Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGhostcrawler gives specifics for patch 3.1 mana regen changes
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 18th 2009 at 7:00PM
One of the big changes coming in patch 3.1 is the change to mana regen, and it has a lot of people pretty frantic. The last thing healers want is for their life to become harder, right? Well, Ghostcrawler hit the forums today with some clarification on the subject.Base regen (which is an equation that factors in both Intellect and Spirit) will be nerfed by about 40%. This means the mana you would regen while just standing around doing nothing will be quite a bit lower than it currently is. However, in exchange, regen-while-casting talents such as Meditation, Intensity, Spirit Tap and many others, whille be buffed so your in-combat mana regen shouldn't be harmed very much. It'll essentially prevent you from trying to wiggle in and out of the 5 second rule for big regen ticks, while not terribly bothering your mana regen while you're actually doing things.
Since Paladins are hardly affected by these changes at all, they're getting hit in a different way. We have the Divine Plea change which brought the healing debuff to 50%, and they'll be nerfing Spiritual Attunement for all but Protection Paladins. Hopefully that doesn't hit our Retribution friends too badly, but we will see.
Ghostcrawler has a lot of other details in the thread (which you should read through, at least his posts), but I'm pretty skeptical. I'm not so sure these changes will really fix much, which means that they'll need to look for other ways to make Mana Regen something you worry about. I'm admittedly pessimistic since I have a Shadow Priest, but I have no doubt that Replenishment will need to be nerfed again. There's such a massive difference in mana regen between when you have it and when you don't that I'm pretty sure it'll get brought down again in the future. Sure, it's supposed to be as important as a tank, but if your Tank was completely impenetrable that would be nerfed, too.
We'll see what happens, hm?
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Michael Feb 19th 2009 9:29AM
LOL, pretty disgusting isn't it? It became so bad for me that I finally just rolled a prot pally and a resto shaman. Now the problem is OMG your not geared enough!! These are my alts and I do not farm heroics with them WTF do you expect. I used to respec my main(spriest) twice a day once in the morning to actually get into groups and once in the evening for raids. I am disgusted by the half-ass so called dps that is getting by while there are such high demands on the tank and healer.
Xodin Feb 18th 2009 8:39PM
So what are they going to do with the mages that have meditation, mage armor, and the mage armor glyph? With this new system, are they going to let us have 120% of normal mana regen to keep us where we are? Cause if they don't let us go above 100% then we're effectively losing 25% of our mana regen.
vexis58 Feb 18th 2009 8:43PM
"The last thing healers want is for their life to become harder, right?"
Sure, if you ENJOY everything being too easy. My druid never runs OOM, doesn't even carry mana potions any more, only ever uses innervate on Patchwerk (and it's not because of my gear, it was the same way when I was still in mostly blues).
I'm really looking forward to this change actually making raiding a challenge again. It's just no fun when I have so much mana regen that I can afford to be wasteful. I want healing to be about skill again, not just spamming my biggest heals all the time.
AJ Feb 18th 2009 8:44PM
I am a holy pally and this will just hasten our guild's raid healers going /OOM!!!! on longer boss fights where when you are /OOM its wipetime. Thanks Blizz, for choosing to make your content difficult by gimping the classes which are most needed and least played already rather than bumping up boss damage and HP. Whatever I guess. Back to my 80 MM Hunter. Till they nerf her too, lol!
/kthanksbye
Max Feb 18th 2009 11:06PM
you're a really really bad healer if you go oom with any kind of decent gear at all.
Bubsa Feb 18th 2009 8:44PM
Anyone else think dancing around the 5 second rule for some healing classes was pretty much the only thing going for them that made it interesting, and a challenge?
I seriously question where GC is taking this game.
Dustybrown Feb 18th 2009 9:07PM
To the ground! apparently.
Etinfall Feb 18th 2009 9:07PM
Hey, whatever they do to make us have to plan a fight is good. More interesting fights, actually paying attention to my mana pool, this will make the game more fun in the end.
Please, please can I shackle??? Oh, the fight is already over! &%@&
JizzardEntertainment Feb 18th 2009 9:33PM
i know exactly how to fix this! they need to lower the mana cost of all caster spells to be in the double digits. then, they need to lower the amount of mana of every class to 100, and make the regen rates a 20 mana tick per 5 seconds, regardless of whether or not the caster in question has cast anything in the past 5 seconds.
after that, they need some kind of OP spell that will require two daggers and deal extra damage to poisoned targets...
GoldenGoat Feb 18th 2009 10:09PM
Another nerf for a class (or classes) that are not Death Knights. At this point, I wonder if Blizz really would like to see raids consisting entirely of healers and DKs.
Moroan Feb 18th 2009 11:10PM
Dear god some people are really really stupid.
DPS (except ret pallies) ARE NOT BEING NERFED IN ANY WAY.
The announced chang is that your MP5 WHILE NOT CASTING will be nerfed.
