Future of Mana for Melee Specs

[Shelly]

Except for Ret and Prot, it largely doesn't matter. Sure...you can run out but you have to work at it. A resource that doesn't matter cannot form a solid core.

A lot of that depends on purpose. They have pretty much removed resource management from ALL tanks. DKs being the one with something closest to a need to manage for Death Strikes, but they have stated that if they feel your primary job shouldn't revolve around the management of your resource then they'll take away that burden.

At this point the ONLY specs I've seen that require true resource management are straight pure dps specs, where more often than not the management of that resource is their largest limiting factor.

Its largely true. As far as melee is concerned, mana may as well not exist. Therefore its impact is, at best, minimal.

Indeed and for the two melee dps specs that use mana as a resource they both have two separate resources that they also manage. Holy power for paladins and Maelstrom procs/stacks for Shaman.

Shaman are also in the same boat as paladins with multiple short term cooldowns they need to juggle. Quite a few less in my opinion than paladins but it's still a lot more than just keeping up your shout like warriors often do or keeping up your horn like a DK.

Largely by design. Thing is...Ret isn't a caster, nor is it designed as one. Checks and balances that work for casters will not necessarily translate into appropriate checks and balances for melee.

Indeed, but we are a dps spec. The point I think you're missing is that we're just NOT balanced around our resource. Would I prefer it if we were? I dunno. I think we're way too reliant on our CDs and our procs, if they removed or changed them a bit to make us also rely on mana I'm not sure how it would effect things. What I do know is that Ret and Enhance are both stuck with only base level mana pools and as such replenishment is more than enough to keep us up. So clearly we've been straight up told "ok, the resource you need to worry about is NOT that big blue bar."

Juggling CDs once every 5 minutes is not a task I would consider all that difficult myself.

If you only go through your various buffs/abilities every 5 minutes you're doing it wrong. That or letting CLCRet think for you.

Let's see:
Inquisition - 36 seconds, no CD, HAS to remain up or you lose out on at least 10% or more of your damage over the life of a fight.
Zealotry - 20 second duration, 2 minute CD. Use every 2 minutes - although on a 6-minute fight you'd probably wait off 1-minute to push it in with a 2nd GoAK.
Avenging Wrath - 20 second duration, 2 minute CD when talented.
Guardian of Ancient Kings - 30 second duration, 5 minute CD.
Lifeblood - (This one you probably don't have, I'm a holy cow, need to find forage somehow.) 20-second duration, 2-minute CD.
Possible on use trinket. - Anywhere from a minute to a 2-minute CD, also possible that you're juggling 2 of these, but these don't count so much since all dps can be in the same boat.

Ok, so that's 5 to 7 abilities I have to juggle to maintain my dps. Also while maintaining a proper use of my Holy Power resource and depending on what boss I'm fighting also weaving in Divine Protection and Divine Shield and possibly even a Lay on Hands.

Sorry but that's more than enough stuff to worry about without throwing in the blue bar.

Thats great. Misses the entire point about needing a resource but great.

Not really because my point is we've got enough management on our plates and that it's actually only a few DPS specs that are forced into a primary resource management.

[Psilar]

Personally I'm in favor of them making mana for prot & ret more akin to how focus is for hunters.

All offensive abilities would cost a set % of base mana (slightly higher then it is now for most) then judgment would restore a set % of base mana instantly when cast.

Then give ret a passive that reduces the mana cost of all abilities by a set % that scales off of melee haste.

This ^ would make mana a real resource for prot & ret because you would actually have to monitor it & judge accordingly.

What? That's how judgement used to work. Now, you get the mana back over time instead of "in one chunk" like you describe. You would get into a situation where you were low on mana and unable to cast judgement. On live, if you have the buff running a second or two should give you enough mana back to cast it again if you're really on the brink of going OOM.

Furthermore, you're suggesting that haste decreases the mana cost? This idea is garbage it doesn't make any sense and does not work with holy power. You're still limited by a "rotation," "priority" whatever you want to call it.

Holy Power is the resource get used to it.

If you scrap the mana bar and focus on holy power only - abilities, could either generate, cost, or have no effect on your HP. You could have strikes/attacks generate - and finishers and heals cost holy power. You would then be left with Divine shield/protection, HAND spells, Res, seals. None of these can really cost or generate HP without quite a bit of tuning. They would obviously have no cost, but be limited by a cooldown.

Currently, that's basically the way we're going, but we're keeping the bar. With FoL, and WoG being tuned we're already in the situation I described. Hard casting heals is a waste if you're getting attacked, and hand spells, res, seals, all have negligible effects on mana for all intents and purposes.

There has to be programming difficulties with eliminating the mana bar for 2 out of 3 specs. Frankly, just get a UI mod that hides it because 90% of the time it doesn't matter.

Currently mana means nothing. Sure there are times where you go low which is either because you're spamming Consecrate, or you're just getting a very lucky streak and you never hit Judgement on your priority. If you're not 1/2 asleep it's no biggie, sacrifice some DPS and cast judgement.

