Recent Active Mana Regeneration Updates

[Zerxes]

I have healed in the past when the 3 sec rule was a way of getting some needed mana regen, although our new cahnge of getting 2.5% mana back every 4 sec for 8 sec needs work. As im sure it will since i know its only Alpha.

Anyone kinda more interested in having the shaman telluric current vs our inervate. A passive which awards 1.25% mana for a free lightning bolt, vs us who have to basically not heal for 10 sec for 5% mana, or 6 sec for 2.5, or lose a certain amount of that regen'ing mana if we cast wrath during that time. Even pallies now 7% gain from spending 3 hp (granted i dont actually know how difficult it is for them to accumulate that nor how quickly).

Will be interested to see its progression as we move towards beta and onwards. Thoughts?...

[exochaft]

Don't want to venture too far out of my normal discussion area, but I figured I could help out a little.

Innervate doesn't have a cooldown after this change, which is a big make-or-break with the design. At least as a healing druid, HoT's could still be rolling and effectively be healing still while Innervate is going, plus having no CD on the ability would allow its use whenever there's a small break in the fight without losing any resource. I will concede, though, that the trade-off involved with some classes is nowhere near equal, although it could be a matter of perspective (Innervate requires no target or resource generation, while other classes need either of those). From an outsider's perspective, I deem the change has good intent, but is not quite on-the-mark in terms of execution yet.

However... I shall not forgive Blizz for depriving non-resto druids a way to get mana back out of combat! Although, if they stop killing my mana pool when I change specs, that would alleviate most of my grief.

[Glurp]

Telluric currents is weaker in terms of Mana regen because it allows the Shaman to contribute in some form to DPS. Innervate (judging by rough numbers) is going to be the best for active mana regen with the added downside of needing to channel it.

[Zerxes]

Like anything it will take time getting used to, and i can see it being decent if u can find 6-10 sec windows frequent enough assuming u have mana issues to begin with. Though any druid would or could use it regardless of mana need (assuming not at 100%) if the opportunity presented itself. I personally like the idea, just will be interested to see the progression as time goes on.

[Exinium]

Hm. I'm indifferent. On one hand, I played Mistweaver for so long, and they already kinda' have active mana regeneration with mana tea. However, it simply devolved over time into clicking the button every time it was off of cooldown, not really putting any thought into it or anything. What concerns me is our mana regen now is directly tied to our throughput. As fights go on and other healers' mana dips, our ability to heal will be severely impacted by 8-second downtimes while we recover mana. However, in hindsight, this isn't a big deal. I imagine it'll be Rejuv until satisfied, Swiftmend, Wild Growth if needed, then during this period of cooldowns/hot uptime, recover some mana. I don't know, it has drawbacks and benefits. I think overall, as a class, we're pretty in control of our mana use right now, and function well on high throughput or high efficiency situations. With that in mind, we don't really need a change.

[ryklin]

"HI, we're blizzard, we removed the god awful 5 second rule so we could add it back in 2 xpacs later, but for all classes rather than just the 2 spirit classes,"

is kind of my take on it, I really hope it doesn't happen, it wasn't fun last time and I doubt encouraging us to do less will be a positive gameplay choice again, it'd be more interesting for pvp where you could encouraging cc chains on 2 dps and trying to force heals out to prevent mana gains and such, but in pve it looks less than fun

[Alltat]

It's basically in combat drinking. It won't make it live.

[Glurp]

It's basically in combat drinking. It won't make it live.

Pretty much. It's fairly obvious that guilds can exploit this easily to heal through pretty much anything, just take turns having healers shit all over their mana and then take turns regening while others cover the rest of the healing.

It's got the same problem as the 5.0 version of Solace for Priests, where it was just retardedly OP because it allowed them to have an endless mana pool.

[Lyoncet]

Two things to note: the latest patch notes say it's cancelled if the Druid spends mana on healing, not mana in general. Also, someone (Celestalon?) said Resto's having Wrath's mana cost removed, so you'd essentially be Telluric Currents-ing but with the upside of still being able to Innervate even if you have no target to DPS, which Shamans and Priests can't do.

