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Blue: 3.1 Changes (Mana Regen and More)
Published on February 6, 2009 by Phaelia 
Blue, Patches 
33 Comments
Bornakk today released information on the changes to mana regeneration in Patch 3.1:
As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.
Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.
- Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
- To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
- The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
- Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
- In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
- We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
- We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
- These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.
These are some pretty extreme changes. My initial impressions:
- The mention of heals over time and clearcasting procs (Omen of Clarity) in the first point makes me feel like this nerf is being directly targeted at Druids, though it will likely impact our Spiritual Sisters, the Priest, as well. Despite the Paladin nerfs, it may end up as a relative buff to Paladins (and possibly Shamans) who don’t rely upon Spirit.
- So much for learning to dance the 5SR dance. An across the board nerf to mana regeneration outside the Five Second Rule makes trying to time your heals and rotations less valuable.
- Intensity and Intensity-like effects are being buffed, but only to keep regeneration inside the Five Second Rule relatively equal to the current value. At the same time, mana regeneration across the board is being reduced. As a Druid, the value of Spirit was based largely upon its effect on Innervate. This represents a substantial nerf to Spirit and a corresponding buff to the value of Intellect since Replenishment is not being changed (to avoid devaluing the classes that provide it).
- Expect to see more Balance Druids pursuing 3/3 Intensity to make up for the nerf to mana regen within the 5SR.
- As Innervate multiplies out of combat regeneration, this may represent a substantial nerf. If they successfully handicap mana regeneration, we may see a lot more Druids using the [Glyph of Innervate] for the boost when used on themselves moreso than the benefit granted when conveyed to another. I hope that Innervate not being listed among the talents and abilities being boosted is simply an oversight.
- /mourn [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] (Okay, okay. I know it’s two expansions old. But we had such good times together! /sniff)
- The nerf to clearcasting effects means Omen of Clarity will no longer help you get outside the 5SR, though the benefits for doing so are going to so greatly de-emphasized that I don’t really see why such a change is needed.
- This probably hurts Druids more than other healers because our go-to heal, Regrowth, is so much more mana intensive than that of other classes. Expect to take HPM (and therefore Nourish) into consideration in the future.
- The reduction in value of Spirit will cause Restoration Druids to purposefully seek out more cloth armor, possibly those items whose regeneration comes in the form of MP5. Here is the current breakdown of 0-Resilience, 0-hit rating epics with spell power:
- 12 leather epics without Spirit
- 45 leather epics with Spirit
- 27 cloth epics without Spirit
- 66 cloth epics with Spirit
I’m sure non-Spirit cloth casters won’t be big fans of this aspect of the change.
Overall, these changes are terrible for Druids. Both Spirit and Innervate are taking a big hit in usefulness, Omen of Clarity is being nerfed for mana users, a popular (if outdated) trinket is being made obsolete, and no other stat is being made more attractive to us to compensate (hello, crit and haste, I still hate you).
Additional Restoration Changes in 3.1
You can view the full list of Druid (and lesser classes) changes here, but here are the ones that will affect Restoration:
- Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
- Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
For some reason, I thought we could already cast Nature’s Grasp in Tree of Life. That’s a nice buff for handling accidental PvE aggro (but too long of a cooldown to be much of an improvement in PvP). Huzzah for finally being able to cast Thorns in Tree of Life. And here I was expecting to have to wait until the Emerald Dream expansion! I hate the name “Revitalize,” but I’m thrilled to see it added to the splash HoT of Wild Growth. This change, combined with the overall nerf to mana regeneration should make it a more attractive 3-point investment.
Want impressions from other Druids in the blogosphere? Check these out:
- Kalon from ThinkTank
- Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws
- Keeva from Tree Bark Jacket
- Sydera from World of Matticus
P.S. Given the above, who thinks I need to rename Phaelia to something beginning with a “K”? Khaelia? Ew.
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So in the DBZ fashion they drop the spirit bomb on us. Lets hope krillin I mean GC comes in to save us. Ive never felt so unhappy playing this game as I have in the last day.
