Well, honestly, I knew someone would say something like that. But this post is about having mage food specifically. Having other food is just not good. Mana comes back so slowly with other food.
I join bgs before i do M+ just so that the only groups I join don’t have to have a mage–but sometimes you have to wait like 20 minutes. Other times you have no mage in the BG group or none who drop tables even if you ask. But that is a huge hassle. I also at times have to log out and in again every five minutes once I have some so the food does not vanish. But that is also a huge hassle. I refrain from joining guilds with friends when the guild does not have a mage that runs M+ regularly, but that is a downer. I shrink down my Wow window and stay logged into the game while I stretch or grab a drink or watch a TV show between runs, but guess what? That is also a huge hassle.
Why Blizzard has healers with serious mana issues and other healers with none makes other healers superior. They don’t have to go through this laborious process because there is no need for any food, let alone the best food for getting mana back. I was told earlier by a group that disc priests have mana issues so they much prefer to invite other healers, so I was to take a walk.
The point is we don’t want to be a liability to groups so we pretty much have to get our hands on mage food. Us disc priests pretty much require the food that gets mana back the fastest but it makes for a huge hassle every time you want to heal a key. THAT is my point. I’d rather get the food myself, even if I have to farm the mats. Why? Because I loathe relying on others and the hassles that that creates. Not to mention I loathe the hassle of getting mage food and then feeling I cannot log out because it will vanish when maybe I want to do something other than be glued to my chair for hours.
You follow?
On an aside, I also prefer to play mainly on the horde side because the player base is a lot larger and there are a lot more higher keys on offer most of the time. If there are Night Elves on the horde side, great, but last I checked there weren’t any at all.
Duh. I find this comment extremely annoying as I have played healers almost exclusively since vanilla and like 99% of Disc Priests, would have to have severe brain damage to not recognize your point here. I have used mana pots and then had the group leader say to invis next packs. Great! I stop to drink whenever possible, but a lot of tanks tunnel and are utterly oblivious to your mana issues and will pull packs with you at 10% mana forcing you to blow all of your CDs to keep everyone alive and then with you at zero mana and no CDs left they let you drink. But your group could have let you drink before and so you would have your CDs for when needed or when it is best to use them.
Manage your mana? I suppose if you just let everyone die by not healing enough so that you preserve mana that is acceptable as managing your mana?! Maybe not, but to suggest any healer worth his salt is unaware of that fact is a joke.
Nobody runs Night Fae currently! I have done more than 3.6k dps in a run with a solid group and would not trade that dps for the world. It is unreasonable to even suggest it.
In summary, no, there are not things me, in my case, can do. Or then again, maybe there are. I can unsub and avoid the hassles. I can drop disc priests and go back to maining H pallies like I did for years. Or I can go through the laborious hassles of jumping through hoops to get and keep mage food before it vanishes. And all this just to get mana back as fast as possible so that the tunnel vision tanks can keep being silly and ignorant. Honestly, though, I simply loathe having to get mage food and wasting time on it because Blizzard took away Fish Feasts and did not replace them with food that gets mana back nearly as fast as mage food! As for your other suggestions, like go Night Fae, it is totally unreasonable. If tanks would simply let you sip for five seconds sometimes… Or better yet, and back on topic: If Blizzard would simply add something to the game that got you back mana as fast as mage food or Fish Feasts, then the hassles of the related mana issues would be half the headache.