Why is mana mostly useless?

It regenerates very quickly and does not really provide ANYTHING other than a bottleneck for healers and arcane mages.

Why is it useless? Wouldn’t it have been better for DPS caster spells to do massively increased damage but actually USE mana when casted?

Why is this mana philosophy the way it is? It is an infinite, inexhaustible resource that can not be drained or otherwise consumed to empower spells, it’s like a remnant that might as well be removed from most DPS classes and no one would notice it’s gone.

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Agree.

I still remember the horror as a Human Mage in WotLK when I first encountered an Undead Shadow Priest and he mana drained me, put some dot on me and kept spamming /lol at me as I couldn’t do nothing.
T_T

Anyway, mana dependant classes should use mana like healers do, DD’s have way too much lee way in regards to resource management, and overall gameplay.

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Because a limited ressources you can’t really restore while casting doesn’t really match with the highest PvE encounters i guess ?

#bringbackmanaburn

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No one said there can’t be ways of restoring mana. There were ways of doing this since vanilla.

Yeah but even if you have a CD or two to regen the whole point is to regen less Mana while casting and end up oom if you overdo it right ?

Makes me think that it was taken away so that casters aren’t just benched in favour of energy-like classes which do not have similar downtimes.

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lol…what

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Going oom while avoiding any unnecessary damage in raid would be stupid, you are full health with 1% mana running around like excuse me WTF.

Because most specs now rely on a secondary resource, in a way replacing mana.

Id say that mana-relevance was removed from Damage Dealers because of how many Melee and Non-magic DPS could comtinuously fight without becoming useless while mana-users would eventually have no mana left unless they stepped out of combat.

You’d have to give a stamina resource to all non-mana-users if you wanted a balanced field.

Healers have mana issues though because of the “soft timer” it gives on fights

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It’s like that because going OOM during a fight was not fun at all. Having to use the mana regeneration seal as a paladin was not fun. Using Aspect of the Viper as a hunter and doing 50% reduced damage was not fun. Well, at least they had these to regain there mana, but most of the other mana using classes still suffered while rogues and warriors had no such issues since they always used energy and rage.

Giving dps specs secondary resources or new main resources was one of the better class design decisions. Healers are fine like this because it would be a joke to keep everyone alive with infinite mana. Arcane mage should be completely reworked because even if it would be good (it’s not, worst spec in the game currently on most encounters and m+), its just painful to play.

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You’ve pointed out 2 places where it isn’t useless yet conclude it is. Are you just on a thread spamming spree? I’ve seen you post a couple today and they’re all just random thoughts that you somehow feel are good enough to publish.

Well if your IQ was over 100 you’d understand the point of the topic.

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Yea, you’re bored and felt you had to make useless topics.

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Once you level past 20, you’ll see that mana plays a role in all sorts of situations, not just for healers and arcane mages. :ok_hand:

I disagree, I thought this could be fun. If you don’t think and just pop something like Aspect of the Viper when your mana was low then yeah, that’s not fun. But what if you find a moment in an encounter where you can’t deal damage? Then you’d pop the Aspect to gain a little bit of a boost.

As a priest in TBC it was always fun to utilize Shadow Fiend on bosses like the curator. The new version of Shadow Fiend, while more balanced, is utterly boring in comparison. I agree with the OP, mana isn’t very fun anymore.

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I think mana is pretty okay now. It’s been through a lot of overhauls.

I tend to notice my mana on and off over the course of the expansion. I think it’s pretty balanced as of now. You can sort of pick how important you view regen as a healer based on a lot of different factors( like group sysnergy, encounter success etc.)

As for dps you have othe resources, but mana may play a role in the case of e.g. spell stealing and other dispels. I haven’t had much time to fiddle with my dps characters for months though, but I don’t have a problem with mana not being a part of my dps rotation. I have other spells(helpfull ones) that will drain it if I start using them. Like, I can’t heal forever as a balance druid, but I may be able to cast a couple of heals or so if absolutely necessary while waiting for a healer to catch up etc.

I don’t mind mana being mostly focused on healers and spells meant to protect you.

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I dont understand how it was more fun to run oom as a dps back in vanilla or whatever and just afk and autoattack the boss for half the encounter.

Current design is fine as it is. Most dps specs are using other resources not mana anyway, and only have mana as a secondary resource for healing spells as a hybrid, and yes they can run oom while healing themselves.
Dont really understand the problem anyway lol.
Yeah great mana is healer and arcane mage resource. You have insanity now and astral power and whatever shamans have.
And oh plz i dont care about glorious classic times. Take that to the classic forums.

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Each to their own.

I mean, I didn’t hate it, but how is this different to managing other resources as dps? I sort of feel like mana being mostly healer oriented these days being a okay thing, 'cause healer mechanics are a little different.

You still have resources, they are just no longer mana. Or well, you have mana, but your mana is rather irrelevant to your dps. Manage those resources and just think of your mana bar as a “helpfull tool” bar instead.

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No, not necessarily. You could have efficient spells and inefficient spells. When using efficient spells, you could have a net gain of mana per gcd, while when using inefficient ones a net loss. The inefficient ones could have more powerful effects, but eventually run you oom, rendering you unable to use other inefficient spells. It’s really called “gameplay”, the thing that triggers certain decisions that have repercussions though time.

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