirit regen while casting is alot as well. Evocation makes a big difference aswell. etc etc
Spirit isn't that useless as it seems for mages, most gear is just lacking it :p

 

silv

I'm not sure how this is purely limited to mana potions? Our rogues chug haste pots every 2 minutes, and our tanks are constantly popping a variety of things.

Feral druids and Warlocks are probably the only class that can escape chain chugging some type of pot without suffering consequences.

 

Fayrn

Not to mention the ones from Spirit Shard turn-ins (2x Spirit Shards for 1x Super Mana equivalent). I know I sent out almost 100 of those mana potions to our healers when 2.1 came out (far too many Shadow Labyrinth runs for the Spellstrike recipe that never dropped).

I have to agree that the the "fix" of making potions easier to get was a poor effort, but I think it almost works if your DPS classes forwards all the extras they don't need to your healing classes.

 

BeeLz

Rogues chug them to perform better. Healers, mages and hunters use them to be able to do their task.

 

Bikiniwax

Allowing potions to stack to 20 would make Engineering even more useless (See Mana Potion Injector). However, to kill 2 birds with one stone, Blizz should allow the Engineering BOP Mana & Health Injectors to be BOE. This would allow engineers to make a little cash making these injectors and selling them to raiders who could use potions that stack in 20's.

EDIT: After reading about Haste pots for Rogues, etc. maybe an even better idea would be for the Mana/Health engineering schematic to be changed so that Engineers could make ANY potion stack in 20's. Mats would be the same as they are now, albeit with 20 of whatever potion you wanted created into an Injector.

 

BeeLz

I do agree engineering should be more useful but there's already a profession to make elixir and potions, it's called alchemy.

 

Cormack

Err, I believe Bikini's suggestion would be that Engineers would obtain already crafted pots from alchemists and use their magical technological powers to turn them into 20 stacks, which could be used by anyone. I don't see how that hurts alchemists.

 

Cads

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.

 

Northerner

I can spend an entire fight outside of the 5SR but my goal isn't to have mana, it is to deliver damage (or rarely, control or curse removal and the like). As such, using AM, making decisions after waiting for a clearcast aura and so on just doesn't help my end desire. Spirit presently is only of any value for a fight where chain-chugging and other tools are still insufficient for keeping me casting and in those mythical situations, it would still have to provide more total damage rather than just extending the time I can cast for. This is starting to wander off-topic though a bit so I'll close with an observation.

Mana regeneration on gear is a good thing for Mages. Spirit and mp5 are nice. However, because of the way the item budget works they are rarely a preferable choice to stats that directly increase damage. More importantly though, because they are dwarfed by the mana regeneration of chain-chugging potions and having a shadow priest in your group (and I mean made completely trivial in comparison to these options) the optimal solution is to take no spirit, no mp5, use molten armor and chain-chug potions (if needed) while using a shadow priest. I think that's a little broken personally but there we are.

 

Thanaomira

Insofar as twiddling the mechanics, similar to the "you may only drink one potion per combat" idea is: drinking an X potion gives you an "X potion" debuff that lasts for 4 minutes.

Problem is, the first obvious solution is to alternate chugging SMPs and UMP/MMPs. One tweak to fix this would be that mana potions could be modelled as a universal mana gem by giving you a 10 minute, potion-specific, debuff, so now you can't just simply alternate SMPs and UMPs.

The next tweak would be to broaden the debuff into a small set of classes: restore mana, restore health, increase armor all come to mind.

Playing devil's advocate, this only lessens the impact of chain-chugging by throwing in a factor of 0.5, and I suspect this kind of chugging still overwhelms Spi/Mage Armor/Meditation regeneration on mages. (I am much less experienced with playing a priest.)

So then you could theorycraft "normal" mana regen from gear/talents/spells and adjust the debuff timer to match that more closely, assuming people are quaffing potions at the first opportunity.

Incidentally, this would also address chain-chugging Protection potions as well, I believe.