No, It's not a drinking problem
by Amanda Dean 
Feb 12th 2008 at 9:00AM
Matthan of Burning Blade brought up an issue with drinking to recover mana on the public test realm. He found that he was not receiving the normal benefit from imbibing. Hortus indicated that this phenomenon is not a bug but a change in the mechanics that ramps up mana regeneration over time. Players are used to a steady increase in mana with every tick. This change was not included in the patch 2.4 notes. The general consensus from players is negative. Speculation suggests that the change was geared toward casters drinking Star's Tears or conjured water in the arena. Posters have made many arguments on why this would have negative consequences in the PvE environment. Many casters drink between pulls and do not usually have the opportunity to spend thirty seconds drinking in raids and instances. Incremental increases in drinking over time would inconvenience all members of a party or raid as they would have to wait for casters to fill up on mana. This could change become disastrous in chain pulls and endurance fights, where every second counts.
Suggestions include making this change only affect arena battles or to just impact Star's Tears, since aside from conjured beverages, no other beverage can be consumed in the arena. The possibility of omitting this change altogether has been made by posters with varying levels of civility. From what I could see, no one was happy about this adjustment. Personally, I can't think of anything nice to say about it, so I will say nothing at all. What do you think of this unannounced change?
EDIT: Correction on arena consumption. Thank you!
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Buffs, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Dahk Feb 12th 2008 9:09AM
Correction: You can also drink conjured water/Conjured Manna Biscuits in arenas, not just Star's Tears.
Mukan Feb 12th 2008 9:10AM
"Shoot 100 people because 1 among them might be a criminal."
That's what comes to my mind. Idiotic change. I use to drink in between the pulls on my mage to quickly regain the lost 10 % mana from the previous trash mob. This will be completely pointless in the future as I will barely regain any mana in those 2-3 sec.
Sometimes I wonder if the designers ever play their own game ...
Squee88 Feb 12th 2008 9:13AM
It's just a stupid band-aid fix for a much bigger problem of classes being able to run from battle in arena to regen mana.
Milktub Feb 12th 2008 9:14AM
Hrmmmm ... I can imagine this would make BM quite a bit more difficult.
glorft Feb 12th 2008 9:19AM
Wow, that change has got to be the dumbest thing I've seen yet. Whole encounters depend on acting fast and almost none of them give you the time to drink for 30 seconds.
sephirah Feb 12th 2008 9:19AM
I'd really like to know how many players:
- do endgame raids (10%?)
- do arena "seriously"
Blizzard spend lot of resource to make content for the former, and lot of effort to try to balance the game for the latter.
Oh well, we just must live with it...
Banishaga Feb 12th 2008 9:21AM
As if drinking didn't have a problem already. Mana pools already require two drinks to refill them. This will now extend the period you have to drink. Star Tears are crap anyways as they aren't conjured. Mages already have a tough enough time in arenas, and Star Tears detract from their necessity. Different subject, I know. Give mages a higher conjured water so at least people with a friendly mage wouldn't have to drink for 45sec for full mana.
Itsnoteasy Feb 12th 2008 10:04AM
This is a total non-issue so far as I can tell. While playing my mage on the PTR, I didn't even realise the change had been made. That was while solo grinding, blasting through my mana and drinking every few fights.
As the blues have repeatedly stated, the only time you will see less benefit from your drinks is if you drink for less than six seconds. That's less than three ticks of mana regen (since you gain mana from drinking every two seconds.) If you're drinking for less than six seconds, then you're already wasting most of your water. If you're not drinking any longer because you don't need any more, then you probably didn't really need to drink right away anyway. If you're not drinking any longer because you don't have time, then you've just ensured you don't need to drink for an extra 3 seconds after the next fight. If you're not drinking longer because you're in PvP and someone's trying to kill you, then that's exactly what Blizz is trying to prevent!
Really, people seem to be blowing this completely out of proportion. If I was being mean, I'd say that people are whining because they don't want Shammies to have all the fun...
Tridus Feb 12th 2008 10:20AM
Not true.
In Hyjal trash, I'm often the resurrector if someone dies. I get out of combat when a wave ends (sometimes it takes a few seconds for some reason). Then I res for 10 seconds. Then I get about 4 seconds of drinking before I'm up healing again.
