Healers and Mana: A request for observations

[KaijuLizard]

Our paladin and shaman never seem to go out of mana and sit at the top of healing endlessly. As a Holy priest, I am not struggling per say but I find myself out of mana by the fight end whereas the other 2 aren't. Our druid seems to be in the same boat as me. Im also limiting myself to mostly spot healing/single target healing and not much in the way of AOE healing as a whole.

[Wordsearch]

Rarely go OoM myself as a MWer unless I am really trying to. Get more mastery, keep ReM and TFT on CD. I don't use Mana Tea as 100 talent, instead I use FT and still have rare issues with mana.

Even during H raids with 30 people and 5-6 healers I find it hard to go OoM. Haven't needed an innervate yet, these are given to our druid/holy priest.


Are you using Essence Font alot? Enveloping Mist alot?

I rarely use EF, and only use EnvM on tank when he really really needs it. My rotation is mostly ReM, TFT and Vivify

Personal curiosity really but how do you keep yourself from going OOM. We just started Mythic this week but even in many Heroic fights I still go OOM. Does this leave you with a lot of down time? Especially since Innervate is one great things for us Innervate + Essence Font is like a raid wide cool down. Just like to pick your brain.

Edit: Mastery is also our worse stat according to everything everywhere.

[Krazzorx]

A lot depends on if people are overhealing a fight. No matter the difficulty overhealing is a bad thing for your ability to kill the boss. But many people do that anyways. And if you do overheal ofc you won't go oom as there's nothing to heal.

[Xar226]

With Spirit gone, and mana normalized, do you feel mana starved in EN? Are you comfortable in Mythic+ runs? Do you have to quaff mana regen potions to feel competitive?

Holy priest perspective here.

Honestly, I think they got it right. I don't feel "mana starved," but that also doesn't mean I can spam anything I want for as long as I want. That's how mana should be as a resource. Spell choice should matter, and there should only be so much fail from the rest of your group that you can cover for.

In dungeons (up to Mythic+ 7) I only had a mana issue a single time, which was on Helya +7. I ran out as the fight ended, but I was probably playing more aggressively than I needed to be since I never OOM'd on a dungeon boss before. That said, I do tend to drink before a boss fight (I'm usually ~50% mana after trash). The only other time I came close to OOM'ing was in a regular heroic Black Rook when we pulled two packs right out of the starting gate and nobody bothered to interrupt the heals. The damn pull lasted like five or six minutes, so going OOM was hardly unexpected.

As far as raiding (just Normal for now, my guild is casual as fuck but we'll move into Heroics soon) I've never had a mana issue. If anything, I need to figure out how to play more aggressively because I tend to end the fight with too much mana. I think I've potted once or twice. I'd like to get to a point where I'm potting each fight and ending close to OOM. Then again my guild tends to chronically overheal fights for a number of reasons so it may not be a possibility.

TL;DR: Mana is an issue when you or your group aren't playing well, which is as it should be. Otherwise I have been good to go.

[Saverem]

As a MW, I do see mana problems while doing Heroic raid and Mythic +4+. Basically, MWs are fine with low or steady damage, but with spike damage we have to use EM which costs a shit ton and high grp damage we have Essence Font which is our highest mana heal.

I've never used Mana Tea though, so that talent might be worth looking into.

[Spotnick]

As a mistweaver, you are pretty much forced to pick the Lifecycles talent for raiding if you don't want to go oom.

If you are not struggling with mana as a mistweaver, it's because you have too many healers in your raid.. because it's really REALLY easy to have mana issues, plus we have to ignore interesting talents just because we need mana preservation.

Thank god I'm a blood elf and alchemist. Lots of mana return there.

And for Mythic+, mana is irrelevant as you can drink after every pull.

[Probably]

As a MW I'm seeing a lot of contradictory information in this thread.

There are people boasting that they "never go oom" and to me this is a big red flag. If you are progressing and you aren't close to oom, or not having to use mana pots by the end of the fight all you are doin is forcing your other healers to carry your slack.

In contrast you also don't want to be oom 1 minute into the fight. There's a balance. Heal like crazy when damage is out, be smart about it, but don't mindlessly spam when it's not required. Do some dps to the boss in those times. I personally feel like mana management is an essential key to healers right now, and I hope it stays that way longer than previous expansions.

[Zka]

Disc is soo easy to OOM if you overdo atonements. Otherwise it's okay, if you have problems, skip schism

[Thra]

Personal curiosity really but how do you keep yourself from going OOM. We just started Mythic this week but even in many Heroic fights I still go OOM. Does this leave you with a lot of down time? Especially since Innervate is one great things for us Innervate + Essence Font is like a raid wide cool down. Just like to pick your brain.

