Replenishment's wild ride
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 24th 2009 at 11:00AM
Ah, Replenishment. No buff might be more welcomed in raids and reviled in theorycrafting. Ever since Ghostcrawler told us it was a necessary buff earlier this year, Blizzard seems to have twirled it around and around, taunting us like the proverbial carrot on a stick. It's been passed out to many classes, buffed a few times, nerfed even more (that Arena nerf was particularly strange), and in patch 3.2, soon headed to the PTR, it's getting nerfed again, even while MP5 (mana per five seconds) is getting a boost. What's the deal?Merlot, the Shadow Priest behind the Misery blog, has a good breakdown of just why Blizzard is so schizo with Replenishment. The whole point of the buff was to have Blizzard have some control over mana during fights -- instead of worrying about each class' mana separately, they'd just have this buff that gave mana like a big spigot, which they could then control as they saw fit. But players are so different across the board that putting them all under one big buff umbrella hasn't worked so well: a buff to Replenishment helps some and hurts others, and a nerf does the same, meaning Blizzard is flipping back and forth on turning the spigot on or off nearly every patch.
Merlot concludes that the only real option is to throw the whole thing out -- along with the Replenishment changes in 3.2, the MP5 change means they're already heading back to tweaking individual classes (classes like Shaman and Paladins focus more on MP5, and thus are targeted there), so they might as well just do that for everyone. Otherwise, they'll soon realize that the current Replenishment numbers offer too little mana to some classes (Priests?), which will lead to another Replenishment buff and a nerf to something else. Blizzard was trying to save some balancing by making everyone responsible for Replenishment, but I'm with Merlot: it's a clumsy way to do things, and it leads directly to this back-and-forth balancing, where you're targeting the problems of the solutions rather than the problems themselves.
Filed under: Paladin, Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Buffs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
makebooms Jun 24th 2009 11:17AM
What about giving a buff to certain talents that affect the way that replenishment works? This way you can control the amount of replenishment per spec or class.
Dharmabhum Jun 24th 2009 11:20AM
wow, that almost makes enough sense to be plausible. how about it?
Robert M Jun 24th 2009 11:30AM
Sorry man, have you ever seen the developers at work? That makes WAY TOO MUCH sense to actually ever go live.
makebooms Jun 24th 2009 1:14PM
A lot of classes stack Spirit in different ways, meaning that you would still have the same issue. Replenishment is viable from the dev perspective because they like raid buffs, as opposed to each class being its own little self-contained worker bee. Otherwise, they would not tinker with replenishment at all and just tweak the talents on their own merits. Remember that Replenishment came about as a means of providing raid viability to Ret Pallies (oddly enough at the same time that Ret Pallies were becoming OP, but I could have that wrong) and Shadow Priests.
Robert M Jun 24th 2009 1:53PM
“Replenishment is viable from the dev perspective because they like raid buffs, as opposed to each class being its own little self-contained worker bee.”
The problem here is though that raid buffs become more about epeen than about the encounter. Sure we all like to see massive crits or inflated HP pools, but how is any boss really different than the last except because they hit harder and have more of their own health to take down. The tuning process has gotten out of control. If we have just 2 more expansions, the health of tanks is going to be so ridiculously high that it’s just about stat stacking.
I believe high end tanks entered OL with around 6k health, and needed about 4k more to be raid ready. T6 geared tanks had about 15K health entering Northrend and needed about 8K more health to be viable for raid tanking. By the end of this expansion, it won’t be unheard of to see tanks with ~45K I would guess. How much more health and armor will they need to be raid ready when they reach the level cap.
The point is that the inflation to stats that results from buffs instead of having classes that are “worker bees” isn’t really doing much for overall game design but instead allowing those mages with nasty crits (and other classes as well) to massage their egos.
Tuning encounters around raid buffs is hardly “bring the player, not the class” unless every player has what he needs to work effectively. This is why the Sarth zergs stack classes that all benefit from the same raid buffs. The worker bee design may seem less fun but it doesn’t punish the tree druid who heals for a predominantly melee group either.
bunny Jun 24th 2009 11:18AM
i'm just glad my raiding guild is so casual that i don't have to re-gear, re-gem, and re-enchant every patch. this is getting silly.
Nick S Jun 24th 2009 1:22PM
I wish mine was. It's getting expensive.