I still wouldn't be surprised if this didn't make it into live, but just wanted to point that out. Seems like it's a decent way of maintaining your mana during low-damage times while contributing DPS, not a way of bringing you back up if you're OOM.

[Kalesh]

Pretty much. It's fairly obvious that guilds can exploit this easily to heal through pretty much anything, just take turns having healers shit all over their mana and then take turns regening while others cover the rest of the healing.

It's got the same problem as the 5.0 version of Solace for Priests, where it was just retardedly OP because it allowed them to have an endless mana pool.

That won't happen. 5% mana over 10 seconds (including the 2 second cast time), healers won't go inactive for 100 seconds just to regain 50% of their mana back after an intensive section.

[xytech]

Sounds awfully boring.

[Exinium]

That won't happen. 5% mana over 10 seconds (including the 2 second cast time), healers won't go inactive for 100 seconds just to regain 50% of their mana back after an intensive section.

Suppose Innervate in its current state restores 30% of your mana. You're able to cast it twice in most encounters, which last roughly 6 minutes. That's 60% regen. It would require 120 seconds, or two minutes total downtime during the course of the fight to regen as much as we get now. Seems pretty weak.

[thigan]

Next expansion comparing druids will be about anything that is it right now + DPS. The DPS from Wrath pretty much will define if the druid is maximizing healing throughput, more Innervates == more expensive spells. Of course you have the option to do nothing while innervate, good luck showing that log to anybody tho.

- - - Updated - - -

Sounds awfully boring.

Exactly the opposite, you will have be forced to plan innervates + wrath spams to be able to abuse mana regen as much as possible.

[Deleted]

Hey,
First let me start of by saying that I like the idea of active mana regeneration. If the end result is something similar to how tanking works i'd be very happy.

This is from a heroic raiders perspective.

Now onto why I don't like the current iteration of innervate. The biggest problem for me regarding healing is when I have nothing to cast and just stand around doing nothing while people around me are fighting. I'm not sure why, but it feels extremely bad, like I should be doing something, I am not thus I must be bad.

I like to play in a rhythm and it usually consists of healing the stuff that I know is coming and reacting to unexpected damage spikes. To keep myself in rhythm I always make sure I am casting something. What I like is casting nourish on the tank when there is nothing to do. Obviously right now it is not viable due to high damage in heroic raids and high amount of passive mana regen. However when I was starting to get into SoO and had no heroic cloak or meta gem, I loved healing that way.

It is pretty clear to me that Innervate as is right now on alpha would break my rhythm and I fear I would not like the class. There are some easy fixes to this so I will not dwell on it. Instead I'd like to offer another, a bit more drastic, mana generation method.

Lets say Innervate has a 1,5 sec cast time and regenerates X amount of mana, has no CD. It can be cast on other healing classes/specs.

Here is what this change would hopefully accomplish. It would add a filler spell that would not break your rhythm. Give players a choice of healing/ mana regen.
The second part is a bit more controversial (restoring mana for other healers) . For it to work It would require other healing classes to have similar abilities, restore mana for other healers, because otherwise you run a risk of making one class a mana battery. It would make healers harder to balance. Why I think It would be a fun mechanic in a game:
1. Adds another dimension to healing (health bars full? check mana bars)
2. Raises the skill cap for healing ( how do you measure a good healer? eHPS, mana regen, burst HPS, sustained HPS?)
3. Changes healing without changing it too much ( You can still do the healing you want, Its just that there is some extra stuff to do if you want to)

In the end, This is just a suggestion and I would like to hear other players opinions. Do you enjoy healing rhythm and would you like a new mechanic for healing. Maybe you don't like active mana regen. Why?

TLTR: Alpha innervate breaking immersion, new active mana regeneration idea.

[Glurp]

Exactly the opposite, you will have be forced to plan innervates + wrath spams to be able to abuse mana regen as much as possible.

Or you just coordinate with your other healers taking turns spamming mana regen and healing suddenly becomes trivial for a lot of guilds because Blizzard can't balance healing requirements around requiring intricate mana regen rotations from every guild.

