I think it should be also mentioned that skills like “Shield Rush” with 50 mana costs are close to useless even WITH the increased mana regen.
Like, I am not even kidding, shield rush is useless as mobility AND as dps due to such a large cost.
They forget that without enough ways to gain mana(outside of mage, which is king at this - as most classes have to spam a normal attack to get mana back) there really isn’t much reason to pick a high mana cost spell when there are builds that use 0 mana abilities that deal lots of dps. If they all had their own special mana trick, it would go a long way(heck, it doesn’t even need to be mana regen, if it just reduces the cost of the next spell as a cooldown effect it is still useful)
I try not to blatantly contradict people when I can, but I feel the need to point out that Shield Rush is in line with Shift as the most powerful movement abilities in the game right now when it comes to speed. It’s so good that almost any Sentinel build can be a farming build by just putting this skill on the bar. I’ve seen it claimed before that Shield Rush is bad, but veteran players have been taking full advantage of it’s power for years now and it’s kind of crazy just how much better it is than most skills. keep in mind that 55 mana is the base cost, but there’s a node that gives 120% mana efficiency if fully specced.
Yeah but then you sorta cant use your teleport to move around freely, it not only has a longer cooldown, but now if you just use it to move around you must use a big spell after it or it has a longer cd for no reason.
it changes it from a movement ability to a hybrid tool to solve problems.
that sorta just illustrates my point. All of this would make total sense if blackhole was some gamebreaking shattering boss destroyer when you press it.
instead it costs 250 mana, has a 20 second cooldown, and does… average damage. when you have to use all these tools to solve these issues it just makes no sense.
I am ok with the gainer / spender playstyle i just think the balance is off which is why you see a ton of builds that dont even have a spender being the strongest builds in the game. the bow mage ( if it has changed i apoligize ) a very cool build but it revolves around a simple way of stacking an obscene amount of armor shred and getting near free damage scaling with the boots. if you try and make a build that is even 50% as fast or strong as that build its almost always on the more simple side as well.
doesnt that kind of seem silly? we are " supposed " to take one specific node in the entire tree or we are trolling? huh? maybe give us other interactions that feel like they mesh… maybe a passive point in the mage tree that gives you a stacking buff for standing still that gives you mana regen and damage stacks but doesnt last very long. not every build will want to use it (mana strike ) and it would give more incentive to greed out for longer channels of their mana gaining ability or even arcane ascendance
the best part about arpgs for me has always been breaking the mold and making a build that doesnt seem like its possible and making it work. same with magic the gathering meta decks are not fun to me. but in last epoch it seems like they are smacking your hand down any time you slightly deviate from the " expected " path. so many times you will realize that you are a few skill levels off of a really cool interaction or like in my cinder strike case no amount of gaining mana back with a gainer or other skills together will be enough to sustain the mana cost and even if it was the damage pay off that you would think would be there is sitll about half as strong as very simple no drawback builds
i dont know how you or anyone else that has said it consider mana as an offensive stat. are there not defensive buttons in this game?!? are there not buffing and support abilities?! i honestly dont know where u guys are getting this " mana is offensive " idea
sure but my problems currently for this specific build are that they generator buttons dont generate enough ( 50 - 80 mana cinder strikes ) especially because even if cinder strike did the same damage but i some how had infinite mana the damage is not even that strong compared to extremely simple braindead spammy builds… i would like to see dark quiver resolve node give alot more mana. it already costs 20 mana to cast the skill so if a build is running any of the other nodes from the rogue / marksman trees that increase mana you would need to have to pick up 3 arrows to even be a net positive in mana and thats considering you arent shooting a single attack in between.
If regen was pushed to suffixes most big mana builds would probably tank because the current meta is to play a build with enough offense with low gear investment and then stack as much defense as you can. That’s why he’s saying it shouldn’t be a suffix (and even if that’s not what he’s saying, it’s the most compelling reason). If the meta were to change then it would be fine, otherwise this would hinder high mana builds even more, not help them.
hmm possibly but from what ive seen and played with most " big mana " builds dont rely on mana stats on gear. a few pieces is all they need to get to 300 mana and virtually no builds that i can think of have to have mana regen on gear to function at all.
My favorite build and very probable starter at 0.9 (Synch Strike Shadow Daggers) requires mana regen to sustain the rotation. Some Sorc builds want to get to 700+ mana. Many builds don’t need to build for mana, but some very much do. It’s a mixed bag, which I think is a very healthy place to be.
