Blizzard please fix the casters mana

Community General Discussion
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MANA was changed because some group of CASTERS kept using their strongest spells and ended up OOM in mid-fight. Instead of educating the players Blizzard goes around and dumb down the gameplay in the name of ‘fun’. Ironically.

This was worst move than any pruning done in the game. It made MANA BAR totally useless. Blizzard of course promised us they will find a better solution in the future, but after seeing the class previews since Legion it seems like they are far from being serious with this issue.

Having a look at SPriest and how they lost their MANA BAR and how Arcane mages became the same as other specs in term of MANA value is showing that the design is intended and the solution is not anywhere in their plans.

Spirit removed in Legion which IMO also another slap, which Blizzard did to their right cheek (face).

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I quite like the rework on caster resource systems. Somehow mana does also feel more fitting for a Mage than a Warlock. Thematically it’s better that not everyone uses mana, I think.

The inherent problem however, was that melee had infinite resources and casters didn’t. That made for obvious problems in long encounters.
So they fixed it.

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What does that even mean?

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It was l2p issue and I hope in future they make casters lose mana… It is more fun that was in pvp and pve.

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considering Arcane mages are meant to burn through as much Mana as possible, I am also confused by OP comment.

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Caster mana was an inherently unfun system that casters had to play around, while melee just waits for their rage/energy bar to refill so they can keep spamming

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As a SPriest I’m reasonably happy I don’t have to worry about mana as well as insanity though we do still have a mana bar
I always felt it was more suited to healers than dps; it was all part of the juggling act when I played Discipline and was an important part of everything I did.

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Yes, I see what you mean. I agree for healing it makes more sense. I have been playing Arcane spec for so long and am too stubborn to respec. Although admittedly the rotation has improved a bit in SL, the whole rotation as arcane has been annoyingly punishing if you lose your place in it. That can be easy to do in the heavy movement orientated raid bosses that have dominated for the past few years.

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Yea well, when it still mattered we had an additional slot where we could toss in a wand for those rare oom-moments and hunters had still arrows to purchase.

I don’t think removing the mana-aspect from the offensive part of a caster was a bad thing. It was inherently unfun, there was often little to do other than enchant Mana/5s and basically cast slower.

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Mana became like a rage or combo points. You build mana, then spend it. There is no consequence in mismanaging mana.

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Do any casters actually run out of mana at all, except the single one of course. As that’s the way it was designed.

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Did you play an arcane mage? That is the only DPS class that got harsh consequences dps-wise when not managing mana correctly.

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I mean I kind of agree. Is there a point in letting warlocks keep mana? If the bar never runs out then what’s the point of having it? Unless it’s a technical issue where every class has to have some sort of resource bar.

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All healing spells eat mana super fast on dps classes.

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Warlocks have healing spells?

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Drain life. Also buffs eat mana aswell. Like fort and intelect.

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not sure about warlocks, but for mages mana actually is being used up for stuff like spellsteal

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yes i cant wait to go back to that good ol playstyle of wanding mid fight and watching my mana bar instead of actually playing my class to the best of my ability and squeezing out the best dmg/healing.

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Fun for who? I already have to refill my mana all the time because a certain tank wants to Zerg the dungeons. It’s not fun.

“Oh sorry guys before we continue I gotta mana upp”

2 seconds later

/OOOOM

NAH. that’s not fun.

If you like that, go play classic

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De-ranking spells was limited in Value in TBC already and slowly faded away. Since that pretty much only arcane mage uses mana in their rotation. And all healers.

And if there is no down-ranking you can’t really implement a mana based system… like you can have mana return if you do your rotation correctly but then the margins would have to be extreme for it to work, punishing if you make a mistake and for every new player (DPS nowadays is extremely high ceiling).

It’s for specific classes that have their rotation set around this. What’s the point in having all caster DPS designed in the same way as arcane mage? Stack icon X to deal more damage but using way to much mana, then cast Y to drop the stack to start dealing much less damage, gaining mana. And if needed use a long cooldown that increases mana regen - maybe we should delete all other specs if all will be the same?

There are combo points, energy based melee classes, holy power builders/spenders etc. - you can re-do mana into something like this but what’s the point then? Even more classes having same rotation mechanics/resources?

Nothing fun in enforcing old systems just because many years ago they were used for completely different class and content design.

In vanilla people were so bad that even mana management was way above their skill level. In Classic people optimize consumables, stats, gear. Healers know which ranks to cast, casters chug mana pots, dark runes on cooldown and the DPS is so high that fights last way way less than originally making mana not really an issue.

And mana died because at some point people got to the same level as now in Classic - making it “not a real mechanic”. It’s very hard to balance casters around “for 25%-35% of the fight they are oom and do nothing” while also making someone play them instead of non-mana classes that would perform way more reliably.

As a MW healer I had to learn mana management hard, really hard, but can’t really see it for a DPS class aside those that are directly build around it like arcane.

I played frost mage in Classic where top DPS was pressing 1 button with mana gem, evocation, mana pot/GFPP in between and rag was dead. I also leveled and geared a frost mage during BfA and to get a green parse I had to:

  • learn the rotation
  • improve the rotation based on wowanalyzer suggestions
  • pick correct secondary stats, enchants, talents as suggested by the theorycrafted and simmed guides

To get blue or higher parse I would have to get BiS azerite traits. Then to get purple I would have to play a lot and get every encounter timed in memory to use cooldowns, short cooldowns, trinkets and procs optimally. Current game is very complex for a DPS player that wants to perform close to what’s possible. This isn’t vanilla and RPG style mana for casters.