MP5 while casting STAYS EXACTLY THE SAME as abilities Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac, and Spirit Tap ARE ALL BEING BUFFED/
Seeing as DPS that are at any point are not casting are unbelievably stupid (excluding boss fights where you need to stop dps for some reason but that really doesnt mean that MP5 while not casting is going to be important) THE NERF DOESNT AFFECT THEM
The Divine Plea nerf has already been added to the game with 3.0.9 so if ret pallies havent noticed it IT CANT BE THAT BAD.
Realistically this nerf only affects HOLY PRIESTS AND RESTO DRUIDS. Other abilites which restore MP like Rapture, BoW and Mana Tide ARENT BEING NERFED.
Xodin Feb 19th 2009 12:28AM
Assume while not casting that a mage's mp5 is 1000. (I'm using 1000 to make the math easy)
Currently, Meditation +Mage Armor + Glyph = 80% of normal regen during casting, or 800 mp5 while casting.
So while not casting = 1000 mp5
While casting = 800 mp5
Ghostcrawler has not said that they'll allow the mana regen to go above 100, or that they're boosting the mage armor glyph.
If 1000 mp5 while not casting is reduced by 40% it will become 600 mp5 while not casting. If they cap the benefit of our abilities at 100%, then we'll have 600mp5 while casting instead of 800, which is a 25% loss in mana regen while casting.
If they don't cap us at 100%, but don't buff the glyph, then a mage will be at 120% of the not casting 600 mp5 which works out to 720mp5, which is still a reduction of 10%.
So either mages are getting nerfed 25% of their casting regen, or 10% of their casting regen, or not at all, and so far we don't have any blue posts with details about how they're handling the mage armor glyph, so we can't be sure it won't be the first two possibilities.
Cy Feb 19th 2009 1:53AM
I'm going to believe you because you posted your points in caps, which is always the sign of someone speaking truth. Plus of course you started out by calling everyone else stupid, which is another sign of excellence and knowledge.
Except then I noticed something else:
YOU'RE WRONG.
Moroan Feb 19th 2009 3:13AM
Ok when I said people were stupid I may have been out of line but I was so annoyed by all the DPS that were having a QQ about how their mana regen is being nerfed when it's not.
Xodin actually made a good point but seeing as this isnt meant to be a nerf to dps classes I assumed that glyphs would be buffed as well as talents, and that there wouldn't be a cap, if there was I think they would find some way to buff it.
I used caps to emphasize points that people just didn't seem to get.
And thank you for telling me that I was wrong Cy, its always helpful to be told that im wrong withouth being told how or why.
Lyraat Feb 19th 2009 8:50AM
Wrong.
Hunters don't have mp5 except for AotV, which dramatically decreases our dps. Our gear doesn't have mp5 on it (like it did in BC), and spirit is a joke. The only in-combat mana regen we get is from a couple scattered talents and glyphs (mana back when shots crit, that sort of thing) and AotV.
oscurotoro Feb 18th 2009 11:19PM
Why is everyone so dumb. Obviously shamans aren't being nerfed, I'm assuming the guy who said hunter nerf is kidding. WHILE CASTING MANA REGEN IS NOT BEING NERFED IF YOU STAYED IN THE 5 SECOND RULE YOU WILL STILL HAVE THE SAME MP5 IF YOU TRIED TO STAY OUT OF THE 5 SECONDS WELL YOURE A PRIEST AND I DONT LIKE YOU.
gilren Feb 19th 2009 12:29AM
As a priest I really hate this change, especially for soloing. Mages can cast water, make gems, and have their mana regen talent for out of fights. Warlocks can still lifetap and bandage. Priests...carry lots of extra water for soloing. And now carry more, since out of fights we're going to regen mana 40% slower, and priests tend to load up on spirit and not MP5. So thanks a lot for adding more downtime or more expenses for the priests.
hpavc Feb 19th 2009 1:06AM
Poor innervate
Nick8708 Feb 19th 2009 12:53AM
Spirit Tap isn't reliable for a non-shadow priest. As it currently works, it only procs when the priest makes the killing blow. Improved spirit tap only procs with a crit from Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death. I'd like to know how they're improving these so that a non-shadow priest can still benefit from them. I'm leveling a holy/disc priest and while I don't mind sparing the 3 points for Spirit Tap, I don't usually attack. When I can attack and don't have to focus exclusively on healing, getting the killing blow can be a game of chance unless I am very careful with my timing - which usually means not healing as effectively as I could.
Unless they change Spirit Tap to make it more useful to healing-focused Priests, I'm going to have to stop and drink more often than before. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it'll certain add a signifcant amount of downtime. Since it seems Blizzard is focused on making leveling just a means to end-game content (obvious from their addition of the recruit-a-friend program and this specific change to improve the experience of raiders) then making it take longer to reach that plateau is gonna suck for me. I hope whatever changes they make to the talents will also benefit us healing-focused priests.
Yamsy Feb 19th 2009 3:39AM
As a holy/disc priest Spirit Tap is not the talent you should be concerned with.
Meditation (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=14777) is our main "while casting" talent... and it is listed as getting a buff right along with Spirt Tap.