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Blue: Mana Regen to be Updated or Redesigned
Published on January 29, 2009 by Phaelia 
Blue 
32 Comments
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?
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Very nice write up. I have noticed how trivial mana regen is as a holy pally. Intellect, thanks to replenishment, and divine plea, and crit are now my mana regen, and I try to stay as far from mp5 as possible. I’m only marginally geared, but I can sustain holy light spam, for about 3-4 minutes as long as I’m getting replenishment. There does seem to be something wrong with this.
Back in TBC, I had to gear up for mana regen, but now it’s gone by the wayside.
Also, making spirit meaningful for all healing classes means that resto shaman and holy pally gear would have to be completely re-itemized, and I don’t think blizz would do something on that scale anytime soon.
Wearing the gear that is itemized for me, mana regen is not a concern whatsoever. After running a few Naxx-10 raids (with only heroism emblem gear and heroic drops) and realizing I never had to innervate myself short of when I was straight-up spamming Regrowth on people, I took another look at what stats I was prioritizing. To say that spirit is less valuable to me is certainly true. Haste and crit might not do much for me as a druid, but what good is more spirit when I never run out of mana anyway?
I used to heal in BC as a priest, and I really did enjoy needing to be efficient and playing the 5-second rule. I’d like to go back to the days when I’d actually NEED my innervate and those potions I always have on me for some reason. The days when I might actually NEED to drink between pulls when I’m running heroics rather than just tossing an innervate on the mage and running on to the next pull.
Adding MP5 in the first place was a bizarre move. They thought spirit was too powerful in beta, so added the FSR. Then the FSR was gimping certain classes so they added MP5. Now MP5 is meaningless. The simplest solution is to scrap the current Rube Goldberg: eliminate both the FSR and MP5. Then properly tune Spirit.
Altho I will agree mana regen is starting to become more trivial, some harder encounters (Thinking 3D 10man) I did use innervate (twice) /pot (plus I believe a mana tide totem) for the kill, while using two regen trinkets (Darkmoon card:BD and Majestic dragon figurine). In close to best-in-slot gear now, too.
Depends a bit on the encounter tuning, but I quite like regen how it is >.>
As far as slotting large numbers of BC healers into our WOTLK team, we have some of our healers respec each week to dps for fun – which isn’t everyones choice, but for those who choose to, its great fun.
Good stuff, I couldn’t agree more with ghostcrawler’s points. I don’t think there’s any question that spirit is currently far and beyond MP5. As a restoration shaman I’ve essentially given up any hope of trying itemize for regeneration beyond 300 MP5, opting instead for a larger mana pool and crit.
Honestly, I wish shamans as a whole had a more complex healing rotation. Beyond the occasional NS healing wave or tidal force + LHW it’s literally just riptide & chain healing the entire raid.
It’ll be interesting to see what sort of changes are introduced in the next few patches.
Zuggys last blog post..Shaman Talent Builds
The state of my mana bar is a good indication of how well the fight is going. If we’re in control, then my mana bar is nice and healthy. If the mobs are in control, then its dropping fast. (Although in that situation, the health bars of the DPSers are usually dropping faster
).
And I have found myself dancing the FSR fandango in a few heroics recently. Its not essential, but its there so why not practice using it.
Anelfs last blog post..Beastmaster 3.0.8 – nerfed too hard? Well err, yes it was – see here.
I’ve “graduated” past caring about regen, as GC said. My gear is such now that I can spam all day and all night and be fine; I use a pot a week at most; and I almost always give my innervate to someone else (unless I had to battle rez or be rezzed etc).
It’s a bit boring to never have to worry about mana – I enjoy mana management if it’s not something I have to spend a lot of time worrying about; I need to be focusing on everyone’s health bars, not so much on my own mana bar.
I do miss healing rotations, dreamless sleep potions, and downranking (although I don’t miss HT spam).
I feel a bit cynical about the whole issue, to be honest. I don’t think they are ever going to get it right. They’ve changed the coefficients and back again. They took away the ability to chain pot and to downrank. They gave us a bunch of people/specs who could throw mana at us. Just so many things they have fiddled with and they still keep coming out of it unhappy with the result.
