Should Blizzard "reintroduce mana"?

[MiiiMiii]

I know mana is still a thing. It matters to healers in both PvE and PvP. It matters to Arcane Mages (but it acts like any other resource bar mostly). The line ends there though.

All other dps specs don't use any mana at all. The hybrids "use it" but it is just used for your heal spells, you can go out of mana and still DPS.

This has lead to a bunch of spells being so horrible in PvP that they got removed. Spells I thought were really fun and interesting. Spells like Drain Mana, Mana Burn, Mana Tap and Viper Sting.

It has also lead to a bunch of PvE spells being way less impactful like Mana Tide Totem, Mana Totem, Blessing of Wisdom, Mana Tap +++
These spells used to help both Healers and mana DPS users.

And because the mana dps users got DPS boosts from abilities like Mana Tide Totem, they balanced this with melee having other ways of getting more DPS via stuff like Windfury Totem, Blessing of Might and Strength/Agi totems.

So, why was mana changes into what we have today?

I personally see it as something they did just to reduce complexity in balancing. Like a potential mana using DPS running out of mana in the GOGOGO M+ mentality, can't have that can we?

We all moan that the classes feel boring and I think mana mattering is something that would make the game more fun. It's fun to be a Shaman being loved for giving mana to your Shadow Priests. It's fun to be the Shadow Priest that gets that extra mana and can do some sweet DPS.

Maybe reintroducing mana will not make the game more balanced, but balanced does not mean fun?

What do you guys think?

[huth]

I don't think the few years we actually had to worry about it were any more fun than today.

And it's probably been a decade or so since i last had to pay any attention to it.

[Throwme]

It's fun to be a Shaman being loved for giving mana to your Shadow Priests. It's fun to be the Shadow Priest that gets that extra mana and can do some sweet DPS.

It wasn't fun being the mana battery as a shadow priest, knowing that you were brought along just for that one feature and not because you were actually awesome. Any shadowpriest would do and you just happened to be there at the right time.
It wasn't fun casting Innervate on that one DPS that constantly didn't know how to manage their own mana and yelled INNERVATE ME PLX I NEEDZ MANA!!! Usually Innervate would be nice to save for when the healers needed to keep us alive, but noooo, use it on the crappy DPS, of course, no problem.

THE IDEA is good. But the implementation will not be good. There was a time for that kind of gameplay and that time was years ago. You can enjoy a little bit of that gameplay in Classic, but I do not and will not ever miss it.

[Kumorii]

No... them moving away from mana bars to resource bars for most spec and classes was a good move. Could make the resource management(mana) work in different ways and with more interesting management than bland mana could ever do.

So, why was mana changes into what we have today?

I personally see it as something they did just to reduce complexity in balancing. Like a potential mana using DPS running out of mana in the GOGOGO M+ mentality, can't have that can we?

Also what in the actual fuck? Having multiple "mana bars" gives them more complexity in balancing instead of everyone having the same single mana bars.

[quez]

I'm all for more complexity to the dps specs, one thing about healing which I enjoy is to manage your mana in such a way that you hit 0% mana at the same time as the boss dies. This would though require all dps specs to have means to regulate their mana usage without having to stop using abilities, and that would require a rework of many if not all specs who use mana.

[bmjclark]

I dont think it really adds anything.

[sam86]

yes, one of biggest reason why warlock was fun was his mana tap ability, laughing while other dps are slowly wand/melee refill their mana, and hunter aspect
i enjoyed mana a LOT even as dps, now blizz f8cked healers mana harder than before, while dps 'mana' bar is useless
i hate that my paladin can use mana only for flash heal, and just 4 times too, why not just make flash heal has 4 charges and remove mana bar in first place ?

[Ophenia]

I'm all for more complexity to the dps specs, one thing about healing which I enjoy is to manage your mana in such a way that you hit 0% mana at the same time as the boss dies. This would though require all dps specs to have means to regulate their mana usage without having to stop using abilities, and that would require a rework of many if not all specs who use mana.

All the specs had passives/actives to deal with mana though. SPriests through Masochism for example, we had to deal with SWD self-damage to replenish mana in case of "problems", that was approximately interesting as we also had to take care of our lives.
There was also Vampiric Touch which replenished a few mana per tick as far as I remember, and also Dispersion.

Mana management was interesting imo, as it also gave a limit to what you could do. A SPriest couldn't spam SWP on billions of targets without getting oom (that was a problem for low transmog/mount farming though). Now that we can, they had to reduce SWP to a meaningless DoT dealing meaningless damage.

Plus, having real mana allowed the hybrid spec to do some other things. I remember assist healing/dispelling at times against Tsulong. Now I can throw 3 or 4 flash heal and gtfo

[Zendhal The Black]

Yea because running out of mana on a prot paladin was allways so much fun

[MiiiMiii]

Also what in the actual fuck? Having multiple "mana bars" gives them more complexity in balancing instead of everyone having the same single mana bars.

