On a recent Lurker death, as a BM hunter with Shadow priest+Mageblood+Superior Mana Oil, I still had to drink before each Phase 1 or risk not having enough mana for the next Phase 2.

Affliction locks really don't need mana potions if they are smart about their mana regen,

I usually come around top 1-5 on DPS depending upon encounter we are doing and never need to drink mana potions, our guild has been farming Illidan for the last month or so too,

basically I usually go like:

Put up all dots --> start spamming SB --> dark pact once so my pet starts regenning mana again --> all dots again, SB spam some more --> lifetap once --> all dots again --> more SB spam etc

Whenever I get a few thousand mana below my max I normally lifetap or darkpact in order to bring it back to full again.

Siphon life usually heals me for around 100 HPS and my t6 bonus means around 40 HPS, so I can safely lifetap once and my dots will renew my health back to full without the need for any heals, I use darkpact mainly when my pets mana is full/nearly full, but it's usually the thing I start with as it is of no cost to me personally.

I sometimes change my lifetap/darkpact rotations up depending on the encounter, sometimes you can't really afford to lifetap more than once below max HP as you can be killed quickly to AOE, and on fights like Illidan having the transitions between phases 3/4 I normally darkpact my pet empty between phases and lifetap as much as I need to at the start of the "humanoid" phase as there's no AOE damage.

Actually, you also had 2 bloodlusts, which I did not have. Our bloodlusts usually are rogue/warrior group exclusive, which I haven't gotten our leaders argued out of yet. And since you have gotten 128 ticks of manaspring and a mana tide, may I assume you had an agi totem? We usually do not get one. [I have had one on the occasion of our teron gorefiend firstkill, which had me up to 14xx dps (with lesser gear of course - was like 5 weeks ago or something)] We have one melee shaman who gets to place windfury for the rogues and warriors, the rest ist healing specced and such drop wrath totem for healers/casters.

And no there are no helpful judgements active for us. I think I have seen JoW once on Gruul prenerf, but our paladins don't do it because they say they get manastarved, which I as a hunter acknowledge as a legitimate reason.

I usually don't have a need to Mana potion for most fights, because of the following:

1. Mp5 on gear.
2. Blessing of Wisdom.
3. Judgement of Wisdom.
4. Mana Oil.
5. Mana Spring totem.
6. Shadow Priest (I usually don't have one)
7. If worse comes to worse, FD / Drink. Easily applicable at certain times (for example, between adds on Kael'thas in phase 1, A'lar phase 1, when Lurker submerges and my assigned adds are dead and Lurker isn't up yet, etc)

We have a raiding Ret Paladin in my guild, so Judgement of Wisdom is almost always up.

However, on the off chance that a fight is very long, I am mostly out of mana, and need to push the DPS for victory... I have no problem using a potion.

Bullshit.

To be tactful.

Tell your paladins to remove their heads from their arses and put JoW and JoL up. They're just being lazy.

Seriously. JoW is almost all I need as a BM hunter, even using max rank Arcane and Multi as well as KC in my 1:1 rotation. I still use Fel Mana pots, but only on the longest fights. Of course, I use Mark of Conquest as well, but WWS shows it's not a major factor.

I fail to see your point. The fact remains you used 2 unstable mana potions which yielded you less mana than a single fel mana would have. In turn, you decimated your own dps by not using multi, arcane or kc. Like someone else said, more mana means more dps and in this case you did have control over your mana.

well

This is my point. I did not have a shadow priest. I listed the buffs for the poster who wanted to know exactly that. I chucked cheap ass daily quest reward pots an didn't even use all the tools available for max dps [since I had a migraine attack and played at bottom line attention] and still achieved the questioned dps threshold. I did not say anything more or less. In my original post I even said, that for pushing max dps hunters definately have to manapot.

One of the things many warlocks do wrong is that they wait until they are completly out of mana before they start using Dark Pact and Life Tap instead of using it once to refill their mana pool completly. As said above, using your Dark Pact early will make the imp start regaining mana and you will therefore have more mana in the long run.

I personally have a rather gimp destruction build right now, but I lifetap once the first time it will fill me up. Hopefully I will get a renew or an other HoT to re-fill me. If I see the re-new overheal me I just tap once more to let it heal me. The worst thing you can do is to tap almost all the way to the bottom in one go as the healers will panic and you will get heals from every single healer. Not to mention the danger of getting hit by some random thing and die from it.

