Most mana efficient class

General Discussion
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Is there a class that doesn’t need an inventory full of mana pots just to play the game?

I haven’t played D2 for a long time and most of my characters have finished normal. My sorc just finished nightmare. Honestly, I am enjoying my time playing but I find mana to be frustrating. Kill a unique pack > drink. Kill a big pack of regular monsters > drink. It’s getting to the point that I don’t kill things just because I want to conserve potions. Sure, a lot of things drop mana pots which certainly helps. However, looking at the loot filter only to pick up mana pots isn’t very engaging either.

Of course, having an inventory full of pots means I can’t pick anything up except for what fits in my cube. I know the majority of items are trash but I would like to be able to pick up rare, unique, set items, and gems at a minimum.

I have an insight with level 16 meditation which definitely helps. However, I would like to improve that further. I am starting to focus on +mana after kill items.

Most of the guides say to dump your points into vitality but I have continued to put more into energy for the extra mana even though it isn’t very efficient.

My characters:
Level 60 nova sorc: Potion chugger.
Level 40 warcry barb: Warcry costs a ridiculous amount of mana.
Level 45 FoH paladin: FoH is just insane. Redemption aura helps quite a bit but still lacking.
Level 50ish Amazon - Bow skills cost a ton. Lightning fury costs a ton. Potions for days.
Level 50ish Necro - Hit corpse explosion a couple times and oom.

Anyways, enough rambling for now.

Thanks!

TLDR: I have no mana. I want mana. How do I fix this?

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umm all classes are mana efficient?, if u dont have things like torch and anni, or + mana items then yeah your going to need to stick points into energy.

for melee characters, its easy mana leech, for non melee classes, insight is plenty

and yeah you should be drinking mana postings while you play… thats normal. but they will also drop in way more than u need unless you have other players picking them up.

nova sorc if your not using insight of course is going to need mana pots unless your going full ES and have a ton of mana

warcry barb… means your merc is proably killing stuff… you need flat mana items, but u also have find potion.

foh paladin… well your not supposed to spam foh as fast as the game lets you… d2R lowered the cooldown by alot,

frankly idk what the issue is… you have mana pots… your supposed to drink them when u get low on mana

bow and jav u should have mana leech and if u dont have an insight merc you may need to take an pot here and there but its not bad

necro… you really dont need to spam CE. once their amped 2 or 2 will kill pretty much anything

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The default mana recovery rate (100% in case of a naked character without skill points) recharges your mana from zero to full in ~2 minutes regardless of the number of your max mana points.

High Warmth level and a Meditation aura (Insight polearm) can add hundreds to your default mana recovery rate:

+100% (200% in total) = default mana recovery rate x2 (full recharge in ~1 minute)
+300% (400% in total) = default mana recovery rate x4 (full recharge in ~30 seconds)
+700% (800% in total) = default mana recovery rate x8 (full recharge in ~15 seconds)

Meditation aura (Insight polearm): https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Meditation
Lowest roll (level 12 Meditation): +575% mana recovery rate
Highest roll (level 17 Meditation): +700% mana recovery rate

Warmth: https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Warmth
Most sorc builds put only 1 point into this (except maybe a firewall sorc) and the +skill bonuses from gear push it to about level 15-20 depending on sorc build. It’s linear, gets +12% per Warmth level.
Level 10: +138% mana recovery rate
Level 20: +258% mana recovery rate

The time needed for full recharge (from zero mana) is independent of your max number of mana points. For this reason you regenerate more mana points per second if you increase your max mana. The number of regenerated mana points per second can be so high that it can exceed mana consumption even with a lightning sorc (one of the most mana hungry builds in the game). About 600-700 max mana with an insight polearm is where a lightning sorc starts to become fun. CTA/BO can help a lot in buffing your max mana. With a CTA and +mana gear your max mana can easily exceed 1000 without wasting stat points in energy. The BO level of your CTA depends on the number of +all skills of your gear (+sorc skills don’t improve the BO level). Some items add +X% mana but those bonuses (just like the +X% mana bonus of BO) apply only to your base mana and the flat +mana points given by gear. It does not apply to mana that you get from +energy points given by gear.

One of the best pieces of gear with +X% mana is SoJ because of its +1 skill. On a low budget look for two blue/magic rings on the market that give 10 fcr and +91-120 mana each (Bahamut’s ring of the apprentice). Might be the best low budget ring for mana intensive sorc (especially lightning sorc). Should cost Ist or less per piece (if the mana roll isn’t a perfect 120) but some people think it is worth Ber or more, they are wrong. The high runes are traded for rare caster rings with 10fcr close to 100 mana and additional bonuses like resists +str +dex etc. You might be able to pick up rare 10fcr + mana rings for cheap if they don’t give too many additional bonuses to be Ber+ worthy. Other great low budget items to get lots of +mana points and +skills: spirit crystal sword (lvl req: 24), spirit monarch (lvl req: 54, str req: 156), shako (lvl req: 62).

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I can tell you that my current HC Necro-summoner @ level 71 has 640 mana and a mana regen @ 70%. i have no mana charms. I do have a torch & anni. Aside from full Trangs, I have marrowalks, leorics arm, and a +3 plain summon ammy. I have 7 summon gc’s [none with mana].

I have no real mana issues. I am just starting to use a level 12 insight pole on my merc which will give me 575% mana regen. I will use that until I can make obedience.

Even using CE or whatever, I have had no issues keeping up with my mana. I have expended “0” points into my energy attribute.

