Mana regen investment Mage feels pointless

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21

I mean mana regen does not have to suck.

What sucks is spells that in no universe are worth even close to the mana cost they have.

Meteor storm is a cool concept and feels cool when it goes off. then you look at the 175 mana you just spent and realize what a waste of time that was. if meteor storm cost more in the realm of like 100 mana, then being able to cast it every few seconds when you have 20 mana regen would feel okay.

Like im messing around with ballista explosions rn and remembering just how lame it is that to cast 2 ballistas which blow up costs a staggering 44 mana, thats after taking the -50% mana cost passives. if you didnt take these, it would be 88 fucking mana.

Heck if you want to play ā€œplace ballistas and let them shoot stuffā€ the -mana nodes are bad, they come with reduced duration. So if you wanna place your 4 ballistas you need 160 mana every 10-12 seconds. You need to either have enough mana, and even then, you need atleast 12-16 mana regen just to recoup the mana back from this endeavor. God forbid you have to move to the next pack before that time.

So while the devs dont want mana to be trivial, I agree that investing 3-5 affixes into mana regen isnt ā€œtrivializingā€ it, thats like saying ā€œyou hit 100% crit with every slot dedicated to crit chance, thats trivializing crit!ā€

I dont think you should be able to spam meteor with a single mana regen affix. But if you have all of the mana regen on every passive or slot, you should be able to cast meteor storm every 2-3 seconds.

its also honestly just outdated design, you can argue sorc has some synergy with big mana cost spells, so meteor storm shouldnt be that much lower in cost.

But some classes have 30-50 cost spells that do something similar to things other classes have that cost 5.

You can summon 10 skeleton archers that last forever, move, and cost like 20 mana each tops. Why does a ballista cost 44 mana?

6 Likes
22

Yes and no :smiley: . Mana reg needs to be bad because if Manareg was worhtwhile it would get out of hand if people invest into it. Manareg needs to stay kind of ā€œbadā€ to make use of the builder/spender system EHG have put in place.

It should be easy to calculate how much manareg would spiral out of controll if you increase the base reg. If you donā€™t increase the base reg we are still in % of nothing is nothing terretory.
I think the best possible outcome is to balance manacosts of skills but this is most likely a thing that happens in the far future.

1 Like
23

Well thats what I mean, mana regen is bad because of the things around it. you dont have to buff mana regen, you need to change shit like EQ and ballista costing 50+ mana for 0 reason or tie the mana cost to certain mechanics that are problematic if spammed.

3 Likes
24

Because, itā€™s the first source of mana.
But you can get mama from other ways. Specially from some time of skills

25

I think the design of needing to spec a skill for mana recovery if you want to play something balanced with a downside of high manacost is fine. There are plenty of builds where you can solve mana in various ways, and with uniques as well.

The mana system in this game is far more interesting than any other ARPG Iā€™ve played.

Like right now playing Runemaster I get mana back with Runebolt which Iā€™m weaving into my casts for the cold runes, so it doesnā€™t feel like Iā€™m just dumping my mana and then spamming it, and with Frost Wall, which I actively need to run through to buff my glyphs and invocations anyways, so itā€™s also more interesting than just a mana generator.

3 Likes
26

Mana is an issue in LE depending on build, but buffing base values is not the only absolute answer. A pass on mana cost of skills could achieve the same goal, or perhaps adding mana leech options. And no, forcing people to use mana strike or focus does not increase diversity, I dont see how anybody could think being forced to use 1 of your skill slots just to take care of mana adds to diversity :thinking:

PoE does it right, you can have hyper mana regen, mana leech, can craft -mana cost on accessories, use your energy shield as manaā€¦tons of ways to solve the mana problem. Right now, we dont have that. Hopefully the devs will look at other mana gaining options, altering mana costs, or hell even both.

1 Like
27

This was my point.

The problem with buffing regen is that it would create other imbalances. You should still run out of mana if you spam big spenders. There should be no point at which you donā€™t have to wait for mana for these things.

