Tuesday 11 November 2008

Mana issues

Mana is always a touchy issue for paladins (and to a lesser extent Enhance shamans).

So what is the issue in particular for Paladins?

Well with the recent nerf to Judgement of the Wise, mana given has gone down from 33% to 15% of base mana.

Now at 70, I have noticed the difference in the loss of mana, but I have compensated by simply judging wisdom all the time. This is not a fun mechanic though, because in PvE, I feel like I am forced to use JoW all the time and have lost the flexibility of being able to judge light.

So my view is that paladins should be able to sustain a single target rotation (Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm), and should only start to run oom by doing ‘extras’ like popping off a heal, using Hammer of Wrath, and dropping an AoE ability like Consecrate.

At 70 however, with a roughly 7k mana pool I can achieve all of the above a little too well, due to the intellect on my gear. This is what is causing a misconception that paladins will be OP at 80 in that a paladin will be able to use all of these abilities without going oom. What a larger part of the WoW community don’t realise is that at 80, all dps plate will not have intellect on it. Zero!

That means that an 80 would have about 5k mana (from what I’ve heard on the Beta forums) and retadins cannot do all of those things due to the tiny mana pool. Mana management becomes much more tricky as there is less room for extras. As it is, I rarely heal anyone (even myself) because a ret paladin’s mana is so small. Bandages, health pots and health stones are the order of the day.

What I am interested in though is how the new Divine Plea mechanic will come into play at level 71. Will this be our saviour to our oom problems? I’ll have to wait and see.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The mana return is a percentage of "base mana". Base mana does NOT include intellect on gear.

Having intellect on gear provides you with a mana buffer. It doesn't give you more mana in return.

Therefore, going oom on the long run has nothing to do with intellect.

The answer to your last question: Divine Plea will save you from going oom (when not using too many special abilities).

Heywood Djiblomi said...

Something I think is somewhat overlooked: 15% is not really 15%. We must first cast a judgement (take your pick) that costs 5% base mana, to get 15% base mana in return. Frankly, I'm a little underwhelmed at 10% for the cost of 3 talent points in tier 6 (or 7?) of the Retribution tree, when two procs of Seal of Wisdom (4% of TOTAL mana) will net roughly the same result (three, once we start seeing no INT in our gear).