Tomnationwide Jun 24th 2009 11:20AM
Why not have Replenishment affect certain classes differently. A Priest would get .25% while a Holy Paladin would get .2% etc etc and you can tweak as necessary
Robert M Jun 24th 2009 11:48AM
That's not the best option though I think you are on the right track. If replenishment is a required buff, and one they expect a raid to bring along, it could stand to reason that every class needs some mana regen mechanic not offered through their talent trees.
If the developers design encounters around the notion that you have replenishment, then it could stand to reason all classes who could benefit from it should just have a talented passive mana regen similar to the necessary returns on replenishment.
Folding it into the talents of the classes that need it provides many advantages, but the major one is mana management for those classes that are expected to not run out of mana. See the GC post on the subject where he says that mana is really the responsibility of a healer and a good DPS should never run out of mana when managed properly. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/17899801584-the-real-top-mage-questions.html
The fact that Blizzard insists on passing out sharable buffs to every class is getting highly dangerous. There are really no pure classes anymore; because almost all of them bring a desired buff or debuff which means they have utility, though not as much as another class.
If Blizzard would just put together a hybrid tax code, and allow everyone to see how much the devs value each buff and debuff brought by each class, you may even find some pures who could QQ less based on the amount of utility they bring compared to a true hybrid. Opening the doors of replenishment has been a major step in the wrong direction because with each buff and debuff that gets watered down and shared, the mechanics of encounters become trivialized with each utility that you manage to fit into your raid. They then transition from trivial to mandatory…think heroism/bloodlust and replenishment.
http://fatchickstank.blogspot.com/
Deathgodryuk Jun 24th 2009 2:04PM
We rogues remain pure
Robert M Jun 24th 2009 3:07PM
/agree Deathgodryuk
Tomnationwide Jun 24th 2009 3:11PM
You know the Replenishment holders should be Tank specs since you KNOW they will be present. The synergy exists.
Gothia Jun 25th 2009 6:03AM
Blizzard is not doing this based on class, they are doing it based on encounter. They want healers to run out of mana or be very close to it at a certain time of the fight.
Brian Broom Jun 24th 2009 11:22AM
If replenishment is required (as GC said) then what that says to me it that passive regen is too low. If everyone has to have it, then buff passive regen (per class, if necessary) and then it can be tweeked until its right.
davethedruid Jun 24th 2009 11:26AM
What about the fact that it is unbalanced? Like the fact that Hunters get replenshment, but Holy Priests, or Shamans do not? If you raiding its prob not a issue, but if you are doing 5-mans its kinda unfair.
theRaptor Jun 24th 2009 11:42AM
Problems in 5 mans...
What are you in greens? My Holy Gear is only about mid Naxx-25 level (which isn't massively above level 80 blues) and I can heal most Heroics with renew and the occasional flash heal. Mana is not an issue in Heroics, if you are running low on mana in a Heroic as a Holy priest someone is doing something horribly wrong. Get better tanks and run with DPS that know what "aggro" means.
Oh and you can use your shadowfiend as Holy. Really.
Replenishment exists for four plus minute fights, not for 1-2 minute Heroic boss.
BitterCupOJoe Jun 24th 2009 11:45AM
Not to sound like an elitist jerk, but if it seems like replenishment is making or breaking your 5 man attempts, then replenishment is almost certainly NOT making or breaking your 5 man attempts. Instead, you're attempting the content with people that are undergeared, underskilled, unfamiliar with the content, or some combination of the above. If you believe the difference between you downing a 5 man boss is whether you're stacking the right buffs, then you are almost certainly wrong.
kabshiel Jun 24th 2009 1:42PM
The only exception to that is if you're trying some achievements, in which case Bloodlust/Heroism is highly recommended.
Wyred Jun 25th 2009 4:49AM
The other day we got some random holy priest off LFG in for VoA. Turned out he was REALLY holy, as in 0/71/0. If you nerf replenishment then this priest will no longer be able to cast PoH once a minute. Won't someone please think of the children?
Jon Do Jun 24th 2009 11:33AM
I can't speak for other mana-user classes or roles (such as DPS), but as a raiding Holy Priest I never run out of mana. It's kind of a BTPNTC thing - I know how my class/spec's mana regen works, and I gear with that in mind. I rotate in Inner Focus, and I may need to pop Shadow Fiend occasionally, or a potion, but that's about as bad as it gets.