I admit that it is a little boring to be back to the good old “my regen’s enough, stack on the spellpower” thinking of TBC.. but I just don’t see them ever settling on a solution.
Keevas last blog post..Grid followup: copy my layout
Well, I’ve seen both sides of the Healing coin on this one as my 2 current 80s are a Druid and a Shaman.
Admittedly, I have not used the Druid in a Resto capacity since 70, so I’m only familiar with the 3.0.2 changes and can’t speak much to that. What I did notice was that the previously unthinkable OOMTree was happening more then, and I see it sometimes in Raids (moreso in 5 mans) with Druids than I ever did before. Of course, 10 seconds after combat is over, it seems like they go from 20% to full mana without eating….
What I can speak to more is the Shaman. I primarily Raid as a Restoration Shaman, though numbers frequently have us with more Healers than needed and I default back to Elemental – as my cross-spec versatility with the same (or mostly the same) gear is far better than most of the other classes. Gear-wise, I’ve got almost everything that Naxx-10 has to offer at present and gemmed heavily at MP5 / Spellpower (Royal whateverthey’recalleds). I don’t use the “Improved Water Shield” talent because, frankly, I can’t be troubled to make sure that it’s always up with charges expiring, nor can I always spare the GCD.
In terms of mana regeneration, I think that my Resto Spec is just about right. I push deep into the pool when I’m chain-casting, but usually not so far that it’s an issue. Sometimes, a mechanic like Kel’Thuzad’s Detonate Mana will handicap me, but healing is infrequent / bursty enough in there that I can usually recover it without too much stress. The only fight that really strains me is (surprise) Patchwerk, where I’ll swap out non-MP5 pieces for those that have it, use the “reduces mana cost” totem and the like, and *still* push the threshold for OOM after pot/mana tide/etc – but that’s kind of the point of Patchwerk, so I accept it.
It’s a completely different story when I flip to Elemental. Even though I rotate out several pieces of gear for ones lacking MP5, my regeneration is so high that it’s a joke. I’ll finish a fight like VoA-25, look up at my mana bar and watch it tick twice before it’s full again. I’m fairly certain that I could run with a mana pool of ~4000 and never go OOM. Sure, some of that is a by-product of having MP5-heavy healing pieces interspersed, but it’s not gear alone. DPS is just to the point that mana regen is ludicrous, and whether it’s because scaling is going bananas or due to an effort to lower “downtimes” while playing, I don’t know. What I can say is that there is a pronounced difference between DPS mana regen and Healers.
Heck, I was looking at Mage specs the other day – if you glyph for Mage Armor (double effect), a Fire / Arcane spec can actually talent into a build that returns more than 100% mana while casting – and that’s before the critical strike refunds (and to say nothing of Evocation or Mana Gems).
It’s challenging now, but comfortably so. Given that, Naxx is a comfortable Raid, so it should be. Wait and see. Oh, and ditching MP5 in favor of Spirit? As (possibly) the last class / spec that cares about MP5, I would QQ muchly.
Shaman is not 4 Spirits!
Ribeyes last blog post..Elemental / Resto Shaman Gearing: Heroics
I think that replenish effect in its current state is way too strong.
Having to go for int as the best mana regen stat is kinda sad.
Besides our raiding Boomkin has dropped all mana regen talent (dreamstate and intensity) simply because replenish makes mana issues non-existing.
During my first few weeks of raiding I was struggling with mana issues while shamans and paladins were with no problems simply due to their large mana pool – this seems wrong to me.
I would love to see the replenish effect halved, I think this would make itemization and gear choise more fun again – I have lots of fights where noone even needs my innervate and the use of pots is non existing.
Make mana control a issue again – It would make healing more fun since overhealing and inefficiency a real issue gaing
I also can’t remember when I used innervate last time. The mana using DPS also have infinite mana. Practically we could remove our mana bars from the UI as we never need it. Either the mana regen must be seriously nerfed or certain spells (WG, CoH, CH, JoL) shoud get their mana requirements increased drastically along with the highest DPS spells of spell DPS-ers, forcing them to use sub-optimal rotation until certain “BL, drums, trinket and all CD up guys” phases of the fights.
