Or an unholy deathknight

Recently my guild has started doing 10 man nax and for the most part I'm fine but on some boss fights I tend to run out of mana halfway in. I've been trying to research the best i can to figure out what spec is best for me in these raids and help with mana but it just doesn't seem to be cutting it... Anyone have any suggestions or tips?

What I can tell from my experience is that everything goes around replenishment. Basicly, if I have replenishment I don't go oom. And when there is no replenishment it's not only me who seems to have mana issues. Also, a lot depends on your raid's dps. For example on normal Patchwerk which takes us something above 3min I can go thru whole fight w/o innervate and then yesterday, when we did him with 23 people and some of melee dying the fight took so long that at 10% I was totally oom (inner went to a healer since I was used to fact that I don't need it). And then again there is Kel'Thuzad on which you might go oom no matter what if you are unlukcy with detonate mana.

Generally in my oppinion "mana issues" are situational. Maybe you could be more specific which fights are draining you the most and what is your typical raid composition - this might help in finding some solution since I don't really think there is some universal spec for everyone when it comes to mana talents.

OK, after some research it seems Beef and Adoriele both omit Dreamstate and Adoriele even leaves out Intensity (as pulled from 16 Dec Armory).

Now, my question is, why the omission? Is the raid composition providing enough mana regen? Is your gear level providing a larger mana pool? Are you casting Innervate on yourself every boss fight? Are you using the Glyph of Innervate?

Why 2+ pages on discussion on Dreamstate, Intensity and Moonglow only to omit them from your talent spec?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

It depends heavily on how fast your guild kills stuff -- Im specced OoC + 3/3 Intensity for now, but this also means that I can do any fight without using my own innervate.
Suppose I could drop atleast Intensity & still only require IV on Kel'thuzad + Sartharion - Mostly keeping it for when things go wrong & to cut out drinking time on trash.

If you spec only for bossfights, & are in a group with good dps, then you can pretty much ignore all manaregen talents, fights just dont last long enough.

You can get away with very little mana regen as long as:
- You have a good crit rate, with full crit rate buffs (arcane int and BoK for intellect = crit, Improved Scorch/Winters Chill for 10%, Ret Paladin or Totem of Wrath for 3%, IFF for 3%, IIS for 3% to starfire, 4t7 for 5%).
- You have Replenishment
- You have Judgement of Wisdom
- You manage your mana in AoE/trash situations - never break AoE early if you have a choice, always use clearcasting procs on Hurricane, etc.

As your gear improves your int/crit will improve, increasing your overall mana pool which will increase the value of JoW, Replenishment and Moonkin form crit regen, as well as giving you a slightly better starting pool. The increase in overall stats and the decrease in the length of fights as you/your guild gears up decreases mana problems very quickly. There can also be a big shift in the amount of mana generated in a 25 man instead of a 10 man.

I built a very quick and dirty spreadsheet in order to assess my mana regen mechanics - as far as I can tell replenishment is worth about the same as JoW, and each is worth approximately 1.5x the value of a full 3 points in Intensity. One point in Dreamstate for me is approximately equal/slightly worse than a point in intensity during chain casting, but due to it being flat MP5 instead of regen-while-casting, it comes out slightly better overall especially in fights with a lot of downtime/pure regen (which is why my spec has one point in Dreamstate). Note that dreamstate is 4%/3%/3% per point. With my current spec and gear, I haven't used an innervate on myself (I don't have the glyph) in the last week of raiding, including on trash, and I've never felt starved of mana.

The only boss fights in which mana regen talents are worth anything once you get to the epicly geared stage are KT (detonate mana, long fight) and Sarth +2 or +3, and even then it shouldn't be a problem with innervate / if you manage your mana properly.

You aren't stunned in vortex as you can still cast spells and do everything else during that phase. The only limitation is that you count as moving, so casting cast-time spells doesn't generally work (although sometimes I can get a NG-Wrath off very occaisionally).

You should be looking to not refresh dots coming up to vortex, put them on as you get pulled in, and refresh them as vortex gets near the end in order to maximise your dps while not able to cast cast-time spells. You should also make sure you use starfall near the start of the vortex in order to minimise what impact it can have on sparks (a stun from CF through starfall on a spark that is about to be death gripped is annoying).

Depending on your gear and what you are doing, you may not need gobs of mana regen. At the very least, well geared druids in raids with the right buff combination, you may not need either intensity or dreamstate. In PvE situations, however, most druids at this point will likely have intensity but not dreamstate, based on how the spirit regen works better than the intellect regen, and how there is gobs of spirit on PvE gear that is shared between balance & resto.

