Affliction warlocks have infinite mana through the use of class abilities. A super mana pot basically saves them one or two global cooldowns of dark pact/lifetap, giving them an extra shadowbolt every two minutes. That's pretty Meh. Yeah, it's an increase, but it's not really noticeable and it's really worth crunching numbers to compare it to a destro pot.
This is not really true. Affliction warlocks have superior, possibly vastly superior, mana regen to everyone else but it is not infinite. I can and do run OOM on fights, especially AoE fights.
Yes you can almost always stop and lifetap, lifedrain but you take a pretty serious DPS hit doing this.
Well yeah, Seed of Corruption can annihilate my mana pool too, i meant a vanilla brick-wall dps scenario. If you're not taking damage, siphon life and FSW/T6 should be able to maintain your lifetapping without the need for drain life, especially if you have enough paladins for BoW/JoW.
Of course there's very few raids where you aren't taking, or trying not to take, damage of some sort or another. Those get in the way of our mana efficiency, as I mentioned.
As a hunter you will stay within the 5 second rule 100 percent of the time. I fail to see how any hunter of any spec using a proper rotation can go 5 mins without using a mana pot, let alone the 10 min average of most fights. BM spec uses a lot less mana so depending on the fight and the buffs available they might not have to chug pots but surv/mm no way.
As a hunter you will stay within the 5 second rule 100 percent of the time. I fail to see how any hunter of any spec using a proper rotation can go 5 mins without using a mana pot, let alone the 10 min average of most fights. BM spec uses a lot less mana so depending on the fight and the buffs available they might not have to chug pots but surv/mm no way.
If you look at hunter gear, you generally don't find spirit, so even outside the 5 second rule, we aren't getting much regen to speak of. Our gear (for the most part) stopped getting mp5 on it as well, its expensive in the item budget, and many hunters picked up leather rather than wear a vastly inferior mail piece with mp5 on it. So our regen doesn't set the world on fire, both inside and outside of the 5 second rule.
I just pulled up my armory, unbuffed I sit at 89 spirit, 93 mp5 not casting, 11 mp5 casting. (May vary a bit, logged off playing around with hit rating, so I'm wearing a different neck than typical.) Needless to say, I have very little regen, in combat or out. Since I picked up Improved Hunter's Mark for the melee, I only have one point in efficiency. I'll use about 3240 mana per minute using just my most efficient rotation, auto/steady. Add in Kill Command for a more typical rotation, and that puts me at 3970 mana per minute. Pretty quick to run out of mana using either rotation, even with pots (-2000/-2500 mana per minute).
Unfortunately, in the vast majority of fights I'll have to do one or more of the following:
Mend Pet - 300 mana, up to an extra 1200 mana per minute)
Misdirect - 304 mana, initial pull misdirects use 1072 mana between aimed, distracting, and multishot.
Scorpid Sting - 297 mana, an extra 891 mana per minute.
Assuming a worst case scenario, where I'm the only hunter, and I need to misdirect on cooldown, mend constantly to keep my pet up, and keep scorpid sting up, but using my most efficient, steady/auto rotation (without Kill Command) my mana usage would be about 4734 per minute. (I subtracted the mana cost of 7 steady shots to cover the global cooldowns I spend healing my pet and refreshing scorpid sting rather than using scorpid.) That would have me out of mana in under two minutes without potions.
If another hunter were taking care of everything, and I was just sticking to a steady/auto rotation, leaving out kill command, 3240 mana per minute is used, which still puts me waiting on my potion timer before the third potion. A lot of this can be mitigated by keeping viper up, but we're losing 155 ranged attack power, and 5 talent points by doing so. Hopefully the next incarnation of viper makes it more realistic to switch to after you begin to get low on mana.
So I guess this is a long way of saying, if your hunters aren't using potions, they aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Of course you need to factor in the various buffs, but unless they have a shadow priest, there is no way they should ever be able to last a fight without potions.
Mana potions don't provide anywhere near enough mana for a warlock to bother with most of the time. In the old days pre-lifetap buff this was not true, since a mana pot could provide 3 ish lifetaps worth of mana. Now its just 1 lifetap every 2 minutes, and takes away the potion timer for emergencies. Frequently your whole raid tends to go into emergency mode, and its nice having a portion of the raid able to recover w/o healers while the healers scramble to get everyone back up. Anyway, Super Rejuv potions are about all we need to use and only fairly infrequently (i.e. when things go sour, after a battle res etc).
