If I lost a BG to group of RP walking Christmas Gnomes…I’d be too ashamed to step foot in a BG ever again. Lol
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To be fair, we were coordinated and heavily geared. It was with my 2s partner at the time shortly after we broke 2200 and his cousin who was helping to heal us. Coordination can be a significant game changer, especially with comms.
Though that priest who tried to mana burn my partner (a feral druid) will live on in my heart. God speed mana burning priest. God speed.
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My very best memory in WSG was on my Feral Druid. I chased a FC from Flag room to Flag room while my team just got everything else. I didn’t even realize it until we were running up the hall and it was just the two of us. I would say neither of us was very good but I kept hitting him and he kept running. He died halfway into the flag room. It was an amazing feeling. I was oblivious to everything else. Lol
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Tbf, it’d be funny if Shapeshifting still cost mana in amounts uniquely significant to any int-less Feral (or later Guardian), leaving them unable to swap back to Cat Form after de-rooting. Then, a CC or two later, you guys would be calling him genius. /s
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Look, he was a brave pioneering soul. He tried his best.
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I really do miss my tBC era Disc/Shadow battlefield attrition spec… So much MP for my team, so little for theirs…
I don’t quite miss it as much as tBC Beastmaster, but still.
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I remember having certain arena matches where I knew it would go on til the time limit in Wrath playing 2s. I just couldn’t out dps certain healers.
But with Viper sting… I could slowly drain their mana, muahahaha!
Shtop it, man – I’m missing OG Chimera Shot now.
/sigh
I wonder what dungeons would be like if mob MP were an actual significant concern. My gut tells me it’d be the worse for it, but on further consideration, the idea that you might have periods where the AI is meaningfully/obviously on the offensive… idk, could be neat.
(Oddly enough, old-school XIV had a mechanic like this. Different mobs would differently generate skill resource [Tactical Points] from damage taken, dealt, absorbed, or thwarted, in addition to over time, and there could be cases where you’d want to bait out a special attack earlier in order to desync it from another mob’s attacks so your tank wouldn’t get collectively trucked, or you’d want to manage damage dealt, or use TP-reducing skills, for when mitigation or incapacitating skills were ready, etc., etc. I’m exaggerating a bit as the concept was never all that deliberately implemented to be played around, but it was interesting nonetheless.)
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In the JRPG Bravely Default 2 I recently played and beat a difficult boss on hard difficulty thanks to something like this. My team was under leveled for the fight but I had a strat that basically kept me acquiring tons of healing items to stave off death.
He kept beating me up until… he just. Ran out of mana. But his AI kept trying to have him use the same attacks. The poor boss got a massive butt whooping after he went oom 
Heh, nice.
I guess the larger concern is just one of variance in how a given fight is framed. When ultimately sustained DPS (i.e., including the effects of burst and such to keep fights short and efficient, but ultimately just to make the run as short as possible rather than out of any real, pull-specific concerns in most cases) is your only concern, and every fight in framed in terms of a steamrolling offense, varied only in being CD-laden or between-CDs, there seems a fair bit of wasted potential.
Now, if mob MP and the like created an extra affordance (instead of burning down this hard mob, we can just outlast it for a shortened time via MP-burns), that may or may not be significant. There’s no telling from that alone whether the framing of the fight would change or quickly meta into just another singular proceduralized route of action. /shrug
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I think the issue would be MP burns potentially feeling mandatory, or encounters being built with the assumption that MP burns are in play. Which either leads to MP burns being mandatory or meaningless depending on how things are tuned.
At least, that would be my assumption as to why they moved away from that design.
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Yeah, that’s about my assumption as well. Unique affordances are awesome, until they become (seemingly) mandatory.
(And with invites, perception is everything anyways.)
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I don’t understand a single thing either if you just said. Lol.
Basically, we were talking about the idea of how mana burns used to be a thing in the game, and what bringing them back might mean for the game!
But I think Vit and I both agree that sadly, such utility likely will never really return. Outside of PVP uses, it becomes hard to balance and feel meaningful without also feeling mandatory in PVE, which is something Blizz has been trying to avoid for years. It’s a similar reason why Anti-Magic Zone for Death Knights is being nerfed next patch. A lot of groups feel they need to stack death knights due to how strong that utility is and they are the only ones with access to it.
If mana burns were brought back and mobs were made accordingly with the idea to account for mana burn, you would likely see longer periods of incoming high damage on the party. Cool downs could account for it but if say you have no mana burn? It would be hard to balance for the group without mana burn and just a sort of “check mark” for those with a mana burn in the party.
Mandatory (or the perception of it anyways) utility isn’t fun for a lot of players. It’s also why the crit / mana regen stuff from old survival years ago was removed too.
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Heh, I feel like that particular case is owed to more than just mandatory utilities feeling bad (in that you feel obliged to bring them). Effectively permanent and passive raid buffs are straight-up dull. (Compare Fortitude to Rallying Cry, for instance, or Mystic Touch / Chaos Brand to Heroism.)
Having to spend talent points on effectively passive raid buffs that could otherwise be used for your own interesting gameplay, moreover, doesn’t feel great (to say the least).
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You know, I wasn’t even thinking about that. But yes, you’re totally correct lol. Buffs that apply automatically that you never have to think about other than “Do we have X in group to give it to us” is just not fun.
On that note, though… I was wondering what that would look like as a meaningful, active mechanic for Survival only to remember I got half way through writing one such ideas as an alternate-history musing for RSV in either Ghorak’s or your ‘RSV as 4th spec’ thread, only to lose the draft and give up… Oof.
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Literally me with Ghorak’s thread. I had a lot written up, it got lost and I got super frustrated. I need to get back to it (especially since he updated his thread) but that sort of stuff is so disheartening lol.
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And so many attempted Warrior threads on my part, since starting a thread in a new tab will typically bring you back to your previous thread attempted in said forums, but will occasionally instead just delete it automatically in the process of starting another…
Probably no huge loss in regards to the RSV one anyways, though; it was pretty out there, and damn near required RSV to be a team-centric playmaker in the course of its guerilla warfare mechanics (i.e., waaay more big-brain and coordinated than your average, otherwise interchangeable DPS).
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You mean in this topic? [Updated for Dragonflight] Munitions - If RSV was to return
Or do you mean one of my older posts? I recall in the one linked above, you do touch on elements pertaining to the complexity or rather partial lack thereof with older iterations of RSV. Nothing much regarding supportive elements, at least not something like the above though.
Doesn’t the website save drafts automatically if it’s somehow closed down or similar? I have noticed some glitches, especially when browsing/writing a post on the forum through my phone, although nothing as big as the complete loss of a draft.
Sorry to hear that…for both of you.
On this topic though, I still recall Viper Sting and Aspect of the Viper, even as a function in PvE. The most noteworthy one for me was when using those two on Lady Deathwhisper in ICC.
Basically, you could pop them both while hitting her, and it was enough to fire off 1 single Steady Shot + Chimaera Shot, and you had replenished your whole mana pool within just a few seconds. 
More often, especially a bit later in the tier, it was enough to just keep Viper Sting up on her and you never went oom.
Not to mention how it(Viper Sting) actually helped to drain abit of her mana over the course of the fight. Referencing the ability: Mana Barrier, which she uses to replenish lost health. No massive amounts since the amount drained was based on the caster’s mana(myself), and not her own, but still, it added up over time.