Would You Consider 3 Levels of Spirit Based Mana Regen?

This blue post came to me courtesy of Sylly. Her post in particular addresses out of combat regen.

It’s no secret that I’ve felt the pinch myself. I barely end encounters with less than 10% of my mana left.

Mana Injectors? Exhausted.

Pure Mojo Flasks? Consumed to the last drop.

Hymn of Hope? Sang so much Simon Cowell would pay me to stop.

Shadowfiend? Sparky the fiend is tired of being whipped out.

But I’m okay. I’m still hanging on. I still have mana left. There is just enough left to do the job that the encounter asks of me. But oh my is it painful. It’s as bad as House losing access to his precious Vicodin. He can do the job while grinding his teeth and absorbing the pain.

The proposed solution?

A number of WoW forum members made an intriguing proposal. Redesigning spirit regen so that it takes into account three different factors:

  1. While casting
  2. Out of the 5 second rule, in combat
  3. Completely out of combat

Sylly agrees with this and I like the idea myself.

What does Ghostcrawler think?

One way to go would be to just get rid of the FSR and make out of combat regen (legitimately out of combat – not sneaking a sip during an Arena match) provide very fast regen.

Let’s open up the floor. I want to encourage some discussion here especially in the comments. What do you think of this idea? How has your mana held up so far in the current end game?

28 thoughts on “Would You Consider 3 Levels of Spirit Based Mana Regen?”

  1. Out of combat Regen would be nice for saving downtime.

    I’ve never really understood what downtime was for. Why should I need to drink water between fights, or sit on a flight path for 10 minutes again?

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  2. Anki: I would say realism, but I had to stop and think about that one. I can’t come up with an argument about downtime as of yet.

    Time sink would be my short answer.

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  3. If the downtime is intended, that’s a shame, I prefer healing to watching my toon sit on the ground (as pretty as Ulduar is). 🙂

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  4. Although, I will admit that they were mindful of needless downtime in Ulduar in one case … I LOOOOOVE those teleporters.

    Coulda used them in Nax. And BT. And … well you get the picture.

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  5. So far, I only feel a pinch if I’m having to pull some sort of shenanigans to keep my tank alive, and even then there’s usually a point where I can sneak in a Divine Plea.

    As far as having to sit down and drink after a boss fight, for all but the ML, it’s no big deal, and odds are someone’s going to need ressing or someone’s going to need to be patched up, so everyone can sit down and eat or drink back to full.

    I’m not so sure why people are saying there’s still too much mana floating around in combat, because if I’m not watching what I’m doing, I’ll start running dangerously low dangerously early.

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  6. My mana has been fine but I need to pay attention. And I get certain times where I always use for example a shadowfiend.
    Ex: Mimiron:
    Fiend in P2
    Hymn in transition P2-3
    Fiend in P4
    And I trow a pot in when I can’t handle anymore. With this I found my mana very very doable in Mimiron fights.
    But I kinda like the idea of 3 levels of spirit. I would like that!

    SuicidalPriests last blog post..Ulduar Healing (Part 2)

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  7. For me Naxx is still the endgame. When I am healing I find that as long as I am paying attention to what I am doing I don’t run dry. I will use the hymn, and I will use my shadowfiend, but rarely a mana pot.

    Then again I typicly run as DPS shadow and only heal as my secondary spec (although I have a decent healing set)

    Dechions last blog post..I was wrong

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  8. I’ve always felt that the battle between warriors trying to keep rage and healers drinking made five mans atleast have a sort of realistic flow to it. In raids the pauses comes anyway when you don’t know the content well. Ressing people and so on.

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  9. however much it would benefit regen in raids and to a degree 5mans, i cant see it being viable because of all the occasions it could be abused.
    eg. imagine grinding/leveling with that, you would be able to go on forever and the rogues and warriors of the game that cant just top themselves up will be up in arms. also the pvp side would be awesome but probably OP, i would love it but i cant see the players not benefiting from it letting it happen.

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  10. “I barely end encounters with less than 10% of my mana left.”

    I’m sorry, but where’s the problem then? If you were dry half way through then I could understand, but to me this sounds really balanced. It sounds like if a healer went down and things got really stressful that you’d go OOM which to me is how it should be.

    You’re having to really think about your mana. That’s a good thing.

