Mana sucks

yup. funny how everyone forgets this :expressionless:

so is skipping an entire saber slash.

I think we should get rid of health.

Yea Iā€™m joking. I do sort of think this but only with certain characters in Mobas, not in WoW.

Nothing about this is hard. Itā€™s annoying.

Except it was designed for a reason. When you have to stop to drink in group content, it gives you time with nothing else to do to socialize. And it works very well that way in Classic

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I donā€™t understand this. Rogue energy is in no way equivalent to caster mana. Energy is a fast-filling resource that is meant to be emptied and filled over and over again in the course of a single encounter. Caster mana has to last through an entire encounter, going from full to empty. It is supplemented in combat with active abilities with long cooldowns, and can only be refilled in its entirety once combat ends. These long cooldowns can become liabilities if timed incorrectly, or if there are multiple fights between said long cooldowns.

Your ā€œmana barā€ refills quickly and is meant to be repeatedly emptied. Caster mana is not.

The wait time, the downtime between pulls and the idea of ā€œmana managementā€ where you are not doing anything when your mana bar is empty during a fight is the problem. I donā€™t know what the solution should be but ā€œdo nothingā€ is not the answer.

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i wasnā€™t being seriousā€¦i thought that was obvious.

It wasnā€™t. I demand an apology! Irony has ruined my day.

[Edit]
Some of the comments Iā€™ve seen on the topic of mana are soā€¦ questionableā€¦ I really canā€™t tell the ironic responses from the serious ones.

this wasnā€™t even true in 2004 nor is it true today.
never have i once in 20 years of wow thought to myself that i had nothing else to do but socialize while drinking to regen mana.

you also ignoring that a lot of people quest solo.

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People chat when drinking between pulls all the time. They did back in Classic, and they did back in Vanilla top.

Except I specified ā€œin group content.ā€ This is an MMO. Game systems are designed around playing with others. Making design choices so that you can do anything solo is part of what killed the game

Yes, but itā€¦ really isnā€™t a primary function of drinking, is it?

What is the point of forcing a player to sit and drink between encounters? What is mana management and why does it exist? Why is the amount of time as it is? Presumably to add a dynamic to combat: if you ā€œmanageā€ your mana correctly, a player skill, your reward is less downtime. Itā€™s a simple risk/reward feedback loop. Lots of games have it.

What happens when you mix a class that has this ā€œmanagementā€ mechanic with one that doesnā€™t? What happens if the classes that donā€™t have this management vastly outnumber the ones that do? Are they going to wait, or does this management simply become a liability?

What if you have an entirely melee group and the healer never runs out of mana because everyone is over-geared? What is the risk/reward loop for the ā€œmanagementā€ class? This happens a lot.

Kill time in the open world was presumably balanced around downtime. Mages have lots of downtime drinking, ā€œbalancedā€ out by their quicker kill time and squishier nature. Warriors are harder to kill and their slower kill time was balanced out by shorter downtime. Except it doesnā€™t really work out well in practice, does it? How many people talk about how slow warriors are to level and how fast mages are to level by comparison, even before SoD?

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According to the WoW Dev Diary, it is. They specifically tuned drinking to incentive social interactions in dungeon groups. They also messed with the idea of refilling mana after combat, or just way faster drinking

Isnā€™t it nice how well things work out on paper compared to the real world? SoD is so far away from OG vanilla it isnā€™t even funny. If I use Fireball in a dungeon now itā€™s a waste of damn mana because Living Bomb is so much more efficient itā€™s not even in the same galaxy.

Also, you ignored the rest of my comment.

But it did work out that way? Most of the conversations I have in a dungeon are when thereā€™s downtime drinking

Except what winds up happening is the melee and ranged run along to the next encounter while the caster is in the back drinking. Itā€™s simply become a liability with how the game wound up being played.

Even back in OG vanilla, ā€œmelee cleaveā€ groups were far, far faster at clears. I have distinct memories of getting denied groups because people wanted melee cleave groups to clear whatever high level dungeon faster. The biggest goal people had as a caster was to reduce that drinking time to near 0 if possible, even downranking. Downranking allowed healers and casters to make their mana bar last longer. Before the advent of damage meters, the impact of it on damage wasnā€™t as well known but people just knew their mana lasted longer.

This reminds me of David Brevikā€™s comments on Stamina in Diablo 2.

I have a warrior and a mage. There is chatter on both characters, even if the warrior gets into a melee cleave group.

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This exactly. People are twisting themselves into knots justifying why casters have to have significant downtime between trash pulls even though there is no balanced tradeoff currently in game to justify this.

Your damage is bad when at full mana. You are slowing down the group when youā€™re refilling your mana bar. Very balanced. Much fun.

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To a point I can understand the rose-tinted goggles. To a point.

But at some point it just gets ridiculous and maybe more nostalgia is setting in than should be. OG Vanilla was not a fun game at times. There are other issues that are going to rear their deformed heads as the phases progress and we spend more time than originally intended in specific level brackets.

OG Vanilla introduced several things related to mana managment throughout its lifetime specifically because the player base declared it was ā€œnot funā€. Oils did not exist originally. Lots of buffs were single-target only and not raid/party-wide. Mage Armor didnā€™t exist for a long time. And at level 60, mages made water 20 at a time, but drinking took forever. Blizzard introduced a level 60 water eventually. You made 4 at a time but it drastically reduced the downtime in raids.

And there were a ton of other changes made to the game that Iā€™m sure Iā€™m forgetting that we now take for granted.

Some of the knots Iā€™ve seen around the topic of mana are so ridiculous not even Khadgar could undo them. I wouldnā€™t be surprised to hear that by the middle of OG vanilla that ā€œwe made the downtime as it was to encourage socializationā€ intention still held.

you said it gives you NOTHING ELSE TO DO BUT SOCIALIZE. which is just hilariously untrue in 2004. nor is it true today. love how you are twisting your answers to fit your narrative though.

doesnt matter what you specify. making it sound like the only thing we do in a game that was designed around solo play AND group play is just you trying to make it fit your narrative again. nice try though

and no matter how much you say random things that are your own opinions will never make them true.

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What else can you do in game while drinking?