The focus should be on Holy Power for paladins - not whether or not we should have mana.

I play a paladin thats my 2 cents. I just don't see the paladin mana bar going but rather a transition to what I described. Cost HP, Generate HP, Costs mana(and the mana costs mean nothing). With tweaks the HP system will be fine.

Enhancement shaman.....they need something done more so than paladins.

---------- Post added 2011-11-12 at 03:12 AM ----------

Honestly, insisting that every healing spec uses mana isn't terribly creative on Blizzard's part, is it? It's always been bothersome enough to me that Blizzard had the institutionalized three role mold, but it's really inexplicable to me that they feel healers have to be mana-based resources. Tanks draw on three unique resource systems, DPS draw on four unique resource systems.

I had to light a cigarette for this one.

Mana less healing sounds terrible. Right off the bat you know that the mana-less healer has a maximum capacity. Next you know that, that maximum, is less than the maximum of a healer with mana. Why? Because they can do it forever, and the healer with mana cannot.

A healer needs to have something(eg a resource) that depletes. DPS and tanks have health bars, when they hit 0 they die. Healers have mana, when they hit 0, they die. When I have infinite resources to heal, I live forever.

All DPS's resource systems are meant to be sustainable. Their limitation is their health. If you implement a resource for a healer that is not mana, it needs to deplete just like a resource in the real world over time. If you start off at "full resource(eg full mana)" and you work your way down to OOR(out of resource), how is that any different than having 10000 mana and then 0 mana.

It isn't.

Now I don't necessarily agree with this, but this is Blizzard's reasoning. There is a lot to be said for this though. Frankly, I've played just about every MMO and I think mana goes about it the best way. Despite my best efforts I personally cannot see mana-less healing working unless no healing is based on mana.

[fears]

Coming from a ret paladin sometimes mana does get tight if I use our aoe heal to help healers or use consecration, or holy wrath which is a forced part of our rotation. I think more emphasis should be on the problem of holy power rng, which is a newer problem then mana thats been there since paladins/shamans have existed. What Shelly said also has alot of truth to it in all the things we need to juggle.

I don't get why Blizzard always has to be a bull in a china shop breaking everything for some nonsensical reason that was probably a post-it on the side of the water cooler as a joke. Fix the current problems before creating new ones.

[Talen]

A lot of that depends on purpose. They have pretty much removed resource management from ALL tanks. DKs being the one with something closest to a need to manage for Death Strikes, but they have stated that if they feel your primary job shouldn't revolve around the management of your resource then they'll take away that burden.

You seem to keep missing the point about why a meaningful resource is needed. Managing that resource is, for some specs/roles/classes only a small (or relatively small) aspect of its purpose. The purpose of the resource is to provide the checks and balances a class needs, to provdie am,echanic by which they can mess up and be punished for it, and so on.

Mana doesn't provide the meaningful checks and balances Ret needs. Yes Ret - not really talking about tanks, save so far as both ret and prot are melee orientated and therefore should use the same melee system. The resource management aspect comes into play only in that, if you mismanage your rotation, then it is detrimental.

Indeed and for the two melee dps specs that use mana as a resource they both have two separate resources that they also manage. Holy power for paladins and Maelstrom procs/stacks for Shaman.

Holy Power ISN'T a resource. Its billed as a resource, but it doesn't function as one and beyond adding yet another ramp up mechanic to the class provides none of the checks and balances a resource system needs to provide.

Note: I'm not even touching on management. Resources act to constrain abilities by acting as a balance mechanism. As such, they need to provide certain features or implement certain limitations. HP doesn't.

What does HP do? HP punihses the wahckamole deisgn of the LK Ret. At that iot works very well. At anything else, its less than adequate as it functions not as resource to be managed, or a constraint, or a balance mechanic....but as a simple, straightforward shared CD.

Indeed, but we are a dps spec.

Which is the point. DPS specs need and rely on certain inherent checks and balances in order to function properly. Warriors use rage. Rogues...energy. And so on.

Paladins? Paladins get a HP system and a meaningless mana bar. For the other checks and balances the Paldin system needs and has to implement, it tries to emulate the system via the use of other features. Haste, for example, gets its own link to a paladins resource system through the SoB talent. Burst limiters are copied throught he use of CDs. And so on.

BUT.....this system, this emulation isn't perfect and introduces its own set of limtations and issues. The use of CDs, for example, to limit the potential for burst requires that there are gaps in the rotation. Gaps which require filling. Which leads to ceratin other issues, such as the feel of the rotation and the impact on RNG.

If you only go through your various buffs/abilities every 5 minutes you're doing it wrong. That or letting CLCRet think for you.

Ahhh...now we've gone from the easy to manage CDs into managing Inq as well.

As its is, I have a tracker to keep track of Inq duration and pop Zealotry and AW about 10s after I pop GAnK. Leave out the GAnK and you only have two...plus trinkets.