Edit: Mastery is also our worse stat according to everything everywhere.

I don't spam heals the whole time. I ensure my ReM is on CD. Save my TFT for ReM to get out 3. If the damage is smooth I'll EnvM the target taking damage (mostly tank) and just channel my SoothMist into them. You have to trust your other healers, and they have to trust you. If your trying to solo heal EVERYONE who is taking damage you're going to go OOM and have a lot of overhealing. I know the other healers will snap focus the tanks during raid wide damage, so I tend to aim my heals at those lower in the raid frames to avoid overhealing targets my other healers will focus.

Mastery is probably the strongest stat for 5man content. I don't gem/chant for it at all, but I get a bit from my gear. It is free heal's from your ReM, EM and Vivify cast's. The more mastery the bigger the heal (for free). Haste is our worst stat IMO and lots of haste causes you to go oom quickly. Crit/Vers is what I mostly stack for bigger heals.

As a mistweaver, you are pretty much forced to pick the Lifecycles talent for raiding if you don't want to go oom.

If you are not struggling with mana as a mistweaver, it's because you have too many healers in your raid.. because it's really REALLY easy to have mana issues, plus we have to ignore interesting talents just because we need mana preservation.

Thank god I'm a blood elf and alchemist. Lots of mana return there.

And for Mythic+, mana is irrelevant as you can drink after every pull.

I also thought Lifecycles was going to be mandatory, but haven't used it once since Legion launched. I enjoy the moving channel too much. How is having too many healers in the group a problem for mana? In my head the more healers the less I have to heal. When we 2 healed norm 7/7 last week that is when I struggled for mana.

As a MW I'm seeing a lot of contradictory information in this thread.

There are people boasting that they "never go oom" and to me this is a big red flag. If you are progressing and you aren't close to oom, or not having to use mana pots by the end of the fight all you are doin is forcing your other healers to carry your slack.

In contrast you also don't want to be oom 1 minute into the fight. There's a balance. Heal like crazy when damage is out, be smart about it, but don't mindlessly spam when it's not required. Do some dps to the boss in those times. I personally feel like mana management is an essential key to healers right now, and I hope it stays that way longer than previous expansions.

When we were progressing on H Il'gynoth I was top 1 or 2 on the healing done metres (which means nothing btw) and always finished our wipes with about 30-40% mana after using a mana pot. Other healers had been OOM for about 20-30 sec. Healers carrying each others slack is how it seems to work atm. No use all of your healers blowing their load in the first 3min of the fight to have no heals in the back end of the fight when it really counts. I learnt this early on watching everyone run out of mana. So I started conserving my mana for the end of the fight for when others ran out of gas.

It is such a good system, I am enjoying the experience of going back to what a traditional healer role was all about 'Keeping people alive'. It became much like the dps with the Healing Metre's being an indicator of performance. It doesn't matter if your last on the healing metre's in your group. All that matters is that stuff is dying and it is not your group members.

[JonBeMerkin]

7/7N 3/7H resto shaman here with tons of m+ done

So if you are doing regular heroics and mythics you will never go oom at 840+

When you start doing M+chest runs (2 or 3) you will go oom pretty fast because you have to spam your "flash heal" type spell CONSTANTLY. This goes for any class. Your basic slower less mana ability is just not good in high damage intake situations.

For raiding you will always go oom its inevitable. First 40-60% of the fight I call "Conserve" mode were basically I conserve mana doing all cheap spells. At the last 40% of the fight or so I call the "Unload" phase were I look to start using some mana and hopefully not go oom before the fight ends.

The mana is sorta an issue but I enjoy it...Makes the game a bit more fun. Running ahead on a +6 key to try and get a sip before the next pull..Actually thinking okay i'm 10% mana hes about to pull 3 packs what can I do here rather then just spamming everything I have because i can't go oom.

[Spotnick]

I also thought Lifecycles was going to be mandatory, but haven't used it once since Legion launched. I enjoy the moving channel too much. How is having too many healers in the group a problem for mana? In my head the more healers the less I have to heal. When we 2 healed norm 7/7 last week that is when I struggled for mana.

Mostly talking about 20 man fixed progression, if you 2 healed normal, I doubt you used Essence Font a lot and had 20 people.


But I see many people using Mist Wrap now, and I've been using it for Mythic Ursoc.

[Glorious Leader]

So after having raided with several groups my initial impression stands. Maybe more than any other expansion you need dps to step its game up if you expect to be able to function as a healer. You can really only do so much. Stuff needs to die fast. People need to avoid shit. You cant bail people out.

