3.1 Mana Regeneration Changes
saedo — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 13:52
Well Mori I think predicted a couple of these things here: /node/5486
But here's the Mana Regeneration changes they have in store: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422908&sid=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.
- Regenera
tion 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.


If they're boosting talents
saedo — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 14:59If they're boosting talents that regen while casting, I assume they're spirit based too, wouldn't it come out pretty even?
creative but has huge problems
moriella — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 14:40Giving replen to more classes is fine, this does nothing to increase the amount returned but makes it easier to have in small groups.
Changing divine plea : I really dont know how much this will effect pallie mana regen or how much it will cause them to worry about mana bars - however I think it's important for ANY healer to have to worry about them, otherwise any class who has 'infinite' mana will be OP
Making certain talents more 'mandatory'. After years and years, Blizz is finally baselining divine spirit (something priests asked for since 2.0 or so) - Priests have also begged for meditation to be moved to baseline as it's 13 points in the disc tree and all three specs have always felt it's mandatory. Blue has said several time this was 'being looked into because it wasn't planned to make every spec have to go into one certain tree' - this is a very odd response from them when we were looking to have it baselined or a smiliar talent added to the holy and shadow tree
Making spirit more useless is certainly odd. This will make some of the loot QQ even bigger in pug's. The up and down swings of spirit in WoW is crazy, blizz is constantly either trivializing it or trying to make it more desirable. Why not just remove it as a stat?
As I've shown in the last two 25 mans - Disc Priest who stack intel cant be run out of mana. None of the fixes blue is proposing addressed this. With the coming changes to disc, I predict the spec is going to be in very high demand as it seems they may be making us the most efficient healers. Interesting concept, make disc more efficient and longer lasting than pallies, leaving pallies with more pure HPS , but who cant maintain it for long.
The end result of this is not going to stop the intel stacking to maximize replenishment returns. Those healers who previously did gem spirit would be well advised to go ahead and make the switch to intel. Especially if you are a high crit build allready, the difference in a couple hundred Spell Power will have minimal effect on the size of your heals but your endurance will skyrocket. Adding about 90 intel thru gems brought me about 25 more mana per tick of replen due to the high scaleing of intel in raids.
Interesting concept, I'm not sure it will do what they want as the word will eventually spread on high intel builds and everyone will stack it, putting us right back where we started and needing further changes for 3.2
"As I've shown in the last
starstalker — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 14:56"As I've shown in the last two 25 mans - Disc Priest who stack intel cant be run out of mana"
- Weren't you also using your shadowfiend?
"The end result of this is not going to stop the intel stacking to maximize replenishment returns. Those healers who previously did gem spirit would be well advised to go ahead and make the switch to intel."
-This might apply well for Disc priests, pallies, and maybe shamans, but I'm not sold on this for Druids. Can you point me to any information pertaining to a crit vs spirit build for druids?
"Making spirit more useless is certainly odd. This will make some of the loot QQ even bigger in pug's. The up and down swings of spirit in WoW is crazy, blizz is constantly either trivializing it or trying to make it more desirable. Why not just remove it as a stat?"
-Spirit has been a core stat for druids since I've been playing one (BC). Removing it would require a signifigant retooling of many druid abilities, not the least of which would be their mana regen model.
re: regen
moriella — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 15:26I only have to fiend or pot when I dps or dps/heal . Two fights in Naxx tops. If you check parses from maly/sarth last night I never potted or fiended and never even came close to 60% mana, only hitting 70% mana at the end of sarth3d.. The reason for this is my rapture regen only works from effective healing, i regen nothing from overheals or damage spells.
No, not today - as this is still a new concept, but I bet you will hear more about it soon. I'd be happy to regem you for free for some testing if you like. I'm not familiar with how many of your heals can crit however. I didnt say gem crit, I said gem intel
Spirit was a core stat for holy priests as well. Generally the difference between a 'good healer' and a 'bad healer' was their ability to dance the 5sr and not have mana issues. This new rule set is going to totally remove the need to worry about 5sr. Yes, less spirit will make your innervate less effective, however I'm guessing that in the 'big picture' that blizz has planned - that is 'working as intended' as well.
We are moving closer and closer to constant casting whack a mole healing. No need to understand the mechanics and learn to play your class better , just roll on any gear that drops and spam heals.
"No, not today - as this is
starstalker — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 15:42"No, not today - as this is still a new concept, but I bet you will hear more about it soon. I'd be happy to regem you for free for some testing if you like. I'm not familiar with how many of your heals can crit however. I didnt say gem crit, I said gem intel"
- Ah, you're right, you said intel not crit. In my mind I was thinking about the healing value of intel, crit. I looked back at a naxx run, and of my available spells, only about half of my healing comes from spells that can crit (my only benefit to crit, Living Touch, accounted for ~1% of my overall healing in a night).
@starstalker/tree droods
moriella — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 17:17After making the assumptions about int>spirit for droods, I decided to go do the research and see if I could 'back it up'
Here is a quote off EJ Forums from Scurn. as of today
I also went and checked out the resto druid itemization thread at EJ.
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37578-restoration_itemization/
Even back in November they had intel being worth more regen than spirit. Int druids are reporting not needing their own innervate in current game mechanics. Obviously, this will be more and more the case.
IMHO, stack enough spirit for a full mana pool from innervate (harder content will make you use it again). After you hit that plateau (probably easily reached with gear drops only), then enchant/gem for int and some sp.
Good find
starstalker — Thu, 02/05/2009 - 17:23Good find. If the replenishment/spirit nerf hits harder than I expect, I just might try this out.