You are wrong here. If all DPS specs has an INFINITE DPS rotation, it is easy to balance. That is what they have today.

If mana matters, at some point you run out of mana. However, Warriors and Rogues don't run out of Mana, and still has an infinite dps rotation, so suddenly only they can deal damage.

If their goal is for both the mana users and the Warriors/Rogues to end up on the same DPS at the end of the fight, it is way more complex.

[Twdft]

I remember my hunter during WotLK switching in and out of Viper aspect, in itself kinda fun gameplay. But it also ultimately means that you are not dps'ing all the time you want because running from one trash to the other would not be enough to regen mana in the long run.

I like it much more today when I have to manage my resource to do optimal damage, as opposed to back then when I had to manage my mana to do damage at all.

[Qnubi]

I liked being a support class/player. Helping with Mana regeneration was fun. In D3 I play zDPS (basically support) and it's a lot of fun. In WoW my favorite class is Shaman, I have stun totem on CD and purge/interrupt and spot heal whenever I can.

[Raugnaut]

Blizzard has stated that they removed mana burn effects mainly for "fun" feelings - While it's a minor "Hey that's cool!" for the one doing the burning, the one being burnt was all "I may as well AFK because there isn't anything I can do about these constant burns". This has been part of their balance design since Wrath, when they started removing the various mana burn effects.

Mana management becomes a very fine line - Too far one way, it's just a resource bar. Too far the other way, and it's AFK while wanding for 30 seconds.

Personally, I feel that blizzard moved TOO far to giving everyone resource bars, ESPECIALLY Shamans. In WoD, Enhancement was 95% CD based with a few procs, whereas Elemental was 95% proc based with a weak filler. Then they just changed them to a glorified fury warrior/MM hunter. Was terrible decision making.

[Unholyground]

Class ability procs replaced mana pure and simple to tailor a cleaner rotation.

[Flurryfang]

Hmm....

I think it is one of those things, that made playing simple dps classes back in the day a bit more complicated. Just look at some of the videos we have from the Classic beta, where mages have to juggle using low mana spells and high mana spells. It is not just about doing the most dmg, but also making the most of your mana, especially if you do not have alot.

I would not mind going back to the Wrath/TBC age of mana, but Classic mana thing was really bad in my opinion. There were so many fights, where characters like Ret paladins, DPS shamans, boomkin druids and pretty much all dps casters outside of mages and warlocks would run out of mana before the fight was over. The last part of the fight was always a slug, if you had alot of ranged dps, as they were forced to do simple auto attacks/wanding, since they were out of mana. I don't miss those days.

I do miss the days of Mana/Shadow priests, they had a real function in the game, like Enhancement Shamans with their windfury totem for melee. We are also back to the time of individuelle class importance, with a lot of party buffs and "interesting" class mechanics. The idea of Prot Paladins being the only real AOE tank was also fun, especially since they were not seen by the general population before Hyjal.

In the end, i think it is a thing, that can not stand on its own. If you want mana to be a thing again for DPS casters, you have to make a reason why. Just doing it to do it, does not really make a difference other than limit play.

[VodkaBlyat]

Ressource management as DPS and TANK is a lore's illusion, well actually management of anything is actually an illusion, its too hard for donkeys to focus on what to do while fighting.. making them manage absolutly nothing but doing enormous numbers make them stronger, now warcraftlog is a real competition a real challenge.

[Throwme]

Didn't the mana gained from Vampiric Touch scale with your DPS? Meaning that the more dps you did, the more mana people gained.

Yes, but even a crappy shadowpriest brought more managains than no shadowpriest.

[Yes but actually no]

Absolutely not.
Classes worked absolutely fine with no mana in WoD yet since legion they have all played like crap, we need good class design not stupid mana restrictions. Last thing i want to deal with against mongo melee in pvp is now being out of mana again whilst dying to mongo melee auto attacks that do more dmg than my casted spells.....

[BB8]

Yeah, they should remove mana from all dps classes and make it a healer only thing.
Then it could be balanced with things where you can buff healers, replenish mana and all those nice abilities that we had in the past.

For the DPS classes some energy bars matching their spec (like some already have: Maelstrom, Insanity, etc).
These replenish faster mana and are not affected by the mana spells for healers. They could run out of energy only if they burn it.

Things like mana drain, could be renamed to energy drain (mana drain to give energy depending on which spec).

[Aldo Hawk]

Yes, I think we should go back to mana mattering again.

But here is the problem. And is that nowadays everything is super fast, and having such resource to manage slow things a lot.

It's kind of the same thing as classes that never had heals having them. Did you noticed that classes with self heals got those heals in a more 'fast usage' way? And that was at the same time rogues got self healing in the form of that finisher (don't remember the name, it was a HoT that you had to spend CP on), and now with Crimson vial?

I would do that right now, but the game as a whole should get a restructure for it not becoming worse than when it was important.