The Mage, especially the Sorcerer, strikes me as the class that ought to have the most interactions and options with mana. At the moment, we have expensive nukes, Focus, Arcane Ascendance and Mana Strike.
Focus is the go-to option for Sorcerer’s mana recovery needs but, let’s face it, stopping and channeling at regular intervals is pretty boring. AA has some different spec options but you’re still rooting yourself in place in order to kill everything nearby. By the way, it interacts terribly with the current controller support: good luck targeting anything behind you when you can’t move.
Mana Strike is the most active and interesting to use: switching to melee in order to rapidly refill your mana and get those big nukes off. The problem with that is, Sorcerer and melee don’t mix that well. You need to be close to enemies that you’re not actively killing and the mana glob’s travel delay makes it even worse. Mana Strike does have some OoM nodes but they don’t work well with the rest of the Mana Strike tree and you’re kind of SoL anyway because your important defensive and utility skills cost mana to use.
I’d really like to see more interesting/active options for Mage’s mana management. Mana Strike’s OoM nodes could use a rework and there ought to be more interactions with mana for the rest of Mage’s kit. Thoughts, suggestions?
ETA: Rage with the new Druid forms is a good example of resource management done well. I love how you can get creative with the various rage generation and form combinations.
The biggest nuke I have only costs 35 mana, and generally anything I need to nuke more than once keeps me moving so I don’t just stand and nuke till empty often. I am not doing a channeled skill so I can imagine it works differently for those builds, but everything else seems easy to manage mana. People make same complaint with warpath because mana doesn’t regen while channeling, but I’m wondering if that downside is really the best way to balance the skills.
The same mechanism applied to Mana would result in incredible power. The Sorcerer should be able to spam some skills, but not all.
Currently, you can have an efficient mana recovery with several affixes and/or dedicated rings. I agree Mana management could do with a rework, but I’m not sure it would be good to give too wide access to fast recovery.
I think currently the problem lies with large mana pool type builds.
For example a 100 mana sentinel who gets back 10 every time they use a “filler” skill, can quickly return from half mana, some even work in a combo manner, using a few multistrikes dropping a forge strike that costs 40 mana, then refilling and repeating the combo.
I think currently for casters with big mana pools like Shaman and mage, regen/focus feel kinda bad. They need some sort of active mechanism that rewards them for having big mana pools.
Agreed, I didn’t mean to suggest the Mage get an identical system. The Mage has direct access to exclusively Mana gated high damage abilities whereas the Druid forms have few means of spamming high cost skills so the Mage should be balanced differently. It’s more the active and comboing nature of the recovery options that I’m after.
ETA: Now that I think of it, there’s a specific gameplay feel of recovery that I’m after, that I’d like to be able to combine with the feel of the Sorcerer. I want to be actively fighting to get my mana back, in between using it for flashy nukes, as hard-hitting as possible. The Druid forms have that active recovery feeling down pat, with multiple ways to accomplish it. The Spellblade also has it, especially if you can synergize a big hitter with Mana Strike. The Sorcerer, not so much.
Like the Teleporting Strikes node for Mana Strike? Even if it does massively reduce the mana gain. Maybe Man’s Strike could do with a node that converts it into a spell/adds cast speed scaling.
Imo mana regen is pretty weak rn. Most builds either use a mana generator (skills like rive/mana strike or skills like focus/transplant/volatile reversal) or just use only low/no mana cost skills.
Sapphire rings could get buffed to like 2-3 Flat mana regen and buffing mana regen nodes could allow for better mana sustain that wouldn’t allow to spam high cost skills but be an alternative to using a mana generator.
Giving access to flat mana regen must be done carefully. We currently have a base mana regeneration of 8 mps. Giving access to 2 flat mana regen on one item would yield 25% more mana regeneration which is crazy for an implicit. The current sapphire ring only giv4es 1 additional mps and does not scale further with increased mana regeneration.
This would probably make mana management to easy. I like that you have to think about how to manage it. But I still would like to have more passive options like additional affixes on gear/tree/skills.
Yeah just don’t forget the lackluster dmg and the pidgenholed skillchoice. I’ll always trade this mechanic in for something with better dmg and something to use my brain while playing and the ability to use every skill I like to use at any given time.
There is a simple way to make mage work the same way. use bad skills and do low mana skill setups and do poop dmg and you have almost the same as druids ^^.
I think I see what you mean. Personally, I like the puzzle of trying to coax more power and QoL out of the tools at hand. I’ve been tinkering with Druid builds for weeks now and I don’t think I’ve exhausted the possibilities yet. You can’t choose your skillset as freely but that’s compensated for by each Form having a full kit; there’s quite a lot of mixing and matching to do.
It sure is but there are restrictions as well. Try to use your pet skills for example without playing a multiform build and without gimping yourself. That’s just one of many problems the druid class suffers from. Right now Druid feels to me like a worse Lich.
At level 15? Lightning Strike 0 mana is your friend + whatever “nuke” for bosses. I see 0 mana issues in that level range if you invest your point according to the possible setup you can have aka crap gear = less intensive spells.
