I am interested in this discussion from several standpoints, not least because I plan to do a semester-long simulation project on (most likely) Mage DPS.
I find the concern with dps vs. healer mana regeneration quite critical to the discussion. However, I don't necessarily think that Blizzard is trying to shoehorn Spirit-using DPS classes into a healer regeneration model. Quite obviously, the model should not be applied outside of its scope. However, the point remains that a healer's 'active mana regeneration technique' is simply the choice not to cast a heal until outside the 5-second rule, gaining the OO5SR regen rate. As pointed out, this does not serve Mages or other spellcasting classes in the least, and so an active regeneration approach is needed.
Pointing out AotV is useful, in that it shows the type of tradeoff that Blizzard is most likely trying to find for Mages, but using a non-Spirit focused model.
My original thought would be to put something like the Moonkin effect (2% max mana return on spell crit) on Mage Armor, but that doesn't use Spirit. Therefore, a Spirit-based (as opposed to max mana based) active regen mechanic seems to be what is needed by Mages.
I have some thoughts about it, but I understand that posting 'wishlist' suggestions is against forum policy.
All that does is compound the situation where we're making at-the-trainer decisions by adding yet another occurrence of "do I glyph for mage armor or molten armor?"
Mana isn't something you should have to primarily plan for at the trainer. It's something that happens on a fight by fight basis, and a dungeon-by-dungeon basis. Mages need fewer "at the trainer" and "before engage" options and more "in the moment" options.
I rather like "before engage" options such as Mage Armour and gear choice. We mages are supposed to be intellectual types who should be able to cope with this sort of strategic stuff! And if we make a mistake it's not the end of the world - we can do better at the next try.
But I'm with you regarding "at the trainer" options.
I rather like "before engage" options such as Mage Armour and gear choice. We mages are supposed to be intellectual types who should be able to cope with this sort of strategic stuff! And if we make a mistake it's not the end of the world - we can do better at the next try.
There's a really good post about a page back on this thread that responds to this, so I won't bother to repeat it.
And none of that addresses that right now being balanced around raid buffs just to sustain mana is annoying. It's one thing to not do as much DPS in a 5-man if you don't have raid buffs -- every class deals with that. To be drinking and holding up the group is annoying, and a problem unique to the mana-users without a spamable mana regen.
I've just started carrying my stacks of the original mana pots and hitting them between pulls. Once I've used them up it's obviously not a solution. But I really dislike being the class that slows down the 5-man (even moreso than the healer does.)
I have to say that's probably been the worst part of changing from warlock to mage: I used to love speed-runs because that's how I like to play the game: constantly pushing the group, going quickly, being efficient. Now I'm the guy sitting there drinking slowly (because mana pools are again very large relative to the best drink available.)
So you're starting to feel what I've told you before you rolled a mage. Its awesome and all, but drinking between every mob being killed is beyond retarded.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Perhaps it would be an interesting change if the molten armor glyph and the mage armor glyph would be combined. So there would be a choice in long fights to switch your armor and you don't have to loose the the glyph bonus.
The problem with mana solution being spirit based, is that gearing spirit costs dps. If they want fix it by making mages gain significant mana from spirit (and lack significant mana without spirit), they also need to up overall mage DPS to make up for having to pick gear with less damage on it. This is obviously problematic, though, as on short fights you're still going to swap to no spirit gear and be overpowered, unless they either normalize fight durations or make our mana pool extremely weak without spirit, thus forcing us to gear spirit even for short fights. Just like warlocks go oom very fast without lifetapping, they can mages go oom very fast without spirit, but up dps in return. If done right it will result in no-spirit mage doing equivalent DPS to a non-lifetapping warlock, with both going oom at the same time, while a mage gearing for just enough spirit to last through the fight will do similar dps to warlocks that lifetap just enough to last through the fight (if not slightly more, since warlocks have slightly more utility and survivability).
I'm not a big fan of solutions via itemization as it forces you to have multiple gear sets for different fights (while warlocks can just lifetap less and hunters can AotV less), which can be a big waste of epics for a guild. Maybe if they also gave mages an ability that converts spirit to dps, so that when you don't need the mana you can drop your regen and gain dps without swapping gear, but then again that may be going too far (but could be awesome).
I don't think converting spirit into dps is a good solution. Does it matter how many stats a player can make use of ? Making spirit give dps would be like 'just making it attractive' without any real justification as to why. Sure, I'd be happy to get free dps buff, but I just don't see the logic behind it. You want spirit to fulfill its initial role, unfortunately, the class as a whole is unsuited to make use of mana regen the way blizzard conceived it.