[Thra]

Mostly talking about 20 man fixed progression, if you 2 healed normal, I doubt you used Essence Font a lot and had 20 people.

All true. 2 healed with 14 people. Did not use EF much.

So after having raided with several groups my initial impression stands. Maybe more than any other expansion you need dps to step its game up if you expect to be able to function as a healer. You can really only do so much. Stuff needs to die fast. People need to avoid shit. You cant bail people out.

Very very very true. Our heal team caught some flak the first week of raiding. Basically "you guys need to pick up your game, healing was shit. People dying all the time". When the damage taken was brought to the attention of the raid lead that heat very quickly shifted. We can't cover the asses of bad's 'forgetting' to move out of stuff, if we do try then mana will be an issue.

[Glorious Leader]

All true. 2 healed with 14 people. Did not use EF much.



Very very very true. Our heal team caught some flak the first week of raiding. Basically "you guys need to pick up your game, healing was shit. People dying all the time". When the damage taken was brought to the attention of the raid lead that heat very quickly shifted. We can't cover the asses of bad's 'forgetting' to move out of stuff, if we do try then mana will be an issue.

Yep. Anothet very good example of this is ilygnoth. If your healers are oom by the time the first eyeball is done its almso all entirely on dps. Adds didnt die fast enough, avoidable dmg wasbt avoided, hstonr and personal cooldowns werent used etc etc.

[Simulacrum]

When we were progressing on H Il'gynoth I was top 1 or 2 on the healing done metres (which means nothing btw) and always finished our wipes with about 30-40% mana after using a mana pot. Other healers had been OOM for about 20-30 sec. Healers carrying each others slack is how it seems to work atm. No use all of your healers blowing their load in the first 3min of the fight to have no heals in the back end of the fight when it really counts. I learnt this early on watching everyone run out of mana. So I started conserving my mana for the end of the fight for when others ran out of gas.

It is such a good system, I am enjoying the experience of going back to what a traditional healer role was all about 'Keeping people alive'. It became much like the dps with the Healing Metre's being an indicator of performance. It doesn't matter if your last on the healing metre's in your group. All that matters is that stuff is dying and it is not your group members.

Sounds to me like you guys are overhealing a lot if you can just slack off for most of the fight.

Though at least for Il'gynoth I can see why you'd do that. Fight is so boring to heal, but punishes you really hard for slacking off (if you don't overheal it...), which is a pretty deadly combination. I have my team overheal it as well when we can, just because it's so annoying not to.

[Lykurgos]

Currently progressing on The Dragon of Nightmare Mythic and as a Resto Druid i think mana is in a tight spot. The Nightmare Dragons are a Resto Druid fight with all the ticking dmg and you are forced to heal very much, so i have to be very careful, or i will be oom when the boss is at 40%.

I think there are some Specs wich are more mana starved then others. Especially Paladins come to my mind, who seem to struggle to go oom on any fight. While the Holy Priest and I are oom, the Paladin is at 60%. I don't like this imbalance in mana usage.

Don't get me wrong i don't want that Blizzard nerfs Paladins, i just want some equality like lower the mana cost of some specs a lil bit? I don't want this Addon to be the beginning of Cataclysm all over again, wich was a nightmare for healers in terms of mana (besides Paladin who had no Problems at all - hm sounds familiar) But we won't get any mana reg at all. I don't know if I enjoy this healing model.

[Deleted]

What I noticed it is eventually unforgiving for the healers when something gets messed up. Either people get globalled (like tank error on HC Ursoc) or DPS die so fast that by the time the GCD finishes of the thing you were already doing you might be to late to do something about it. If it the impact of the mess-up is more raid wide the healers go oom. Maybe it is working as intented but for me personally it feels very frustrating at times, I just sit there staring at my screen and watch people die is not in a healers nature lol.

[Deleted]

Im struggling quite a lot in raids honestly. If you go ham approach you'll be oom by around 60%, so definately need to conserve during periods of the fight. As a rdruid.

[Thra]

Sounds to me like you guys are overhealing a lot if you can just slack off for most of the fight.

Though at least for Il'gynoth I can see why you'd do that. Fight is so boring to heal, but punishes you really hard for slacking off (if you don't overheal it...), which is a pretty deadly combination. I have my team overheal it as well when we can, just because it's so annoying not to.

You are probably right. We are running with 5 healers atm for 28man raid. Every says we need 5 healers, I don't feel it and have voiced that we should drop one for more dps but not my decision.

Ive seen a team 2man heal a Heroic Il'gynoth with 24man raid. This was after the nerf/buff and they still did it in 1 phase. Apparently on Heroic you can still do it in one phase, so hopefully we do that this week!