Sweet Relief: GC on out of combat mana regen
Ghostcrawler got chatty on the forums yesterday on a number of points surrounding healing and mana. The whole thread is a really interesting read, so be sure to check it out. The thread and his responses touched on a number of issues connected to raid healing that were very interesting for me, but one of the things that really piqued my interest was his response to a question about changing out of combat mana regeneration.
One of the biggest flaws in connection to the 3.1 mana changes has been, in my estimation, the fact that the out of 5 second rule slowing of mana regeneration by 40% has made downtime for healers pretty… ponderous. Leveling and playing a healer has long been an exercise for the incredibly patient player (or the player with enough resources in game to respec to DPS for questing) due to the excessively slow method available to healers for killing mobs, coupled with the frequent necessity for them to drink between encounters to regenerate mana. The 3.1 mana regen nerf served to severely exacerbate this situation, causing healers to spend more money on drinks than they might otherwise have done because of the agonizingly slow pace of mana regen, and slowing their already painfully slow progress through the game.
For me, this hasn’t been a huge issue. I’ve been playing my druid in WOW for almost 2 years, after all, and had the gear and resources available to dual spec as soon as the opportunity was available. Great, wonderful. So the healers who are most penalized by the snail’s pace of OO5SR mana regen currently are those who are leveling, who cannot afford 50g to respec, let alone 1000g to dual spec.
However, even healers like myself who have had the resources to dual spec and only use their healing spec when instancing or raiding have had a big crimp thrust into our style by this change, and not while we’re healing, either. The best scenario I can think of to illustrate this takes place in Naxxramas on the way to kill Patchwerk. In order to clear out the trash to get to Patchwerk, the raid must cross two running streams of green slime that cause both physical damage and drain mana considerably. It is possible to jump the first of these without being affected. However, on the second stream this is not the case. So the raid goes through and comes out the other side both damaged and mana depleted, and there is a trash pull waiting to meet the group in this bedraggled condition. The pull is not difficult, and it is not a huge deal to heal the group through it, even with the mana depletion effect. My tank has always moved from this easy pull right into another trash pull. This used to be no concern of mine, as there was enough down time going around that my mana would catch up and be sufficient. No more. I now have to nip away at as much of a drink as I can get just to be viable, or I have to slow the entire raid down by saying “I need a drink.”
The above example is a small one. An extra moment or two in hours of raiding. But it is not isolated. There are many small moments like this within a night of raiding. Is it a big deal on its own? No, of course not. Are they even a big deal when you gather them all together? Even in this case, I’d say probably not. They might add 10-15 minutes to a 4 hour raid. /shrug So why am I bringing it up at all? Because it is so unneccesary. It is, in fact, completely pointless. The point of the mana regen nerfs of 3.1 were to prohibit largely the benefit of dipping into OO5SR mana regeneration while in combat. This goal, ostensibly a worthy one from Blizzard’s perspective, was met. Jolly good. Except the collateral damage was to create needless time and money sinks for healers and their party/raidmates that benefit no one and add a small catalyst of irritation that sometimes fades away and sometimes grows voraciously.
As 3.1 approached, I was in agreement with other players who suggested a solution similar to what appeared in yesterday’s healing thread on the forums:
How about actually re-engineering spirit regen so that it has three different cases:
1) While casting
2) OO5SR but in combat
3) Out of combat
Of course, even though I’m not a game designer, even I can glimpse the complications of adding a third mana regen rate to the game. But it seemed a better solution than the 3.1 cutting off of healers’ noses to spite our faces plan. I do not remember in all of the board discussions that I followed at the time seeing any of the developers engage this suggestion, probably because of the complications that would arise from it. But yesterday, Ghostcrawler met the above poster’s argument with the following:
Regen is definitely lower in combat. I’m not sure it’s as binary as constrained vs. non-constrained. Totally agree about your point at large though. One way to go would be to just get rid of the FSR and make out of combat regen (legitimately out of combat – not sneaking a sip during an Arena match) provide very fast regen.
From what I’ve witnessed, the developers have usually thought very carefully about game changing mechanics before mentioning them on the boards because of the blow back effect of talking about something and then not following it through. Of course, this doesn’t mean that changes always take the shape that the blue postings prognosticate. But a blue post like this always means that developers are aware of the issue and are giving serious consideration to possible solutions. Because of this, Ghostcrawler’s post is a happy, hopeful, probable portent for positive change in the pipeline to correct the misdirection caused by the mana regen solutions implemented for 3.1. Here’s hoping they are able to balance it out while factoring in the need to adjust mana regen overall if completely eliminating in combat OO5SR mana regen.
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[...] This blue post came to me courtesy of Sylly. Her post in particular addresses out of combat regen. [...]