Niton

The time taken for a paladin to get within 10 yards of a target, cast Judgement of Wisdom, and run back to a safe distance to resume healing is much longer than 1.5 seconds in most fights. If I could apply Judgements safely and efficiently, I'd definitely be using them in raid situations more often.

 

PandemicXTC

If your raid group can keep Mag banished for a few seconds you shouldn't need to pot more than once or twice. Shadowfiend durring banish = full mana bar. Mind blast durring banish is a nice spike of mana as well.

 

Cryect

Too bad I don't have a real addon that uses it :-p One day when I feel like coding an addon and not Recount a Mario Kart clone might pop up though.

Anyways going to stop going OT now

I need to do something useless.

 

DecimusGarona

You could always bring a retribution paladin to keep the judgements up. I think hell just froze over by the way.

 

Exto

Meh, just pvp in your downtime and buy the token pots.
They work well enough for me (im a resto shaman, most likely the most mana inefficient healer class- although lets not get into that, thats another thread)

 

◊ Kyth

Not sure why everyone says warlocks don't need mana pots, or say certain specs circumvent it entirely.

It's just that warlocks have the option (or rather, are basically forced to, since our dpm is so low) of reducing their DPS by lifetapping to get mana back. Warlocks don't get a magic "mana for free" ability, nor do they get to cast directly off their HP bars. Some specs (specifically, one spec) just have the option of sometimes being able to pull mana from the pet, which is also a GCD, thus saving a bit of healing on them. Technically I suppose you can sacrifice your felhunter instead of your succubus, but that's a 15% dps loss, which is close to, but worse than, the dps loss you take from lifetapping.

For me it's 15% of my time on a raid is spent lifetapping. Only ~20-30% of my dps comes from dots, so I'm still looking at a solid 11-12% DPS loss to lifetap. Anything I can do to mitigate that is good in my book.


I use mana pots on every cooldown on almost every fight except ones that I know we'll win easily. And I do very much appreciate it when I get a shadow priest.

Locks just have a choice, but they're still chaining pots on real fights if they're trying to do maximal dps, just like a mage does. (yes, I also farm demonic runes -- GCD-free, whee!)

 

Failure

Your numbers are only correct in a fight that you stand still and DPS a boss on. On most real encounters, you have time that you have to run, or can't DPS, etc, that you can actually lifetap during with 0 loss to DPS. I'm hard-pressed to think of an encounter that doesn't have something like this.

[edit: Granted, your post is still correct, and you still do gain DPS via mana consumables, but the 11-12% is a best/worst (depending how you look at it) case scenario)]

 

◊ Kyth

Absolutely. Sorry I did not word it clearly enough. Many things mitigate that loss, mana pots and shadow priests are two of them. I also opted for 6mp5 on my chest, which is really only about 1-2dps increase, but I don't find I need the 150hp on my chest really, and, hey, it's 1-2dps .

I have indeed adjusted when I lifetap to make it when I move: but do note that's also often the worst-possible time to take 1.5-3k worth of damage, so it's not always wise, safe or even doable, and you can get stuck only lifetapping when you're otherwise in a position to be nuking.


We just all have hotbuttons, and one of them is reading anything that hints of that horrid wow-forums warlock meme of "my health is my mana!" No, actually, your spell damage is your mana, since that's what determines how much you get back on a lifetap... Note that this is yet another reason why spell damage is far better for a warlock than hit or crit.

I also dislike warlocks who don't ever carry mana pots (or destruction pots), even if they're only for use when you're trying to get through an enrage or burn through the last few percent on a boss.

 

Furio

Even assuming you do lose 11-12% DPS due to Life Taps (because 15% of the fight is spent Life Tapping), you should investigate using Destruction Potions over Super Mana Potions. After all, a SPM saves you what, 2x GCDs per CD? Three extra seconds of casting per two minutes only increases your total cast time per two minutes (assuming chain casting and 15% lifetap time) from 102 to 105 secs. That's a paltry 2.9% increase in cast time (which, incidentally, if chain casting non-instant spells is roughly 67 Haste Rating).

