New mana costs...I dont understand

[rushofcrazy]

Am I missing something with the announced mana costs for priests? It seems that both pallies and shamans got increases, and druids were hit and miss, but priests mana costs were dropped to almost nothing. I mean, being a disc priest as my main, I'm not complaining, I'm simply very VERY confused. I understand that pallies and shamans will have insane mana pools, with the 400% increase and such, but druids dont seem to have that, and their mana costs remained relatively the same. Sombody please fill this retarded person in on the plan, cause I am just completely lost on the logic lol

[frownface2000]

I know this sounds like a huge cop out of an answer, but it really is still too early in beta to figure out if these numbers are intended, or bugs, or just one iterative pass to see if Blizz likes it.

That being said, I believe the 400% increases exist for Pallies, Druids, and Shaman (I know that you mentioned Druids possibly not having it, but I know for sure that Balance does in their new talent-tree passives). This is because at least one of their specs (Ret, Feral, and Enhance) are designed to be low-mana specs in order to prevent crazy off-healing and whatnot.

Priests, on the other hand, are mana-dependent casters in all 3 specs, so they will presumably either always have small mana pools (hence the most reduction) or ALWAYS have that 400%-sized mana pool.

However, again, it's still a bit early to make these kinds of claims and theories.

[Neichus]

but druids dont seem to have that

Natural Insight is automatically given to Resto druids when they select their specialization.

I think what you're missing is the fact that Intellect will no longer provide an increase in mana pool size. Mana pools will be the same size the whole expansion. Now, for Shamans/Druids/Paladins they all have specs which are not casters so Blizzard made their base mana pool relatively small then gave caster specs enlarged mana pools. Priests however are pure casters so there's no need for that: their mana pool will naturally grow to whatever size at level 90. In that case they need to drop the cost because the old costs being founded on 'base mana' would have resulted in Gheal costing like 35,000 mana.

Edit: dang it, Frownface beat me to it.

[Sakamae]

I thought Kaesebrezen did a nice job explaining the change in another thread discussing mana regen with the new spell costs/intellect change.

1) 100k Mana at level 85
2) Int doesn't increase mana, so max mana = base mana for Priests, the other hybrid classes have max mana = 5*base mana for their casting specs.
3) 1 Spirit is 1 Mp5 (to put it in another way, 1000 spirit is 1% mana per 5 seconds)
4) You regen 5% mana per 5 seconds (or 1% mana per second)

Spamming Gheal will consume 12% per 5 seconds, you regen 7% (assuming 2k spirit), that's still a 5% deficit per 5 seconds, resulting in being oom after 100 seconds.
Even with the max spirit you can currently have (around 4k i guess?), you'd only be able to change this to a 3% deficit per 5 seconds, or being oom after 165 seconds. You're pretty much forced to use heal/spiritshell.

And going further, if blizzard regulates spirit on items like they did with BoT to firelands (as in, we don't put in many spirit items), then heal/spiritshell will never drop out of your toolkit

Most of our healing spell costs are calculated from "Base Mana", which is being changed, and that's why the spell percents had to be changed. Healers are going to have to relearn how to heal efficiently again to make it early in MoP. Regen mechanics and healing are going to be quite a bit different than they are now.

[Psychomantis]

Resto Druids get 400,000 mana, Guardian, Feral, & Balance get 100,000
Holy Paladins get 400,000 mana, Ret & Prot get 100,000
Resto Shamans get 400,000 mana, Elemental & Enhance get 100,000

Holy, Discipline, & Shadow Priests get 100,000 mana

Were build different since we don't have any Tank or melee specializations. They don't have to artificially increase the mana pool and therefore must decrease mana costs to counteract having a mana pool 1/4 the size.

Monks are an exception, even though they have a melee and tank spec they still only get 100,000 mana as a Mistweaver.

Of course this is just how I'm interpreting the info and I could be mistaken.

[rushofcrazy]

Thanks for the info guys! I knew the explanation was out there somewhere, I was just too lazy to go find it, I guess. Makes total sense now, and I'm excited for a change. I've always been a priest who "used Heal way too much" so this will be no big deal to me xD Again, thanks for the info

[MKing]

Honestly, i think they are trying to bring back pre-cata healing, which imo isn't a bad thing.

[gcsmith]

Resto Druids get 400,000 mana, Guardian, Feral, & Balance get 100,000
Holy Paladins get 400,000 mana, Ret & Prot get 100,000
Resto Shamans get 400,000 mana, Elemental & Enhance get 100,000

Holy, Discipline, & Shadow Priests get 100,000 mana

Were build different since we don't have any Tank or melee specializations. They don't have to artificially increase the mana pool and therefore must decrease mana costs to counteract having a mana pool 1/4 the size.

Monks are an exception, even though they have a melee and tank spec they still only get 100,000 mana as a Mistweaver.

Of course this is just how I'm interpreting the info and I could be mistaken.

I think thats correct, and Monks only need 100k since only the one spec has access to mana anyway

[Kaesebrezen]

Of course this is just how I'm interpreting the info and I could be mistaken.

You are mistaken with the values.

Basemana for Priests at 85 is 100k. Druid, Shamans and Paladins have 20k Basemana at 85. The casterspecs of those classes get a passive that increases basemana by 400%, which resuls in a 100k mana pool

Monk Mistweaver mana currently is 20k, but that's probably a bugged. All caster specs are supposed to have the same manapool.