    Overall, I feel like this post lacks a lot of context. How long of fight are we talking about here? Do you always use 2 spell power trinkets? These are important factors to know because if you’re being limited to only high mana regen trinkets for 4 minute fights then yes, I agree we’ve got issues here…. but if you’re talking about ending with mana left after 9 minutes using spell power trinkets (etc) then it’s hard for me to see an issue.

    All that said, I do agree that if nothing changed in combat that regening mana outside of combat 3 times faster would be a great thing. (They would of course have to not enable this in any PvP setting and we’d have to accept that all mana users in World PvP would have a massive advantage)

    Veneretios last blog post..Are you Double Potting?

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  11. Vene: There is no problem in terms of combat. I’m quite satisfied with it. It doesn’t bother me when I end fights with 10% or 40% in the tank. Does it hurt? Yes. Is it bearable? Yes. Could it be improved and tinkered with? Yes. Personally I’d like non-combat regen to shoot up.

    This post lacks context because the fights, encounter demands and fight durations are varied in length. This post is designed to be an open ended one to solicit feedback from readers with their experiences in regards to healing and regeneration in a variety of situations.

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  12. Hey,

    Cynical me says Blizzard gives us downtime to fill things out. Why lets us achieve something 2 hours when they can push it out to 3.

    A lot of what they do is about keeping progression at a rate they are happy with. Don’t you wish you had mount speed when only level 10?

    I have heard it said that Blizzard make us have downtime to avoid RSI. Load of baloney i reckon. but, there could be something to it.

    If they want us to have downtime in Raids why not let us have downtime batched and be tied to RL downtime.

    Here’s what i propose

    Every 45-60 minutes the run must have a forced 5 minute recuperative break. If you push past it you end up with a debuff that limits your mana and health regeneration until you take the designated break.

    It could be linked to individuals as well as the raid so you don’t toon swap for speed runs.

    Raider Leader presses break button and people are freezed from activity other than drinking eating and chatting until

    People can safely know they can have a pit stop every 45 minutes

    In exchange for batching up your break once your out of combat your regen goes berserk

    just a crazy idea

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  13. Come to think of it, if they have to make out of combat regen go up, make better food that’s not usable in arena.

    Or a kind of manapotion/ability that you can pop every minture when out of combat.

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  14. @Zusterke: They are in fact buffing biscuts next patch. Word on the street anyway.

    I can see the blue post’s point. I have yet to pot on any non-hard mode encounter. And we run with 6 healers max, 4 or 5 on most normal mode fights, so it’s not just other people picking up my slack.

    I think mana starts going a further when you realize that >0 hp is not dead. Not every raid member must be topped all the time (for most encounters anyway). Allowing people to stay at 80% health because they are safe enough saves a huge amount of mana. This seems to be major difference between my play style and several other healers I have played with. It’s a left over habit from competitive Guild Wars GvG healing. Healing in this fashion usually means that I have plenty of mana on all the normal mode encounters, and all get really pushed when a 100% topped raid is necessary for survival – which only happens on hard mode. I think that is how it should be.

    As for three modes of regen, I don’t really want to have to run the math three different times to decide which upgrade is best for me, etc. So totally out of combat regen should be BOOM 100% full or something, regardless of gear. Of course this would take away a large part of mage utility, though one the mages might not mind losing. It would also remove a money sink in the economy. I have no idea how much gold is spent on water, so I cannot say how significant that sink really is. Thought honestly, it might only be fair for health to do the same thing. If casters can avoid water just by sitting down for a bit, melee should get the same benefit without food. And that seems like a slippery slope to me.

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  15. I am not sure about three levels of mana regen. I really think what was suggested by GC (to have OOC be really OOC regen) to be the way to go. While every one is looking at end game right now the biggest area that I have seen affected are rerolls and 5 man runs. I have had similar experiences as to the article’s poster with my priest in 10 man Uldar. Use every trick, heal only my assignments and still end up almost dry.

    When I was leveling my priest I was able to maintain enough OOC regen to take a large block of the 5 man content between bosses with out having to stop to drink. The flow felt very good. Clear a room. Move to the next area. Drink. This gave a very good flow to the instance runs. Clear and rest, Clear and rest. Quick efficient and fun. Now it seems that even with better gear clearing out a 5 man forces me to drink every 2-3 pulls. This is a large increase in downtime that it takes to run an instance.