Compare 2.9% more casting time under absolutely ideal circumstances to the 2% crit (44.2 crit rating) and 120 dmg for 15 secs used when you want it. Averaging the Destruction pot over the 2 min CD yields 15 dmg and 0.25% crit (5.525 crit rating). However, that average is under worst case circumstances as, presumably, you'd wait a second or ten between CDs so that you could be sure to chain-cast during the entire duration. Additionally, the 2% crit becomes magnified when you simultaneously pop other CDs that enhance damage (such as Icon of the Silver Crescent and Bloodfury - both of which are conveniently also on 2 min CDs).

Clearly, warlocks should lifetap and use destruction potions over super mana pots. The Super Mana Pot only comes out ahead in the rare “emergency situations where the warlock, raid, and/or healers are under such unusual duress the warlock can not spare 2x personal GCDs, 3k health, and/or a healer can not spare 1x GCD and some mana.

 

◊ Kyth

I did.

I can go back and re-do the math, but when I ran it last time (and had a friend verify my calculations), SPM > destruction for 0/21/40 (and its ilk), and destruction > SMP for 41+/x/y. Basically it comes down to the twin facts that (a) affliction can take advantage of improved lifetap, and (b) far more of their dps continues while lifetapping (30-40% of your dps is nukes, versus the 70-80% with destruction).

I certainly might have been wrong, and I don't have the file saved anywhere. But I had been using destruction up until then, and now I carry both for situational use.

 

Alcyon

I (and some other people pitched in, I guess) killed Leotheras for the first time last night, and on my final attempt I had 13329 mana restored to me via VT. That's 130% of my mana bar. JoW restored around 4218. That's 17500 mana I wouldn't have otherwise had if I hadn't wormed my way into a group with a shadow priest (by getting the raid leader to swap me with another mage when he died, and forgetting to get switched out for the next attempt) or been so insistent on receiving JoW from the paladins.

Mana regeneration is broken because you can't balance encounters around it. You can't make any valid assumptions. I, as an arcane mage, am going to last about 13 seconds without JoW or VT. A rogue will last forever. A chain potting frost mage with VT and JoW will last forever. On Maulgar it's not much of an issue, on Morogrim these differences become exceptionally pronounced.

How long until encounters are balanced around every caster having a pocket shadow priest? Flasks were nerfed because they were deemed required*, and mana potions made slightly easier to obtain, but at least you always have the option to get them. You can't create a shadow priest from an alchemy lab. We had only one in the raid last night. We can't run with 3-4 shadow priests (though it would seem others are, from Gurg's post, as I don't think he means he takes 3 holy priests).

There's an art to forming a raid group. You put the shaman with the warriors so they can provide GoA () and a warlock with an imp with the main tank. But having a shadow priest shouldn't be the difference between being a raid viable DPS class and not.

This isn't a whine post about shadow priests, per se -- I love having one! But mana is a flawed mechanic because it works over minutes, rather than seconds, as energy does, or on a sustainable level, as energy and rage both do. When mana is designed as a mechanic to say "look, you can cast optimally for X, or suboptimally for 2X.", and then you design encounters around these assumptions, you can't have variables doubling or tripling X.

In a way similar to consumables, I suspect a Tier 4 geared mage with a shadow priest is better DPS than one in Tier 5 without one.. Maybe even a tier 6 geared one.

You can either:
- Remove VT, and retune accordingly so that classes that presently have mana issues on regular fights no longer do.
- Remove/heavily nerf mana potions, or make them actually viable to use 20 of in a night, and then retune accordingly, in addition to the above.
- Spread the VT love around so that no classes will have mana issues in a fight of reasonable length, in which case, why have mana at all?

Essentially it comes down to this: Is mana a fight length limit, or a gold sink?

* I still went through a flask, an adept's elixir, 3 brilliant wizard oil and 5 or so +dmg food last night. I could have gone through about 20 super mana potions too, if I could play enough to sustain such a consumable addiction. Thanks for solving the consumable issue, guys!

 

Furio

It's a shame you no longer have the file - I'd be very interested to see where our constructions of the situation differ. Let's try to get a better picture of what, exactly, we're saving.

For the sake of argument, we'll assume 1450 shadow damage raid-buffed (should be right about where you’re at based on armory profile) and an average Shadow Bolt (factoring in crits and raid de-buffs) of 4.5k. Correct me if I’m wrong about your average SB. We’ll also assume 0/2 Imp LT and perfect casting conditions (ie no lag and ability to stand still). Lastly, we’ll assume SB spam.