I see that Replenishment is meant to be mandatory to get spots to Shadow Priests, Ret Paladins and Surv Hunters. However with the completely messed up BM nerf and Surv buff, Surv Hunters became the highest DPS AND replenishment providing spec in the game.
I also miss mana management. Levelling, I almost never had an issue. In 5-man instances, I need to drink…twice? Perhaps three times? I can innervate at the very end of a fight if I’m being careless (or the group is and are standing in fire). Having to plan your pot drinking, your innervation and conservative rotation while still keeping tanks alive was part of the excitement of playing, and had some skill involved.
Bellwethers last blog post..*Spoiler Alert*
It’s simple. Delete mp5. As long as you are able to stack constant regen, you will never need to stop casting at some gear level. Every healing class needs a fixed 30% regen while casting healing tree (pun intended) talent, and an amount of mana return on crits. Beyond that, healers need to be punshed by OOM if you spend too much time I5SR. That way, healers stick to assignments, watch their mana, and have the spaces that are required for gear level appropriate raids. Also, cutting edge raiders that take less healers have truly less margin for error and have the challenge they want. As it stands now, “well-geared,” healers can be taken 10 at a time, put into a box, shaken until 4-5 fall out, and spam heal and not go OOM.
Yes, this is partly the content’s simplicity at fault, but it’s also a gear issue. In TBC, “well-geared” didn’t happen nearly as quickly, and didn’t include blues.
I am concerned that Blizzard is paying attention to healing meters. This behaviour needs to be de-emphasized. If you raid leaders are taking healers that put out the biggest numbers only, then they are missing the point. I realize that this does happen, but should be an in-guild issue, and not a “revamp mana” issue.
I think an interesting solution would be to have stacking healers buff mana regen. Maybe only to 5, or something, to allow for variability in make-up, but that way healers look at each other as a team again. IT never bothered me when my HOTs got stomped on, because I knew that what mattered was making the boss dead and keeping people alive. When Blizzard caves to the juvenille, “My numbers are bigger than yours,” mentality, healing loses. Bigger numbers folks should play DPS, that’s where that mentality has a home. I don’t think it’s a correct line of thinking there, either, but it’s fairly established a rule.
TLDR: Mana regen is too easy, we need to be punished for constantly spamming. The way to do this is take away constant mp5 and emphasize teamwork and passive regen (O5SR).
I definitely feel that mana regen is of little important in the current raiding game. I don’t consider myself oom until I have run out, innervated, and run out again. And I can tell you now, the only time that’s happened to me is last night, amazingly, when myself and a paladin 2 healed Malygos(10).
As far as what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well as always it’s hard to say. But I think the content overall is too simple. With my guild’s raid makeup, replenishment is 100% uptime, in most cases. (though in the a fore-mentioned 2 healer maly, we had no replenish! ouch)
i have hopes that ulduar will mark a change in encounter difficulty from the get-go, and that changes to mana regen are put on hold until after the more difficult content is available for testing.
due to the high availability of gear now, to everyone and anyone, of course content is being trivialized more quickly than ever before. of course the concept of making things accessible for casuals negatively impacting hard-core players by negating content challenge is a whole other kettle of fishies…
Most importantly, I think, the raid content is ridiciously easy. I would like to see the mana regen in a much tougher raid environment. At the moment guilds that are raiding naxx heroic, if you don’t have lag, have geared up quite nicely and are going through it like a knife through butter. That makes healing much easier.
Raaffs last blog post..Lets do the Math
Hi, hunter here. While I don’t heal I do rely on Mana to put out raid damage. I do have to use aspect of the viper to replenish my mana but that could be due to two reasons:
1. No Spirit or MP5 on hunter gear.
2. I’m mostly in heroic dungeon gear and no raid gear
So, while it might be true that spell casters such as mages, priests, ‘locks, etc.. don’t worry about regen at a certain point, we hunters always have to think about it. “Am I low on mana? Switch to viper, hit rapid fire and hope my bar fills fast so I can go back to doing full damage.” Perhaps blizzard needs to go to a similar mechanic for all mana using classes. I honestly don’t know.
I was bored at work today and thought “Hey before I leave early, I’ll check resto4life to see if there are any new good articles”
Wow was I suprised to find this amazing (albeit long) article.