I’ll miss good old blue dragon as well he was a super sexy fun time friend I called him Billy the blue.
3.5 years of mastering the 5sec dance.. I can’t imagine it going away.
I actually just found these posts on the forums, thanks to BBB. I’m not overly concerned with it all, because when you can go an entire instance, wipe free, without drinking at all, in my opinion, it’s a little much. We druids have always been excellent at sticking outside the 5SR and having awesome mana regen, so much so, that some people may start to wonder if we’re actually using any mana to begin with.
We saw the first major buff to mana regen with 2.4(?) when they buffed spirit based regen to scale with intellect. This made Priest and Druid regen skyrocket, and pushed Druids to the point that we could even survive without our own innervate (I can’t count the times I’ve given it to a priest…). Since then, I don’t think it’s relented at all and as regen amounts continue to rise, we -do- have less worry about our mana pool holding us back.
A lot of people on the official forums were asking to make healing more interesting and difficult. I believe that this is what’s going to do it. Making us decide whether it’s worth it to heal that one dps who takes a few thousand damage, or to try and stay in the 5SR and get the most out of our regen.
Keep in mind that the devs have already taken steps to prepare us for a change like this. Lest we forget the Tier 7 2 piece bonus change from Rejuv to Lifebloom. I do believe that the main thing they’re trying to do is to limit our reliance on the 5SR so that we can come up with some new and creative ways to keep everyone alive and killing, while not crippling ourselves.
Also, I can’t help but wonder how much this is going to impact innervate… If they do this change to spirit, they almost have to buff innervate to counter it. Innervate is the Druid’s best known ability, and if they’re nerfing the main aspect the ability works off, I find it unfair to just leave it as is and leaving us hanging.
Lastly, the Blue Dragon Card, which I’ve recently come into possession of, has been absolutely wonderful… I can’t imagine not having it anymore… But I do imagine that it’ll still be a must have for Druids, as with our frequency of casting, the proc can be up almost continuously. While it will reduce the effectiveness, it’s still a damn good trinket and will continue to be.
I’m going to embrace these changes, but I just wish we new more of the extent and the changes they’re planning.
Honestly, outside of the uncertain future of innervate, this change won’t hurt druids too much. The 5SR isn’t as big a concern for us as it is for priests, who rely on cancel casting and juggling the 5SR to keep their mana afloat as they can’t downrank. The majority of our playstyle so far, with all of the shiny HoTs we have, seems to be just loading them up. I’m a regrowth druid and when that’s done, I’m tossing HoTs like candy. From my personal experience (yes, even before I outgeared Naxx), this is how I’ve always played and mana was only an issue when I was still using blues/greens to raid.
I was one of the people before clamoring for some new challenging element for healing. So long as innervate gets a buff, I’m pleased with the proposed change. Mana will be a bit tighter, but not something I have to cry about. The 5SR was a myth to me before (so was my innervate, qq). Perhaps I will have to change a few gems around (I am currently Spell power/intellect) and a few of those cloth pieces will look yummier, but nothing too much more than that. Looking at the Warcraft forums, I can’t help but think that a lot of the response posts are knee jerk reactions. The change won’t hurt us nearly as much as people are speculating.
I’d be happy to see healing be challenging again.
.>
Really how is nerfing the 5sec making it more fun. IF anything giving us less out side regen means more inside mana regen.
What does more inside regen mean. Well it means more mp5 no matter what you call it. Whats the purpose of mp5. Its used when chain casting to get some mana back.
In short I read this as your not casting enough we want you to cast more and why would we cast more? More raid wide damage or huge spike damage.
We are asking for healing to be fun not difficult. I don’t get drunk and joke around on vent like the dps and tanks because If I did people would die. Its not fun having angry drunks even if its on farm.
They officially just told every one your going to have to have refreshment class its mandatory. They like how it works. its new and shiny so they are forcing it on us. Bring the player not the class seems like a lie.
We want spirit to be useful to all classes now feels like a lie.
We want healers to be different that now feel like a lie. They are nerfing what was unique to druids and priest. Will mp5 and spirit be 1:1 now will mp5 be better no one knows yet.