First of all, Life Tap Rank 7 has a coefficient of 0.8 for shadow damage (I’m fairly certain SM, DS with Succubus, and other % modifiers do not affect LT). This means that with 1450 shadow damage, you’d get 1742 mana per GCD. An average SMP is 2400 mana, so it takes 1.38 Life Taps (2.07 secs) to equal an average SMP. A mere 2.07 secs of casting per 2 minutes is less than one additional SB cast. Taking our assumption of 4.5k dmg per SB cast, then the SMP equates to 3726 dmg per 2 minutes (31.1 DPS).

Now, the Destruction Potion’s 2% crit and 120 dmg is much tougher to quantify. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that the SB spam indicates a 0/21/40 or similar build). They key factor is that Ruin is present. Thus, we’ll assume 2% crit is a straight 2% DPS boost (ignoring ISB, although we all know ISB increases the DPS contribution of crit). Over each 2 min period, the 2% crit is a 0.25% DPS boost. Recall we’re assuming 4.5k average SBs. Further assume that 4.5k is based on a 20% crit rate. This yields an average non-crit SB of 3750. Thus, we can calculate the DPS boost from solely the 2% crit for 15 secs portion of the Destruction Potion to be 3.8 DPS (3750/2.5*0.0025).

This 3.8 DPS boost does not include the bonus DPS from 120 spell dmg for 15 secs! We know that with SnF the SB gains 104% of shadow dmg. Thus each SB gains 15.6 dmg (120*1.04/8). Then factor in the 20% crit rate to get 18.7 dmg per cast. This is an additional 7.5 DPS. Combine with the 2% crit bonus and the Destruction potion is an 11.3 DPS increase.

Results: SPM = 31.1 DPS; Destro Pot = 11.3 DPS
(For reference, a 20 DPS difference amounts to just over a 1% difference when chain casting at 1800 DPS – which is our assumed SB values)

When tinkering with the assumptions, realize that as casting situations become less than optimal, the difference between the two shrinks. As far as scaling is concerned, it’s obvious the SPM scales better in so far as the saved GCDs are used exclusively for additional spell casting. The SMP DPS decreases proportionally to the amount of time spent not casting that could have been used to Life Tap. Moreover, if health levels of are concern but time is wasting, then using lower ranks of Life Tap during that dead time would also further diminish the DPS boost of SMP. Also, the 2% crit from the Destro Pot adds additional DPS if active while other spell dmg procs or bonus effects are up (such as Flame Shadow, trinkets, Bloodfury). While Bloodlust/Heroism does lower the GCD, Bloodlust/Heroism does not increase the effectiveness of SMP (it merely keeps the DPS boost constant). Bloodlust/Heroism does, however, increase the effectiveness of Destro Pots by 30%. Lag should affect both SMP and Destro Pot similarly if using lag-adjusted casting bars (such as Quartz) and /stopcasting macros.

As far as non-SB spamming specs are concerned, Destro should improve with affliction for obvious reasons. Lacking Ruin hurts the Destro Potion, relative to the SMP, slightly. Fire specs should have similar results although the lower coefficient for Incinerate would hinder the Destruction Potion by a few DPS. Felguard specs would see improvements with Destro Pots relative to SMPs because of the boost to pet AP and Mana Feed (if talented and not in shadow priest group).

Final Conclusion: SMP and Destro Pot can each be better than the other, depending on the situation (no duh, but at least it’s nice to have some concrete support as to why one isn’t strictly better than the other). I suppose you’ll be able to differentiate between the best warlocks by what, exactly, affects their choice between a SMP and a Destruction Potion.

 

Bloodtear

The thing is to identify the correct problem in the first place. Is chain potting bad because of the power that these potions give or is it the gold sink it represents.

If the problem is in the power, then nerf is the only way to adjust them. But this requires a massive overhaul of the current content according to it. Most of the encounters at this moment require chain casting of heals or dps spells and there is no option for resting and doing rotations. Note that if this happens, then Blizzard must be extremely careful not to kill the professions or raiding shadow priests.