Great write up and Im going to make sure to share it with the other healers in my guild on Duskwood.
Don’t know.. As I look at the equations posted on wowwiki and other sites. The only way to really balance mana for everyone is to throw out +SPI or throw out MP5 or Change +SPI to be more consistent with what MP5 is doing for us today. It would simplify gear choices.
I think the other problem we’re running into is sometime during BC we threw away healing assignments from the old AQ40 days. Every 25-man pug I’ve been in so far has been “throw heals on the tank and then heal others if the tank is topped off”.” Which causes massive over-healing of the tanks and under-healing of the DPS. And causes mana regen issues on the low-end, and a lot of bored healers on the high end.
Plus it has created a “stair step” healing chart effect that can be deadly if one of the top two healers falls over dead or is interrupted by a D/C. It throws the rest of the healers in a panic as suddenly large chunks of people are low on health for “some odd reason.”
- Ben
Bearesss last blog post..January 23, 2009 17:00:00 CST
~ Fur to Bark – A Restro Druid Story ~
Mana regen is just one of the many things that are trivial nowadays. Most of the raiding content is extremely easy compared to Pre-Wrath raids – Blizzard needs to look at the bigger picture before they start messing around with mana regen. The fact is that the raid encounters are very simple nowadays. Pair that up with the fact that there is so much high quality epic gear out there that is easily available. The game is now considered way too easy by most.
Focusing just on mana regen though…
I do not think the answer lies in nerfing mana regen. The answer should be in ramping up the difficulty of raid content. Blizzard has given us this really good mana regen – now make us spend it. Make the encounters more complex so we actually have to come up with healing assignments, strategic healer positioning, etc. Hopefully Ulduar will provide this.
Very nice blog you have here.
Back on topic. Mana regen is really generous to me. With Majestic Dragon Figurine, and Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon, i can innervate our arcane mage on cooldown without any harm to my mana, even without replenish. (With Glyph of Innervate, its a nice bonus to my own mana as well.
Without replenish, the only fights i have problems are Sarth+3d, Saphiron and KT if he loves me, and detonates me more then once or twice. But for that i had to sacrifice quite a bit of Spellpower… if mana regen gets nerfed, i might have to sacrifice a bit more… if it gets reworked in a future content patch, i hope we (Spirit stacking casters) are not punished for our needs/preferences.
If “too easy content” is the problem, then ulduar will test it (Hopefully).
Once again, congratulations on this blog, i feel silly about never seeing it before.
I’m curious, of all the players who are immune to mana problems, how many of you are raiding with Replenishment? I struggled fairly often before our Hunter respecced to Survival; now I’m having much less trouble.
Beyond that, if you’re finding the content easy, then almost by definition you won’t have mana trouble. (Easy = not working hard = not casting a lot of heals.) The interesting question to me is how far you can ramp up your healing efforts before you flirt with going OOM. Ulduar will be more challenging; the question is, how much more?
Alameins last blog post..Druids: What’s the best raid heal?
I find it interesting that many of the people who say they have too much mana are the ones carrying Majestic Dragon Figurine, and Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon. Perhaps it is the trinkets that are OP? I think the problem is clear. Replenishment, although something they want to keep to make Ret Pallies viable, is broken. Why “fix” everything around it?
Great article as always, Phae. Long time reader, first time commenter.
It amuses me that none of the commenters here must pvp. The biggest problem with mana regen is actually that most of it no longer comes from gear, but from group buffs, improved wisdom and replenishment in particular.
Not only does this greatly advantage arena teams with a replenishment providing class, it also demonstrates how poor regen is when you’re not being carried by group buffs. In arena, wearing three pieces of deadly and the rest mostly hateful I have 14k mana and absolutely pathetic regen, my mana pool lasts somewhere between three and six minutes depending on pressure, and that’s with a glyphed innervate.
Mana regen is not fine by any means, they nerfed the coefficient on spirit so badly that per point of itemization value it is much worse than mp5, and I don’t see that changing even on the next tier of gear.
Screw replenishment, give us decent self reliant mana regen again in my opinion.
@Brownjohn: I wasn’t aware that Paladins were also shying away from MP5. Does that mean that only Shamans actively seek items with MP5 anymore?
@Kiryn: It’s sad that Spirit’s value has been eclipsed by that of Intellect. I always felt that stacking Spirit felt very Druidy. I’m sure Priests feel the same. Hopefully, Blizzard will find a good balance of enjoyable mana management without making us feel powerless.
@Malvesti: I wasn’t aware that the 5SR was something they added during beta. That’s really interesting. I remember MP5 being an attractive stat leveling up, but that might have been because I was clueless. ^_^
@Tree: Hopefully the fact that there are some encounters that are still very challenging means they’ll at least wait to see how Ulduar shakes out before making a drastic overhaul to the system. I’m actually nervous that they might reduce Intensity to its previous 15% value, though that wouldn’t seem to address the issues created by Replenishment.
@Zuggy: The Shaman healing rotation seems boring to me, too. I understand they’re okay with different classes healing differently and Shamans casting fewer spells, but the monotony of Chain Heal would have made me reroll long ago. As far as Spirit being too powerful relative to MP5, Shamans’ lack of reliance upon Spirit means they can afford to stack more Intellect. Obviously, greater Intellect means you derive greater benefit from Replenishment, currently one of the most powerful restorative effects. I’d therefore be hesistant to call for the nerfing of Spirit since I don’t think it’s the heart of the problem.
@Anelf: It sounds like your practice using the 5SR may end up paying off in the long run.
@Keeva: “It’s a bit boring to never have to worry about mana – I enjoy mana management if it’s not something I have to spend a lot of time worrying about; I need to be focusing on everyone’s health bars, not so much on my own mana bar.” < This. Although I never enjoyed Sleepless Mana Potions. Overzealous or oblivious Priests would always dispel the sleep effect off of me, wasting my potion cooldown!
@Ribeye: I was initially having mana troubles on Phaelia, but with only moderate gearing up I was fine again. Having cross-spec versatile gear sounds really, really nice. Although Resto and Balance Druids definitely have some overlap, the need for spell crit, spell haste, and hit along with a de-emphasis on Spirit means you'd practically need a whole second set of gear to really perform. Thanks for the welcome insight Shaman regen.
@Tiroq: I think it's especially noteworthy when players start dropping their regenerative talents (Dreamstate and Intensity). Yikes.
@Gevlon: Unfortunately, it seems like Blizzard doesn't feel mana management should be an issue for DPS classes, only healers. I can understand the argument that they need to compete with non-resource-limited DPS classes like the Rogue and Warrior, but it does seem a bit of a double standard. Great point about Survival Hunters.
@Bellwether: I have fewer objections about mana management in 5-man instances. I'm generally in those for the badges anyway, so the faster we can complete them, the happier I am. I would like to see more mana management necessary for raids, though.
@~The1Jeffy: I don't think MP5 is the problem. As far as I know, most casters aren't stacking MP5 right now.
I disagree that Blizzard shouldn't be looking at healing meters. If raid leaders look at them, Blizzard needs to, as well, to ensure that each healing class remains competitive under different scenarios. The second they start ignoring these stats, we get statements like Tharfor's "Resto druids are still very strong at what they do. I notice when I’m raiding with mine that I don’t do very well on the healing meters, but that’s just because of the way that druid healing works." O.o
While I like the idea of healers adding to the cumulative regen of the raid, I am worried that stacking healers for regen and capping the number that can actually contribute will essentially set that number as the maxium number of healers brought to a raid.
@Marzipan: I hope you're right that they're waiting for Ulduar before deciding what changes to make. Of course, depending on how much PTR testing players do of the new raid instance, they might decide to make some changes concurrent with its release.
@Xathras: It's nice to get some insight into Hunter mana management. I was under the impression that mana was more or less an afterthought for you guys. Good to know that's not the case.
@Speedmonkay: Thanks for commenting and for sharing the article with your guildmates.
@Bearess: I'm all for simplifying gear choices. I am really tired of wondering how much regeneration each one gwill give me. I would prefer if things were more cut and dry. Unfortunately, with many different stats factoring into mana regen right now (Spirit, Intellect, a number of talents, and even spell crit for some classes), I'm not sure how much simpler it can really be made to be.
