Premise: Mana management is still a continued source of dissension between mages and Blizzard, regarding the current implementation of various mechanics/spells/abilities and talents. Lets get this all under one roof for some consolidated discussion and really expose the mechanics in question and attitudes surrounding them.



Mana is synonymous with the mage class: We've always wanted good options for managing our mana - and since WoW's release - many tools have indeed been added to our arsenal for mana control: Evocation becoming a core skill, Mage armor, redesigned Mana gems, Arcane Meditation, changes to evocations mechanics/cooldown and even upcoming tweaks to Pyromaniac. And, of course, spirit has always been there as 'that stat'.

Before going further, several Blizzard design points should be noted first:

- Mana is, by design, intended to be something we need to be aware of and managed accordingly.
- In this meta-wow era: all mechanics need to function acceptably in both a PVP and PVE setting.
- Spirit is deemed by Blizzard as something all PVE mages should have, to some extent, as shown by its continued placement on our tier gear.

With that in mind, dissention comes from many points. I'll just list a few, other people can add their own:

- Spirit can swing from being useful for one spec, to virtually useless for another. Despite having some talents to make better use of spirit for certain players of a certain spec, its still 'that stat' for the other specs. (Why is spirit considered standard on our tier gear, if only 1 niche spec really can make decent use of it? Is it acceptable that our tier gear, with spirit, is the gear that mages actively seek to avoid the most?)

- Armor spells: Molten armor and Mage Armor force us to make dumb decisions. Naturally fire mages want to use Molten Armor (to the exclusion of Mage Armor) and there goes any benefits from spirit for that spec. To repeat: You just rendered an entire stat (which is deemed something mages require) virtually useless by clicking that Molten Armor icon. (Pyromaniac changes will go some way to addressing this). Frost mages ordinarily have no need for more regen, so why would they want to use Mage Armor over Molten in a raid scenario? This just brings up the obvious question: Why do we even have molten/mage armor separate in the first place. Is choosing between them meant to be a 'fun' decision we make? It's not, really.

- Spirit is just not as 'fun' as other stats. Partly because mana regen is a somewhat hidden mechanic and partly because we don't have talents to make more exciting use of it. I liken this to comparing having a TBC Shadow Priest in your group or a TBC Ret Paladin in your group. In one case, your screen is filled with wonderous regen and an attractive "Misery' tooltip detailing your extra +5% damage. In the other, theres no indication the Ret Pally is even there - even the tooltips weren't updated to reflect Imp JOTC and Imp Ret aura. What did the TBC ret pally give to you? You might be surprised how many players never knew, or cared. Spirit regen might 'be there' and doing something like the Ret Pally was, but just not in a compelling and exciting way like the Shadow priest was. Thus its no surprise we have little appreciation for it.

We know what crit/haste/spellpower/hit do: the effects are fun, visable and transparent. You cast faster. You crit. You hit harder. You don't miss. Those are mechanics we liken to being fun - and no surprise they are stats we openly embrace. Spirit is still the 'I can manage without it, really!' stat that people actively seek to avoid.

When some people say they 'wish they had more use for spirit' they aren't necessarily asking for overpowered regen - they just want something more useful, more tangible and more fun as a reason to appreciate the stat. A common suggestion is a passive ability (like Spiritual Attunement for Paladins) that converts a small portion of total spirit into damage/crit rating.

- Our mana management tools can be frustrating. Whether to use Molten Armor VS Mage Armor? Mentioned prior. I don't consider that a fun decision to make, as a fire spec mage. Evocation? Mages simply don't like standing still doing 0 dps, whether thats the design intention or not. Until we address that issue - that we don't like standing still doing nothing - evocation is not going to be embraced widely as a fun mechanic. Theres lots of creative ways to improve evocation. Make it more AOTViper like, make it castable while moving. Make it charge up a +%dam buff for use immediately after channeling (as an offset for you being stationary for a short period). Playing with the cooldown, doesn't really address anything.

Its not all negative, however. The old mana gems were laughable, yet they were ultimately changed into a respectable mechanic. They now feel like a solid asset to the Mage class. Credit given where deserved. Thus I propose this question,

"Is the current mana model for mages (our management tools, spirit - everything), acceptable to you?"

The current situation of mana is fundamentally flawed. I dont think its a matter of simple tweaks to resolve the issue, it may require a fundamental overhaul.

The basic problem is that Mana using DPS classes are at the whim of fight length. Either you have enough Mana to last you the duration of the fight, or you sacrifice Damage to regain mana (in several ways, mana pot instead of haste, evo, armors) in order to last the longer duration. The longer the fight, the more sacrifices required. As such, the only real mana management mages due is guess the length of the fight, then adjust accordingly.

Correct me if I'm wrong but nonmana using classes (rogues, DKs, warriors) don't particularly care how long a fight is. Obviously, varying lengths of fights result in different percentage of cooldown uptime, but that aside, their DPS remains relatively stable regardless of fight length, even stretching the fight out to infinite duration. By comparison, Mage DPS is steady up untill a specific fight length (the duration we can last without caring about our mana pool) and then begins to seriously trend downwards.

Obviously, the question of who would fare better in a 30 minute fight is not a relevant one. But as long as the mana situation is dependant on estimated fight length, there is a real problem.

There are two key components to mana management that Blizz needs to have for it to be successful.

The first is choice about when to use them. Not choice about will they be necessary, they must be necessary. If everyone is using them the second they come off cooldown, thats not fun. I think Warlocks life tap is in some ways a good example here. A good warlock chooses to lifetap while moving, a bad warlock uses lifetap while standing still when they could be shadowbolting (TBC destro example I guess). A good warlock lifetaps when its not dangerous, a bad warlock may lifetap when a damage spike is incoming and endager their survival. CHoice about using a mana management tool leads to better DPS (or survivability).

The second is gear decisions. There has to be some choice about taking on mana regen on our gear. Right now, the returns are so ridiculously low for everyone, that the only way spirit works for DPS casters is by giving it a secondary effect, something they havent done for mages. I don't want them to make spirit work by making it do something else. If thats the only reason people want spirit, the stat is a design failure and should be dropped. Right now, becuase so much is dependant on fight length, it cant work. We definitly dont want to try and have a regen set of gear for an expected 8 minute fight, a burn set of gear for a 5 minute fight, and be guessing before the pull which we should wear. Imagine this hypothetical (again using lifetap becuase I like the mechanic of trading a single GCD for mana) with totally made up numbers:
For every 2 minutes of fighting a warlock has to lifetap 4 times. If we give that warlock X amount of spirit, it will increase the mana regen to the point where the warlock has to lifetap only 3 times for every 2 minutes of fighting. You now have a situation where you can compare damage stats versus spirit. That X amount of spirit is worth 1 GCD worth of DPS. That X amount of spirit is also worth approximatrely Y hit/crit/other direct DPS stats based on comparable gear lacking spirit. Make the figure balance, and voila, people care about mana regen when looking at upgrades.

But as things stand right now, we ignore mana regen on gear, and hopefully ignore it with playstyles during the fight unless the duration forces us to suffer for that decision. It's not a stellar mechanic.

Not true. PvP mages shouldn't have spirit. As all tier loot got spirit it is fair to make the assumption for all PvE mages, but not for PvP mages.

Actually a very good observation. Another reason why people rarely even mention frost mages when talking about mana batteries.

For bad raids and 5 man groups I would say my mana is ok. It still require management and drinking as soon as possible when you get out of combat. Then again I used to be arcane AB-spammer in TBC so I might be used to drinking more than most mages.

But for farm content speed clears - like when you do Naxx25 in around 3 hours it really is a big burden and annoyance. On trash nearly all classes can keep the chain pulling going all the time without problems - except mages. Sure some classes needs to drink 5-10 sec here and there but mages far more than any other class needs to drink during entire pulls - even with gems and evocation on max CD. The only way for a mage to be top 3 overall dps in a Naxx25 raid is if the raid is going slow/bad.

Something else that concerns me is the upcoming change to Judgement of Wisdom :

Class Base mana 2% mana

Druid 3796 75.92

Hunter 5046 100.92

Mage 3268 65.36

Paladin 4394 87.88

Priest 3863 77.26

Shaman 4396 87.92

Warlock 4294 85.88

Mages having by far the lowest base mana pool means that we are the class gaining the least from JoW. That combined with being the class needing mana the most on trash I don't like at all.

Another huge problem in my eyes is mana regenerations talents and skills lack of scaling on gear. At the moment most mages got 2xtier7 set bonus and not that big mana pools. In 6-12 months that won't be the case any more. Stuff like Replenish, Mana gems and Water that doesn't improve at all when your gear does is very bad in my eyes. Making those skills scale with spirit and/or intellect is a big priority to me. One of the things that are definitely going to be holding back arcane mages in the future - both dps and fun-wise. Also to me it doesn't make sense that I had to drink more than 40 seconds pre-TBC as arcane mage to get full mana, when my prot-pala alt could do it in a few seconds. It should NEVER take more than 30 sec to drink 100% of your mana - no matter gear or spec.

Replenishment is not being nerfed, JoW is. Replenishment will continue to return 0.25% of maximum mana meaning that we aren't reaping the least benefit from it.

Maybe you "sense" whining, becuase you didn't bother to read.

Look, 90% of the time in most raid setting, mages dont have to manage their mana. We can ignore all regen stats on gear, not have to evocate, not have to pot, and use the exact same max DPS 'rotation' for the duration of the fight.

That's bad design. It's not what Blizz wants. There's no fun it either becuase there is no choice.

The remaining situations where we do have to manage our mana in a raid setting, it's a simple matter of converting DPS into mana. An outdated list of this concept is here: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html The specifics and numbers have changed but the principles are pretty much the same.

If the design is that most of the time I dont have to manage my mana, and when I do it's as little as possible becuase I'm lamenting the DPS lost with every choice, thats not exactly good design. If the design is that I never want to choose the gear with regen/mana management stats becuase the same item level replacement with nonmanaregen stats is always better, thats not good design. And thats the fundamental problem presented in this thread.

Since Blizz has stated that they want us to be aware/managing our mana, then its likely they wont keep things so we can ignore all of our mana regen options the majority of the time. That may prove to be problematic.

And nobody has said otherwise, but the topic at hand is whether the current tools and relevant stats are fun, whether they and the decisions your forced to make interact well (and logically) with the class - and whether there is room for improvement.

Going by this logic, we could also have said "get used to managing your mana" for vanilla wow (Back when we didn't even have evocation as baseline, no mage armor, laughable mana gems) and assumed that everyone should just happily accept those mechanics, too.

I think, as others have said, it's more of an issue of fight length and mechanics that cause mana problems. If we consider the balance between different DPS classes and the mechanics each of them have for doing damage, there is a flaw between mana using classes and non mana using classes as pointed out by Manly a long time ago I believe.

Basically, it seems that the dps "balance" revolves around having unlimited mana. A warrior operates under a rage system and a cycle between special and white attacks. A rogue or feral druid operate under a constant regen mechanic with fixed regen amounts again in a cycle. I have not played a DK so I'm not sure how the rune mechanic works exactly but they also don't seem to suffer from "dry" spells like mana using classes do.

All other dps classes or specs operate using mana, and the biggest difference is that mana is something that has to actively be watched, whereas rage and energy is a passive gain. Players make choices based on how much rage/energy they have, but they have no options to actively affect that pool. (Although ferals did use powershifting before) Because they do not have to manage their dps resource it is, essentially, unlimited. They choose how to use it, yes, but they don't have to control how much of it they have or receive during a fight, it just happens. Therefore, the length of a fight really does not mean anything to them.

Mana using classes on the other hand, can run out of their dps resource and have to actively manage it during a fight. Now this causes problems depending on how the fight is tuned and the regen available to these classes. If dps is balanced around the assumption that because mana is a finite resource, these classes should be able to do higher dps up until mana is exhausted at which point there is a period of lower dps or recovery while it is regained. The problem is how these classes are balanced around this and occurs when:

A) Mana is never exhausted either because of outside mechanics and regen factors, or the fight length and mana using dps can go all out the entire time.
B) The fight goes too long, mana regen is not sufficient, fight mechanics cause a loss of mana(drain) or require excessive use of mana (aoe)

In both of these cases an imbalance happens between mana and non-mana using dps. In the first, because mana is never exhausted, the mana using classes will trounce the other dps because they never have to use their recovery options if they are balanced around doing higher dps because thier dps resource is finite, despite not having that occur.

In the second, the opposite happens and the mana using classes will be trounced due to not being able to sustain their dps resource if they are balanced according to the situation that occurs in A.

So I guess the question is how are the dps classes expected to be balanced? Should we all be expected to perform somewhat equally in any fight? Something has to change in regards to mana for that case. If not, then is it acceptable and/or enjoyable to have that imbalance based on the fight design to sometimes top the meters, and other times spend a large portion of time doing low dps or nothing to recover?

To answer Tyrian's question, No, I don't think the current mana regen mechanics are acceptable. I think they are workable, and playable, but I do not like how hit and miss they are. With the right group setup we are just fine, if we are missing some crucial part or don't have access to all the buffs we might have in a 25 man while doing 10 mans, we can be severely crippled. If we are balanced around having replenishment and/or jow or tide or blessing etc, etc then we need to always have those or something to compensate. When we are missing any combination of those and suffer because of it, it becomes a flaw in our mechanics in my opinion.

At the moment I'm happy indeed with the amount of manaregen we got, especially with 2xT7-Bonus. Since other classes still have stronger aoe's than we mages, I don't think we will run into manaproblems soon.

I think there is enough gear available for mages though, and I'm quite happy with the situation, since most classes are bidding on spirit-items (at least in our raid), leaving the "mage-gear" to us mages.

I could live fine with evocation and gems, I just hope they don't put spirit on T8 again...

I'm quite fine with the spirit mechanic as it is, even if it is not vital to every mage depending on talents.

1: I see spirit as just 'that stat' added on to my gear, on a piece of gear i would take regardless of whether the stat was there or not.
2: Mage armor is that buff I use on non-dps fights that are all about survival. Mage armor and molten armor are just different tools for the job.
3: With a priest with talented divine spirit, or on the fights where I might be vital enough to warrant getting innervate, spirit is a great stat to just have in the background.
4: a) Evocation is meh. Personally I like seeing the little bar go up really really fast. But it often doesn't get to last for the full duration, because either the channeling part can get knocked down in raid damage (so I have to save icy veins for when I'm about to evocate?) or right after you cast it, a mob targets you with some deadly aoe that you need to move out of.
b) How about we just get a glyph that makes use "phase-out" while we evocate. You won't take damage and you can't be healed, but you regen and don't have a chance to get pushed back unless you cast a spell. But maybe, just maybe with the new patch fixes in 3.0.8 that at least arcane mages will get to celebrate dominating on the 2min evocate + meditation, even if their overall dps is found lacking in my raids.

I would like something in the fire tree, or passive for all mages, that makes spirit directly beneficial. That being said, I'd rather not have a direction spirit -> worthwhile stat conversion because I'd like to pretend that I'm not just a lower dps version of an affliction lock + mana strudel. Understanding that it's hard for the blizz team to just come up with a new innovative idea for how to meet my needs on fire mages on spirit, maybe that's what the fire tree should be about: giving up spirit implementation in trade for higher raid dps.

Evocation needs to be moved away from a channeled spell. Something along the lines of how Divine Plea was changed from an evocation-like spell in beta to a buff like innervate. Restores 25% of max mana over 15 seconds at the cost of 1 GCD (and lowers healing by 20%, which does not effect two out of the three paladin roles). My perception of the change might be wrong, but it seemed that it was in response to a lot of whining on blizzard's forums. A similar change, also in line with Aspect of the Viper, would be preferable. Castable buff, restores 60% mana but lowers damage done by 20% while it's up.

FYI, no priests have Imp DS anymore because it only grants spellpower equal to the amount of spirit buffed which is 80 spellpower. Not only does it no longer scale with your amount of spirit, the buff is overwritten by other buffs; most notably the shaman totem.