As longtime players may recall, having enough mana regen to be effective once meant maintaining a careful balance of Spirit, MP5 (yes, even Druids once found this stat desirable), and/or spell crit (for our tin-plated brethren). Then along came Patch 2.4 with its complete revamp of the once easily understood mana regeneration formula. Intellect suddenly became a factor along with a coefficient that scaled inversely with level. They even threw a square root in there for good measure. With these changes, Intellect suddenly gained newfound import and many Druids and Priests found themselves with practically endless founts of mana once they reached at least middling TBC-level raid content.

With the release of Wrath, Blizzard attempted to de-trivialize mana regeneration by significantly decreasing the level-based coefficient from 0.009327 to 0.005575. Many players initially complained that they found mana regeneration a real struggle. Of course, this was before players had acquired much gear from Heroics or Naxxramas, and most quickly discovered that our mana regeneration was at least as manageable as it had been at the end of TBC. Exacerbating this issue, the Replenishment effect now provided by Shadow Priests, Retribution Paladins, and Survival Hunters made Intellect an incredibly desirable regeneration-based stat. As a result, many players can now significantly discount efficiency comparisions when deciding which spell to cast. Sound too good to be true? Blizzard thinks so, too:

We think mana regen is too trivial at the moment in PvE and just right or too difficult in PvP (depending on the class). Now part of that is because the content is easy. Part of it is because we’ve given players a lot of reasons to avoid having to worry about the FSR. Part of it is just generous talents (like Illumination). Part of it was the change to let Int scale regen to some degree. The whole package is something we’re looking at. Mana regen is supposed to be part of the game – you aren’t supposed to graduate out of it with enough gear.

We can probably assume that too-easy content won’t always be a factor, but what about the Five Second Rule? With the introduction of Lifebloom in TBC and its 1-2-3-4-5-6-CAST! mechanic, Restoration Druids didn’t really have the luxury of planning around the Five Second Rule. With the 3- and 1-second extensions provided by Nature’s Splendor and the optional [Glyph of Lifebloom] respectively, however, many Druids are once again able to steal a second or two of out-of-combat mana regeneration every now and again. Just look at how much you can do in one 10-second cycle and still get a “tick” of regeneration that’s outside the 5SR:

This is a lot more feasible (and a lot less tedious) than it would have been in TBC with 7-second Lifebloom and 2-4 tanks. While Priests have long been masters of taking advantage of the Five Second Rule, they aren’t limited as a Druid is by Lifebloom. The question is whether this type of micro-management would actually be enjoyable to the more time-constrained Druid. As Keeva highlights in her article Waxing Philosophic: Healer Squabbles, the amount of damage in an encounter is finite over time. This means that healers are essentially competing with one another to accomplish the same objective. Intentionally “opting out” of healing your raidmates for 5 out of every 10 seconds will do little to make you feel – or appear – useful.

Lhylee of Maelstrom (US) asks if it wouldn’t be simpler to scrap the whole idea of the Five Second Rule altogether and simplify the system across all healing classes:

Question: would not it be simpler for Devs, Class Designers and Boss Designers not to have to deal with the FSR, and rework the mana regen system and simplify it between healing classes? (I’ve never heard about a DPS class running oom anymore, as they did in Vanilla) Eventually change talents and values around it, and rework Spirit too to make it a more valuable stat for all classes? (why would warriors not put some Spirit to really boost their health regen?)

I find it interesting that Lhylee specifically says “healing classes” and not “mana-based classes.” The implication here is that mana regeneration being considered trivial is not necessarily an issue for DPS classes. The argument for this being the case generally centers around the idea that mana-based DPS needs to be able to compete with Energy-, Rage-, and Runic Power-based DPS, something that can’t happen if their DPS isn’t sustainable over long periods of time. Obviously, all healing classes are limited by mana.

Twiddling your thumbs waiting for your mana to regenerate while people fall around you (no doubt planning what bad words they’ll carve into your bark later) is frustrating. In TBC, healers could fall back upon Super Mana Potions, using them early and as often as possible to avoid falling into mana-starved, Lifebloom-maintenance-only mode. While I’m not saying I want to go back to chugging 3-4 mana potions per boss attempt, failing because I can’t sustain healing output isn’t fun. At the same time, it can be fun to plan your spell selection to avoid getting into a situation like the one described, and Druids have traditionally excelled in this area with our efficient heals over time.

