Replenishment will have to go eventually.

[kardar]

While doing normalmodes mana didn't matter at all really, but during heroic progression its just as important as it was when i just dinged 85 on my healer. i run with around 3100 combatregen on my pally and i can still oom during the end of the fights on alot of the hardmode fights

[killars]

I know when I ran raids on my priest I was pretty mana starved (disc) and this was before they increased the mana on PW:S and I was in BIS pre-raiding gear.Only when you receive large amount of Int and high gear do you really see Replenishment being... "too good". Also the normal mode content wasn't meant IMO to be done in loads of epics, but rather in a fair amount of blues and in that regard it is really hard to maintain mana without replenishment. Int is meant to be the super stat by the way. Agility is far better for Agility bases classes, Strength is far better for Strength based classes, Intellect is far better for Intellect based classes.

According to WoWProgress only 21% of raiding guilds have even killed a heroic difficulty boss. I would think it would make it tremendously harder on those healers to progress on bosses with less mana or less healing power if they felt they needed to stack spirit instead of int especially moving forward into heroics which is a large jump in difficulty to normals.

[Niter]

Sometimes I think about a model where spells cost a lot less, but healers are unable to regenerate mana without items and/or some skills/talents. Maybe that could make mana and decision making more important, since you would not just be able to step back for a while and regain mana spent unwisely. I am not sure how good would it be though.

[Wilderness]

That's just a cause of people getting geared. As long as Blizzard makes mana important after each released tier then it wouldn't matter exactly how much you need mana regeneration within a tier. When transferring from a normal mode to a hard mode, it's only logically that your through-put should go up because incoming damage will go up as well, everyone knows that. Having the regen to keep on healing but being unable to heal enough to stabilize and keep a raid up just won't work in general. Some will get around it, but it'll serve as a massive roadblock for most.
If mana didn't matter, then you wouldn't focus on mana regeneration until the point where you could heal without OoM'ing, you'd just go straight for through-put.

Just because you stop focusing on one stat at one point doesn't mean the healing model fails. It'll be a failiure in t12 if nothing change, however.

Definitely this.

If you are not well geared for heroics, then mana is an issue. If you are not well-geared for raids then mana is an issue. And in some of the hardest heroic raids mana is very much an issue. There will always be points where you are geared enough for the content that you are doing where mana is not a concern, or fights whose mechanics are not designed to test healers or healers mana, but rather raid coordination and awareness. So not every fight has to be one where healers are in danger of going oom. But even at the end of this tiers heroic raids mana can and is definitely a concern so overall they are doing a pretty decent job.

But as Yuanrang mentions, the real test will be in how everyone fares as we move into Firelands. People in 372 gear shouldn't notice that big of a difference in normal mode Firelands, but someone going from 359 T11 into T12 content should have the same mana issues that early on in this tier people had as well. If they do it that way then the system is working well. If people in 359 T11 can walk in and not really care about mana then its not working the way they said it would/should.

[cleotaurus]

You're argument assumes that healers are no longer concerned about mana. This is not true. You talk of "haven't even done that many heroics yet," and thats probably why you have this false assumption, because the damage in easy mode is not significant. On hard modes mana is definitely an issue. If people don't dodge all the avoidable damage then the healers will likely go oom. For example, if arcane storm is allowed to tick more than a couple times in a fight (if we are even able to survive it) then I will go OOM. On heroic chim, I am usually close to oom by the 4th feud, and feud is the only time I am really spamming spells. I have close to 3k spirit when you include the druid 4pc and tsunami stacks. We are still working on h magmaw because mana is a major issue (since we aren't avoiding as much damage as we can).

I really can't see us reaching a point of infinite mana any time in this expansion.

[Mongoose19]

SP had it entire TBC. Was insanely powerful as it gave mana return after how much dmg the priest did.

This what I loved about TBC, unique feeling of class. Shadow priest being the mana baterry, having to stack spell power everywhere he could. That was really original and refreshing playstyle. Now everything is the same and dull...

[Krakau]

Krakau does not understand the reason this intellect stat is to be so coveted. Krakau and warrior community continue to agree that it is bad stat. Mastery is much better for your shield to block anger from bad enemy.

[Affiniti]

And we haven't even progressed through many hard-modes yet.

So how about you go do some hardmodes and let us know.


Please note that encounters aren't designed to be killed in full BIS -- at that point yeah healer mana prob won't matter, but that's because the encounter wasn't balanced around full BiS. Encounters are designed around having mostly non-heroic epics, with a few heroic epics thrown in (depends on the fight. Later fights are balanced around more gear etc).


So saying "Our healers have an average ilvl of 361 and we aren't having mana issues on normalmodes" is rather funny.


Another thing to note. Try doing some of the first hardmodes before they nerfed them 3 times making it that much easier



Let me know!

[Sunseeker]

Spirit Regen = Sqrt(Intellect) * Spirit *.016725

That is why people stack int rather than spirit, not because of replenishment. Increased returns from spirit along with the other things you listed. The max mana pool also increases return from % based mana returns like rapture from a disc priest, for example.

THIS. The equation that effects regen and combat regen means that higher Int will show significantly better returns than higher spirit. Reasonably speaking, most healers will get spirit in place of another secondary stat other classes would normally get. Usually hit, crit, or expertise, since none of those are necessary to the vast majority of actions taken while healing, or already given through spirit-to-hit conversions. Healers should be wearing mostly healy gear, you're going to get 90-100% the int and some additional spirit. Having a piece with say, int, sta, mastery and haste is still a very good choice though, as those are two secondary stats that tend to be invaluable to healers.