I think I can guess one of the bosses that is being a pain. Patchwerk, right? I had the same issue in my first night in there. You have any replenishers in raid? Replenishment classes do indeed work wonders right now. We have been doing 10 Man Naxx, didn't have the numbers yet for 25, and when there is either a SP or Ret Pally in raid I have no issues at all.

However, with it being December now and not everyone even at 80, we don't always have the Replenishers around when we are doing the place. At present I have been using the Dreamstate/Intensity combo to help prop me up as I work on getting better gear, but plan on dropping it when we start the 25's in January. I will say that it did help a ton when we got KT down this Sunday, as he kept on Mana Bombing me the entire fight, and yep no SP or Ret Pally was in the raid. Without the Dreamstate I likely would have been out of the fight for awhile.

Other then that fight though I have been okay now, getting out of the T6 and into proper 80 gear helped a little too. First night we were there was really rough on me, but once I got some Heroic gear, it got a lot more managable.

Okay now for something odd I have noticed in Naxx 10. Is it just me, or is it really easy to actually hit the stuff in there even if you are not Hit capped? I was below the cap at 260, and only had a Draenei Shammy to help, and still never missed. I'm at cap now, but it just seemed really odd to me. Can't really complain, I managed to do top DPS in there, but it did raise an eyebrow.

Heh. For a little bit of context, I hit 80 on Thursday. I've done a few heroics so far, and 2 bosses in10-man Naxx filling in for someone until he showed up (Razuvious and Gothik). I had a ret pally in during Naxx, not sure if he or the Prot were dropping JoW, but in all cases I only ran OOM if I started a pull without drinking first (though I did come close on one fight, not sure which). In any case, this is my first spec since hitting 80, and my first real raid is tonight. I'm trying this spec out, and if I can't support it then I'll switch to include some Intensity. I have a free point floating around somewhere, I may just try 1/3 to begin with.

The reason for the discussion is to provide people with information. Just because I may not think a talent is useful, or necessary, doesn't mean someone else doesn't, or doesn't feel safe without it. Having the information out there is always better than not having it out there.

Though this is quite different from, say, discussing a Balance/Feral hybrid DPS spec. That's stupid. Picking DS or Intensity? Perhaps not optimal, but not necessarily stupid.

260 is around 10%, with draenei it would be 11% and with BoP 15% so not that much below the cap (I am assuming you didn't have SP). When I was 1-3% below the cap (depending on raid composition) I also haven't noticed the misses (tho they were there on wws ^^)

On the note I think you have bit too much hit at the moment Also I think that if you don't have SP in group it would be handy to get IFF (might be instead of IIS). This way you could lower the hit in your gear and get some other benefitial stats.

I would suggest removing the one point from Genesis and putting it into Owlkin Frenzy. Alot of fights in Naxx actually proc it often.

Heh, you can blame the giant rise on Hit on KT. I ended up with the dagger because no one else wanted it, and got the hat, so I am in a very odd position right now and trying to decide what to do. My current set is more of a result of just having odd raid make-ups because of who got to 80 first. When we have done he Naxx 10 runs, the ranged has been limited most of the time to me and an Elemental Shammy (that actually worked out nicely as we work great together and end up helping each other a bunch). One of the SP's literally just reached 80 less then a week ago. When we have the 25 Naxx runs we should have always one SP, so that will not be much of an issue then.

Been thinking of grabbing the Sundial to use in place of the Mark of the War Prisoner now that I am really comfortable, though I also am tempted to cycle out some Hit gems. Hmmmm decisions.

Not thought about IFF, but I will say IIS has been decent for me. I realize it will work out even better if I had the IS glyph, but right now that Vate glyph is more useful.

I have to say one thing about Naxx being a fun entry level raid, it's been a great play pen to try out different things!

I need 10 points between the first two tiers, if I don't have 1 point in Genesis I would only have 9 and not be able to move to tier 3. This is the same reason peopl have 1/3 Moonglow. But, since I have no mana issues I put it in Genesis. If I could get in Owklin I would have loved to have done so.

i hope i haven't miss anything... but ... i have some questions about IFF

Do IFF works for the moonkin(s) if a feral apply it?
Why, when i apply it in 25mens raid, the debuff vanish itself ? is Misery (shadow priest) replace it ?
and when i try to refresh it, it says : "un sort plus puissant existe déjÃ*" (in english i think is : "a more powerfull spell exist")

(sorry bout my english, i'm french ^^)
Thanks in advance

Misery does replace FF. It's unknown whether FFF triggers the 3% personal crit bonus from iFF, but most people are assuming it does until we know more.

Since the mana discussion continues I'll chime in one thing to keep in mind: intellect matters.