However, lack of KC isn't exactly a great way to DPS, so realistically I'd assume mana oil and mana/5 food, since I don't see how one would avoid going OOM with KC included in the rotation.
I still don't see how you realistically won't go OOM even with potting with a pure steady/auto rotation. Potting will generally give you 3200 mana every 2 minutes and a pure steady/auto rotation will consume about twice as much. That will still leave you OOM after a few minutes...
Now I supposed if you potted, used mana oil(s) and had a BoW going I can see maintaining steady/auto for a sufficient amount of time to last through the fights. We usually don't have enough paladins to get three blessings though, so I'd be taking a DPS hit there.
Anyway, I don't really want to derail this thread but I do think that under almost all circumstances even BM hunters benefit DPS wise from a SP.
Last edited by Jakt : 08/30/07 at 5:41 PM.
Reason: Fix grammar a little
As an affliction lock in a guild on Kael'thas, I found that chugging mana pots is a bit dangerous.
I much prefer to save my CD for the "omg-wtf-just-about-killed-me" moments so I can HS/PoT to ensure I don't die from round 2 of whatever just nailed me. I found that dying really does put a dent in my overall dps.
It's also a relative decision ... relative to where you are DPS wise in the raid or where the guild is with regards to downing that particular boss. ie: If your tops in DPS and/or your guild is not even close to killing that boss, then it's probably a waste of gold.
Judging somebody by how many mana pots they chug is not really the measure you should use imo ... It's just a factor in their performance. If said performance is 'sub par' there are probably many contributing factors that need to be dealt with :-).
I still don't see how you realistically won't go OOM even with potting with a pure steady/auto rotation. Potting will generally give you 3200 mana every 2 minutes and a pure steady/auto rotation will consume about twice as much. That will still leave you OOM after a few minutes...
Now I supposed if you potted, used mana oil(s) and had a BoW going I can see maintaining steady/auto for a sufficient amount of time to last through the fights. We usually don't have enough paladins to get three blessings though, so I'd be taking a DPS hit there.
Anyway, I don't really want to derail this thread but I do think that under almost all circumstances even BM hunters benefit DPS wise from a SP.
Going OOM is a question of when, not if. I'm with you in that potting alone isn't going to last the length of a TBC boss fight - one will need JoW/BoW to keep enough mana regen going even with mana oil/mana regen food.
You and I appear to agree that a hunter getting an spriest is better than a hunter without an spriest (BM or otherwise). I'd be curious to see a WWS of Putsout's "1200 DPS hunters with no shadow priest" just to see their gear & buffs.
I only ever use mana pots in fights with very low amount of movement required. As i tend to only LT/DP when forced to move as to minimize the effects of GCD's on my damage. If i have the luxury of standing around and spamming a target for the most part i will use mana pots.
For hunters, you can easily check 2 things on WWS to see if pots would easily make a difference:
1. Are they using aspect of the viper? If they are, and they aren't potting, potting would help. Missing aspect of the hawk is a big DPS loss.
2. If they're BM, are they firing roughly as many special attacks as they are autoshots? If they're firing significantly fewer, then it's probably because they're oom, and mana pots would help. If they're MM, they should be firing even more specials than auto(1.5:1 in theory, but not doing it might be due to latency or other non mana problems)
If you see no indication of mana loss from #1 or #2, and they don't have JoW or a shadow priest, then they probably have way too much mp/5 on their gear. You might talk to them about changing gear around so they get more dps on their gear (but now need to start potting). (Although at least in this case they actually CAN keep their potion cooldowns available for healthpots)
I raid as affliction and tend to keep 20-30 of both health and mana pots in my bags for raids. A lot of the time, especially as affliction, I can avoid using mana pots through good timing of Lifetap/Darkpact. This would be while moving, unable to DPS the boss because of a shield, etc. For some fights though, mana pots definitely make a difference. Any time AE is involved, or there is a long period of time with no movement and no reason to stop DPS, I'll use mana pots. Otherwise I tend to rely on tap/pact, and save my cooldown for health pots incase I take a spike of damage.
I raid as Affliction and rarely use Mana Pots, since I have Life Tap (mostly fueled by Siphon Life) and Dark Pact from a raid buffed Imp. The only times I have mana issues are when I spam Seed.