    The other issue is rerolls. From speaking with several people leveling up alts the change has killed their flow in a similar way as it has with 5 man runs. After 2-3 kills they must sit and drink. They did not have this issue before and I know of the three that I had spoken with two had abandoned their alts due to the leveling issue.

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  16. From a not so spirit-based-POV: On my shaman I think mana regen is pretty balanced. Encounters I healed are Ulduar25 up to Yogg-Saron.

    Since the launch of WotLK, shamans have been at the bottom of the mana regen ladder. So I guess many shamans are very used to mico managing their mana during encounters and adapt their gear for different encounters (swapping in and out trinkets/mp5 heavy) while spirit based classes could sit at full mana during most fights during the first months of WotLK.

    For me managing my mana is a fun meta-game as a healer. I have to time my mana tide totem for the right time. Maybe even take a little break from healing and let replenishment fill up my mana. Or switch to more mana conserving healing spells. For me it would even be fun to nerf mana regen even more but add another active mana regen mechanic to all healing classes. Spam healing spells like crazy and still expecting a 50% mana pool at the end of the fight is like heroic strike spamming and expecting to keep a decent rotation up all the time.

    @spirit: Nerfing or buffing spirit is always a tricky thing. Not only have all the changes be balanced to the encounters but to the two non-spirit healing classes as well. For shamans, spirit is useless. INT is good, so stacking some INT makes sense. So for me it would be kinda silly if the healers with the largest mana pools would be cursed with the slowest OOC mana regen.

    Just make drinking restore A LOT more mana and that’s it.

    drugs last blog post..Non-Hard Ulduar clear

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  17. As a druid, I’ve never had mana regen issues. I realize that druid HoTs are pretty efficient, even with Blizz doubling the initial cost of Lifebloom. I don’t seem to have issues with out of combat mana regen, or even with the 5 second rule. There are SO many mana regen buffs available from a number of different classes that even on some of the tougher boss fights, I’ve never gotten low on mana.

    My guild raids Ulduar but I haven’t been on those raids yet, so I’m only speaking from 25 man Naxx experience, which we have on farm.

    I guess this is more of a priest issue than anything else? I do have a 70 priest, I should level him to see what the fuss is about.

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  18. @Sangi:

    I haven’t noticed much difference leveling up my mage. If you are actually leveling at a fast pace (moving between mobs as fast as possible and killing everything in your path), the FSR doesn’t come into play very much at all.

    My main gripe about leveling my mage is the fact that all the water I can actually make SUCKS! Granted, the BoA gear gives a lot more stats than the normal gear at that level would, but whats the point of being able to make water that fills only 1/3 of my mana bar in 30 sec?

    Totintotemss last blog post..Val’anyr Explained

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  19. Remember that OOC regen isn’t suppose to be huge because it is a limiting factor on how fast you can chain pull in instances and while leveling. If it was higher out of combat it would make leveling and many instance runs much more trivial. We already got rid of CC, let’s not get rid of drinking all together and make it into a chain-AE-pull-fest.

    I’ve been healing on my pally these days. It’s pretty fun. I’ve noticed that on any fight where I can use Divine Plea regularly I’m fine. I noticed that if I have to chain heal I just don’t have the time to Divine Plea and my mana will go down fairly steadily… unless I can melee! As a paladin, if I can melee during the encounter I won’t run out of mana. Seal of Wisdom is huge. We still have a ways to go for our mana to be a problem.

    I do want better water though. Sitting down to drink after switching specs I run out of drink and have to start another to fill up. It takes about 50 seconds with a 25k mana pool, even when using Divine Plea.

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  20. I’ve noticed that the fights tend to have a nice ebb and flow to them, which allows me to regen mana fairly efficiently. I don’t use DP every time it’s up, but the fights ‘seem’ to have breaks where I can pop it. While we haven’t done Sara on 25 man yet, on these fights I can generally use a combination of DP and actually hitting a mob to get a significant chunk of mana back.

    For me, a lot of it is knowing when your tank/raid will be taking slightly less damage. For example on Thorim I’m generally in the hall with one other paladin or a disc priest. I use the first add after the first mini boss, and the last add after the last mini boss to just whack away with my hammer – that way I’m at full mana when I drop into the arena. I don’t know if that’s part of the intended mechanic for our regen, but it makes me feel better.