On a separate thread entitled GC: Why should we be worried about mana?, Pointyend of Khaz Modan (US) asks about why mana management is considered so core to raid difficulty:

It’s challenging enough to be a healer just keeping people healed and watching all the GCDs.

Ghostcrawler responds:

I am sympathetic if you find healing too difficult. Many players do not and are clamoring for more of a challenge. There are many ways we challenge players in PvE, including complex encounters, short enrage timers and high damage. When mana management, or healing in general, are too easy then certain encounters become too easy. Furthermore, the game mechanics as designed don’t work — Spirit and mp5 become stats players aren’t interested in. Choosing efficiency vs. throughput is not a meaningful decision. Healers in general are marginalized because raids can get by with fewer of them.

[…]

We have structured the game in such a way that you can find a difficulty level you are comfortable with. Naxxramas is one of the easiest raids we have ever done. Malygos gets a little more difficult, and Sartharion with multiple drakes is fairly difficult. Going into the future we will keep adding even more challenging and hardcore encounters while still making sure players who just aren’t into that can still enter raids. The game has difficulty levels. If you are finding things so difficult that they aren’t fun then by definition you probably aren’t a cutting-edge raider. That’s cool. We want to make sure you still have plenty of interesting things you can do, even within a raiding environment.

Right now, it isn’t uncommon for a guild’s corps of 8-10 TBC healers to roll off for the 5-6 slots allotted to them in current content, and the problem only gets worse as a guild becomes more comfortable with the content in question. The seemingly obvious solution to this dilemma would be to increase the amount of damage done in a limited time frame so that you would need more healers to keep up with it. Huge, Hurtful Strike-esque hits to the tank run the risk of causing the raid to wipe to the RNG, leaving AoE splash damage the only alternative (that I can think of). However, Blizzard has stated they’re specifically trying to limit or reduce the amount of AoE healing necessary to avoid having to make all healers AoE-healing super stars (see also: Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, and [Glyph of Holy Light] nerfs).

While it’s not clear how to improve healer representation without nerfing mana regen, Replenishment seems to be an ability that may need to be nerfed because it scales so incredibly well. To quote Lhylee of Maelstrom (US) again:

Replenishment [returns] 0.25% of your max mana every second. So it is basically 1.25% of max mana as MP5 (easier to compare that way)

• Raid buffed, you can easily [reach] 22K mana in Naxx25
• 22,000 x 1.25 = 275 MP5 (315 MP5 at 25K mana) (scales)
• Improved BoW = 110 MP5 (fixed)
• Improved Mana Spring = 110 MP5 (group only) (fixed)

Replenishment is eclipsing other mana return effects so much so that boosting your mana pool through Intellect is frequently the preferred way to improve your mana regeneration. When asked about the strength of this ability, Ghostcrawler responded:

We consider Replenishment mandatory. What I mean by that is we assume that you have Replenishment available to your raid. It is technically possible to go without it, but you will need to overgear the instance or otherwise compensate for it in other ways.

That doesn’t mean we will or will not nerf Replenishment. But we don’t want it to feel optional (assuming you are in reasonably challenging content) and nerfing it too much might have that effect.

So it would appear that Replenishment is here to stay. That’s not a bad thing since it seems to be fulfilling its purpose of increasing the desirability of a couple of specs that sometimes had a hard time gaining legitimacy in TBC. Nonetheless, it needs its effectiveness toned down so that it stays in line with other similar effects.

And finally, I’d like to share this tidbit from the Why are priests considered a ‘hybrid’ class? thread:

I think you can make a good argument that the pendulum has swung back towards Spirit and away from MP5. I think long term the whole system is in need of an update or re-design, but this is not a 3.1 level task.