[Exinium]

Or you just coordinate with your other healers taking turns spamming mana regen and healing suddenly becomes trivial for a lot of guilds because Blizzard can't balance healing requirements around requiring intricate mana regen rotations from every guild.

Only that won't happen. Healing will be less burst and more sustained, so activity in the fights is going to be much more relevant than it is now. For example, I could sit around doing nothing on Heroic Sha of Pride but healing with Effloresence, and as long as I have a few Rejuvs up and Wild Growth, I'll not only not spend mana, I'll perform well in healing. If there's constant damage coming out, you can't exactly afford to have downtime. I think the idea for Reto Druids will be : "Is Wild Growth on cooldown? Is Swiftmend on cooldown? Is there any burst damage coming up?" If the answer is no to all of those, slap an Innervate on for some mana recovery.

[Glurp]

Only that won't happen. Healing will be less burst and more sustained, so activity in the fights is going to be much more relevant than it is now. For example, I could sit around doing nothing on Heroic Sha of Pride but healing with Effloresence, and as long as I have a few Rejuvs up and Wild Growth, I'll not only not spend mana, I'll perform well in healing. If there's constant damage coming out, you can't exactly afford to have downtime. I think the idea for Reto Druids will be : "Is Wild Growth on cooldown? Is Swiftmend on cooldown? Is there any burst damage coming up?" If the answer is no to all of those, slap an Innervate on for some mana recovery.

It's hard to say for obvious reasons (not knowing any encounters) but you can safely assume there are going to be varied healing styles for fights, even though Blizzard have said they intent to make healing rely less on burst healing you can't exactly design every fight for an expansion to be the same, there will still be varying sorts of damage intake in a raid.

In terms of "You can't just sit around and regen mana when you want" that is exactly what I said in terms of how skilled guilds could take advantage of it. Because you cannot simply just regen mana whenever, guilds who are good at coordinating advanced tactics/rotations could EASILY assign a rotation within their healing team to take turns blowing through a lot of mana with strong heals then regening it while the next person in the rotation does the exact same thing. The problem that will then create is that Blizzard cannot balance the healing requirements of fights assuming that every guild will (or could) do that, so suddenly for the guilds who are skilled enough to take advantage of advanced tactics, a lot of healing requirements are trivialized for progression purposes.

Imagine if Hymn of Hope didn't have a cooldown, that is pretty much what is going to happen to healing in WoD if these changes go live.

[Trubo]

Pros: No cooldown

Cons: Can't do anything for 10 seconds without either canceling Innervate or consuming some of that small amount of mana.

If they're going to force this Innervate down our throats then Wrath had better be free to cast during its duration. Don't want to be the only healer that's effectively picking our nose whenever we need to regen mana.

[Exinium]

It's hard to say for obvious reasons (not knowing any encounters) but you can safely assume there are going to be varied healing styles for fights, even though Blizzard have said they intent to make healing rely less on burst healing you can't exactly design every fight for an expansion to be the same, there will still be varying sorts of damage intake in a raid.

In terms of "You can't just sit around and regen mana when you want" that is exactly what I said in terms of how skilled guilds could take advantage of it. Because you cannot simply just regen mana whenever, guilds who are good at coordinating advanced tactics/rotations could EASILY assign a rotation within their healing team to take turns blowing through a lot of mana with strong heals then regening it while the next person in the rotation does the exact same thing. The problem that will then create is that Blizzard cannot balance the healing requirements of fights assuming that every guild will (or could) do that, so suddenly for the guilds who are skilled enough to take advantage of advanced tactics, a lot of healing requirements are trivialized for progression purposes.

Imagine if Hymn of Hope didn't have a cooldown, that is pretty much what is going to happen to healing in WoD if these changes go live.

The mana regen is pretty minor. It takes you out of the loop for quite awhile. Can you cast it on other people?

[Deleted]

It all seems an unnecessarily complicated version of stop casting for 5 seconds, and mana regen skyrockets.