And if you’re using Shield Rush as a spammable dps skill, you’re taking the nodes that remove the mana cost and cooldown.
That said,
There was a period (before the Lunge rework) where even “veteran Sentinel players” were saying its bad (on discord) and only using Lunge for the massive buffs it was giving.
That’s what the likes of Lizard and Arb have said in the past & they are definitely better players than me.
Probably because most of the time we spend most of our mana on offensive skills (Sigils of Hope and the Sentinel’s free skills notwithstanding).
yeah i guess. ive kind of moved past caring about mana regen / flat mana being suffix i think more mana tools should be given to classes across their talents / passives in unique ways. having alot of builds that use a generic mana gainer / mana spender being the only mechanic you have dealing with mana will get kind of dull. have more ways of balancing your mana that tie into each other that fit the theme of each class.
I avoid most mana spender builds in LE unless I can virtually spam or they are cooldown spam builds that regain enough mana over their cooldown. Most spenders dont dish out the damage and then you have issues where attack speed actually doesnt help you much, where free skills you can scale it to infinite
I view mana as an issue to solve like defences, you always have to sacrifice something(s) to fix your mana, most (basically all) aRPGs give mana potions at first to basically fix your issue, then later you usually can spec out of it which is your reward - not having to hit a mana potion every x seconds, same as using a generator.
Would gladly give up 40-50% of my maximum mana pool to get 50% more regen, even one of the mandatory damage nodes on Aura of Decay reduces/costs you by 3mana a second and its noticeable
I think ill remain playing no cost/low cost builds to remove the headache, imagine if you could just remove enemy crits from the game but the drawback is you can play less builds because playing free/low cost basically eliminates mana/regen as a mechanic
Another issue is due to boss damage reduction mechanics, hitting them with a hard hitting skill doesnt feel worth it, Smelters Wrath feels amazing on the first hit against a timeline boss, second hit is good, everything else is terrible and you may as well spam Rive
Well, we have wildly different opinions here, which is great. Saving one who said: mana is fine, just not use the big spenders lol.
To me is NOT a problem, it is what it is, is another resource and another thing you have to be mindful when building your offensive kit. To me more mechanics to think about is always a positive.
From a personal perspective, I think having more options is always great, having more powerful and synergistic mana affixes doesn’t cause an imbalance, after all, affixes spent in mana comes with opportunity cost.
I agree some skill costs, and passives/skill perks that change mana values are way off, my impression is that skills and perks ended up balanced against the most beneficial combination and outside of that, they are garbage.
Saying mana is fine, don’t use many of the in game skills is… a very contradictory statement shall we say
There are only a handful of spender abilities worth their mana cost. And there are many more high cost abilities that are just bad.
For example Hail of Arrows plays very well with filler abilities, because its high impact high duration ability
The same can be said for abilities like Shatter Strike, Channeled Nova, Earthquake, Erasing Strike, Sync Strike, Ice Spear… even Smelter’s Ass (typo intended).
On the other hand you have abilities, whose mana cost is unsustainable, but whose damage is not really worth the mana.
Static Orb, Volcanic Orb, Shadow Cascade, all modals that give Rogue cost 0 abilities added cost, Balista etc. Even abyssal echo mana cost gets really bad if you bypass the CD, but it does a lot of dmg. The difference here is how classes interact with that mana cost. Rogue can refill mana relative easy. The same goes for Sentinel. Spellblade can use mana strike, which is quite bad ability on its own but w/e at least you get a lot of mana back.
Sorcerer is aboslute garbage. So the mana reger affix is a nice QOL to do, but if your base class has junk mana recovery options % mana regen is not going to help you.
Yes but we were taking it for the buffs, not the movement. That was also before they shared a CD so we’d just use both. It was actually even faster because we would Shield Rush then immediately Lunge then Shield Rush again, rinse and repeat.
Shift is on rogue and one of its passives is creating a shadow, rogue can regen mp on shadows, it essentially costs zero…
and the fact that in order to even use shield rush you need to waste points on the mana efficiency node on top of gear requirements(shield). It just is too much investment for it to feel even remotely good to use as a pure mobility skill.
And all of this is because sentinel lacks a very good consistent mana building method
in the case of shadow cascade - the only reason it is worth the mana is because rogue can gain mana on shadow expire with an idol and thus it becomes free.
which is itself a problem, that the build RELIES on exploiting a idol interaction in order to work.
Without it rogue would have mana issues
Surely if it’s an intended interaction for the idol then its not an exploit? The Smite on throwing attack hit returning mana wasn’t intended so it was fixed.