Some Anecdotal experiences:


In the past two weeks I've switch my entire gearset and no longer have any level 70 items with low intellect values; this has caused a huge shift in my mana situation. In Naxx last night at the end of a 3.5 minute Patchwerk I didn't manage to get below 10k mana by the end of the fight with my 2/3 Intensity spec. No innervate or spirit buff either. I couldn't even come close to running out of mana with only one innervate on Noth; last week I almost ran out through two innervates. Thaddius is the longest burn fight in 25 man Naxx, and I couldn't get below 8K total mana with no innervate. I started Gluth -AT- 11k mana from lazy pre-stacking illustration and couldn't run out or need my innervate. I can go into a 10 man without replenishment or a paladin and last an entire Kel'Thuzad fight (With mana burns) which was impossible two weeks ago due to significant gear differences.

In summation: Once you are geared properly you will not need mana. I managed 5270 DPS on Patchwerk last night (I'll edit in the WWS later for those interested as I parse them after work for the guild) and could have done better if I'd dropped Intensity and OoC for Brambles (And definitely dropped Moonglow for Genesis). When looking over my WWS's on most bosses one thing is also significant: moonkin form gives us the vast majority of our mana regen.

EDIT: Wow Web Stats

WWS of patchwerk last night at 5471 DPS. All possible raid buffs and a speed potion used. Gear is as Armory minus cloak was still Cloak of the Illidari Council. Used wrath to proc Eclipse-Starfire except during bloodlust. Failed and only got one Starfall (First week using it on boss fights). From what I can see I got lucky on my partials as they're supposed to be closer to 5% and I only had 3.2% for Starfire.

So, just having thought through this quite a while, I'm wondering why anyone takes IIS over IFF.

IFF provides:
- 3% crit to all spells for you while FF is active (assumed to always be active during a 25 man).
- 3% hit to all spells for everyone when required (if there is no SP available, e.g. during Razuvious controlling, or during a 10 man).

IIS provides:
- 3% crit to Starfire while Moonfire is up - although this is assumed to always be active, due to not wanting to clip the last tick of Moonfire I often find my Starfires finish casting while Moonfire is not active.
- 3% damage to Wrath while Insect Swarm is up - it is of dubious worth to keep IS active while in a normal rotation (for me it's approximately level in DPS with just continuing to Starfire unless I need to use Wrath for eclipse) and when casting Wrath under Eclipse then you lose a full Wrath with benefit if you cast IS and if you cast prior to the eclipse starting, you'll only get benefit for the first ~10 seconds. Generally I only cast IS during movement.

I just don't see how IIS is better than IFF for pure damage (3% crit to all vs 3% crit to 1 / 3% damage to 1). If you factor in the utility of IFF during periods while a shadow priest isn't available to put up Misery, it just makes it a lot better, and then there's the effect of crit making eclipse proc more reliably, and providing more mana regen.

Can anyone see differently?

I would add that recasting IFF might be seen as dps lost while MF is something you use either way. Also having to keep an eye on IFF while already keeping eclipse rotation is just one more thing that makes your life harder I can't tell however how much those actually influence the dps.

IFF would be better if the crit was working also from FFF and as far as I know it hasn't been proven yet.

I am assuming that FFF works for IFF. If this isn't the case (hasn't been proven either way afaik) then fair enough, however if FFF works with IFF, then my previous post stands.

Not all people are privy to a feral druid, and the cost of recasting FF greatly diminishes the value of IFF

That being said, 3% damage > 3% crit.

I did a simple test last week which seems pretty conclusive to me, but I might have missed something.

I went out to the arena in nagrand, took off everything but two items, which left me with ~4.8% crit showing on the character pane. This should put me at 8.8% with talents.

A guildie brought out a level 70 warlock and put on pvp gear such that his character pane showed 9% crit reduction.

Another guildie put FFF up on the warlock. I spammed rank 1 wrath, and got a crit. If IFF did not work with FFF, this should have been impossible.

This, makes me favor IFF to IIS.

The mitigating factors that I can think of are:

If you don't have a feral tank, then IFF isn't a damage increase (if you have 50% crit, then spending 1 GCD ~1.3s out of every 40s -> 3.2% of your cast time to gain a 1.53/1.5 -> 2% dps increase kinda sucks). However, if you don't have a feral and you have at least two physical dps, you should be casting faerie fire even if you don't have IFF as it's an estimated 5% dps increase (against boss armor levels) for each of them, so it's still an increase in RDPS (though I haven't done the math on the cost of FF vs recklessness, I'm pretty sure a moonkin GCD is cheaper than losing CoA). The only place this has been an issue for me is sarth10+3, where our feral tank is on sarth, so the drakes don't get FF, and we don't use any physical dps.

It's possible (though perhaps unlikely) that IIS stacks multiplicatively and IFF stacks additively. This would obviously help out IIS in the comparison, but testing it is a bit tricky.