I carry Mana Pots (PvP one avg 1800), but Tapping a PvP Health Pot gives me more mana (but less dps due to GCD usage) b/c I get 20% more healing plus 20% more mana out of a Tap, so avg 2160 Mana gained.
That said, I usually save my health pot, which I don't usually even use. I realize I would gain dps by using Mana Pots, so I take a dps hit of about .75 SB every 2 minutes or about 10 dps lost. I usually end up #1 or #2 on damage, so I am not doing poorly but I see I have room to improve with pot usage.
If I respec into Destro or Demonology, I think I would start to use Mana Pots, because then I don't have the "excuse" of Life Tap fuel via SL.
Some attentive affliction warlocks will also save mana pots for specific moments, rather than chain-chugging. E.g., spring a mana when you have a successive 2/2/3 seconds left on a series of corr/ua/whatever dots, when they only have enough mana to refresh the first dot or two. So they pop the mana pot at that point and are able to roll through all three dots without having the need to lifetap. The GCD juggling is still relatively unchanged, but the timers stay in their relative sync and you minimize the downtime on DoTs. Not saying this is a great way, or a bad way even, to manage your mana pots, but it's something I've seen mentioned several times in several threads.
Regardless, if affliction warlocks are not using mana pots, then they really should be chain chugging destruction pots, or SOMETHING. If you're not using your potion timer for anything at this point, then you're not serving up to your full potential.
Last edited by Silmeria : 08/31/07 at 2:04 AM.
Reason: Clarification
I much prefer to save my CD for the "omg-wtf-just-about-killed-me" moments so I can HS/PoT to ensure I don't die from round 2 of whatever just nailed me. I found that dying really does put a dent in my overall dps.
That's exactly why I like to run with 150 MP5 on my hunter (buffed). I can get away with using half as many mana pots leaving my pot timer up (half the time anyway) for when I've burned health stones already and am on the brink of death. I think I only had to use 1 or 2 mana pots on our last morogrim attempt and having the pot cooldown up when I got launched with 300 HP from the water grave saved my butt.
Going OOM is a question of when, not if. I'm with you in that potting alone isn't going to last the length of a TBC boss fight - one will need JoW/BoW to keep enough mana regen going even with mana oil/mana regen food.
You and I appear to agree that a hunter getting an spriest is better than a hunter without an spriest (BM or otherwise). I'd be curious to see a WWS of Putsout's "1200 DPS hunters with no shadow priest" just to see their gear & buffs.
Take a look at me (Tiiaa). 1200+ dps on gorefiend just with simple auto+steady spam, no KC, and 2 unstable manapots.
As for buffs: int, fort, gotw, kings, might, ravager dog, onslaught elixir, mageblood pot, superior mana oil (yeah been a bit cheap there, I know) and hawk active (I try to not use Viper as long as I can get Mana from any other source)
As regarding the topic. When doing some lazy auto+steady rotation I usually get by with unstable manapots, sometimes supers (injectors ftw) - the last time I used fel mana was back before the Gruul Nerf, since there's never any nightmare vine on the AH and I'm no herbalist. But when we have to push it, Mana Pots are a must, even as a hunter. Btw. I don't really think haste pots for hunters are the dope, according to my calculations (which might be pretty dumb, but w/e) you have to time it right to get 2 additional autoshots in the hasted timeframe, if you time it badly, you only get one more autoshot. Not what I would call a great buff. I prefer Flame Caps.
I've only experienced a couple a bosses in TK/SSC, so I can say my experience for BT/Hyjal is lacking, but I'll try to give in some input.
I would say, without a doubt, that if you're willing to go for MAXIMUM dps as a hunter, you WILL run out of mana in a very short time period, especially if they are Survival spec or Marksman spec using 1.5/1 rotations. We're talking somewhere about 500-600 Mana per 5 sec consumed using this rotation, and chaining Fel mana pots is about 133 mp5 over time. Multishot and Arcane shot are big mana sinks, but they are the best dps options if you're willing to use them.
Personally, I don't choose that path, because firstly I never have a shadow priest, and secondly, I'm not willing to use 5-10 pots per try on each boss (yes I'm cheap :P). If you choose the MANA EFFICIENT dps path, like I have, you can do about 85% of the dps a MAX path hunter will do, but about 2-3 times more efficient (also easier to play, since the MAX path shot rotation isn't something you can macro totally). We're talking somewhere around 180-250mp5 consumed here, and as such its a lot more manageable with raid buffs not involving SP.