[Nostradamuz]

You are mistaken with the values.

Basemana for Priests at 85 is 100k. Druid, Shamans and Paladins have 20k Basemana at 85. The casterspecs of those classes get a passive that increases basemana by 400%, which resuls in a 100k mana pool

Monk Mistweaver mana currently is 20k, but that's probably a bugged. All caster specs are supposed to have the same manapool.

Yes Mistweaver mana is currently bugged in Beta, but everything else you said is correct. All healers will have approx. the same amount of mana.

[rushofcrazy]

Wait, now I'm confused again. If all healers have about the same mana, how is that going to work with us having such cheap spells, and theirs so expensive? Are their mana regen mechanics just that much better? Are our spells also not going to hit for anything, and theirs alot? Sorry if it's obvious to everybody else, it's just not meshing in my head properly, or I'm missing something vital.

[Prod]

Posted this in the other thread:
For Priests, all our mana is "base mana". For the sake of argument, let's use these numbers, using Heal for comparison.
In the new system, we have 100k "base" mana. 2% of that is 2k, so the Heal costs 2k mana.
In the old system, we have 20k base mana, which is increased beyond 100k by int. But Heal costs 20% base mana, so 9% of 20k is 1800.

So you can kinda see that the raw mana costs remain relatively the same. The big difference now is under the old system, spell mana cost as a percentage of total mana, got smaller and smaller as you got more intellect. Under the new system, mana cost as a percentage of total mana will remain the same all throughout, which means more spirit is needed to help your mana.

-edit-
Might as well add it here. The reason priest mana costs listed on the front page look like they all went down, whereas all the other classes went up, is because for a priest, 100k mana is all base mana. For a holy paladin, on the other hand, of his total mana, 20k of that is his base mana. So a spell with 30% base mana cost would be 30% of 20k or 0.3 x 20000 = 6k which is 6% of his total mana.

[Seriesh]

If our base mana pool is 100k, and theirs 20k, then their base mana percent costs would have to be five times greater to be equal to the mana costs of ours.

1% of 100,000 is 1,000, 5% of 20,000 is 1,000. The mana IMPROVEMENT from the specialization only seems to increase total mana, not base mana, so the base would still be 20k for those classes.

Edit - bleh, being semi-braindead today makes me second to explain it, not first. :P OH well.

[DemoBytom]

what I don't get is.. If int doesn't extend mana pool.. Than it means that even with +400% from skill the mana pool will be the same for the whole expansion? It's still +400% of base mana pool, which is scaled with level not with items....?

[Rizendragon]

Honestly, i think they are trying to bring back pre-cata healing, which imo isn't a bad thing.

They're actually taking the Cataclysm healer nerf a step further this expansion. We won't see the ICC model back again for a while if ever. I expect to see very few restrictive enrage timers this expansion, but rather letting the healer's mana pools be the enrage timer.

[Thallidomaniac]

what I don't get is.. If int doesn't extend mana pool.. Than it means that even with +400% from skill the mana pool will be the same for the whole expansion? It's still +400% of base mana pool, which is scaled with level not with items....?

Pretty much. Healing will get easier by further gear upgrades because of higher stats, but not because of a higher mana pool like how it works right now.

[Rizendragon]

Wait, now I'm confused again. If all healers have about the same mana, how is that going to work with us having such cheap spells, and theirs so expensive? Are their mana regen mechanics just that much better? Are our spells also not going to hit for anything, and theirs alot? Sorry if it's obvious to everybody else, it's just not meshing in my head properly, or I'm missing something vital.

Priest base mana pool = 100,000 meaning that something that is 1% of your base mana is 1000 mana cost. The other classes have a 20,000 base mana pool meaning a 1% base mana cost is 200. So Blizzard needs to balance based off of that.

I'm not in beta so i can't confirm this, but i'm sure that Holy Light and Heal cost roughly the same right now.

[bgeesy]

Honestly, i think they are trying to bring back pre-cata healing, which imo isn't a bad thing.

What, you mean spamming big heals with no regard to mana pools and never running out of mana? I think you mean pre-LK or BC healing.

[Prod]

what I don't get is.. If int doesn't extend mana pool.. Than it means that even with +400% from skill the mana pool will be the same for the whole expansion? It's still +400% of base mana pool, which is scaled with level not with items....?

I think the point they're trying to drive in is that, if you want to have more mana, you get lots of Spirit.
Under the current system, having an increasing mana pool (due to int) meant that the mana cost of spells as a percentage of total mana kept getting smaller and smaller. Even if you don't take any mana regen source into account, spells were naturally becoming "cheaper" to cast, so to speak, which means you can rely less and less on mana regen.

[pyrogfx]

Resto Druids get 400,000 mana, Guardian, Feral, & Balance get 100,000
Holy Paladins get 400,000 mana, Ret & Prot get 100,000
Resto Shamans get 400,000 mana, Elemental & Enhance get 100,000

Holy, Discipline, & Shadow Priests get 100,000 mana

Almost that, except as far as i understood, all priest specs will have 400,000 base mana, which is why they dont have the +400% skill; they have it naturally in their stat growth. This is because all priest specs would need it, so why not just have it inbuilt.

Also mistweaver should have the hypothetical 400,000, while other specs having 100,000.