Thing is, its fairly easy to understand how CDs work and when to layer them. The CD system would work far better if layering was harder to acheive and the CDs more situational. AW wouldn't get such a boost from GAnK if it applied only to Holy damage for example.

Sorry but that's more than enough stuff to worry about without throwing in the blue bar.

And other classes can say the same AND have that little resource bar to "manage".

Not really because my point is we've got enough management on our plates and that it's actually only a few DPS specs that are forced into a primary resource management.

And yet, you still miss the actual role of a resource. It isn't (necessarily) to provide something the player has to manage or pay a lot of attention to. Its to provide a check and balance system. by using mana, Paladins have to rely on other mechanics to provide the same features....but they in turn have had issues.

EJL

[zcks]

What? That's how judgement used to work. Now, you get the mana back over time instead of "in one chunk" like you describe. You would get into a situation where you were low on mana and unable to cast judgement. On live, if you have the buff running a second or two should give you enough mana back to cast it again if you're really on the brink of going OOM.

Furthermore, you're suggesting that haste decreases the mana cost? This idea is garbage it doesn't make any sense and does not work with holy power. You're still limited by a "rotation," "priority" whatever you want to call it.

Holy Power is the resource get used to it.

Holy power may be a resource but since it is based of combo points it definitely needs another resource to work off of.

What I'm suggesting is they drop the CD on CS & HOR (might mean they would need slightly reduced damage) so that they only cause a global cool down of 2 seconds when used.
After that they would simply need to change the Art of War talent so that it always reduces the cast time of exorcism by 100% at rank 3 & causes exorcism to generate a charge of holy power when used. (the proc would simply double the damage & make it mana free)

Then last but not least they would need to change Sanctity of Battle so that mana costs for offensive abilities would be lowered by a set % of your melee haste.

That ^ combined with tweaks to base mana cost would effectively turn mana into a system very similar to focus Which would work quite well with holy power management & possibly even mean ret would no longer need the shitty mechanic that is inquisition.

[Deleted]

Depends what you're doing. There have been several times I've run out of mana in PvP as Retri, for example, because using Judgement would be a waste compared to other higher-damage skills. Like if I've popped Zealotry and I get a lot of lucky procs, I can just do CS->TV->TV->repeat.


Anyway, seeing as they keep adding resources to other classes (Warlocks and shadow Priests come to mind), I don't see how they can't change the resource bar by talent spec. At least Retribution having an "Energy"-like resource would allow them to have a more active, fun playstyle.

Then you still wouldnt run out of mana because TV doesnt cost mana. dolt. And when you call "judgement a waste" you deserve to get mana starved. Lets see how you'll use those other higher damage abilities with zero mana. Any paladin worth its salt however, will occasionaly get low on mana because of consecration/holy wrath

[Deleted]

To me it seems like you have completely misunderstood the way the resource system works for paladins(holy excluded here since other resources than mana for a healer wouldnt be very balanced). Mana is not like a main resource, it should rather be seen as an aspect of the resource system together with holy power. it's used for many abilities which deal damage, but it's also the resource used for the heals, except word of glory. if we would start having issues with keeping a decent amount of mana when dealing damage, healing would not be an option, unless you have to swap your focus to healing only, but then why not just bring a healer?
i know blizzard lately wanted ret to focus more on dealing damage than dealing damage while healing a shitload, especially in 4.0.6 on friendly targets. however, that's not a valid argument to make mana a harder resource to maintain.

if we dont have any cooldowns we dont deal any real damage, just as if a dk has all runes on cd and dont have any runic power. this is how we're limited in dealing unlimited amounts of damage. for instance, a frost dk can spam obliterate a few times but then have no runes up, thus a cooldown on obliterate. but regarding crusader strike, it simply has a cooldown to keep the spamming under control. templars verdict, one of the hardest hitting abilities runs on holy power, and therefore has a limited availability. if we run oom by just dealing damage, we wont be able to build up enough holy power to get a nowhere near other classes dps.

mana is not supposed to be the resource slipping up all the time, thats how holy power works, just like combo points. but then you could say that energy for rogues works better, but again, they have unlimited availability to their abilities as long as they have enough energy, paladins dont have unlimited availability to crusader strike for instance, a cooldown solves that issue. higher mana cost would only work out if the mana regen went a LOT up, but then its just like energy basically. at least for a ret pala.

where mana comes in handy is when you have to heal a lot, its not really cheap in mana to spam flash of light, actually it drains the mana like a bitch, so if you're forced to use divine shield, you go oom in a second and have to judge and use divine plea to gain some mana again, but if you're in heavy combat, its not necessarily an option to just back out and gain mana and come back when you're ready. the judgement and divine plea gets the mana back to a level where it's possible to deal damage, but then you're in a situation where spam dispelling for instance is not an option.

basically, mana doesnt really limit the damage output, thats the purpose of cooldowns and holy power, but it does indeed limit the healing output and can give a hard time after a bubble, which to me seems like it works pretty much as a resource system is supposed to. just because most other melee dps classes use other systems shouldnt be a reason for us to as well.