This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
No more downranking in WotLK
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
Aylia
Quote from a Blizzard poster (
oringinal link
):
In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells. All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.
This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it's a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.
So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.
We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.
tl;dr version
Lower ranks of spells will cost the same or
more
mana than higher ranks of spells in the expansion.
Here
is a screenshot demonstrating what they've done.
I know that the way encounters work will have to be balanced around this change, but wow, that's going to take a while to get used to.
Post by
60618
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
17744
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Galaxi
This discussion is also
here
and
here
.
Post by
oddbrown
I have been doing some number crunching and I have come up with the following figures. I'm not sure how accurate they are, but they seem a little surprising to me!
@ lvl 70
base
intellect is approx 145 (averaged over all races) this works out at (125*15) + 20 mana = 1895 mana points (base)
So as
Greater Heal
now costs 32% of base mana this works out at (1895*0.32)mana or 607 mp at lvl 70.
Currently this spell costs 825 mp untalented. With 3/3
Improved Healing
this works out at 740 mp, still 133mp higher than the WotLK cost!
Considering that most raiding priests have around 600-700+ regen O5SR to cope with the current spell costs I can see blizz having to juggle the regen calculations to actually cost people mana over a long fight (a slight exaggeration maybe but you get the idea).
Post by
Aylia
So having a bigger mana pool only hurts you, stupid. The more mana you have, the costlier the spells are, more it takes to regen.
No, this is not how the change works. Quoting again here from what I originally posted, "Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect." The cost of spells is based only on your level and class. It's a percent of the amount of mana you would have if you were naked and unbuffed, basically. Any intellect you have in addition to that does not affect the spell cost.
The concern here isn't the cost of max rank spells, it's the loss of the ability to downrank spells to conserve mana.
Post by
murakaz
The change was probably made more for PvP than PvE (what isn't these days), but I welcome this from a PvE standpoint. It'll make managing mana an actual challenge and will hopefully allow them to balance boss fights so healing them is more fun.
Post by
42603
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
166311
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
17744
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
sandrock
maybe lesser heal and heal will be back in service, who knows xD.
So far in my beta testing, Lesser Heal and Heal are still not viable.
Post by
5200
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
oddbrown
hmm...so this is like..
ex.
priest A has 20 base mana and 40 intellect based mana
priest B has 20 base mana and 60 intellect based mana
smite costs 50% base mana..Aka 10 base mana
does that also mean it costs 10 mana?
so "priest A" can cast 6 smites while "priest B" can cast 8 smites?
That's the basic idea but I think you are a little confused as to what is meant by "base mana".
My understanding is that it is whatever intellect based mana you have before all the added int from your gear or any buffs is your base mana.
So for a level 70 with 145 base intellect, their base mana is 1895 mp.
So your "smite costs 50% base mana" means that your smite would cost 50% of 1895, or 948 mana, not 10 mana!
If you check, you will see that the variation on base intellect between races at level 70 is a massive 9 intellect (Belf has highest and Troll has lowest over all races).
As 9*15=135 mana points that means that the difference between spell costs in terms of real mana expense is next to nothing, so it is more likely that both priests would be able to cast the same number of smites from their mana pool but priest B may have enough mana left to get another smite in earlier due to not having to regen so much mana to meet the cost of the spell.
I hope that made sense...
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.