We can all agree mage mana regen has always been shit or non-existant to the extent where we can do something meaningful about it. But that is no ground for justification for trying to half-ass (yet another) patch to mage mana issues. I don't want spirit, nobody wants spirit; I want the mana situation to make sense.
And lets be honest here for a second. I believe mana management is a myth. It has never been much true. 'Mana management' is just a stint expression that has no bearing on my immediate play. I might on extremely long fight attempt and maximize my dpm, but thats about as far as its going to go realistically. The only actual impact 'mana management' has on my play is me making up for the fact that I have no active mana regen, and no meaningful options to regen mana; what it means is that I end up drinking in between every single pull, no matter what the context. And I think only god can accurately measure how much I loathe drinking in between every pull and holding down the raid/party.
In any case, is there any real meaning to mana management in world of dual specs ? The way I see it, if I were to ever consider swapping armor mid fight, I would far rather change spec before the fight than come to that point. Is multi-spec the way of mana management ? Because in the end I will never attempt to manage mana on a given spec, I'll simply spec the spec that allows me to ignore mana management.
Last edited by manly : 01/13/09 at 12:13 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
And lets be honest here for a second. I believe mana management is a myth. It has never been much true. 'Mana management' is just a stint expression that has no bearing on my immediate play. I might on extremely long fight attempt and maximize my dpm, but thats about as far as its going to go realistically. The only actual impact 'mana management' has on my play is me making up for the fact that I have no active mana regen, and no meaningful options to regen mana; what it means is that I end up drinking in between every single pull, no matter what the context. And I think only god can accurately measure how much I loathe drinking in between every pull and holding down the raid/party.
In any case, is there any real meaning to mana management in world of dual specs ? The way I see it, if I were to ever consider swapping armor mid fight, I would far rather change spec before the fight than come to that point. Is multi-spec the way of mana management ? Because in the end I will never attempt to manage mana on a given spec, I'll simply spec the spec that allows me to ignore mana management.
I respect just about everything I have read from you Manly, but I think this post is utter bunk. Really. Why I say this is because mages have gotten into the mindset that only DPS matters and that "we'll never run out of mana in any meaningful way" on the major fights. Well, thanks to Blizzard being wimpy about both spell cost and mana regen (passive AND active) we've fallen victim to this lazy view of being a mage. I think that what the new arcane spec is attempting to do is actually give you the option to choose a play style that allows you to largely ignore mana (like you like) or care about mana pool and regen for maximum DPS (or just plain flexibility).
And since we're being honest for a second, then we have to admit that being a mage is butt-ass easy. It's *so* easy that aside from the occasional CC required, we just basically spam two buttons on bosses for 90% of the fight--hardly paying attention to our mana pools. Maybe you like being lazy; that's cool. But, maybe some of us out here think that spirit can fulfill its expected role (to aid in both passive and active mana regen) and become a stat that is more like HIT--where the more you have the more it adds to your DPS (true DPS--the total damage inflicted over total time of fight from opening sequence to zero hit points) until you hit a "cap" where it's not going to help you anymore. In the case of the arcane specs, this "cap" is a soft one that is determined by your mana pool and DPS cycle. It's as simple as that. It basically takes being a mage and puts a little bit of brainwork into the mix...something that can't hurt those who don't care to be this lazy anymore. And, if you like, skip all of that and go back to spamming fireball for 4 hours a raid night. That still works too.
I think you missed my point. I don't care whether or not I need to manage mana. My point was, its more optimal to use a spec that doesn't sacrifice dps (ie: better dpm) rather than try to retrofit your play on a build which can't sustain its normal DPM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I believe I understand your point. What I was saying was that all things being equal, the spec that requires some stat balancing to get the most juice out of it (and have competitive DPS or maybe better DPS ultimately with glyph) is a different play-style that might appeal because of your ability to "throttle" DPS somewhat more than FFB or TtW/FB.
For me, maybe it's personal taste because FFb is a finicky, crit-dependent spec that is very streaky but strangely extremely simple to play (especially if you have a designated scorcher). It's just boring, frankly. This offers an alternative that requires some engineering to play, so to speak.