I could also see a skill getting reworked so that it could enable ā€œunlimitedā€ mana for a short duration. Maybe like a rework to Arcane Ascendance that so that it has a much longer CD (like 60 secs), has a higher base mana drain, but makes spells free while it is active.

28

I donā€™t use focus or mana strike. Never have in any of my mage builds. Although I do have a build idea that specifically uses focus on runemaster. Itā€™s probably jank, but thatā€™s my point. There is plenty of build diversity and options because of your limitations. It may sound counterintuitive but thatā€™s pretty much how RPGs have always worked going back to D&D.

1 Like
29

Iā€™d agree that in some cases like mana-intensive builds, having infinite mana is a no-no. But overall mana regen has to be useful in a way.

Letā€™s say that is only one of the ways to regain mana, which is true. Why do you have to be forced on every build to use a generator and a proc, or generator in general to regain mana.
In that case where you donā€™t want that, mana regen has to be useful to at least maintain mana to a certain degree.

But if mana regen scales poorly, and continues to be poor regardless of how much you invest into it, itā€™s not worth having in the game.

30

I donā€™t use ā€œspendersā€. The only time I play ā€œgeneratorsā€ is because I like the skill on its own (Mana Strike). I always use skills that have as close to 0 cost as possible.

This is mostly because the big spenders just arenā€™t good enough for the frequency that they can be cast, most of the time. Or maybe the free, or close enough to it, skills are too good?

The other reason, personally, is because I HATE multiple button builds. I want a single attack skill and some buff/debuff skills that I use not very often. Builds that do generator/spender require multiple skills in a rotation that I just wonā€™t do.

3 Likes
31

Yeah, thatā€™s another factor. We are talking in general and not personal playstyle. I usually think most of the spenders in general arenā€™t worth it but hey. Mana regen has to have a meaning right.

32

While PoE does certainly have a lot of ways to deal with mana, I think it goes too far in terms of making it a non-issue.

3 Likes
33

thats why i wont react to that post

1 Like
34

your might be right about this. didnt thought about it that way.

I get this but at the same time it feels like a trap now for people like me who invest so much in it only realizing there is no point :stuck_out_tongue:

35

that actually would be cool for arcane ascendance. great idea imo

36

I can agree with this, but, I would rather have more options with their own proā€™s and conā€™s to solve a problem opposed to none. I dont think the problem is as huge as some others feel it is in LE, but they are right about one thing, the defintive answer to mana as a Mage is mana strike. Flameward is probably used by almost every build as well just because of its sheer utility, so there are 2 of 5 slots in use by high mana spending casters.

Honestly, I would just vote for putting mana leech on an idol. Their is obvious opportunity cost, and here we dont hit for 10 million, so a single .02% leeched as mana (can play with duration to make it take lets say 5 seconds) may not even be the answer, but part of the solution. Thats the best system, when a bunch of small choices all sum up to fix whatever issue is currently at hand.

We have seen the numbers, with all spots on gear taken, FW spec, and passive tree, we get up to like 40 regen. Thats crazy bad. I am not particularly worried about it, EHG does us right in the end. There are so many ways they can rectify this, that to me, its in the non issue category for now.

1 Like
37

Noobfilter!

Just kidding. Yeah manareg is kind of a trap. I think the main issue is that you canā€™t balance it out. You need xyz manareg to make it worthwhile and still donā€™t get enough dmg out of skills because you canā€™t go for enough +dmg nodes to make for the mana reg waste.

If there was some kind of scale that keeps reg/dmg in balance things would be better but going for manareg just makes your dmg worse because you waste affixes.

Well there is already one solution in place aka use a builder. Yes I get it this playstyle is kind of lame. Then there are helpfull things in place like getting more mana using skill X or reducing mana costs of skills.
We have a few options but they are all meh.