This is one of the reasons that I am not planning to revisit mana regeneration post-Wrath right now. I suspect/hope that the system that will replace our current one will:

• Make MP5 a more attractive stat to otherwise Spirit-based healers and/or make Spirit attractive to all mana users
• Make mana management an important part of healing to reward and encourage efficiency
• Simplify the mana regeneration formula so that gear comparisons are less tedious (and utilities like the 2.4 Mana Regen Calculator are unneeded)
• Co-incide with some or all of the healing overhaul

What are your opinions on the current state of mana regeneration? Do you think current content isn’t challenging because you have too much mana or that you have too much mana because the current content isn’t challenging?

Related Posts

• Blue: 3.1 Changes (Mana Regen and More)
• Intensity to Become 30% Regen while Casting
• Blue: Mana Regen Complexity and Restoration Scaling

Feldruid of Frostmane (US) writes in with the following question:

After some discussion with a guild-mate this morning regarding which Glyphs to use, I decided to check with the tree maven for advice.  Which glyphs do you recommend for a raiding level 80 tree?  Have you done any theory-crafting around which gives the most healing benefit?

This is actually a question I get asked a lot, and I haven’t responded to it publicly because several other blog authors have done such a great job tackling this subject (see also: Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket and Bellwether of 4 Haelz). I’d say that Resto Druids are mostly in agreement about prioritizing your Glyphs, but here’s a handy dandy flowchart to help you make the decision for yourself:

The [Glyph of Swiftmend] is non-optional. The [Glyph of Regrowth] is also considered pretty standard, though there’s a chance that a Nourish-oriented Glyph may surface that eclipses it in the future. How you fill your third Glyph slot depends on whether you have issues with mana; the [Glyph of Innervate] is a tremendous boost in this regard, but an additional second on Lifebloom from the [Glyph of Lifebloom] (representing more than a 10% increase to its HPM) is also pretty nice.

P.S. I apologize for my messy flowchart. It’s really hard to fit that many decisions into so narrow a horizontal space!

Related Posts

• Direct Healing in Wrath
• Mailbag: Preferred Tank
• Mailbag: Idol of the Raven Goddess

At the risk of revealing personal politics, I just had to share a snippet from a recent post from Sean Hyde-Moyer of Chrome Cow: US Democracy Server: Patch Day:

Vice President

• The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
• No longer immune to damage from the Legislative and Judicial classes.
• The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
• Reveal Identity: this debuff will no longer be able to target Covert Operatives.
• Messages to and from the Vice President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
• A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.

Check out the full article for more of the same!

Related Posts

• Guest Post: Leveraging Shadowmeld
• Some Follow-Up
• Community Spotlight

It’s patch day! Here are some things to read while you wait for your download to complete.

New Tree Shirts: Stormcrow Wings and Adult Critter Form

There’s a new vinyl, vector design in the Tree Shirts shop featuring the wings of the Night Elf Stormcrow, depicted in purple and brown and embellished in metallic gold. These wings are positioned on the back of the shirts on which they’re shown.

By request, I’ve also added some adult options for the Critter Form shirts, including a maternity shirt. Note that most (though not all) of these are in pre-set colors because of design limitations.

Posts of Interest from Around the Blogosphere

• The Death Knight Survival Guide from Healer Envy
  Learn the tricks of this new Druid-obliterating hero class.
• Druid Tanking: Overview (WotLK) from Of Teeth and Claws
  Karthis takes a moment to summarize the changes to tanking in Wrath.
• Healing Sartharian (25-Man) with Drakes from Tree Bark Jacket
• Leatherworking Goodies from the PTR (3.08)
  Learn about important changes to this typically Druid profession.
• Mixology 101: Kitty Cat Consumables from Unbearably HoT
  Optimize the FITE in your Cat Form with these potent potions.
• Prepping for Patch 3.08 from Think Tank
  A great overview of changes Feral Druids can expect to see with today’s long-awaited release of Patch 3.08.

Druid Pole Dancers Video

Are Feral Druids the new Arena Pole Dancers this season?

Credit to Aurdon of I Sheep Things for submitting this giggle-inspiring video.