As I said before, I never believed that ease of play a spec should have any relation with anything else. If you want the game to be hard, it should be the bosses that are hard, not maintaining your play. You want to argue that it should be harder to play a mage (because its currently too easy?), and thats your justification for active mana regen. I think its BS and a poor excuse but thats just me. In any case, all of this has absolutely no bearing on your original point; spirit. Can you point me out how spirit makes your play more interactive ? I just don't see it. Maybe if spirit helped your 'lifetap', but again, it wouldn't either since all spirit would do under such a case is make you lifetap less, in which case it would go against your stated goal of making mages 'manage mana'. See heres the interesting point I want to make: spirit does not makes your play more dynamic. In fact, it does the reverse.
Then you dare mention spirit as a dps stat. Spirit cannot give more dps on a spec that is already using its max dps rotation. All it does is allow you to sustain your damage longer. Said in other words:
more mana + more time = more damage
Please note very carefully that the above formula intentionally makes no mention of dps, because it simply doesnt fits in the picture. More time is not something that you have control over. If a fight lasts 5 minute, it won't last 6 minutes because you have more spirit. The boss will still die in the same amount of time. I know that what you meant to say was that spirit should give more dps, but that makes the assumption that you will go OOM eventually without spirit, and this is where I believe that assumption is flawed.
Note that I am not advocating that the mana situation should stay as it is -- I am pointing out that making spirit good is not the proper fix. It has to be done in multiple steps, and spirit should be one of the last steps.
Last edited by manly : 01/13/09 at 7:47 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
At the end there is an infinite possible solutions to the current situations that will work if done with proper balance.
They could just give us more mana per int and make drinks restore a % of max mana and/or make our spells cheaper. It would work and be balanced with current mages not topping meters consistently on fights where mana is not an issue. If they do that, spirit obviously needs to be removed from mage sets and other gear intended for mages.
If they want something more creative, though, that actually uses spirit as a stat that not only helps but that you will also actually want on your gear, they could do the following (all combined, or it wouldn't work obviously):
1. Greatly increase mage armor regeneration while casting.
2. Make molten armor increase spell damage linear to spirit (shouldn't scale much worse than spell damage, but not as good either. Say 0.7 sp per spirit or something, with the 0 benefit point being something higher than 0 (around naked mage spirit value) for balance purposes).
3. Remove or greatly reduce the mana cost of those armors, and possibly remove the GCD.
4. Scale total DPS up a bit to make up for not having molten armor crit active at all times
5. Increase mana costs enough so that mage armor will need to be used for large enough portions of long fights and still need to be used to some degree in short fights.
6. Reduce evocation casting time and/or increase effectiveness so that it's still worth using over mage armor when possible, but will be far from allowing you to not use it.
The above, when balanced with proper numbers, will make you not have to make life-breaking mana descisions at the trainer, will use spirit as a regeneration stat that increases DPS by a worthwhile amount in both mana hungry and mana overflowed situations, and will not have the "too high DPS on short fights and too low DPS on long fights" (again, if numbers are properly balanced), while keeping the "mana classes should do some extra dps on shorter fights due to less mana restrictions".
I'm sure many other creative solutions can be made, this is just one of them. Blizzard have some creative people there, they just need to get their thumbs out of...
Right now mage DPS is balanced for fights up to a certain value, and anything beyond that drops the dps significantly (DPS = damage done / fight duration), and it doesn't matter what descisions you make (chose mage armor to have more mana? Fight duration still dropped your dps significantly making you underpowered).
I'm not really sure why people always jump the 'make spirit a dps stat' train, who cares about spirit, even if it worked as it is for warlocks (30% to spp?) I wouldn't care about it (sure I would like the dps boost) and it won't make mages go berserk for spirit items nor will it make you glyph and use Mage Armor.
But more importantly, it won't solve our mana problem, namely as it was stated multiple time: We either have enough and ignore the blue bar or we don't and we stand ogling at the mob. Sure there are gems (great 2t7 bonus makes them something I want to use) and Evocation but that's included in the we have enough scenario.
To make 'mana management' something meaningful for mage we would need something like AotV or Life Tap, then you will mini-max dpm/dps specs vs. time spent managing mana like locks or hunters.
Well basically they should either make spirit a good stat or remove it from the gear. Even if they make it "help", it'll still be a sucky situation just like DPS warriors having agility shoved on their T6. If we're going to have stats on a tier set (or any item meant for certain classes), they'd better be useful stats, or else they shouldn't be on those items. I really don't like the trend of blizzard making useless items (be it helms with no meta gems, or just items that stack randomly bad combinations of stats), especially when they're a set piece. Not that set pieces shouldn't have alternatives, but they should have appropriate stats for the class. To be honest mage set itemization isn't the only one I don't like, but it's by far the worst of all sets.