When it comes to mana pots I always carry a stack with me just in case but I don't use them unless it's either very dangerous to Life Tap or I need to keep my DPS up. If I can otherwise I will use Life Tap and a HP Pot or HS to get myself up again since it in the long run get me more mana. The Rejuvination Pots are also nice if it's a really critical and hetic situation.

As SV hunter with both 5/5 Efficiency and 3/3 TotH

1. Mana Oil and Major Mageblood are standard. (=30mana/5)
2. I use Mark of Conquest for mana intensive fights with no pauses in dps. (~34mana/5)
3. I use max rank, max special rotation (1.5:1 rotation)
4. I chain pot Major-Super-Fel Mana pots - depending on time/fight and group composition
5. Normally i have shaman and lotp - mana spring/tide + ~45% crit rate(TotH) help.

No matter those things I can go oom in ~4-5 minutes (when CDs come in way). I FD+Drink at every opportunity (hydros phase transition, leo ww, vashj end phase1, lurker sinking, al'ar p1-2, solarian becoming immune,...) I use FD+Drink if only for 2-3 ticks of drink and resume DPS as soon as possible or FD+Drink&Eat instead Bandage.

With no consumables I go oom in ~90seconds on Dr.Boom.

Raid or two I played one of our BM hunters thats on vacation. (lord/al'ar for BT quest)
And I had SP. I don't think I used 1 pot and I was really trying to "waste mana".

So basically sometimes you can see me chaining fel mana and then on other fight using 0 mana pots. Depends on group / bufs / fight pauses / extra jobs(scorpid stinging-kiting-trapping..).

Edit:
There are places where extra power from AotH is not needed and i keep AotV on. Like being on Elementals at Vashj.

I'm currently at 129 MP5 while not casting and 46 MP5 while casting using my crap gear (armory profile here).

I just tried a Dr. Boom run with only AotH up, using a standard auto/steady rotation (KC included) and no trinkets/rapid fire; here are the stats for that. Basically it lasted for two minutes, then I ran out of mana. My pet was active, but it obviously couldn't do any damage (the KC mana still being burned though).

Illidan phase1 (first 35%) i can dump my entire mana pool ~7200 fully buffed (mana oil, no potting). Which is roughly about ~2 minutes, since my BW CD comes up a little after Illidan changes to phase2.

I do usually carry around Mana Potion Injector (20 charge super mana pot, 1 slot engineering item) and [Drums of Restoration] and [Fel Mana Potion]. I dont always use the cooldown whenever it's up, but depends on the fight. Like Mother Shahraz, I will use Fel mana potions/Drums whenever the cooldown is up. Even in 4/5 T6, I have 124mp5 (Not casting), 32mp5 (Casting)

I'm also usually stuck in a non-sPriest group (2 BM Hunters, Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druid) and JoW is hardly ever up. I'm hoping with change with AotV will help.

As a destruction lock I find that sacrificing my felhunter works really well. Basically it cuts the cost of shadowbolt from 399 (Cataclysm) to ~225 per bolt, meaning that I can chain cast about 40 of them in a row without any breaks at all and no pots. Usually there is not much need to do any life tap or mana potion since in most fights I'll need to move occasionally and my mana regenerates a lot during this downtime -- not having to life tap helps me be competitive with affliction warlocks on dps (the 15% extra damage for succubus is less effective on long bosses than the 75% more sb per mana).

Using mana pots would probably increase my damage by a little bit in some cases, but I prefer to life tap and use soul leech to recover the health, saving health pot cd for an emergency (not dying is much better than getting an extra 0.5% dps).

That entirely depends on the fight.

I could just as easily say, "One of the things many warlocks do wrong is that they lifetap reflexively rather than planning it strategically for when they would otherwise not be able to cast due to having to move."

Yes you shouldn't drain your mana and then lifetap down to 5% life on Vashj P2. But you also shouldn't lifetap while standing still on Void Reaver and then have nothing to do while you run away from an orb.

And dark pacting early doesn't change how much mana you have in the long run, just how much health you may have to spend to get it (you can always lifetap instead of dark pact if your imp doesn't have a full DP worth of mana.)



In answer to the original question:

I use mana pots any time I won't feel likely to use a health pot within 2 minutes. Especially in TK where they're so cheap, but I do it in SSC as well (I camp the AH for cheap armaments.) I'm 0/21/40 (shadow destruction.)

e.g., on Kael: I happily use a mana pot while doing SoC on P2 because my HS cooldown will be up if I need it for P3 (even if I used it in P1 due to something stupid), and my pot cooldown will be up again for P4.