All we know is they really didn’t increase the fun factor of healing, all they did was shake the fundamental ground we stand on or turn them upside down..
its.. all a dream a very bad dream.
I’m disappointed and it’s definitely going to be annoying to have to sit and drink a lot more often on trash. But my *big* concerns is the statement that they balance 10-man raids around the assumption that there will be someone offering replenishment.
That really seems to overvalue 3 specific class/specs -on 25 mans, that makes sense. On 10 mans, it seems ridiculous.
The side note is how frustrating I’m finding Blizzard’s – overall treatment of healers in Wrath. It feels like we’re constantly being nerfed, made less effective, insta-killed in PVP, forced to work with sub-optimum stats/gear. This is just more icing on the cake.
Right now I’m at the point where I log on TO raid heal and then off and that’s it, I’m cut off from 90% of the game.IF dual-specs go in, I will finally stop being bitter, because at least I’ll be able to solo my dailies and still be able to do the one thing I do find fun and rewarding still (raid heal).
So I’m crossing my fingers – but NOT feeling super optimistic!
Personally, challenges are fun. Healing thus far has been pretty mindless. Especially for druids, it’s easy to do your job and be mediocre. Having things to worry about aside from decursing or moving out of void zones is a change of pace. Perhaps it is playstyle, but I spend very little time O5SR while healing, phase transitions aside. Frankly, there hasn’t been any content that requires that level of micro-managing as mana is a non-issue (except in the blue moon where you have to drink during trash). The only content difficult enough to judge this by is Sarth 3, a fun fight to heal, yet there is so much going on that (again) O5SR is a luxury.
I hesitate to mention anything about pvp, because that is where the change in mechanic will really be felt. PvP has been disheartening in general as a resto druid, another can of worms.
Though I really would love to see some numbers and see the true extent of these proposed changes. I used to heal on a priest in Vanilla WoW, so that part of me will be sad. I wonder what other possible mechanics Blizzard could introduce to meet expectations for fun.
*
P.S. Given the above, who thinks I need to rename Phaelia to something beginning with a “K”? Khaelia? Ew.
Damnit, it’s my real name! Those other bastards at least chose theirs. I just had a mom in the 70s who thought it sounded cool.
Really nice writeup too.
I think that this is going to end up hurting priests more than druids given the nature of their spells and procs (they spend more time o5sr due to clearcasting and instant proc spells), but yeah…I mourn that they’re going to be dumbing down healing some.
Kals last blog post..[Druid] Savage Defense guesses (with math!)
I echo Anteela on most points; having mana be a complete non-issue removes the challenge. For me the most immediate change will be that I will have to pick up mana biscuits (and make sure I have Kungaloosh for when I forget
) But now we’ll have to judge if regrowth is worth it, more paranoia if our LB stack topples over, and tighter use of mana trinkets and cooldowns.
No nerf is fun, but this is necessary.
Perhaps I’m the exception, but I’ve never even attempted the 5scr dance while healing. I’m always too busy casting hots on people to bother waiting a few seconds to add more mana regen (I’m an ADD spam healer for sure!). Instead, I’ve always focused on maxing out my mp5 (I’m around 345 unbuffed right now). So I don’t know whether this news will force any changes to my healing strategies when raiding. The nerf to spirit sucks, though, as I currently stack heavily on that (though largely because of the bonus it gives to tree form healing). Here’s hoping they come out with an improved Alchemist Stone trinket for healers to replace my Spirit-World Glass.
“This probably hurts Druids more than other healers because our go-to heal, Regrowth, is so much more mana intensive than that of other classes. Expect to take HPM (and therefore Nourish) into consideration in the future.”
Isn’t that the whole point? There’s something fundamentally broken when 2 of our healing spells are not being used in PvE, no one hardly ever uses nourish and I doubt anyone has healing touch on any of their bars outside of being macroed with nature’s swiftness.
Aw, and I was about to get Blue Dragon too, just needed to farm the Ace and I would have had the whole deck.
