Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Spirit and mana regen in 2.4

The first thing I did upon logging in as Elk last night was to check my character sheet and look at the mana regeneration stats. According to armory (which I checked before I logged in), my mana regen before the patch stood at 391 mana per 5 seconds (mp5) while casting and 167 while not casting. The only buff on me at this time was Arcane Intellect, giving a total Int of 486 and total Spi of 506.

When my character FINALLY loaded and I was able to see through the lag-generated haze, I checked out that same stat: mana regeneration of 570 mp5 while not casting and 221 while casting. That is without AI present (INT: 446, SPI: 506). Later on that evening, I was able to get a friendly mage and priest to bless me with a divine spirit and arcane intellect. Mana regeneration jumped to 651 mp5 while not casting and 245 while casting.

With that much mana regeneration, I think it is unlikely that Elk will ever run out of mana even during the longest, most heal-intensive boss fights. This, of course, begs the question: Why does Blizzard feel that this change is necessary and what impact will it have on the balance of the game as it stands? Are they planning boss fights that are going to last fifteen and twenty minutes? Are mana draining abilities like viper sting and drain mana going to become less effective PvP tools? Time will tell, I guess...

No comments: