To be honest I can't imagine how bad it'll be running a fire/arcane spec in 3.0.8 with nerfed JoW. We were doing 8 man Naxx yesterday and I had replenishment (no JoW), on patch I had to pot (no evocation) and 2 gems, tanking 4h was 'fun' was in Mage Armor and no replenishment used all the gem CDs one Evo (was interrupted in the middle) and was oom in the last 30 or so seconds. KT was as usual - fun, used 6 mana gems 2 evocations and was lucky with only getting one bomb (used molten). (I was frostfire spec with frost channeling)

Judging from how rawr modles fire/arcane in 3.0.8 if you don't have JoW and replenishment you're pretty much screwed unless the fight is very short, so I doubt you'll have fun doing 10 man Ulduar.

Regarding a mana regen ability, we already have one - namely evocation, I believe that if they changed it do be variable CD i.e. you Evo for one tick your CD becomes 1 minute (non arcane) 2 ticks 2 minutes and so on, so we could take a tick from Evo and continue etc. and depending on how long was your previous CD you will be able to Evo. no more than that or some such. But of course something like AotV or life tap is even better.

The worst feeling however is being OOM and no CDs to use, then you're utterly useless, might as well run around and bandage people.

Well, it seems to me that Blizz intended us to switch between mage and molten Armor kind of like same as Hunter have to switch between Viper and Hawk Aspect.
And maybe thats even the answer to the people complaining about going oom in long fights without support.

The Problem with that is that mage armor is way too weak and molten in comparison way too strong.
And that switching armors costs a lot of mana and needs gcd - like that the idea is just broken.

let me give some suggestion regarding the mana issues (which arent real issues atm (26/12/08):
- Glyph giving Spirit based Mana reg no matter which armor (maybe change the magearmor glyph)
- buffing armors shouldnt cost mana and maybe not even cds
- make wanding stronger

I see zero problem in armor's GCD and mana costs. Also, future Pyromaniac talent changes to 30% regen - passive Mage Armor right here. Now we also can have Arcane Meditation + actual Mage Armor + Glyph for it + Clearcasting + percentage returns from spell crits + managems which you can eat w/o manapot combat restriction, and even make in combat still having managain profit. What more regen one could ask for?

Wanding is a ranged version of a "i'm oom but can kill rabbit with my staff". Everything a caster holds in his/her hands is just a stat sticks, we are not some melee Gandalfs. Resorting to wand means that you/your group just failed given encounter. Ok, i'm gone too jerkie here, but point is - you want GCD-free armor switching in order to keep some dps and at the same time powerful wands. Too ironic.

*reads* *laughs heartily* *tries very hard to decide where to start*

First, slapping every possible solution on at once is a dev tactic, not one endorsed by most posters here. Assuming you were to apply critical thinking to the posts you supposedly read, you would realize that the discussion is on why the current mechanics are not enough, listing POSSIBLE buffs or solutions, and comparing and contrasting them. As has been mentioned, the problem is not 'we want unlimited mana to use all our shite at once to beat out everyone else on the DPS chart while also having staves and wands that compete with weapon-class weapons' (although obviously we wouldn't mind it). The problem is that for the expected duration of many fights, our options are to gimp our self DPS to nearly unnaceptable levels to be able to persist through the fight...the difference in strength between our regeneration mechanics and our DPS mechanics is fairly extreme. There ISN'T a middle ground that allows us to make a reasonable tradeoff.

Assuming you've played the deep fire build you're talking about, you'd also realize how much DPS you're giving up to gain access to all that regeneration. You would THEN be very startled to find out that all that regeneration and prevention is essentially meaningless: you've traded enough DPS over the course of the fight to make you compete for last on the DPS for that fight and still don't have the mana to finish! The additional disparity occurs when comparing the new and improved mana gems to our other mechanics: you almost can't. There's really not much to compare...even if you were to reach 110% out of combat regeneration and tack on Clearcasting, you'd gladly trade all of it for a second gem with a cooldown that is seperate from the existing gem/potion cooldown [you'd do it so fast, your head would spin].

We don't expect to top the charts in fights where our mana pool is not properly supported by the raid, but we expect to remain a competent DPS class when we have to 'do it ourself'. All the reasons spirit based regen is currently laughable for us have been mentioned, which is the biggest reason switching to Mage Armor is an overall loss, the additional cost of a cooldown and mana significantly greater than using our main nuke once is really just a slap in the face. So, next time you want to be a member of <Totally Obvious Trolls> wearing the title, colors, and tabard of any level of constructive EJs, posters, or contributors, at least tryout the <Intellitroll> approach instead. You just might fly under the radar.

You missed one of the main points brought up here. Many would like a more exciting, tangible and fun use for the main regen mechanic (spirit) placed on caster/mage tier gear. Also, we want to minimise the amount of 'dumb decisions' the current design mechanics force us to make, such as fire mages using Molten armor and thus redering spirit useless. (At least until the pyromaniac changes). Is there something strange happening with the current system, when mages actively seek to avoid their own tier gear where possible? The current tools available to mages leave much to be desired. And we aren't simply asking for more regen, merely more logical/fun ways to improve the current system.

I wrote all that wrongly, it seems. I just do not see the problem with combat regen as of now, so after i saw those wanding ideas and such couldn't resist and made a post hastily. Sorry if it looked like trolling, not my intention.

From my own experience:
(every case assumes using Molten Armor and standart FFB spec 100% of time)
1. As of now theres no 80lvl encounter to last long enough to drain FFB mage empty.
2. Only one bossfight i participated in (and i "cleared" 3.0 WotLK) forced me to use Evocation - Sartharion+drakes.

Again, sorry if all of this is trolling again, i'm not very experienced poster, but ideas i saw here just looking like attaching a beer fridge to a howitzer. Definately fun and nice, but redundant.

And all current content, other than the end few in Naxx and Sapph, is so short and easy as to be laughable, plus we have an extra 40% to our gems from our tier bonus, and an absurdly mana-efficient spec (FFb.)

Next patch brings other specs that aren't absurdly mana-efficient. Ulduar will bring gear that will mean we don't have stupidly good mana gems. And hopefully Ulduar will bring fights that are of a more "normal" length for a WoW fight (closer to 6-8 than 3-4.)


Not to mention the basic issues with:

- mages and mana drain fights
- mages and trash clearing/speed clears
- mana being so meaningless and regen being so weak that we avoid both as much as we can

(that latter meaning: we give up so much dps just for a bit of regen that you're better off making 'big' changes rather than trying to gear for some paltry regen.)

As my main is (currently) a Balance Druid, I feel like I might want to say a few words.

First, I feel that Moonkin are where you want to be. We have several different nukes, several viable AoE options, and good passive + active mana regen. We also supply useful buffs.

Having said that, I do have a quibble with some comments made here. I, myself, do find Spirit as a mana regeneration stat quite fun, and I do not find the contribution of spirit to my mana regeneration to be 'hidden' in the slightest. I think it has to do with the LK change to the granularity of mana regeneration (0.1s interval), but I do like it quite a bit. I actually like seeing the numbers that are constantly ticking upwards on my mana bar.

I don't know; maybe I'm odd that way. My Mage is Arcane.

As far as mage issues, I agree you have them. What astonishes me is that Blizzard can't seem to find a way to make mage regen 'work'. My Moonkin has the options available. My (now Resto) Shaman seemingly can't run out of mana. But Mages... nope.

It might be due to how separate the mage trees are. For Moonkin, most of our good mana regen talents are in the Resto tree, but we don't sacrifice much (now) to get those talents. The closest equivalent to that would be Clearcasting for Mages, but the sacrifice is much greater.

I like the idea of wanding to regenerate mana at a 1:1 damage to mana conversion. And I do see where it could be ridiculously overpowered. So as a compromise, why not make it something like the shadowfiend for priests? A temporary buff that allows wands to regenerate mana. If its underpowered or overpowered Blizz can tune the buff duration or cooldown, or even adjust the damage to mana conversion ratio.

That is all well and good, but as it stands right now, Spirit never makes a typical Frostfire mages mana bar move up while in combat (Zero in combat regen untill 3.0.8). So if my mana bar is ticking upwards in combat, and really, who cares about out of combat, its due to Replenishment, or Blessing of Wisdom, or Judgement of Wisdom, or a mana totem, or some other external buff.

When evaluating any peice of gear in game, I can totally ignore any spirit on it and my evaluation won't change. There is not one single item that exists in game that I would choose to wear BECUASE of the spirit on it. The correct choice in gear evaluation, for mages, is totally indifferent to spirit. However, since spirit isn't free in the item creation budget, that means that the gear peices with spirit almost always have alternatives without spirit that benefit the mage more.

So under the current system, a mage only has as much spirit as he's been unable to upgrade out of. Not exactly stellar design.

Even with the upcoming change of spirit based in combat regen in the fire tree, the decision making process I've described is unchanged.

The hidden aspect of spirit mana regen I was referring to, is that the average mage really has to go out of their way to answer the question, "Theres spirit on my mage gear, what exactly is it doing for me and why is it there?". And if they reach an answer, its most likely a mix of: Nothing, not much or situationally useful in atypical cases (Eg: Long raid fights without external mana regen sources like Replenishment available). However, if they are arcane spec there are some obvious merits.

Like the above poster mentioned, fire/frost spec mages using molten/ice armor will never see changes in their mana bar from it. The other stats: +int, +dam, +hit, +crit, +sta, +haste all have immediate tangible returns irrespective of spec and spirit stands out different, despite being one of the mage-primary stats.

What I think will happen ultimately is this:

1 - Blizzard will stick with the current system and bandaid fix issues in an attempt just to 'make it work, for now' (Like the evocation cd change, tacking on pyromaniac mana regen)
2 - Until such time as there is the 'lets make healing fun' big mechanic review (similar to the tanking one) where they can make another ground-up attempt to wholly consider the merits of the entire healing system/spirit stat/regen design (and all other associated issues, such as the use of mp/5 stat) in one collective swoop.

I wouldn't expect the touted major healing review to happen for a long time, potentially not before the next expansion. But its quite reasonable to expect small changes and tweaks here and there in coming patches. Some very interesting ideas have been put forward in the thread, such as tying mana gems to spirit and wand DPS->mana (scaling with spirit) conversions.

Only if they actually address dps casters in that review.

It seemed fairly obvious during beta that while there was energy spent looking at how mana would work for healers, there was little to no attention paid to mana-using DPS. It's most evident if you just read back through all their posts, they only ever used healing examples (except on the rare occasion they'd try to bring up DPS too and talk about saving mana for 'that big nuke' -- which as we all know never happens, and is just a misguided attempt to pretend mana has the same mechanic for healers as it does for DPS.)

I don't get a sense, from any of the changes made in beta, that there's really a coherent plan for how dps casters work. You have hunters and locks, with what I'd argue is a good model (spammable regen.) Spriests and Moonkin who seem unable to go out of mana no matter how hard they try. And mages who are looking skeptically at the changes in the next patch because, while fire might do more damage, we're unconvinced after this tier that we can actually support ourselves on normal-length fights. ("at the time you're spending talent points" isn't an example of interesting mana-management choices :p)

I don't think mana-based DPS is a *hard* problem to solve, but I do think it's one they have to make an active choice to work on. It won't just fall out incidentally from a healer-oriented review simply because mana has very different behaviors for healers and DPS.

I really did like how we had to deal with combat mana regen in tBC. Managem or Firecap? Mana or destro? Evo this phase or next? It was fun and meaningful. 3.0 made that obsolete, bringing proc-based spellweaving as a substitution. I do like it much too, but honestly i really hope for Ulduar and up to be much more manaintensive, which will bring back old manaproblems and thus - mindtickling fun. And there is 4(2) minute evos being implemented - this should ring a bell actually.

Healers were made to worry about the mana because it's both easier to do and critical to game design. For healing you can only do as much healing as people take damage, so you don't nescessarily cast to your max, and if they did require you casting to your max, the smallest screwup would result in a wipe (think what would happen if every time your FFB took 3.2s to cast instead of <3s the raid would wipe). So instead healers need to be given higher max burst than really required, while limiting how often they can use that by making sustaining it cost more mana than one could possibly imagine to have (even though with current end-game gear healers aren't extremely far off from that either).

For DPS it's a much tougher game. You can't just do less DPS as mana management, because what kind of mana management that is? That's just doing less DPS. It could only be balanced if the DPS you do while not oom would make up for the time you have to not DPS because you're oom, which is hard to balance due to varying fight lengths (and the portion of them actually spent casting) as well as mana regeneration factors from raid. For warlocks they decided straight-up that mana costs GCDs and life, to no end. Have more mana - use do more DPS by using less GCDs and requiring less heals (and to be honest, the self-damage aspect of life tap is truely insignificant in a raid with the current mechanics, so it's really just the GCDs). If they keep evocation as it is right now, it just becomes a weak variant for lifetap that only has the useless advantage of not costing life.

In BC they had the balance by making mages go oom on hard/long fights if they did not have the support, but allow them to last an extremely long time with proper support. In WOTLK, with buffs being rebalanced and made raid-wide, this can no longer be the case unless you somehow make mages benefit more from the raid buffs, but again that would not be interesting as you're going to always have those raid buffs anyway (mages or no mages) and it'll just make mages ignore mana again.

There's no real bottom line to this post, except for saying that it's hard to fix a problem when we don't really know what we want fixed. Blizzard can't give us unlimited mana and yet make us think about our mana at the same time. Do we just want mages to have "more mana = more dps due to wasting less time on gaining mana"? Because that would've been easy for blizzard to do and is how warlocks work. Same goes for spirit - if it doesn't give direct damage to spells (then just replace it with spell damage), and it doesn't regen mana direcltly (for reasons stated here and in previous posts), what the hell do we want it to do?

What I suppose will happen at the end is that evocation will become the mage's lifetap, and we'll keep ignoring spirit - at least for non-arcane specs (for arcane, we can never really know what's going to happen, as the tree seems to get a total overhaul with every patch, which is an entire discussion of its own).