Is it really not useful at all anymore? Is the reason for that because we just can’t rely on mana regen the way we used to and should just be looking at buffing our heals themselves?
The problem (and the reason I’m not resto anymore) is that they have good ideas but bad implementation. So, I used to heal back in the dark ages of Healing Touch cast->move to reset->cast and 40-mans. Back then there were many healer STRATEGIES. Healers would divide into groups and rotate a group out for regen, and a group in for healing and have macros for switching and all sorts of silly setups.
But in BC it became the era of the spamheal. What was valued was your latency, quick heals on whack-a-bar.
So they realize that infinite mana is bad. Healing on no mana is bad too, but I see what they’re saying. The problem is they are not GIVING US TOOLS TO HANDLE IT. For example. If you were out of mana previously you would use tiny cost spells like lifebloom, and downranked heals.
But downranking is gone. Lifebloom is pricey. Which spells are they going to implement to give us an ‘efficiency’ rotation? Since their ‘efficiency’ rotation no longer involves mass hots and a oo5sr stint – how are we to accomlish their goals?
They take tanks and dps and give them cookies, love, praise and take the healers and beat them with the red-headed stepchild stick. We need to be given the tools to accomplish what they are saying. Very cheap but weak heals. Or situational healing (X heal does little unless you have a bleed or disease then it triples in effectiveness). The problem isn’t that healers aren’t engaged (that can be done, I remember the ‘rev-up’ where I was living in the twitch on Eredar Twins) its that we don’t have the same abilities and capabilities as any other class in game.
Tanks can buff their dps and other tanks. Healers can … heal. We need something other than mana inneficiency to help us distinguish good and great healers from people that just spam a few buttons.
–Zoomkin
@Eggo & Heike
Point number 7 of the first quote:
“We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.”
They’re going to pass it around to other classes/specs so that if your raid does not have a priest/paladin/hunter at all, you can still manage to get Replenishment.
@Serahvin
The reason it’s not going to be as desired anymore is because it gives 100% mana regeneration during combat. This is the out of combat regen, and that’s the number that’s being cut down on.
It might be interesting if they changed furor to also increase our intellect in Tree Form.
So they’ve gone the “ZERG ZERG ZERG” route with healing, too. Who needs teamwork and assignments to maximize individual Oo5SR? Facrolling meets healin, and WoW just gets dumber. I don’t mind the entry raid being relatively easy, but I do mind not having to put thought into what used to be a thinking man/woman’s pursuit.
Druids, start gemming for INT and spamming the forums for kitties/boomkins to get replenishment.
Ret pallies/ Survival Hunters/ Spriesties aren’t brought to raids for just replenishment – they put out sick damage. Nerfing us to fix another class’s historic issue is just plain stupid.
I don’t want replenishment. Give me my Oo5SR and teamwork any day.
They haven’t announced how large the change will be. Is anyone on the PTR for numbers and is the sky really falling? If there are a couple replenishers in the raid, I’m honestly not having to worry much about 5SR.
As for “Revitalize” it still sucks if the HoT ticks only grant mana/power when they heal.
@Siobhann: Replenish works on all Rejuvenation ticks, not just the effective ones. I imagine the same will be the case with Revitalize and Wild Growth ticks.
Well i think this nerf to o5sr was coming, when you could heal a heroic with a lifebloom stack and a reju on the tank and still maintain 99%-100% mana bar, it is a non-challenge – both you and your group is laughing at this state.
I don’t think we have to tear off our leather equipment and stack clothies mp5 and totally disregard spirit.. we cannot innervate without it, and intensity, living spirit and improved tree of life will still make spirit an attractive stat.
What puzzles me is their design scheme with wild growth. “ow it’s to powerful some druids only uses this, let’s put a cd on it” “ok let’s make a bit attractive again by giving it replenishment state effect” We can now put some points in this talent and sit and watch a cd timer and throw WG every cd, instead of when we need to use it. Simply idiotic.
Glyphed regrowth would probably look unattractive to any ulduar raider, and we’ve been promised new glyphs in the future.