    Adgamorixs last blog post..Evaluating new applicants

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  21. I’m going to go with realism as the main reason for Blizzard including downtime with the added (bonus) side-effect of more time spent playing.

    As far as mana goes I have had no issues at all on my resto druid – mind you while I run Ulduar regularly I typically only use my resto druid for naxx as it is not my main. I typically finish boss fights with 50%+ of my mana pool and innverate still unused – the lowest i finished a single fight was sapp (due to the fact that I healed more than both the other healers COMBINED) at ~50% with innervate used up. Really the only thing I have noticed is that I don’t roll double lifebloom stacks on both tanks anymore due to those changes but I have not really noticed much difference with regard to my mana regen. This week in Naxx I healed 11.6M (45% of the total healing) with only 20% overheal – maybe I havent noticed many issues with mana since I tend to be a very efficient healer.

    Ridges last blog post..Children’s Week: A School of Hard Knocks Retrospective

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  22. 10%, really? Are you doing a lot of hard modes? I have yet to hit a mana pot in Ulduar normal modes, having cleared everything except Algalon on 10 and through Vezax on 25. I’m hardly ever using shadowfiend. Now, on hard modes I can definitely see a difference–we did [I choose you, Steelbreaker] on 10 with me (disc priest) and a paladin healing, and I definitely popped a potion and used my shadowfiend for that. Even so, I wasn’t remotely close to oom at the end.

    Now I haven’t been playing holy, or any of the other healing classes, so maybe mana is more of an issue for other specs/classes, which might mean that instead of nerfing something across the board they will need to look closely at individual classes. But if I were to make a judgment based solely on my own experience, I would have to say that regen is still high enough for me that I don’t have to pay much attention to my mana pool.

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  23. @Eliseth: Not quite at hard modes yet. Another reason I suspect that’s a contributing factor is that we’re raiding down to 6 healers. Sometimes 5 based on the encounter. Other times I’ll ramp it up to 7.

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  24. Alliance druid dominates. Shadowmeld takes you out of combat.

    I already have fast mana regen out of combat, I can drink. THis works remarkable well as long as the tank chooses to live, rather than rush ahead when the healer is out of mana. ( and, you know, bisquits, since im also cheap ;))

    I have always geared for mana regen on my druid and in combat the numbers didnt change. The playstyle of dancing around the 5sr for extra mana regen was primarily nerfed. Could this be changed with a gear change on the part of the dancers? If they didnt have the regen they needed to complete the fight, isnt that a gearing choice? Did They Go for another stat that complemented thier playstyle more?

    Its unfortunate that they put in this change as they added a new instance, since its so hard to judge whether the issue is that the bosses are more healing intensive, or that the mana regen change is making the bosses harder than they were intended to be.

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  25. As a resto druid (healed through all but the last few Ulduar-25 bosses), pre-3.1 mana was a joke. I could ignore my blue bar, and as long as I didn’t do anything too silly, keep up with every other healer in the raid on HPS without a second thought.

    3.1 changed things a bit. Now, I have to do what (I suspect) other classes have been doing all along. Look for those moments where I can sneak some time outside the FSR, and hit my spirit trinket then: when the heart is out during XT-002, or on Razorscale, when there’s a lull in the mob spawns in your area (when Razorscale is down, it’s wrath-spam time).

    I do run into mana issues sometimes, particularly when I’m not familiar with a boss fight. As I get to know it better, I know when to lay off the heals, when to proc my trinkets, and whether I can afford to give my innervate away (on most fights: yes).

    This isn’t about grinding teeth. This is about having fun with the challenge of balancing healing output with mana regen. Know your class, know your gear, know the fights, and it all works out.

    If you don’t like it, roll a pally, spec ret, and faceroll.

    Althuras last blog post..Dreamstate-Healing Patchwerk

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  26. WAR has very fast regen out of combat and it is great. It really helps when soloing quests and even in instances. It allows everyone to hit the next group of mobs without downtime, without waiting for people to eat and drink while characters who are losing rage stand around frustrated, making it faster for everyone.

    After seeing it work so well in WAR it would be an awesome change to WoW.

    They would need special code for arenas and boss fights to make sure it’s not abused.

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