As I said before, I never believed that ease of play a spec should have any relation with anything else. If you want the game to be hard, it should be the bosses that are hard, not maintaining your play. You want to argue that it should be harder to play a mage (because its currently too easy?), and thats your justification for active mana regen. I think its BS and a poor excuse but thats just me. In any case, all of this has absolutely no bearing on your original point; spirit. Can you point me out how spirit makes your play more interactive ? I just don't see it. Maybe if spirit helped your 'lifetap', but again, it wouldn't either since all spirit would do under such a case is make you lifetap less, in which case it would go against your stated goal of making mages 'manage mana'. See heres the interesting point I want to make: spirit does not makes your play more dynamic. In fact, it does the reverse.
Then you dare mention spirit as a dps stat. Spirit cannot give more dps on a spec that is already using its max dps rotation. All it does is allow you to sustain your damage longer. Said in other words:
more mana + more time = more damage
Please note very carefully that the above formula intentionally makes no mention of dps, because it simply doesnt fits in the picture. More time is not something that you have no control over. If a fight lasts 5 minute, it won't last 6 minutes because you have more spirit. The boss will still die in the same amount of time. I know that what you meant to say was that spirit should give more dps, but that makes the assumption that you will go OOM eventually without spirit, and this is where I believe that assumption is flawed.
Note that I am not advocating that the mana situation should stay as it is -- I am pointing out that making spirit good is not the proper fix. It has to be done in multiple steps, and spirit should be one of the last steps.
I appreciate what you are getting at. I agree with you that the proposed fixes for spirit (like a direct link to +damage) are unnecessary (like you've been mentioning in your first post along that string). So, the aside about the ease of play notwithstanding, I'll see if I can make my viewpoint clear: what I believe the value of spirit on mage gear to be is, frankly, solely for arcane rotations (we all agree on that) precisely because of what you mentioned above (that if you are already using your maximum dps rotation (like in FB/FFB) where going OOM is currently not easily done under normal 25-man situations).
Spirit (yes, I dare) as a contributor to DPS in a situation where you are mathematically unable to maintain the max DPS is what I am referring. Of course, like you have mentioned (me too), for typical FB or FFB, this just isn't the case. I just think that the sort of paradigm set up with a spec that does not readily offer a maxDPS-without-significant-regen offers something that appears to be missing from FB/FFB. I believe that is just another way to achieve similar ends. Rather than say "that you will go OOM eventually without spirit, and this is where I believe that assumption is flawed," I say, "make yourself go OOM each (boss) fight by using the maximum DPS cycle. Spirit supports your ability to do so." Just a little different. If we couldn't practically go OOM using our maxDPS cycle then the argument (I totally agree with you) is moot. I think we are looking at the same issue from two slightly different sides (but valid ones).
I care about spirit because it is on mage tier gear. Until its either made more potent, more useful for all specs, or removed from said gear, we're going to keep caring. I don't think the 'if you dont like spirit, choose nonset gear' is an acceptable answer either. All our tier gear should be among the most highly desired/wanted items for that slot, not an 'avoid if at all possible' item, or something we reluctantly take to get the 4 piece bonus.
Now in a perfect world, spirit would either be strongly desired/accepted by mages or just not on our gear at all. The problem is neither of those cases are true at the moment and we're left wondering whether Blizzard will actually attempt to go down one of these routes (through design/mechanic changes) - or whether we're just stuck in the current situation.
It's not just on tier gear. It's almost impossible to find cloth without spirit on drops in Naxx. When priests and warlocks start complaining mages are rolling on gear with stats that are useless to them (because there is nothing else!) it's going to make for unhappy players all around.
It's not just on tier gear. It's almost impossible to find cloth without spirit on drops in Naxx. When priests and warlocks start complaining mages are rolling on gear with stats that are useless to them (because there is nothing else!) it's going to make for unhappy players all around.
Very true. When Blizz decided to merge healing spell power and damaging spell power, it seems like they were aiming toward this scenario in raids. Maybe this was a nod to more casual raiders (10-mans, etc.) where item prioritization is far less important?
It's almost impossible to find cloth without spirit on drops in Naxx.