Thx but no thx. even a 0.1% manaleech idol would be to much given the dmg some skills can do. Manaleech or manareg that is high enough to keep you going foever is something LE never wanted iirc.

I think EHG needs to revisit manacosts of high mana cost skills and tone them a bit down.

2 Likes
38

I dont agree, mana leech duration can be set to any time they see fit so that .02% leech isnt exactly op if it is over a 10 second duration. If not mana leech, mana gain on hit. If not that, nerf the hell out of mana costs for mage, I would prefer that over drastically increasing base mana gain as that would lead to balancing issues with the other classes.

Any of that sure as hell lets players have more agency then losing 1/5 of their skill slots on a skill that is used solely for mana gain. At least in D4 almost all class and build requires a gainer and spender, here we have a single class with a problem. This isnt D4, we dont want or need another D4 lmao. There are too many other arpgs that have proven spender/gainer style is the most boring way to go about the issue.

What class outside Mage is facing the issue to the extent Mage is? I dont know any off hand. It could be a Mage specific idol, a 4x1. That is opportunity cost. There are a lot of builds out there right now performing well without having to do this mana balancing mini game, you cant use any high dps Mage skill without going negative. Something needs to be figured out before 1.0, and the spender/gainer approach aint the play.

39

What other classes/masteries work 24/7 without a builder? Specific skills yeah but classes? Nah thatā€™s made up for sure. if not enlighten me pretty plesse.

Same goes for movement skills. I played my spriggan with some friends in a group and never killed one enemy in an monolith run because i had no movementskills i would need to use to keep up with people i play coop with. Should we remove movementskills now or set MS to 25% and thatā€™s it?

LE is badly designed in many ways and movement skills and manareg skills are the worst ones because you most likely need or want both.

Depending on the way you skill every mastery has that problem. I can make even a werebear druid run dry if I want to or make a Warpath build that whirls for 2 seconds and is oom. On the other hand I can make mage builds that work out rather well and I donā€™t end up oom all the time.

Yeah thatā€™s an issue that should be adressed but not by adding useless stuff that needs to be balanced on top of the mess we already have. People need to give dedicated feedback on the matter because if 20 people out of 200k have a discussion about it why should anyone change something?

Mages high dmg skills cost far to much money or do far to little dmg one or the other. If I compare it to another P&P system it goes the following. If you want to throw a ā€œFireball of Nuclear Winterā€ on a land you dislike you simply need xyz manaā€¦ alll of itā€¦ but after you tossed that fireball everything goes boom and thatā€™s it. If I toss a Meteor in LE it could need a fart sound because it feels lackluster compared to the cost.

I think making EHG looking at mana costs again would be a good thing. Sadly there is far to little controvercy on this topic and far to little people complain to make this an important thing to change on their todo list.

But isnā€™t this exactly what EHG wants? Afaik this is integral to their design philosophy with exeptions like Warpath for example or skills that use HP to cast. There is a reason why every class has 0 mana or manareg skills. Is the mage shafted because of ressource costsā€¦ well yeah. Then again there are ways to compensate it and having a mana minigame to take care of makes the class more intresting to me.

3 Likes
40

My problem with leech (life or mana) is that itā€™s a defensive mechanic (well, life leech is) that scales with offensive stats. So you have to balance it around either the high end (lots of damage therefore you either reduce the %, cap the recovery or increase the duration itsapplued over) which would make it all but useless for the low end, or you make it more useful for the low end & it becomes bonkers at the high end.

I guess what they could do is make it a more nebulous stat (like armour & dodge) with a formula that includes some form of area scaling so you need more of it to get the same benefit at the high end. The obvious downside of that us that it makes it way more complicated, especially when most (all?) other games just treat it as the obvious % of damage stat.

Personally Iā€™d just give the Sorc a mana regen as a % of max mana, or missing mana as a mastery bonus with some ā€œabove the lineā€ passives to modify that.

I +1 just for this. And the fart sound.

3 Likes