I actually DO need the mana those four seconds give me. Nerfing my drinking in PvE because arenas are broken is just lazy and idiotic. Blizzard needs to stop balancing the entire game around arenas.
Balasan Feb 12th 2008 10:39AM
Your comments on us 'blowing this completely out of proportion' clearly shows us that you do not do MH or ZA timed runs.
In those instances you do not have 30 seconds to drink. Drinking is just to get back a few ticks of mana in between very very short breaks between trash groups. A nerf to drinking means a nerf to the amount of DPS in between breaks.
It's a retarded change.
Angus Feb 12th 2008 9:23AM
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
The Devs need to quit EFFING UP THE GAME JUST TO FIX ARENA. ESPECIALLY FOR SHAMAN.
Half the freaking PVE nerfs that have been either annoying or close to CRIPPLING have been "arena balance fixes."
My WF totem is now so-so. Which means the amazing increase in rage generation it gave my warrior tanks and DPS my rogues got is now less than half of what it used to be. That totem made up for me not being able to do as much DPS as a pure class. Now, it isn't as much of an incentive to take me. My other buffs and own DPS meant we did more damage than if I was replaced by a rogue. Now I am about even.
ES going to 6 charges? Well, a PVE nerf. Thanks.
LB co-efficient? PVE nerf for arena balance because shaman were actually doing okay. Can't have that.
That interrupt DR would have killed us. It took a mass revolt to reverse it. WF totem had a huge string of comments when they proposed that "fix" previously. Then they hot fixed it. I wonder how long before DR on interrupts goes in as a hot-fix.
Gareth Feb 13th 2008 4:26AM
Got to totally agree here, sick to death with this fetish Blizzard seem to have for fighting in a small box with only some of your abilities (dude - where did my netherweave nets go ?).
There are way better games out there that offer 1 on 1 combat, bending/breaking the game just to cater for the small minority that want this will alienate the 70%+ that PVE+Raid.
Fel Feb 13th 2008 8:56AM
Agreed to both.
I'm betting this won't hit regular servers come patch time.
ScytheNoire Feb 12th 2008 9:29AM
I wish Blizzard would stop trying to make the game for the minority and make it for the majority. Changes like this make no sense, and do nothing to benefit the majority, just hurt and annoying them. Stupid. Blizzard, stop acting like the government and start listening to the majority of players.
Bloodthorn Feb 12th 2008 9:30AM
does anyone have some unbers on how big this change is?
I mean, come on, it might be a lot less than you fear as I see it, and if you're dependant on drinking 1-3 seconds I think you have other problems too.
Let's get some solid numbers on the table before we begin any QQ, cos I can only see this affect timed runs like BM atm, else just tell your AHDH affected tank to slow down 5 secs between the pulls...
Heilig Feb 12th 2008 3:04PM
I can't find the post now, but one of the devs said that you reach the current mana regen rate after 6 seconds. Speaking anecdotally, I can tell you that the 5 -7 seconds of drinking I used to do in heroic BM took about 15 last night, and SEVERELY impacted our success.
Bloodthorn Feb 13th 2008 12:55AM
thanks for the input, now what you are saying quite sucks, for almost anyone that needs mana, especially at pulls/instances like these. I can only imagine how much this could suck at hyjal :/
Arabelli Feb 12th 2008 9:30AM
Hyjal is going to suck in 2.4 -proper-.
I usually try to keep on a 'happy face' but this one makes it more than a little difficult. Fire mages, warlocks and pally tanks are the big trash clearing classes in there. This will be very, very difficult now.
theRaptor Feb 12th 2008 9:37AM
People who think this affects drinking much in PVE are wrong (I have heard that on Hyjal trash you might only get 4 seconds to drink, which could be bad). You still get the full amount over the time period, it just ramps up (with the first 2-3 seconds providing hardly any mana), so if you are drinking from OOM this makes no difference. Also the spot where the ramp up matches what is live is apparently about six seconds, so snatching quick drinks is still possible. What this stops is very quick drinks of 1-2 seconds in arena.
However if you are optimistic you would see that now Blizzard have "fixed" the arena drinking problem they might add better drinks so that there is less double drinking in PVE, and quicker regen for chain pulling and the like.
superfrank Feb 13th 2008 10:30AM
No you are wrong! See other comments and article for explanation :)
kthxbye