If the problem is the gold sink mana potions represent, there may be a easy way to fix it. Make the average mana restored 5K instead of 2.4K. Leave the drop rates and production requirements the same. Most of the mana users do fine with chain potting now. Doubling the mana restored will half the need to use potions, will leave a free cooldown to use on a different potion, and will lower the benefit of a shadow priest in group. The only fluke I see with this are Arcane Blast mages (or some other dps builds that I'm not aware off) that are not sustainable now but may become with this type of change.

 

◊ Gryth

I'm not sure those are the only two options. First, as a point of order, going to the AH and buying several stacks of potions isn't a gold sink, per se. It's much more of a gold redistribution, since the gold is still in the game - just not in its original owners' hands. To me, that says that the chain-potting phenomenon is really more of a time sink, than a gold sink. And the time spent farming (or doing daily quests, or whatever) is what we are measuring against.

Additionally, it seems to me that the biggest issue with mana potions is a combination of power and diversity. At the moment, there is little reason for many of the other potions to exist, from a caster's perspective. Because we are all busy chain-chugging mana potions, there is little reason for casters to carry anything else (healing, destruction, living action, etc.) We never have to reach a reactive decision point, where we choose whether we want to use a potion, save one for later, or use a different type.

I've always felt that mana potions were meant to be used as a sort of last resort - saved for those "oh shit" moments when you're running out of mana but still have a large, immediate need for it. The very concept of drinking a potion as soon as you can - just to get the timer rolling - seems unintended. I would almost rather see them restricted to use only when the caster was under a certain percentage of their total mana (say, 20%). Then, they could become something that you would use as you needed them, rather than at every possible moment. Hell, at that point, they could probably even double in power, and still be both desired and balanced. I would also expand on the Fel Mana concept at the same time, and make the "chain-chuggable" potions (i.e. pre-20%) have hefty drawbacks.

Back to the point, I think the real issue is that chain chugging is bad because it is a) so powerful, b) ubiquitously undertaken (all mana users, on all encounters) and thus balanced against and c) removes options. If we are all expected to constantly be drinking a potion on the cooldowns, what's the point? Why not simply increase overall regeneration by the same amount? From a strictly PvE standpoint, of course.

Note: Pretty much everything here can be paralleled for Ironshield potions on tanks, as well.

 

Cads

What if mana management was made an interactive part of all mana users' classes? This kind of feature exists already - mages have evocate and mana gems, priests have VT and/or inner focus (spec depending) and shadowfiend, warlocks have lifetap and dark pact (spec depending)... Why not increase the effectiveness of these abilities, and/or develop new class-specific abilities, so that by intelligent use of them one could stretch their mana to last the 8-15+ minutes that many fights seem to take.

I'm still not a fan of the idea of nerfing the effect of mana potions. If this is done without giving other ways to keep mana flowing all of your casters will be dry halfway through the fight and thus not be able to contribute much in terms of meaningful DPS. I do agree that the idea of chain potting just to sustain my mana is silly - and it is annoying to almost never have the option of using a health potion on a boss fight.

 

Nerull

While in the past I played priest and tried to time heals perfectly, cancelling a lot ( more the reactive healing except some fights like patchwerk, only letting it go if the tank really takes damage ) , since TBC where I play shaman and have stacked regen ( 170 mana / 5 from gear unbuffed ) I simply became sloppy. Having my totem adding another 50 mana per 5 and often being put in group of shadowpriest to give him and the mages extra mana + heroism, I never have mana problems at all, in fact, even when I spam highest ranks of heals I cant seem to spend it all.

Mana not being an issue makes you spam the tank just to counter burst damage which many TBC raidhealing encounters are based upon. I rather have an extremely excess of overhealing , being close to oom when the fight ends and the MT surviving then sitting all the time carefully planning my heals, having a neat 10% but the MT getting killed at 20% of the boss. If you have the mana why not spend it to make ensure certain victory ?

I might not be the best at configuring Grid, but I see only one global indication if a heal is incoming on a target , not who it is and if it are more. If damage is spikey, basicly I see the indication that someone is healing the MT non stop almost because of this. This doesnt scare me away to spam him also when my mana allows to ( almost always ) - again : better be safe than sorry.

Aside from that I feel that raid healing needs to be communicated well. Both tree druids and shamans can do this excellent but what often happens is that they both do it, the shaman effectively screwing the druid as his heal comes in earlier. If this is clearly communicated before it can prevent a lot of mana being wasted.