New Druid Blogs

Antileah the Druid by Pippa

I’m re-evaluating the way I handle my blogroll. I’m no longer going to provide descriptions for blogs since they often end up sounding very generic – yet writing them takes a huge amount of time – and they don’t typically remain relevant. Druid blogs will still be categorized by spec, and I will continue to remove those who haven’t updated in a month or more, but I need to look at areas where I can save time and this is definitely one of them.

• Achievement: Name a Blog
• Casual Cow
• Druid Heal
• Druids Do It on All Fours (French)
• Moonglade Exalted
• Orbital Bombardment
• The Tree House 
• A Tree’s Tale

Related Posts

• New Tree-Shirts!
• Community Spotlight
• Community Spotlight

Phaelia: This week, I bring you another fabulous guest post from Graylo of the Balance blog, Gray Matter. While some of the talents discussed here are more typically found in a Balance-oriented build, the analysis of their value is also relevant to a Restoration Druid and will no doubt come in handy with the release of dual-specs.

If you played a Balance Druid in vanilla WoW, you are very familiar with the term “Oomkin.” Our mana issues were so pervasive that this term survived through most of the Burning Crusade, even after most of our mana issues were fixed. In Wrath of the Lich King, our “Oomkin” days are far behind us, and anyone that uses the term is either uninformed or joking.

However, I still regularly receive question asking: How much mana regen do I need? Which talents are best? Can I give up Talent X to get more DPS talents? With that in mind I wanted to provide this little guide for Moonkin mana regen.

Talents

How much regen do I need?

This depend a lot on your group make up, but as a general rule you will need more regen as your group gets smaller and the fights get longer.

In 25-mans, I have absolutely no mana issues, and I have seen some high-end raiding Moonkin drop all of their mana regen talents without issue. In 10-mans, I have issues on the longer fights like Sarth-2D because my group doesn’t have a Mage, Shadow Priest or Ret Pally. In 5-mans I don’t have any issues because the fights are too short, but my experience may not be relevant to you. My gear level makes up for my low mana regen.

If your playstyle focuses on 5-mans and you don’t have a lot of gear, then you’re probably going to want as much regen as you can get. If you raid 10-man’s regularly, it’s going to depend on your group composition. If you regularly raid 25-mans, you probably have most of the buffs covered and can sacrifice some mana regen for some DPS talents. However, the best way to tell if you need more regen is if you’re consistently running out of mana on boss fights.

Ok, I need some regen, but which talents do I choose?

If you’ve looked around the various moonkin forums then you have probably seen this equation.

Omen of Clarity > Intensity > Dreamstate > Moonglow

This equation was written with well-geared raiders in mind, but it is a pretty good guideline and fairly vague. Let’s see if I can put some numbers to it to explain it better.

The Numbers

Omen of Clarity

Numerically, this is a hard ability to nail down. It’s very random, you may get it but not use it, and it’s hard to determine which spell consumes it. To calculate its value I looked at several old WWS reports. Look at a couple of high-casting fights like Patchwerk and Razuvious, the proc rate does indeed seem to be about 2 times per minute but highly variable.

Next I tried to figure out what is the average mana cost of the spells I cast during a boss fight. Looking at the WWS report from the raid where I got the Undying achievement, I summed my total spell casts for a Naxx clear. (I know this is a 10-man instead of a 25-man. However, I don’t think my casting habits change much if at all from 10-mans to 25-mans.) I won’t give you the boring details but I cast a total of 1,326 during boss fights at an average mana cost of 458 per spell with one point in Moonglow.

Now, even though Omen of Clarity procs twice per minute on average, not all of those procs will be used and it is highly variable. So, to try and get a minimum value let’s assume that you only use Omen of Clarity one and a half times per minute.

We can get an MP5 equivalent by dividing the mana saved per minute by 12. Therefore the equivalent MP5 is equal to:

(458 * 1.5) / 12 = 57.40 MP5 equivalent (assuming one point in Moonglow)

This may not seem like much, but since it costs only one talent point, it is far ahead of what you would get by investing that point in Dreamstate or Intensity. Just for reference, if you invest a full 3 points into Moonglow, Omen of Clarity would be worth 54.10 MP5 equivalent under these conditions.