But yeah, in short: MAX dps with a 1.5/1 rotation - and 1:1 MAX dps rotations to a lesser extent - need chaining pots and SP/JoW to be able to keep its mana up.
Take a look at me (Tiiaa). 1200+ dps on gorefiend just with simple auto+steady spam, no KC, and 2 unstable manapots.
As for buffs: int, fort, gotw, kings, might, ravager dog, onslaught elixir, mageblood pot, superior mana oil (yeah been a bit cheap there, I know) and hawk active (I try to not use Viper as long as I can get Mana from any other source)
As regarding the topic. When doing some lazy auto+steady rotation I usually get by with unstable manapots, sometimes supers (injectors ftw) - the last time I used fel mana was back before the Gruul Nerf, since there's never any nightmare vine on the AH and I'm no herbalist. But when we have to push it, Mana Pots are a must, even as a hunter. Btw. I don't really think haste pots for hunters are the dope, according to my calculations (which might be pretty dumb, but w/e) you have to time it right to get 2 additional autoshots in the hasted timeframe, if you time it badly, you only get one more autoshot. Not what I would call a great buff. I prefer Flame Caps.
[Edit: Buffs added+remark]
You can do 1600-1700 dps with your gear on that boss, scoring 1200 + on a virtually armorless boss.
Look how much mana i got back from JoW (didnt take a single mana pot), you should really talk to your paladins about this. wws
When starting raidcontent chainchugging fel manas was a requirement, but there are plenty of ways to get some mana back, and after a while you will find your mana pot consumption goes down, this however never happens during the learning process of fights.
If your hunters dont take mana pots, they dont really push their class to the limit, and (in my opinion) are taking a free ride.
You can do 1600-1700 dps with your gear on that boss, scoring 1200 + on a virtually armorless boss.
Look how much mana i got back from JoW (didnt take a single mana pot), you should really talk to your paladins about this. wws
Actually, the difference of dps between you and Tiiaa comes mainly from your scorpid pet.
But your paladins are great. In my raid they don't want to keep JoW up because that'll leave them mana starved (that's what they told me at least :P). So I use a *lot* of pots in raids, even on bosses on farm status.
I highly suggest looking in their WWS logs and see if there are long periods of time where they are mostly just auto shotting due to being lom or oom.
You mention they appear to be oom, so its most likely that they are being cheap on consumables and think they can eek through by waiting on a bit of mana regen. There is no reason to not use mana pots.
My main point for posting is that with more mana you can do more damage, my killcommand shows as pet dps aswell, so just reviewing my dps with the dps of another hunter that doesn't use kill command is flawed.
I just noticed the lack of some really viable and helpfull things, like judgement of wisdom/light.
Anyone should know more mana results into more dps, even if its only 100 dps more, its still 100 dps.
Last edited by okla : 08/31/07 at 3:43 PM.
Reason: clearification
Forgive my hunter noobishness, but is there any situation in which a Hunter would get more DPS out of a Haste potion than a mana potion? I suspect the mana is always better (unless you have unlimited mana from another source), especially because many hunters have to change their rotations when they get more haste, but I thought I'd ask.
Forgive my hunter noobishness, but is there any situation in which a Hunter would get more DPS out of a Haste potion than a mana potion? I suspect the mana is always better (unless you have unlimited mana from another source), especially because many hunters have to change their rotations when they get more haste, but I thought I'd ask.
Haste makes you run out of mana faster, and what little you gain by using the haste potion is quickly diminished by the fact you cut your personal DPS by around 60% once OOM. So, the question is 10% (or however much a haste potion is) vs 60%. Choose wisely.
Affliction lock can last long enough with smart usage of Dark Pact/Life tap and just about 2-3 Mana Pots per fight without beeing in a group with SP.Destro is another mater.It definatly needs SP and about 5-6 pots per fight,though with sacrificing a felpuppy you can still slack in mana potion using,but you are losing 15% extra dmg.But of course if you make yours warlocks chug potions,they will perform better and any destro lock who is saying he doesnt needs mana potions is either slacking or lying.
08/30/07, 3:58 PM
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