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There’s been some discussion and confusion about mana pools, spell costs, and intellect. I was thrown off when I checked out some of the spell costs. Turns out, I had forgotten about the changes coming up for healers. Here’s a summary of the direction we’re going (all of us healers, not just Priests, mind you).
Even wrote about it in a Raid Rx column a while ago.
- Every healer gets a static mana pool amount (100k mana).
- Intellect affects the strength of your spells only. No longer increases mana pool.
- Spirit still remains a mana regeneration stat. More Spirit, faster regeneration.
- Many spell costs are being adjusted to account for the change to mana pools.
- Mana regeneration based on mana pool size is gone.
Here’s a truncated version of the blue post.
With the change we are proposing, Intellect provides bigger heals and Spirit improves longevity. For healers, there should not always be a clear cut answer. Intellect may still be the superior stat, but not by as much as it is today. […] Mana pools can still be large (we are thinking 100,000 mana at level 85) so that it doesn’t feel too bizarre to existing casters and doesn’t feel too much like rage or energy.
What happened to our mana pools?
This is an idea of what the base mana pool of healers will look like. Assume none of these classes have chosen a spec yet.
- Druid: 20,000 mana
- Paladin: 20,000 mana
- Priest: 100,000 mana
- Monk: 100 Chi (Just a figure I’m using)
- Shaman: 20,000 mana
Remember, pretend that these are base mana figures.
But there’s more
With the exception of Priests and Monks, each class gains an ability which modifies their mana pool when they select a spec.
- Druids get Natural Insight
- Paladins get Holy Insight
- Shaman receive Meditation
Druids, Paladins, and Shaman have their mana pools dramatically increased by 400%. That should then bring everyone’s mana pool up to 100,000. When a Monk switches to Mistweaver, their energy bar will be replaced with mana. As they’re the only monk spec that uses mana, it’s assumed that 100,000 is the base value.
In addition, we think fixed mana pools will help healers scale better with content. Some players seem to be interpreting the 5.0 design as healing 5-player dungeons should be easy but healing raids should be very hard. That is certainly a better situation than dungeons being very hard and raids being easy, but neither is really the goal.
What about the costs?
Let’s use a few of the different healing spells as examples.
- Shamans: Greater Healing Wave – 36% of base mana
- Priests: Greater Heal – 6% of base mana
- Paladins: Divine Light – 35% of base mana
Greater Heal ends up costing about 6,000 mana (6% of 100,000). Greater Healing Wave and Divine Light end up being around 8,500 mana (35% of 25,000 mana). Remember that the percentages are centered around base mana which hasn’t been modified by mana boosting talents just yet. This means that their absolute values should be about the same range. Shouldn’t be off by more than a few hundred or a couple thousand. The variance is most likely due to the difference in class mechanics and spells.
So we’re going back to entry-level Cataclysm healing
In a word, yes.
As we were working our way throughout Tier 11, we had to really work on using our mana neutral healing spells (Heal, Healing Wave, etc) as much as possible. As our gear progressively improved, we found ourselves dropping Heal altogether from Firelands and above. Now we’re hitting the big heals and AoE heals more often. You can expect this long term model to stay the same for Mists.
A fight like Phase 2 Beth’tilac on heroic is about as mana-intensive as things get, and that phase doesn’t last very long, so your mana-regen mechanics and cooldowns should be sufficient to keep you going. That won’t change in 5.0.
I still don’t understand
TLDR: Think of mana as energy. It doesn’t scale or increase with gear. Mana regeneration will go up with gear allowing you to cast more spells before running out of mana.
Uh oh. I hope I got my math right.
>.>
lololol
20,000 x 4 = 80,000
25,000 x 4 = 100,000
I find it interesting that Holy Insight for pallies also grant hit based on spirit.
@clra2 It would be even more interesting if any of the hits to this wet paper sack would get me out of it.
These changes should definitely help break up the current monotony of itemization for healers. In Cataclysm, the only other stats I worried about when gemming were haste and mastery, both of which were tied to int in an orange gem. With this change to int/spirit and healer mana pools, it gives us our choice of itemization back, rather than just chanting the mantra of “int, int, int” over and over again.Your comparison of the new mana system to energy is very apt in my opinion, Matt.
@Arajal Yeah, I love having the additional flexibility back. Though something tells me that at like… tier 15, we’re probably not going to value Spirit as highly with the innate Spirit we’d get from the superior gear and such.
@mattuzzi Possibly, but considering that as content gets more difficult, more mana needs to be expended to maintain the amount of healing needed, we may still end up wanting spirit nearly as much as we’ll want int. Even in the current model, I’ve found myself gearing a bit more towards spirit for fights like Heroic Spine, due to the fact that, even with all the perks of stacking int, I still come up short on having enough mana towards the end of the fight. In T15, if fights end up requiring the same amount of relative healing as H Spine, I could very much see us valuing spirit and int equally..
I don’t like the idea of a fixed mana pool, can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I just don’t
At the end of the day I am not too fussed about a standard mana pool or about anything that seems to be changing. Some will be good some will be bad, just different from what they are today.As always we will adjust and end up loving it. I really don’t think we will not be able to sustain our raid teams that would just defeat the cause. Just think of how much more spirit we are getting, it’s going to be crazy numbers. Snd if something is incredibly wrong well, beta will fix that. I am just excited for Mists!
At the end of the day I am not too fussed about a standard mana pool or, about anything that seems to be changing. Some will be good, some will be bad, just different from what they are today.As always we will adjust and end up loving it. I really don’t think we will not be able to sustain our raid teams; that would just defeat the purpose. Just think of how much more spirit we are getting, it’s going to be crazy numbers. WTB MoP now!
This change affects only healers, or all casters?
@psynister Only healers are having their mana pools expanded and tweaked. DPS casters will run off their base mana pools.
@psynister This affects all mana users. The difference is which classes have low base mana with healer buffs (Paladins, Druids, Shaman) and which have a standard high base mana (Priests, Mages, Warlocks).
this change is bullshit oom way to quick now why have they upped the cost of spells by alot and lowered the mana pools seriously did they even think it through half my spells have gone up by 4k+ and 1 has gone up by over 8k wtf…
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