All in all i’m glad they’re putting a bit more strain on the healers, in the end, i hope this will result in dps and tanks will worry more about taking less unneccesary damage, and the end result is less work to us, because frankly, when you have the mana, you just use it!
I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why they say they want us to manage our mana better, but then take away the ability to juggle our heals around the 5SR.
Stepping back for a few seconds, or removing yourself from the fight for 30 seconds to regen – that is managing your mana – making conscious decisions to stop healing and regen, rather than just chain-casting.
Remember Kazrogal in Hyjal? Hardly the hardest fight – but if you didn’t judge when to pot, use regen abilities, or simply stand back and stop healing for short periods, you would die (and kill other people). You had to actively keep an eye on your mana and then decide how long you could afford to stop healing for and trust your teammates to keep the healing up. Then you’d step back in and someone else could do the same. The same principle happened back in vanilla raiding with 40 man raids and healing rotations, where the healer lead would call for particular healers to stop and regen.
Now – we won’t be able to do that, because they’re nerfing regen while not casting.
I honestly don’t get their logic.
While I wouldn’t ask them to make us cast LESS (nobody wants to stand around doing nothing and twiddling their thumbs), I don’t understand why they are taking away this fundamental healer mechanic that allows us to judge when we need to step back for a few moments, trust the rest of the team, regen a bit, and then jump back in. That’s management. That’s interesting and fun.
Remember downranking? It isn’t something I used after Kara, but that was something else that made healing more dynamic and something I did enjoy – deciding on the best size heal according to someone’s health deficit (useful more in smaller groups with less accidental sniping, of course). It took fast judgment, and it was satisfying.
It just seems like they are taking all the intelligent decisions out of healing.. or am I looking at it completely backwards?
Edit: I’m not sure how the regen changes will affect us, this isn’t necessarily a “omg a nerf QQ” post.. more that I just don’t understand their logic these days – saying they want to make things more challenging for us but then taking away the stuff that used to make things more dynamic, more intelligent. Making regen HARDER by nerfing it doesn’t make healing more interesting or fun. Y’know? I’m all for more of a challenge (PLEASE!!!!!) but I just don’t really understand their thinking sometimes.
Keevas last blog post..Crisis averted
What annoys me the most about this is intellect is just going to becomre more valuable. Shamans and Paladins that already stack int for their regen also tend to have int -> spellpower conversions, plus they’ve typically had more spellpower than druids. We’ve got our spirit -> spellpower one, which doesn’t help since they’re once again smacking spirit.
Now, they’ll keep stacking int, getting spellpower benefits from it as well as crit (helps everyone more than druids with serendipity, imp water shield, and illumination), and having their mana regeneration scale at the same time with shadowfiend, mana tide, and divine plea. Innervate’s not gonna scale as well with just int, but even then, I’m just annoyed at not being able to gear for ideal regen while at the same time boosting my heals.
I’ve got to agree with Zaiza.
We are asking for healing to be fun not difficult. I don’t get drunk and joke around on vent like the dps and tanks because If I did people would die. Its not fun having angry drunks even if its on farm.
There’s truth to that, too.
I disagree that this is a necessary nerf, at least, not in this method. I don’t care that I’m walking around smoking Sapphiron in my 213 and 226 gear. If they wanted to nerf healer regen for encounters, there’s plenty of ways to do it in non-global nerfs. Mana draining encounters in some form or fashion are the obvious ways to think of this, but there are far more ways than just a strict mana drain aura of some sort.
I also disagree that spirit was the way to go about it. I haven’t seen any decent Resto Shaman run out of mana, even with their iws nerf – I guess they might be if they’re stacking nothing but spellpower? Our main one has more regen in the five second rule than I do, and I’m spirit happy.
People are forgetting that our gear is going to go up with Ulduar, and likewise, our regen, but I still think this is a bad way to go about things.
Revitalize will be nice, but it’s a shame that they’ve stated they don’t want DPS to worry about mana. Unless my WG hits a healer of some sort, I really won’t care. However, if you keep your healers clumped up in fights that allow it, Wild Growth can generate more healer mana than it costs to cast it. I don’t mind the idea of being a pseudo mana battery as long as it’s for my fellow healers.