@Afterdream: I hope that fights aren't made much more complex to make raid content more difficult. There are other ways to make content difficult than making players dance three different variations of the samba to stay alive while trying to keep their raidmates alive. I personally hated fights that took 20 minutes to explain. >.< @Dithanaor: I’m glad you found the blog, and thank you for commenting.
I, too, have chosen gear that appears to be optimally balanced for me (Spirit/Intellect/spell power), possibly going a little overboard on regeneration for now. However, if they DO decide to nerf regen — and depending on how they do so — I might be glad I have stacked so much Spirit!
@Alamein: I loved your latest post on raid heals. Great idea for how to graph them!
@Marindah: Hey now, the first rule of Blue Dragon Club is “Don’t talk about Blue Dragon Club!”
Thank you for commenting (but please don’t nerf my Blue Dragon Card)!
@Tarqon: Interesting point about PvP regen being out of whack because of the strength of group buffs. I think no one here is talking about PvP mana regen because the article above focused so exclusively on PvE. Right now playing a healer in PvP is so painful that I wouldn’t know if mana regen was a problem. I spend more time in Wisp Form (who has no mana bar) than I do playing.
I’d be happy to have a return to healing assignments actually being somewhat necessary to share time out of the FSR and make the healers work as a team a bit more. Higher damage is a bad way to introduce more challenge for healers, its too random and too much more of the same old same old. It was interesting to see a few fight where healers could through in a little damage as well to help with short enrage fights like Thaddius.
A little more information, a little less speculation:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422908&sid=1
TL;DR version: In 3.1 Bliz plans to nerf mana regen -outside- the 5SR, by nerfing Spirit-based regen. To balance this they will also buff talents like Intensity.
They’re also looking at how Clearcasting works, especially how it affects the 5SR. Sounds like Clearcasting will give you a mana burst (“Innervate-like”) but won’t take you out of the 5SR.
No real opinions yet, still processing. This will put -more- emphasis on MP5 rather than less, of course. Not clear how much value Spirit will retain, at first it looks a lot less attractive.
Oh and @Phae: Thanks! *blush*
Alameins last blog post..Balance gear weights, revisited
Hard to tell at this point. They offer no numbers, so there is no way to tell if we are losing 10% of out-of-combat regen or 50%.
However, this could put even MORE emphasis on spirit for those druids that want to retain the endless mana pool. If they really try to make mana regen a limiting factor, healers may change their focus from maxing spell power. Instead it will be about getting spell power to an appropriate number for the content and then focusing mainly on spirit/mp5 for regen. Since druids also gain a little spell power from spirit, I can see spirit staying as one of, if not THE primary stat for trees.
Very interesting post.
I don’t have answers but I have questions or reformulations of those already in the comments.
The first thing ticking me is: why should a healer run OOM in the first place anyway? If it’s skill at using the appropriate skill to heal the right target at the right time, then AOE healing as a whole is the worst idea introduced in the game, whatever its form might be. If you remember shaman stacking in Sunwell was specifically for their two benefits: best AOE healers and Bloodlust.
This means Wild Growth, although it lost quite a lot of substance (from already being subpar) was altogether a bad idea to add on top of Tranquility.
If we need to still be spamming AOE heals (as I’m sure we all do) means the way damage is dealt to raids is inconsistent with how Blizzard sees an ideal healing world. It is because of random raid damage on large numbers of targets that Paladins were felt as being weak healers at the end of TBC. Their complete lack of AOE healing made them a poor choice to counter the way damage was dealt. Even now with Beacon of Light (hmmm…Bacon) they’re still not very good at AOE.
Second question is: who says a healing class has to be a mana class in the first place anyway?
What if next hero class has three healing trees to compensate for the lack of healers and in order to try grab the attention of people that never healed before a complete new system of healing through energy, rage or any other system is used?
You now have a class that can’t run OOM in the first place because it doesn’t use mana and heals nonetheless, possibly with numbers competitive with the mana-using healing classes (or nobody will play it).
Of course it’s an hypothetical situation but this is what is in place for damage dealing classes: mana users versus non-mana users.
I think the focus is set on the wrong spot: mana is only the currency we use to do the job, it’s not the job itself. Focus should rather be to have the healer make life or death decisions on what spell to use to counter the incoming damage, not finding ways to outgrow mana issues. as such, the disparition of downranking may have been a mistake. As an alternative to downranking, more spells with different effects and costs should be introduced, including ones that lock healing for a set duration be it through Global Cooldown or other mechanics.
