Blizzards vision for mana regen - problematic

#0 - Jan. 27, 2009, 7:10 p.m.

This is concerning the whole "mana regen shouldnt be a mechanic you graduate from" that has been tossed around. (though i do agree that it is somewhat trivial at higher gear level)

Now, there's a huge problem with this as i see it. There is seldom room to "hold back" on healing in a fight meaning you're almost always (at least where it counts, bosses) healing and thus spending mana as fast as you can.
there are of course bosses where raid damage is low and the need for healing is lower but let's face it, you need to balance around maximum, or near maximum healing load or you will fall behind terribly once you reach a demanding fight.

If we never reached a place where "we dont need more regen" we would ALWAYS run out, or always require innervate, or perhaps i should say mana tide as you can't really expect to have one innervate per healer. Then what? if we got enough mana for a fight with a mana tide we would again be at a point where "we dont need more regen" but the alternative is running out of mana.

i do agree that the point where you dont need more regen needs to be harder to reach than it currently is but i STRONGLY believe that working towards preventing that from happening at all will only hurt healers in the long run.

You either have enough mana or not. there's really not much inbetween. it doesnt matter at the end of the fight if i'm at 15k mana or 5k. i had enough to last me through.

if your vision of mana regen becomes a reality the only question would be how long before the fight ends i run out of mana. if that happens you would always be hunting for more regen and never have enough.

If you on the other hand lower the healing load but increase the need for regen you would create a situation where some healers would be forced to regen while others heal, and taking turns. staring at a mana bar slowly going up while the others are healing really wouldnt be much fun, would it? Then of course spirit would become "too powerful" if you were to spend 30 seconds out of 5sr every 2 minutes or so.

I dont suggest copying the mechanic but i really do like how healing is balanced in WAR, using AP. your healing is limited mostly by how much you can squeeze out in a certain ammount of time, with only a minor pause for regen when you run out of AP. You would eventually run out of AP after chaincasting 6-7 big heals but in the time it would take you to cast another 3 you would be back up to full again if you dont cast anything else.

All in all i dont mind seeing devs claim that spirit and regen in general might be too powerful atm but every time i see "regen isnt a mechanic you should be able to graduate from" it makes me cringe.
If anything i would like to see LESS focus on regen (not very fun atm) and more on skill, timing, anticipation and coordination.

my 5 cc

#27 - Feb. 4, 2009, 3:38 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Now, there's a huge problem with this as i see it. There is seldom room to "hold back" on healing in a fight meaning you're almost always (at least where it counts, bosses) healing and thus spending mana as fast as you can.
there are of course bosses where raid damage is low and the need for healing is lower but let's face it, you need to balance around maximum, or near maximum healing load or you will fall behind terribly once you reach a demanding fight.

If we never reached a place where "we dont need more regen" we would ALWAYS run out, or always require innervate, or perhaps i should say mana tide as you can't really expect to have one innervate per healer. Then what? if we got enough mana for a fight with a mana tide we would again be at a point where "we dont need more regen" but the alternative is running out of mana.

We do not wish to have healers in the game that have (near)infinite mana, but on the other hand we do not want healers to run out of mana every single fight either. We want mana to be a factor that you have to be conscious about as a healer, which means that if you play well you should have a large mana pool available to you, but not so large that you can simply ignore it.

These days, Restoration Shamans are often seen as the healer that can run out of mana and ideally this should hold true for Paladins, Priests and Druids as well. They do seem to run out of mana more in PvP though, but not so much in PvE.