If you are having issues, change gear, add mana charms, get merc insight, add points to energy [a waste IMHO] …

There are options. Mostly gear, some charms, some runewords. If you are stuck on being naive enough to go for all “top tier” gear, you will have issues.

Nova Sorc, you probably HAVE to have merc with insight. You will need mana gear, mana replen gear, plus to max mana items help a lot too. Again, gear is the key, there is a trade off for efficient gear and “keeping up with the jones’” gear. Use an act 2 freezy merc to give you that extra second or two from his aura slowing creatures to keep you from being hit or zapped while teleing.
A single point into warmth, coupled with +skills gear will do wonders for your mana regeneration.

Amazon, you need mana steal gloves and other such gear. ALso, again, maybe a merc with insight.

Warcry Barb … how often do you need to keep “hollering”? It shouldn’t cost that much to do all of your shouts and they should last a bit.

FoH, well I don’t play Paladins hardly ever, so no comment here.

Proper build planning, proper gear planning, use of mercs and their gear … all of this will take care of your issues. Just because some gear is considered “top tier” does NOT make it efficient gear for your build. Do your research and plan things out … hell, even test the build on single player … don’t just go buying everything you think is the best or listen to those that would tell you what is the best … the best gear is the gear that protects you, helps you, and provides for your needs … not just “leet” by name or supposed status. Many melee types that use a lot of mana, like barb or javazon, really need ML [mana leach] gear just as much as LL [life leach]. Get a pair of +2 java mittens with mana leach on them. Pretty common.

:edit:

My Full IK WW barb has only 10% mana leech & 339 total mana [611 with Bo/Shout]. No points added to energy. He does ok … however with his act 1 bow merc that bears insight bow, she gives 640% mana regen. He can’t possibly run out of mana now, lol. Again, it’s gear/items/skills/attribute planning for efficiency.

You can have really useful/helpful/efficient gear or you can have bragging rights. It’s all up to you.

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worst advice I’ve ever seen

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I don’t know about worst, but, I am fully against adding points to energy. there are way too many options to resort to that, except certain circumstances.

Like a full mana shield sorc build, in that case you really need energy points, but according to what I’ve read, no points in life. Interesting looking build.

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It’s a very tanky build with the right endgame equipment. I tried a cookie cutter variant of it but didn’t like it very much. Stacking damage and MF seems to be way easier on other sorc builds especially on a low budget. Baal and succubi were casting blood mana curse on my ES nova sorc on a non-stop basis (they probably tried to exploit my fairly low HP) - that almost never happens to my other builds.

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classes that are easy on mana if your starting out, Poison creeper druid, Holy fire zeal paladin, druid summoner, summoner necro.

basically it, all classes will chug mana or heal pots early on till you get a insight merc and some more gear at 75+.

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FoH Pally: Ditch Redemption and use Meditation = Infinite mana.

Sorc: Points into energy and warmth skill. Merc with Insight = Infinite mana.

I have both of these built and never use potions. Insight merc is the best “all around” fix.

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The answer is simple, get Insight on a merc. Mana problems solved.

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Most of your characters/builds are spell casters, so going to be more mana intensive. Warcry barb especially is very mana intensive, even after they tried to improve it.

Something like a melee Barb, Pally or Druid will likely require fewer mana pots in the beginning.

I know the leveling guides say to go warcry barb, but double swing->Frenzy is also quite popular for normal and around lvl 7 or so DS becomes free mana cost. I think guides like war cry b/c you can wear 2x Spirits (and the cheap caster RW >> cheap melee RW for the most part this early) and you can stun your enemies then smack them to death, which helps early on. Anyway DS+Frenzy works pretty well through Normal, but depending on your weapons often runs out of steam by NM, so people sometimes respec to WW. I’ve personally found respecing to WW and making an Insight Partizan is a decent way to get thru NM.

Zeal is similarly pretty manageable mana cost on a Pally.

Melee also gets to take advantage of leach, so mana leach can make it so you completely sustain your attacks and only need potions to recover from mana draining attacks.

Unfortunately a lot of the melee builds will simply trade chugging mana pots for chugging health pots though, at least until you get decent damage and some life leach going.

That said, casters can usually be pretty set on mana by the end of normal or early nightmare. One thing that Tron touched on is that mana recovery is linked to your maximum mana pool. So it’s possible to have such a small mana pool, that even with Meditation from Insight, you’re mana starved. In practice, I’ve found the huge mana buff from Spirit to really help with that for casters - most obvious for me was always trying to spam tele on a sorc, before you’ve got a large mana pool it can overwhelm your mana regen.

As you’ve mentioned, mana after each kill (maek) items are definitely helpful, especially if you can kill multiple enemies with a single spell. You can add that stat with “tir” runes as well.

Eventually most characters can get to the point where they only need potions in emergencies. Melee with leach and casters with +mana and regen items.

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about a Singer barb that uses the skill Warcry to do damage. So he has to holler constantly to do damage. It’s known that Warcry is pretty low damage for the mana cost and it being physical and blockable makes it a tough road. That’s why for leveling guides I think they recommend a hybrid approach where you stun them with Warcry and then smack them to death with DS/Frenzy.

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Thats where you are wrong.
Meditation or any form of Mana regeneration is based on your Mana Pool.
Even if you put in 10 points into warmth for your sorc who has low mana pool, it will fail.

A lv 30 Meditation Insight (assuming it exist) will not help a 100 mana pool Sorc or any class.

Big pool = Bigger regeneration.

How you get bigger pool? Gain levels (dont need to assign points into energy, just gain more levels) or stack +Mana on trash gear or in Charms or use Spirit Runeword.

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