All this being said, I always have preferred to be non dependant on mana pots by picking gear with good regen on it and still decent to good +healing. With that I only have to chain eat mana pots on new encounters basicly and I can perfectly live with that. Once the encounter has been mastered , the raid takes less damage, less healing needed, less mana pots needed , if any at all.

 

Vandermonde

If and when they do get around to rebalancing the power and necessity of mana pots, I hope they also look at making the mana cd an interesting thing to manage. It would be ridiculous to chain-chug health pots, and this isn't a matter of them being weaker or less-assumed; their effect is highly context-sensitive. You hit a healthstone/pot when you're in an emergency and think that you're either going to to die right now without it or that the chances of a worse situation coming up in the next 2 minutes are low. There is never any thought of saving a mana potion cooldown. The only decision is whether to spend a trivial amount of gold for a huge gain vs not doing so.

The mana equivalent of gain x health isn't actually gain y mana; it's some kind of clearcasting effect. For the next number of seconds you gain an amount of spell haste and spell costs are reduced by a percent. For dps casters that's still pretty easy, but not completely trivial to optimize. For healers, it would actually be an emergency button like health consumables are now, and even barring emergencies, setting up an intelligent rotation of their uses dramatically increases their effectiveness.

Of course, there is no way to make this change independantly. You wind up with a ton of rebalancing work, but if you were going to do that work anyway to fix the current chain-chug situation and near-irrelevance of mana as a constraint I think this would be a nice extra.

 

soverpowerd

This thread would have been more aptly named "The problem with shadow priests" as they seem to be blizzard's absurd answer to the mana regen problem.

The first part of the problem is that shadow priests enjoy the enviable position of having their best solo spec also be their best pvp and best raiding spec. (the raiding part is arguable if you want to be hard headed, holy might be just as good, but you can find multiple healing classes, you can't find 1000mp5 over a group of casters just laying in the next gutter). What's worse is the problem is spilling over. Every class wants what shadow priests now have. Pallies think retribution spec should be unbalanced in the same way shadow is right now, ferals want their bear dps back at rogue levels and shaman want the cooldowns removed from WF so they can go back to their dps chart leading days of a few months ago.

Basically it seems that the first step in fixing a lot of problems would start with fixing vampiric touch and bringing shadow priests back into line with what they should be: a choice the raid leader makes, not a necessity the raid leader has to make room for. Maybe make it a 50mp5 aura (putting it on a level with BoW and manastream) rather than allowing it to scale out of control the way it has and will continue to do so.

 

• Playered

The other option is to allow other classes to provide the similar levels of mana regeneration to casters that SP's can provide to their group.

For Druids as an example:
Moonkin Aura: chance on hostile spell-cast to restore <x> mana to the caster.
ToL Aura: chance on benefical spell-cast to restore <x> mana to the caster.

You could also have a class which can put a buff on players which when people cast spells on the player restore mana (like JoW but on friendly targets instead). Something like this for Holy Priests would give them something useful to bring to raiding which they so badly seem to need (?) if utilized well.

Not only do things like this help fix the 'mana problem' we have today, but it promotes the weaker classes and dampens the 'need' of SP's.

 

BeeLz

I do agree but you have to keep in mind that mages are really dependant on shadowpriests at the moment. They need that amount of regen to do competitive damage with warlocks, rogues. So unless they give mages an alternative way to regen mana ( outside mana gems, evocation, mage armour ) they just can't perform well on any fight that's longer than 5 mins if they don't have a shadowpriest.

 

soverpowerd

By doing this all you'd be doing is unbalancing the game even more. Mana regen is a problem, the finger in the dike solution is shadow priests. The thing is now you've got a class that's so imbalanced it's a must have. Creating more imbalanced classes doesn't help the problem, it makes it worse. (especially if you're a rogue (offers mostly just good dps), why bring a rogue when you can bring another 1kmp5 battery)

Of course, I've been a big proponent of things like mana tide being a base skill for all shaman for quite a while now. The solution isn't simple for the mana problem, but creating another problem to fix the mana problem doesn't really help things.

 

Duodecimal

I don't think the answer is to make Shadow Priests less 'vital', but to bring other classes up a bit to have similar utility.