Zamir, shaman stacking actually started because of the advantages of grounding totem on brutallus, it kind of went from there.
Has anybody else considered yet that unless they rework the spell this new mana regeneration that blizzard is proposing will be a significant nerf to innervate? Also I’m not looking forward to the increased downtime when soloing and the like.
In regards to innervate, the easiest way to make it work is alter its formula so that instead of being 5x your ooc mana regen, make it 15x your IN combat mana regen. Then the number should be about the same, and not be reliant on spirit as its base for mana regen. Then the spirit we stack, which will still affect our in combat mana regen at “apparently” the same rate, will still be useful for the innervatge buff.
Of course, Id be happy if they decide to just have innervate work like evocate, returns a % of total mana per second, while casting for 20s. (id lke 4% + of course, since I stacked spirit to do exactly that
)
You know, to be honest, I don’t think there is a problem with regen. I think it’s a problem of some players overcompensating regen-wise for players that don’t stack for regen themselves. I’d be happy with replenishment tossed ~completely~ out the window for all classes, and leaving our current regen system the same.
I know my regen seems overpowered as a druid healer. I’m rarely tossed on the tank because I can effectively raid-heal, top the healing meters, and stay full on mana. Crazy, eh? But look at what’s up behind that. I have stacked about 1300 spirit pre-raid buffs with the Blue Dragon card and the Nobles Greatness card. I only have 850 Int, but with my spirit stacked and procs while fully raid buffed, I can maintain about 1850 mana regen OOC, in casting if both my cards proc. I went through hell with my crazy OoM healer paranoia to stack enough that I wouldn’t go out of mana. I was hell-bent on not having to rely on anyone’s replenishment or mana tide or any such thing, especially since I needed to be group with the tanks, not the healers/DPS casters, so I could pop an emergency tranquility. People marveled at my mana bar’s resilience, and I thought nothing of it till I look at what they were doing.
Our Holy Pally was using Divine Plea every cooldown to keep his mana up, knowing that he didn’t have to gear for efficiency. Now he’ll have to. Our hunters never popped auras to regen mana, they relied on buffs and replenishment. In fact, all our DPS relied on Replenishment. Most of our healers have tried to follow suit, so I find myself having to toss my Innervate to priests (and other classes on occasion) that are geared similarly to myself because instead of going for regen, they go for bigger heals/DPS. Let someone else worry about their regen.
I kinda got tired of it, and came up with the policy that if they want an innervate, unless they got capped prematurely, they need to just reroll a druid.
When you really think about it, only the good healers that prioritize regen are not having mana troubles, and why should they be if they are in what is currently the endgame content wearing mostly if not entirely endgame gear? I still need my innervate sometimes if I have to pick up someone else’s slack, or if a boss decides I’m the tasty person he’s going to focus on the whoooooole fight for his detonate mana skill.
To be honest, I think Blizz should leave spirit mana regen the way it is. Instead of messing with that, remove Replenishment, and make other mana regen stuff such as Innervate Self-target only. Let the other classes/players have fun actually having to spec for mana regen the way we already have to. I’m in a constant state of casting anyways, so the FSR won’t mess with me much, but it’s just very off-putting for them to release this ~obviously~ druid-healer-centered nerf, worded specifically to ~say~ it was because of druid healers right after nerfing Wild Growth. Meanwhile, our priestly brethren turn around and (Sorry priests) whine and moan about how terrible the CoH cooldown was (Hey, didn’t touch me, and I still use WG all the time as a druid healer. If I can make up for it, you can too.) and in turn get a number of very nice buffs to both Holy and Disc.
What did we get out of that deal? We can cast ~thorns~ without breaking ToL. We got a talent renamed because it ~confused~ other people. And that 3 point talent which may or may not proc may now be used with the spell that was “Too OP” that they just nerfed with a 6 second cooldown.
….call me crazy, but I’m not feeling the love, Blizz. What’s next? Take away Innervate, add cast times to all hots? Double the mana use on hots, halve the healing? Double the time between hot-ticks?