Evocation's similarity to lifetap begins and ends with the fact that both restore mana.

Evocation is on a long (1-2/fight max) cooldown, brittle to interrupts, and mage mana efficiency is such that you don't need to use it often if at all.

Lifetap is on a very short cooldown, and it's designed to be used on any fight more than 40 seconds long, and then used every ~15 seconds afterwards, unless you have external mana regen. (TBC numbers; wrath is in this ballpark though.)

Lifetap is just such a good design, along with warlock mana inefficiency. I really wish *that* were the model for the rest of the DPS: mana inefficiency and higher DPS combined with a powerful spammable mana regen mechanic. It makes mana actually interesting, makes mana regen a small, linear DPS-increasing stat (and makes mana-drain fights punishing but doable.)


If they don't actually re-tune mages around such a model, I would just hope that they create *some* sort of regen mechanic on a max 30-second cooldown so we're not so much at the mercy of literally class-trainer-time decisions, much less decisions you make once a fight (which armor.)

Evocations similarity to lifetap is that they both restore mana at the cost of DPS. If evocation is tuned so that using it solves our mana issues, the it is by all means similar to lifetap. If it doesn't, then mages are lacking, which is definitely desired.

One interesting thing, by the way, is that with mages being more mana efficient and evocation restoring less mana/sec than lifetap, in a fight where they would need to evocate mages are probably a better target for mana spring/tide totems than warlocks, since they gain more DPS time from it. However when fights turn into mages going oom anyway or with healers actually needing the extra mana, it can become an issue.

Personally I wouldn't mind having evocation more life-tappish, however it would be nice if mages had something more unique. Regarding spirit I also think they should make it actually give us enough mana to make it a stat worth considering as a stat that reduces evocation time, but still make it quite weaker than spell damage (say, ~0.5 spell damage equivalent per point of spirit) tune it to noticeable with full raid buffs, even if it means giving us extreme %regen while casting (this, by the way, will also improve intelect as it increases spirit regeneration).

I actually had a lengthy discussion on the mana managment on yesterdays new years dinner, and came up with an idea or concept. Intoxication wore off, but the idea still has appeal. I dont know how or in combination with what it should be applied, and how it should be scaled (im no theorycrafter, really) so its more of a "what if..." idea that you can modify or outright kill.

Anyway, the concept is that mana gem stacks give passive regen. The twist is that they give more regen the larger they are, so at the very start of a fight you'd have a higher passive regen, but when you are forced to use one of the gems it goes down. By much or little, im not to judge. When you have only one left the choice is "do i refresh the stack to get through the fight, or do i use the gem for a last burst of mana and hope it lasts until the fight ends?". Properly designed there would be a choice for when to use the first gem too - how is the fight going? Do i benefit more from the long term passive regen, or do i need the bigger chunk now, up front?

This does not deal with the big issue, but could perhaps be one of the answers to one of the smaller issues. I dont know. Feel free to dissect and discuss.

The problem as I see it is that both healers and dps casters needs to manage mana though they can't be designed to do it in the same way. Healers manage their mana by minimize overhealing, that's all they can do except for passive regeneration and cooldown based regeneration.

It's wrong to apply such design to dps casters because we can not conserve our mana the same way healers does through minimizing overhealing. We can't overdamage and we can't just stop dpsing and call that mana management. No, dps casters either needs to be balanced around having infinite mana and this theory being true for all scenarios which is probably the easiest but most boring design there is. Or you can design it around regenerating mana at the expense of dps on-demand, this is what they did for warlocks(life tap) and hunters(aspect of the viper) and I must say I like the concept.

What mages really need is a spell that can be used on demand which sacrifices dps in return for mana and I must say evocation would be a strong contender to fulfill this role. Remove the cooldown and adjust the dps loss/mana gained ratio so that we actually have a tool to manage our mana.

Futhermore I must say that the spirit based mana regeneration on pyromaniac should be scrapped and just applied to molten armour and maybe even ice armor(just to really elimate that stupid choice). Don't touch arcane meditation though, it makes sense for arcane to have more passive regeneration as it's the only specc that can actually adjust it's negative mps in a meaningful.

Bottomline is: Mages' mana management is built like the healers' except we don't actually have a tool that will allow us to manage our mana, therefore I suggest a rework of evocation so our mana management tools are more in line with what the other dps casters have.

Thats already in there - Mage Armor / Molten Armor. Just like hunter's aspects.

Except mage armor doesnt make you gain mana, it just makes you lose it more slowly. Apples and Oranges.

mage armor cannot be used on demand, and the mana cost for switching in combat is rather hefty and it doesn't regen all that much.

Really? It has a cooldown?

It can be used on demand, it just doesn't provide enough benefit to be worthwhile. It can be looked at as a method to "fix" mage mana regen, a-la aspect of the viper.