Edit: As directly above me, I’m not trying to QQ about it (I am bitter at int -> spellpower, but that’s just bitterness, not quite QQ). I’m sure things will end up fine. I just don’t agree with how they’re doing it. They might be trying to make us cast only when absolutely necessary, but with damage as it is that’s almost every time the tank takes a hit.
I just think Blizzard really struggles with the challenge of how to make things more interesting for us. It seems more and more that “challenge” to them means “more of a pain”.
I want more of a challenge when it comes to managing my mana, I do – I don’t like having “infinite” mana.. but it seems as though they are doing it in very clumsy, heavy-handed ways; there’s no finesse, just blanket changes, and in the process we are losing or have lost some of the things that actually forced us to make intelligent and deliberate decisions about our mana.
How things work out, we’ll have to wait and see.. but this is how it seems to me – that we’re not making mana management more interesting, just more difficult. Managing it outside the 5SR, using healing rotations, timing your HoTs just so.. that’s more interesting mana management.
Keevas last blog post..Crisis averted
“Nerfing out of 5 second rule mana regeneration” doesn’t affect me much, since compared to how I used to play as a priest, I’m not outside of the 5 second rule very often, mostly it’s because I’m running around, or accidentally due to clearcasting procs. My mana regen is crazy enough INSIDE the 5-second rule without even looking at the 1000+ mp5 I have outside of it.
I don’t like having infinite mana. I don’t like just spamming my biggest heals whenever I need to. I don’t like never needing to drink, never needing mana potions, and being more likely to innervate the mage I just battle-rezzed than myself. And this was before I overgeared things. This was healing heroics in greens and early blues.
I don’t think of this as a nerf, I see it as “maybe healing will actually be a challenge now.” I don’t know why people are upset about this. Do people really find this kind of thing fun? I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really care about getting upgrades because I can’t see any noticeable difference in having them. I’m really looking forward to this change actually making the game FUN again.
“We think mana regen is too trivial at the moment in PvE [...]. Part of it is because we’ve given players a lot of reasons to avoid having to worry about the FSR. [...]. Part of it was the change to let Int scale regen to some degree.”
Am I the only one who thinks that the changes to mana regeneration don’t make any sens compared to that?
Well, my druid’s got some awefully dodgy gear and even she managed to heal heroics and VoA without any threat to mana pool. Even so, I imagine this change will hurt poorly geared healers in heroics more than good-geared healers. Then again, the times for healers to drink between every fight will be upon us again.
I even checked out some sort of build which allows Balance to give us some Dreamstate abilty:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=00000000000000000000000000000230033312031500531050013000532203105031020000000000000&glyph=000000000000
But, I have to say it does not make me happy (especially Wild Growth which is a great boost to AoE healing). Still, if I find I cannot maintain a full fight with my mana pool, I may be forced to do so.
I hope my penchant for healing on my druid will not be nipped in the bud by suddenly going from all-right to suckage in one go ^_^
Greetz!
Natarumah
Natarumahs last blog post..Preview on 3.1
I dislike several aspects of this change:
1) it goes against their previous claim that they want to balance raids so as people bring “players” instead of “classes”. Now, if you MUST have Replenishment to maintain your mana – it limits your choice of players. In my 10 man actually we do NOT have Replenishment in some configurations (people bringing their alts etc.) and I dislike the idea of being forced to compose the raid with this in mind.
2) if healing is supposed to be “more fun”, then the changes should be towards making mana management more creative (as it was with 5SR game, looking out for OOC procs etc.) rather than dumbed down to passive Replenishment and stacking Intellect.
3) after several months of making clear choices in my gear to favor Spirit, now we will be forced to regear. This might mean going back to heroics for badges or running Naxx again while we should be moving forward.
4) Some objects in the end-game (Majestic Dragon Figurine?, Nobles Deck trinkets with Spirit) will become completely obsolete.
