I mean, that really is what you’re saying though. Your original complaint of the thread is that stacking mana regen to a number you thought was high did not permit you to blow through large portions of your mana pool on every pack without also needing to use Focus. That’s literally what you said:
If you have to use Focus that often, the only clown shoes here are being worn by your build.
You’re playing Motte and Bailey games here, but for everybody paying attention it’s painfully obvious that what you want is for the game to let you stack passive mana regen to a degree that you can mostly/completely ignore mana costs. You’re not going to get it. Get on board with using Focus or Mana Strike, or with not trying to spam abilities whose damage is balanced around having a high mana cost.
My problem with mana regen and this thread is that mana regen feels unbalanced compared to focus and mana strike. It isn’t really a choice of investing in mana regen or investing in focus. People constantly say “use focus or mana strike”, because mana regen is not enough.
And even the quote i reply to is not accurate. I have lots of fun with sorcerer glacier spammer. Glacier costs me ~50 mana per cast, i cast often, have 800+ mana pool and using it on groups of mobs i get enough mana refund to spam glacier non-stop. In single boss fights i use mana strike because focus is weak compared to mana strike, another imbalance. In spirits of fire boss fights there are 3 bosses and if i position them and myself correctly, then i again get enough mana refund to spam non-stop. So no builder-spender mechanic so often mentioned in this thread. They’ll probably nerf my glacier spammer even more next patch
I also want to reinforce original title of this thread. It’s not about base mana regen being low, it’s about investing in mana regen being imbalanced. You should wonder whether to invest in damage or mana regen prefix or passives. Currently you don’t - that’s imbalance, which limits build variety.
Good post. I think it is totally valid to want to negate mana costs by sacrificing a ton on affix slots as well as passive tree points. You will end up with an objectively weaker character, but as a trade off, you can cast to your hearts delight. What is wrong with that? That is huge opportunity cost. As things stand now, you can do exactly as described, and still be crippled, forcing you to then sacrifice a very precious skill slot for a skill that does everything you just invested in 100x better. This hurts diversity, plain and simple. Forcing a gainer as the only truly feasible solution is not healthy for the game.
No, your problem with mana regen is that you can’t use it as a passive replacement for actively managing your mana with Focus and Mana Strike. Unless you’re going to tell me it would make you happy if Focus and Mana Strike were nerfed so they were equivalent with mana regen, because that’s balanced too, right? I didn’t think so.
Mana Regen being equivalent to Focus or Mana Strike is not the point of it, nor should it be, because that would fundamentally break the game. It isn’t going to happen.
That’s great, but that’s just an opinion and EHG clearly doesn’t agree with it. And somehow I don’t think they’re going to be very receptive to “Please rebalance the game so that I can stack one stat to the moon and then ignore any and all need to manage my resources”.
Maybe if you’re trying to shoehorn a strategy LE’s design doesn’t support, sure. But when you understand how and when mana regen can add value to your play and your build, then no, not really. And that’s the only actual problem that anybody has with mana regen - being painfully myopic about it.
I’ve used mana regen effectively on plenty of characters. All I had to do was not shackle myself to the idea that I should be able to stack it high enough to sustain spamming high cost skills indefinitely.
Beating this drum is old, tired, and disingenuous. I think it’s time to stop trying to be manipulative by tacking it on to every complaint.
Disingenuous and manipulative LOL. Not sure which is more comical, your misplaced anger or your keen insight as to what the devs actually want to present to the world for 1.0.
TBF, they have said many times that they want mana costs to be a thing the player is aware of and has to manage/build around rather than something one ignores (like in most builds in PoE). They aren’t looking like they’re suddenly going to change that stance in ~3 months.
I am totally aware of that! I also pray this doesnt turn into a PoE clone, we have a diamond in the rough here. There is an objective problem, this topic right here…we have 1 outlier, a spell focused Mage, whose skills just cost far too much and as of right now, there is no solution beyond sacrificing a skill slot.
If you proc a meteor (or a few) from fireball, you are deep in the negative. The lowest base cost Sorcerer is skill is 35 mana (blackhole), up to 56 with meteor. Volcanic Orb can put you in 3 years debt depending how you spec it, 70 base mana.
There needs to be a balance here. Sure, you should be required to play smart, but right now, Mage is clunky to play until you are well geared. If somebody actually, truly thinks that being forced into slotting mana strike to have a functional, pure caster is healthy for the game and does not stifle creativity, then well, we just view things very differently. Let us have that last fucking slot to use on a skill that makes our builds better.
Decrease costs. increase regen, gain mana on hit or when hit…there are 100000 ways to make this archetype function in a manner that is in line with other classes. Make people want to experiment, thats what makes this game so fuckin good.,
Thats a lot of words, I hope I made something that resembles a coherent thought.
Straw man fallacy much, no? How about you address what i actually wrote and not what you wrongly thought i wrote. And as an excercise for your prophetic/telepathic skills, go ahead and nerf focus and mana strike. My builds can handle that.
It wouldn’t break the game, only your idea of the game. And what exactly would break the game? I don’t even recommend any specific solution here. There were many mechanics proposed in this thread. Every single one would break the game? In every possible implementation? Like even increasing mana regen by 0,1% would completely break the game?
I don’t think people asking for a regen buff understand what the balance is here. If regen were increased to the point of making big mana spells spammable for most of a boss fight, the devs would give those skills cooldowns to negate that. This isn’t just about regen, this is about the skills that you want to spam. The current system is such that you can frontload damage by being able to spam the spells until you are out of mana and regen lengthens that spam duration.
True and i whas even more suprised that it still in a bad state with focus. But you might be right that my build is the clown. Meteor and some other skills that i tried have a pretty high mana cost so i try something else.
i actually like that mana is a thing here. Iam not to sure about some of the really big difference in mana cost between certain skills however. Meteor being one of them. Especially when triggering.
I guess i have to build a bigger mana pool to play that style. I already tried a version of it and it felt better. I didnt like the pay off however between the damage i whas getting and getting a high mana pool around 900. The damage whas ok and the playstyle whas actually really fun imo.