Yes, it's "only" a lifetap. But damage is made up of lots of small, good decisions. I like my raid to give it their all.

I do like that we have a choice (lower your dps by lifetapping to save your health pot cooldown, or hit a mana pot) -- mages are in a tighter spot.

But destruction pots need to be stronger for them to compete with a mana pot for a warlock for anything other than "I have enough mana somehow, the boss is on his last throes, and I need that burst of damage" because our mana recovery isn't passive like most of a (non-arcane) mage's is, and we're losing dps to mana recovery starting at 40 seconds into the fight.


We're working on nailing P4 Kael, if it matters for your question.

As a Hunter, there's one 'trick' (for lack of a better term) that I use to keep my mana at a high level, without the use of pots. My experience right now is 4/6 SSC and 1/4 TK, so I do not have experience with Mt. Hyjal or Black Temple, however the idea here may prove useful.

Our Ventrilo atmosphere is very structured, and in conjunction with a boss mod (I use Big Wigs), our raid group can usually keep a tight schedule on when bosses will be doing certain 'transitions'. When these transitions occur, I will pop Feign Death and immediately drink Conjured Water, as to avoid missing my window of opportunity (and that bloody combat pulse that pushes me back into combat).

Some examples of boss transitions that I have found to work successfully are as followed.

- Hydross switching from Tainted to Pure form (our tank who is tanking each form will call out about 5 seconds before we make the transition; I usually am at maximum range and can get around 6-7s

- Al'ar flying to the top of his room and Fire Quilling (as soon as he makes a break for the top, I pop Feign Death and drink; I haven't had a problem keeping full mana when Phase 2 starts, which is a tremendous help considering the enrage timer after consuming mana for fairly long initial phase one

- When Lurker dives into the water and his adds surface and take their position (I am responsible for pre-emptively trapping my assigned add spawn; my trap is down a good 15-20s ahead of time, and when he dives, I can Feign, and drink, and watch to make sure my add successfully gets trapped, as well as let our tank grab aggro on the inner adds)

At 240 mana per second (Conjured Glacial Water), these little things add up over a long boss fight and can help when pots are on cooldown, or if you want to be thrifty. . I use Fel Mana Pots religiously when I can't Feign and drink, and I'm still experimenting on different boss fights where I tend to consume a lot of mana (i.e. Tidewalker) to see if there are additional tricks that can help stretch my mana pool a bit farther.

As a disclaimer, this may not work for all hunters or guilds, as strategies obviously vary from boss fight to boss fight, as well as responsibilities for each fight. Also, I think the trick behind this is knowing when to do it, and when to shotgun a potion and just keep DPS'ing away.

As I mentioned, I have no experience in Mt. Hyjal or Black Temple as you mentioned, however it seems this trick has followed progression, as I've been able to use it during Karazhan, and Gruul's Lair (High King Fight for example), so hopefully the trend will continue!

Hope that helps,

Cheers.

EDIT: Just saw Sapa had posted a similar thought a few posts ahead..hopefully this is a bit more detail oriented : )

On Kael, I use destruction potions in P2/3, depending when the additional burst is needed (most times on Thaladred, started using them the night we had our first kill.). As a destruction shadow bolt spammer in combination with bloodlust they are very efficient. Otherwise I'm using major rejuvenation pots - expensive, but more than worth it.

Perhaps with your gear this is somehow completely different but the numbers I've run say succubus is better than felhunter (even assuming you can't find "smart" times to life tap) by more than 8%.

Assuming 0.1s lag, 1500 shadow, 10k mana and SB spam.

Taps give 1780 mana back.

With Succubus, MPS = 399/2.6 = 153.46. So I'll need to tap once every 11.6 sec, which puts me at 12.12% of my time tapping. 87.9% SBing.

With Felhunter, MPS = 399/2.6-10000*.03/4 = 78.46. I'll need to tap once every 22.7 sec, which puts me at 6.6% of my time tapping. 93.4% SBing.

Now multiply time casting by the relative damage difference, and we see Succubus ftw (by 8.2%).
87.9*1.15 = 101.1
93.4*1.00 = 93.4

I haven't looked at the data under bloodlust, but unless you know you won't have to lifetap during the period, a mana pot (at least when I looked last time) provides more dps than a destruction pot.

Although, upon reflection, I hadn't looked to see if the numbers changed in a short (<1 minute) fight. Maybe I'll do that before bed .

I can definitely see the P3 value though, since you have time to tap there (unlike P2.) But for right now (working on P4) I'd rather keep the cooldown available for a health pot in case things get too hairy.