5) as pointed above, changes in the gear stats will mean druids will start competing with other classes for non-spirit gear. This will lead to more frustration over DE’d items vs. desirable items with many more rolls. With this changes, loot tables should be updated to increase drop rates of desirable items vs. obsolete items.
According to the notes, both Frost Mages and Destro Warlocks will have Replenishment talents in 3.1. That raises to 5 specs that can bring the buff. Beyond that…
It’s safe to assume we haven’t seen the whole picture yet, both because they haven’t released the whole thing and because they’ll change their minds (a bit) before launch. Details *are* going to change. We saw that in the WotLK beta too.
Stuff that I think still may be addressed includes:
- Retaining value of spirit on gear
- (Likewise) relative value of Int vs. Spi
- Value of mana regen trinkets that rely on Spirit (MDF, Spirt-world glass)
- Effectiveness of Innervate
- Mana recovery out of combat (‘drinking on trash’)
- Relative buffage/nerfage of various healing classes (they will try to balance this impact among classes, unclear how effective that will be)
Stuff that is intended and will probably happen:
- Removing the 5SR from casting considerations
- Removing OOC procs as something to watch for and manage around
- (as a result) Slight stealth nerf to Regrowth
- Value of bringing Replenishment
- One potion per fight
Just my guesses. I like the 5SR change as a goal but I share the worries about the value of Spirit in general. Spirit *is* the regen stat, and I can’t imagine that they’ll let that go away. Otherwise everyone will just stack Int+MP5 and we’ll get back where we started.
The worst case scenario is that the Spirit on our gear will be outdated, while Ulduar gear will have very little Spirit and will be much more prized as a result. Possible, I suppose, but I’m doubtful that it’ll play out that way.
Alameins last blog post..Balance gear weights, revisited
Many of you are far better people than me! I AM QQing about the spirit and Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon nerf. I loved them too much…
I am trying to suspend judgment until we get more information and just keep reminding myself that 3.1 is still far away.
Aertimuss last blog post..Awesome…
I think that the changes are a hit for druids but overall it will make spamming classes less appealing and may improve the likelyhood of being taken into groups etc
I think that my game-play will suit the changes but it may have some changes to my current spec
Upyurshs last blog post..Bliz Announces Druid & Mana Regen Changes
Although basically done gearing for T8.5 content, I think I will still value spirit as my #1 stat for the moment. I’m not going to start picking up ilvl213/226 mp5 gear just because spirit MAY devalue a little bit.
I must say, I don’t know why they just don’t go back to the way it was in 2.3. Remove Int from the equation. Force people to choose between mana pool and mana regen. I don’t see what the big deal is. The regen formula is so convoluted – it’s a mess. Just another example of how PvP is messing up the PvE world.
I guess we just have to wait and see how exactly will play out in the PTR.
With regards to the blue note, it did say that our MP5 should stay about the same, what will suffer is regen whilst not casting. Honestly I do not see how will this affect us, or I am the only one that is constantly casting? Actually come to think about it, maybe what Blizzard doing might not be all that wrong. I am constantly casting because I have endless mana and I literally healing the whole raid all the time, with this change, probably more healer’s will land their heal instead of overheal, but I digress.
Honestly what I find imbalance is not mana. It is the gear scaling VS content difficulty. Why I say that? Because in a 25man raid – though we bring 6 healers, but most of the time our top priest, myself and another healer will probably combined delivering total heal of over 80%. I have not try it, but I am pretty sure 25man Naxx can be done with 4 geared and well played healer, even maybe 3 is enough. Maybe the only real hard content where we need to manage mana is Satharion with 3 Drakes…..
I think it is a shame that druids are being singled out as the “overpowered” of the group. Most of the time, just to keep up with the priests I end up using all of my mana as well as innervate just to compete. Looking at the PTR notes, I also see that the priests main healing spell is not only getting a buff, but 40% increase!
Hots are great, but sometimes, especially for a 5 man instance, you can’t keep up the initial beating repair on a tank and the entire group with just hots. I understand the need to get the mana in check, but what’s with buffing the already better than 95% of druid healers, priests!