This expansion I’ve played around with Warlock, Balance Druid, Hunter, Shaman and Ret a bit and I came to realization that the “resources” a lot of specs have to work with are mostly just reskins of the same general idea: There is a rectangle(or several smaller rectangles disguised as something else) and you use filler abilities to fill it/them up. You have a special ability that fills it up faster or more but it’s usually a CD or a procced ability. Then you dump the rectangle(s) with your extra special ability. Rinse and repeat indefinitely.
The majority of specs are now basically just a build and spend mechanic at their core, with some minor variation that makes them feel different on a surface level. Even ones that don’t really seems like it at first, essentially are. Once you get your rotation going as a hunter, your focus dumps and focus builders function virtually the same as soul shards or maelstrom or astral power, etc. You have the slight additional concern of not wanting to cap focus, but you don’t want to go over your cap on any other spec either.
I understand why Blizzard largely did away with mana as a resource for a lot of specs, because nobody likes going oom. But I think they just created another problem.
Back when most dps specs had mana as their main resources, there were unique and interesting solutions. Using aspect of the viper/viper sting on a hunter felt different from mana gems or evocation as a mage, or life tap as a warlock. They also fulfilled a class fantasy and impacted gameplay. You had to make some sacrifice in terms of damage output or health. Or you had to know a fight well enough that you knew when to evoc safely so you could get the full effect.
It was a common problem that required a diverse array of solutions. By doing away with mana as a resource, they end up creating multiple problems with essentially the same solution. Which I think has removed depth from the game and made a lot of specs feel similar at their core, even if they seem quite different on the surface.
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spending 40-50 levels wanding stuff to death as a shadow priest was not in any way interesting, i promise.
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I’m not saying it was perfect, and the game was obviously in a much more primitive state at the time.
Waiting for mana made specs feel the same.
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You just generalized every RPG ever.
I played classic. Waiting for mana was a constant. “Everybody stop and drink now.”
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RPGs that tend to have a variety in specs/classes/etc, in my limited experience, rarely have everyone relying on mana.
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Ah yes I’m never oom ever… then again I guess my name is apt since I run out of mana with rdruid so maybe it’s just a skill issue.
Even so, as a holy priest I don’t find myself ooming as much as rdruid.
If you want mana to feel relevant just heal.
Okay, but seriously, I feel like mana, even for the DPS specs, is tied to healing. Making survivability harder if things go wrong (or are in PvP). I haven’t needed to do it recently, partially because I don’t play warlock all that often, but I’m pretty sure if you try spamming Drain Life to keep yourself up, you’ll run out of mana pretty quickly. The soul shards, astral power, holy power, so on and so forth take some of the strain off of your mana, and if you try spam healing someone (yourself or otherwise) to keep them up, suddenly mana feels extremely finite.
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I mean, aren’t specs overall more complex since the time of them really needing mana? Like, don’t they have other combat resources they have to balance that either limit abilities or punish for being used wrong? If you want to play with mana, play Arcane.
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Is there any real difference between spend 100k mana and then use this ability to gain 100k mana back and collect 4 purple shards then spend 4 purple shards? They’re both functionally the same thing.
Also the problem with mana is that it kind of places a hard cap on what mana-based classes can do. It means they will always start a fight off strong and then end it weaker than they started. At first glance it seems like it introduces strategy into the gameplay because you have to conserve mana, but when you’re DPS you’re always looking to maximize damage output. Adding in mana does not make that process more strategic, it makes it slower. Because you are always trying to maximize your damage output, but instead of maximizing it through the rotation of abilities, you’re maximizing it by not casting abilities at certain points to regen mana. Or, back when we had spell ranks, gaming the system by downranking.
tl;dr: mana slows down caster gameplay.
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Mana is to keep healing in check.
I would like mana to be irrelevant for holy priest as well. The spec doesn’t really need it, the heals that matter all have charges or cooldowns anyway. That or get rid of all the cooldowns, keep the big heals expensive, make the small heals free, and let me plan when to use the big heals myself.
For the same reason, Marksmanship Hunter doesn’t need focus at all. The spec would be just fine without focus costs. Charges and cooldowns are the restrictors anyway. Maybe people spend less time pressing steady shot, and nothing is lost. Just saying
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My arcane mage goes through mana like old cars use gasoline. Buffed legs and chest with 5% mana regen chant and it slows it down a wee bit. I do not know what the dealio is with manna gems either, they seem to move the bar back up 1/16th and it is not nearly enough.
Play Arcane Mage, they go through mana like it’s free!
I mean Classic WoW has huge emphasis on mana and all the Casters feel the same outside of their utility which doesn’t have a whole lot of mana importance anyways.
Wand. Wand. Wand. Wand.
Imagine if mana was a thing again, the tanks would ignore any class sitting to rest for mana after each fight. Is that what you want?
As a Tank I check the Healer mana but I’m not watching DPS resources much. Just kicks sometimes.
Or just play arcane mage. Arcane is the only dps spec where mana is their dps resource iirc.
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I stopped playing Classic because waiting for my mana to regen wasn’t captivating gameplay