Moonglow

This talent was much easier to quantify, but it is very easy to present misleading information. If you look around the web, you may find a person or two that will indicate one point in Moonglow is equivalent to 45 – 50 MP5. Their numbers may be theoretically accurate, but here not practical because they are evaluating the talent under ideal circumstances. For Moonglow to reach those levels of mana savings, you have to be constantly casting with no breaks and no latency. In real life that isn’t going to happen.

So to accurately quantify the value of Moonglow, I will have to look at WWS reports again.

Looking at just the boss fights in my latest Naxx run I cast Starfire 488 times, Wrath 525 times, Moonfire 113 times, and Starfall ~10 times. All 15 boss fights took a total of 46 minutes and 6 seconds (2766 total seconds). For each spell cast I saved the following amount of mana:

Starfire: (3496 * 0.16) * 0.03 = 16.78
Wrath: (3496 * 0.11) * 0.03 = 11.54
Moonfire: (3496 * 0.24) * 0.03 = 25.17
Starfall: (3496 * 0.35) * 0.03 = 36.71

So, to get MP5 equivalent for the raid, you take the total mana saved and divide it by the time spent in combat times five.

MP5 Equivalent = (((488 * 16.78) + (525 * 11.54) + (113 + 25.17) + (10 * 36.71)) / 2766) * 5
MP5 Equivalent = ((8,189.03 + 6056.82 + 2844.35 + 367.08) / 2766) * 5
MP5 Equivalent = (17457.28 / 2766) * 5
MP5 Equivalent = 6.31 * 5 = 31.56 MP5

These numbers will vary from person to person and night to night, but I doubt it will vary much. In fact, I think my estimation of Moonglow’s value is a little high because I used Wrath a little too much.

Dreamstate

This one is really easy to quantify. All you need is your total Intellect fully raid-buffed. To calculate it, look at your armory and get your unbuffed Int. Then add 60 for Arcane Intellect and 51 for Improved Mark of the Wild. Then multiply that value by 1.1 for Blessing of Kings, and by 1.1 again for Furor. For me the equation works out like this:

Total Intellect = (889 + 60 + 51) * 1.1 * 1.1 = 1210 Intellect

When you have your fully raid-buffed Intellect, you multiply that value by 0.04 to find the value of the first point, and 0.03 to find the value of the second and third point. So, for me Dreamstate is worth:

Dreamstate _{Point 1} = 1210 * 0.04 = 48.4 MP5
Dreamstate_{Point 2 & 3} = 1210 * 0.03 = 36.3 MP5

Intensity

This one is a little more complicated to calculate. First, we need to find our out of combat mana regen. To do that we use this formula at level 80:

MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * 0.005575 )

I’ve already showed you how to find your raid-buffed total Intellect. Finding your raid buffed Spirit is very similar. Look at your armory and get your unbuffed Spirit. Then add 80 for Divine Spirit and 51 for Improved Mark of the Wild. Then multiply that value by 1.1 for Blessing of Kings. For me the equation works out like this:

Total Spirit = (371 + 80 + 51) * 1.1 = 552 Spirit

So my out of combat mana regen is:

MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(1210) * 552 * 0.005575)
MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + 34.79 * 552 * 0.005575)
MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + 34.79 * 552 * 0.005575) = 535 MP5

Therefore, to get the value of each talent point, we just multiply this by 10%. So for me, each point I put in Intensity is worth:

Intensity(1pt) = 535 * 0.10 = 53.5 MP5

The TL:DR Version

As a general rule you can currently use this priority when evaluating mana regen talents:

Omen of Clarity > Intensity > Dreamstate > Moonglow

Please remember though that Omen of Clarity and Moonglow are very static since they are based primarily upon the spell’s mana cost. This means that they favor relatively low levels of gear, but will be outpaced by Intensity and Dreamstate as your gear improves.

That said, Omen of Clarity is still the best mana regen talent currently because it only costs one talent point. I do not expect this to persist until the end of Wrath of the Lich King because Intensity and Dreamstate will improve significantly in Tier 8 and Tier 9.

Related Posts

• Intensity to Become 30% Regen while Casting
• Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of Wisdom
• Revaluing Spirit