Others have pointed out that Mages' buff is rather lacking, particularly for mages themselves. I don't get nearly as excited about 600 extra mana as I do about BoK/BoS/BoW/GotW/etc.. Especially considering the expense of the blasted thing along with the fact that I'm frequently the only mage in the raid.

Some type of Brilliance Aura has to come back. The developers seem loathe to give casters the same output endurance as the rogue and warrior mechanic, which annoys me, but I can live with it so long as we (the mana bar classes) have better tools than chain chug.

If the aura converted Spirit to Mp5 (with various ranks of the Aura capping Mp5 at a certain level), that'd eliminate the chain chug requirement and make Spirit on par with other stats in raiding for caster classes.

On the downside, if the aura is too powerful... then... uh, what? Will the whole damned world end if the mana bar acted like a weak Energy bar? The developers figured out ages ago how to make boss fights depend on something other than finishing things before the healing goes OOM. Infinite mana won't help you if you can't perfect positioning, crowd control, threat management, debuffs, and all the other neat things they've been throwing at us. And even with 200 or 400 or 600 Mp5 I won't be able to spam AB forever.

 

Cormack

As a fix for the mana pot problem, what about something along the lines of "Mana potions now reduce your total mana pool by the amount of mana restored until you leave combat"?

 

andastra

The problem is that mage dps (with the exception of pure AB spamming) is already balanced with the expectation that the mage is chain casting his best dps rotation. We're balanced to do X% less single target damage compared to a rogue/warlock/other dps class based on the assumption of going all out dam/hit/crit gear and chain casting. If I as a mage decides that I want to wear gear that has regen but less dam/hit/crit, stop casting on every clearcasting so I can switch to AM, etc., I will lower my dps even more. It's the fundamental flaw of balancing a class limited by mana on the assumption that said class forsakes everything for damage but can still chain cast. As a mage, you're either chain casting or doing really poor dps.

Another issue is the scaling of the mana cost of AoE spells and abilities. When I first hit 60 back in Feb 2005, hitting 3 mobs with an IAE is better dpm than single targetting them with fireball. Nowadays, I need to hit 5-6 mobs with an IAE before it's better dpm than single targetting them with fireball. On fights where mages need to AoE, mana is really a huge issue.

The only way, I think, to use mana as a limiting factor is to balance mana users, especially the more limited ones like mages and hunters, to do more dps while using mana. VT and potions would have to be nerfed if this is the case, as well as countless other mana regen abilities. However, in this scenario, length of the fight would have a really huge effect on who does the most damage.

 

• Endahl

The Priest PvP spec of the moment is actually fairly deep Holy (Blessed Resilience). Shadow can work decently in an arena, but is only particularly effective if you have UA handy in your team.

This could work, if it wasn't for the fact that shadow priests themselves need VT to remain sustainable and even then you often need to chug mana pots. It doesn't equal net regen for priests themselves, it only makes their mana bars deplete slower and only if they put out consistent DPS. This has been stated in the thread before, but it seems like it requires repeating.

I don't want that to sound too defensive. Something like a static regen amount coupled with a percentage restore to only the priest themselves would probably be a decent balance.

I'm not sure making a party aura regen the amounts of a potentially raid-wide buff consitutes putting them on the same level, though I do agree VT is out of control the way it is now.

The thing is, shadow priests did need a fairly major PvE bone thrown to them with the 2.0.1 class refresh, and they got it in Vampiric Touch. The power of a percentage-of-dps based regen ability means that we've been nerfed in almost every other category, so we need it now even more than we needed it then. Shadow Weaving has been nerfed, VE has been nerfed, threat reduction has been nerfed, and pure DPS output has been nerfed through SWD.

They're all justified nerfs, no less, some even a bit on the light side, but making VT a glorified Blessing of Wisdom at this point would effectively leave us with less than the 1.12 shadow priest repertoire, with more talent points required to get there. Blizzard has dug us into a hole we can't gracefully get out of without some pretty heavy retooling.

Tangent: When do warriors become "a choice the raid leader makes, not a necessity the raid leader has to make room for" (as you put it)? I don't necessarily disagree with the statement, but I found it terribly ironic coming from a person of your class choice. And largely because of the existence of mana potions I'm also not quite convinced shadow priests have attained the same kind of "required" status that, say, a prot warrior enjoys.