That's a bit overstated. Going over my entire gear set, both used and "drops I want" and including the emblem stuff only about half of it has spirit on it and several slots have no spirit itemization. The priests and warlocks just have to accept that a mage is gonna roll if the item is an upgrade in spite of the spirit itemization. My group is doing all the 25 man content, although they're only up to one drake on Saph. This is also pretty much true of the heroic blues/purples and rep stuff. As for spirit on the set pieces...we got good set bonuses this time around. They're enough to make the items very attractive in spite of the spirit.
And fair is fair. I'm also seeing priests using stuff that lacks spirit, cause it's still an upgrade for them. Yes, we may have ended up with each-others favored robe because of the way the drops and dice fell, but it's still better than the crappy blue we were wearing.
The problems are:
1. Mage DPS is on par with other classes as long as mana is not an issue, but drops too sharply on fights where mana becomes an issue. Basically the mage DPS(fight length)* function is rather flat (at least as flat as for non-mana classes) until a certain fight length, and after that fight length the fuction drops rapidly as fight length increases, while non-mana dps keeps the same slow dps drop**, and mana-classes have their dps drop a lot more moderately than mages. Other mana classes also drop their DPS on shorter fight durations more than non-mana dps does, but the drop in DPS stays moderate well into very long fight lengths - in fact it flattens out as you reach the "use what you can regen" duration. Mages flat out too at those durations except at much lower DPS since they regen much much less.
2. Itemization says spirit, optimization says no spirit. Fixing the first is easy, fixing the second is not, but has potential to be a lot more interesting. Of course just making spi->sp is stupid, since then you might as well change it into sp directly, however something more creative like what I suggested above can be interesting and actually normalize mage dps better like other classes - moderate drop as duration increases and flattens out on a reasonable DPS amount on very long fights.
*DPS = damage done / fight duration, not the damage/sec at a given time.
**slow dps drop becuase of global things that apply to all classes like heroism uptime and similar effects.
That's a bit overstated. Going over my entire gear set, both used and "drops I want" and including the emblem stuff only about half of it has spirit on it and several slots have no spirit itemization. The priests and warlocks just have to accept that a mage is gonna roll if the item is an upgrade in spite of the spirit itemization. My group is doing all the 25 man content, although they're only up to one drake on Saph. This is also pretty much true of the heroic blues/purples and rep stuff. As for spirit on the set pieces...we got good set bonuses this time around. They're enough to make the items very attractive in spite of the spirit.
And fair is fair. I'm also seeing priests using stuff that lacks spirit, cause it's still an upgrade for them. Yes, we may have ended up with each-others favored robe because of the way the drops and dice fell, but it's still better than the crappy blue we were wearing.
Just look at normal Naxx loot on wowhead. 15 'cloth' items (I haven't counted cloaks or rings etc.), 12 have spirit and 2 have mp5. Maybe itemisation is better in heroic; I haven't seen as much of this loot and so might be biased. (Edit: looking at heroic loot, you're correct there's a fair bit more that lacks spirit or the nobody-wants-it stat of mp5.)
And of course fair is fair. I think people need to get out of the BC mindset 'it's spirit so it's for healers'. But until they do, it sucks to roll and be told that's not mage gear, and have little way to argue back when they say a priest or lock would benefit more.
The only pieces with spirit worth acquiring right now are your two tier pieces and the itemlevel 226 belt and bracers. Every other slot (and even at least one of your tier pieces) has a better spiritless equivalent, with spellpower plus 2 of 3 hit/crit/haste, without exception. If changes are made and we have to downgrade our DPS stats to get spirit, you'll have the emblems to buy it and new gear dropping from Ulduar. For now, pass.
If you guild is complaining that you are taking gear with spirit on it, you need to find a better guild.
Fire mages can get 100% mana regen while casting.
Frostfire mages can get 80% mana regen while casting.
Arcane mages can get 80% mana regen while casting.
In reality a fire mage will be getting 50%, and a frostfire will be getting 30%, but its still mana regen.
Haste and Spirit Gear is healer gear, but its also Arcane Gear.
Crit is dps caster gear, buts its also Priest healing gear who choose to spec into crit.
This discussion is going of track, but blizzard has said (on multiple) occasions that they don't design perfect gear so that part of you being a good player is itemizing correctly and picking the best upgrades (yes, even outside of tier gear). Do I believe spirit is there as just a filler, no, I think someone at blizzard thought spirit is good for mages and slapped it on our helm and chest, but that is what we have and we try and work around it.
As to almost all gear we want having spirit, is completely false, I only have 1 spirit piece and that's the tier robe, from the items I would still want none have spirit on them.
01/12/09, 9:53 AM
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