When our group was lesser geared and lesser experienced(less heals to go out and more needed), mana was certainly an issue. As most of our healers are now sitting pretty in mostly normal epics, yes, mana has become less of an issue. But this is true of any content is it not? As you over-gear the content, you're going to have less and less trouble with the original issues it presented.

[Yalingo]

If your resto shaman is stacking int, they're doing it wrong.

[Tyleiran]

If you have 2 Resto shamans you can essentially forget about mana issues (in 25 man at least). The problem is that unless spell mana costs go up nobody will ever run out of mana again next tier. The only thing that would cause healers to burn more mana next tier would be to have tons more haste on gear, but as a mosly shielding disc priest that won't even affect the maximum mana I can burn though while spamming as hard as possible.

I think there is a problem with how healers scale where keeping them in the sweet spot is almost impossible. The line between always oom and infinite mana is extremely thin right now and by next tier everyone will be over it by a large margin(and they can't just up mana costs across the board or something because that would make new 85s in blues unable to heal anything).

[Imurbandaid]

Was my first thought as well.

But I too believe that int is too strong compared to spirit. I've often hoped they'd remove replenishment just to help it a bit.

Do you have something against intellect that you would rather see all gems filled with spirit than all gems filled with int?

[Michalev]

SP had it entire TBC. Was insanely powerful as it gave mana return after how much dmg the priest did.

^this was not replenishment though. Vampiric Touch in those days was party only and the amount of mana return had nothing to do with any characters stacks except the shadow priest's damage. Very different mechanic.

[Imurbandaid]

Blizzard cannot really do much about mana/regen mattering anymore...if they increase cost of spells then fresh 85 healers wont be able to play...we are geared, we outgear the mana problems FOR THE MOST PARt...all Blizz can do in the future is make fights very healing intensive where there is shit tons of incoming damage making us heal more often which will make us have to use our cooldowns efficiently to keep mana...that or do something silly like the vezax hardmode mechanic where you are unable to regain your mana.

[Solia]

THIS. The equation that effects regen and combat regen means that higher Int will show significantly better returns than higher spirit. Reasonably speaking, most healers will get spirit in place of another secondary stat other classes would normally get. Usually hit, crit, or expertise, since none of those are necessary to the vast majority of actions taken while healing, or already given through spirit-to-hit conversions. Healers should be wearing mostly healy gear, you're going to get 90-100% the int and some additional spirit. Having a piece with say, int, sta, mastery and haste is still a very good choice though, as those are two secondary stats that tend to be invaluable to healers.

When our group was lesser geared and lesser experienced(less heals to go out and more needed), mana was certainly an issue. As most of our healers are now sitting pretty in mostly normal epics, yes, mana has become less of an issue. But this is true of any content is it not? As you over-gear the content, you're going to have less and less trouble with the original issues it presented.

You do realize that means square root and not the square of Int right? The equation makes Int contribute significantly less and less to Spirit Regen as you gain Int (which will naturally happen as ilvl goes up now) relative to the same increase in Spirit.

I find that a lot of the mana issues people have in normals are because people are taking avoidable damage (not moving, not interrupting, ect.) MOST AoE raid damage is timed and telegraphed to allow for healers to make efficient use of their AoE heals once they are familiar with the encounter.
A great example of this on a 5 man scale is Baron Ashbury in SFK, at first it was seemingly one of the most healing intensive fights many healers have ever seen. But I dare say now, that healing it is a joke, assuming P&S gets interrupted (or dispelled.)

And for keeping healers' mana an issue to worry about, I'm just afraid they will just make more unavoidable raid damage (much like ICC) to create a constant, but annoying mana sink for healers when you are not 'actively' healing tanks or individual people taking damage. Maybe also make haste stacked healers more important and almost required.

I do miss the old VT system of our DPS translating into MP5. But it also gave Blizz a reason to severely limit our DPS.

[DomBomb1]

I think the point was: MANA doesn't matter anymore... AGAIN

Yeah? His point was also that people stopped going for spirit partway through regular content. Except that's flawed because... oh yeah... hardmodes are HARDER.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

How is it flawed? Int = spellpower and spell crit for all casters, if you think we stop stacking spirit because we dont need it you're wrong. We stack INT in gems since it's better than spirit. Besides we reforge to spirit if there's no spirit on the item.
What? do warriors, rogues, mages and so on gem for anything but their primary stat? if so tell them to stop, gemming primary stat is ALLWAYS better than gemming secondary stats (unless you absolutely have to gem for hitcap or exp cap etc, but then it's a gear issue overall.)

[Brashara]

I've hated replen since it was first introduced. Its a stupid idea to have SUCH a necessary buff provided by SO few classes. The difference between having it and not having it is completely staggering.

Maybe I just don't like it, but its felt awkward since it was introduced at the end of TBC. Maybe its because I was an Spriest, but I liked the TBC model significantly better.

[Desamorix]

Replenishment is why Spriests were called Batteries in TBC.

On topic, I don't think it will need to go eventually... I honestly hardly notice it to be honest.

[Belloc]

I think the point was: MANA doesn't matter anymore... AGAIN

Try progression raiding (heroic modes) and then come back and say that.