My understanding of the 1.1 patch is that if I have a channel skill with X cost per second and my mana regen is X, then my mana should not go down when channeling. This is definitely not the case though, so I’m wondering if anyone knows how it actually works? Is this a bug or poorly documented system?
Example: I have lightning blast built to channel at a cost of 20. The skill hover says the cost is 17 because I have a -3 wand equipped (this is definitely a bug, should still be 20). With 20 mana regen my mana still goes down aggressively while channeling. So I thought maybe the increase channel cost of 8 that the patch notes mention was a hidden modifier, but even with a mana regen of 28 my mana is going down, more slowly
My understanding is that not ALL channeling skills are changed to allow mana regen and the LB conversion node still says it stops regen. For reference, Disintegrate is certainly working for me as you describe.
The mana modifier of 8 is not hidden or at least not on my sentinel (warpath now shows 18mana as cost compared to the 10 from before). Looking at the patch notes - there is no mention for LB to have the channeling change added for it.
As for the channeling cost and mana regen still have to finish my testing on my sentinel but it seems to be as follows.
Mana cost (like skill passives or like -3 from affixes) is added to your chars mana regen and then taken from the cost. Like sentinel warpath (what I currently play) has the unchained node which gives -2 mana per point, so 5 points means -10 mana cost and as mentiond above this leaves it as 8 mana cost per second for the channel but as the sentinel starts with 8 base mana regen then this channel cost ends up 0 ( 8 mana regen + 10 mana cost reduction from warpath tree = 18 = skill channel cost). Thats why you don’t see fluctuations like your mana going down cuz of the channel cost then going up from the mana regen, unless you presumably invest in mana regen (need to test it on my sentinel cuz even if i had more mana regen and same tree nodes I did not regen any mana while channeling).
