Casters need a way to leech mana other than relying on Warlord's Mark

freeze pulse setup:


rest of the gear:


tree:


no issues whatsoever (can replace warlords with any other curse but as this is inquisitor there are no better choices..)

im 'condescending' because im old and can easily tell when the problem is real vs problem caused by the person reporting such problem. this is the second case imho - and its description might go like 'people not using tools given to them because these tools negatively affect dps output'

mana costs have been reduced significantly in 2.0 (?) and since then it takes extra effort to reach mana sustain issues, really.

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lorem331 wrote:

My point is not about getting things for free, it's about having more options for casters.
And why are you talking about ball lightning and DOT?
I am talking about casters in a general sense, not about ball lightning. There are some caster builds like fireball/freezing pulse that need to cast very fast, and these builds have trouble sustaining mana.

His point is that there's already a bunch of options (such as limiting your mana multiplier with less expensive choices).

You can use warlord's/mana leech support. You can use mana flasks (Lavianga's isn't that expensive for extreme cases). You can use different gems to cut mana multiplier or cut cast speed in favor of raw damage per hit. You can pick up %reduced mana cost and/or increased max mana (and there's some combo nodes that do both). You can build up a lot of regen, including using clarity. You can use blood magic or EB. You can use a number of different ascendancies that have some mana and/or cost specialization (trickster, heirophant) or even mana leech (berserker).



There's already LOTS of options... being too stubborn to compromise and use them isn't an excuse to add more to the game, especially when mana is supposed to be the counterbalancing point to spells' gear-independent damage scaling.

Mana pots recharge insanely quickly - they were hugely buffed a couple of xpacs ago.

It's not really melee vs caster balance, since bow users get all the untyped mana leech they need from the spirit void area or the essence sap area (and usually it's just 1 point to cap the leech rate - the notable is unnecessary, especially with acuity).

And the melee vs caster thing is getting funny now, with skills like earthquake and lacerate (which outranges many spells). GGG's solution to balance melee: make it all ranged.

Outside of a few specific niche builds (guardian ES aura with grand spectrum), investing in mana and mana regen should be more rewarding. Even MoM builds can avoid investing in mana/mana regen with damage taken gained as % of mana skills/items/corruptions. If you go blood magic, a single stone golem surpasses the regen you'd gain from 10+ passives in mana/mana regen.

In pvp, it's not uncommon to see the top ladder casters using 5x mana pots (there's a greater emphasis on cast speed in pvp, especially for things like flameblast). The balance here is a little off.

Do any of the naysayers here honestly believe that the balance for spell vs. attack base skill cost, post-support scaled cost, sustain options, and reward for investing passives in sustain is perfect?

Edit: Suggestion
I'd like to see some kind of reverse blood magic notable for heavy mana builds, that increases or better scales the base % of mana regenerated per second, so players who build heavily into mana/mana regen can see better returns for their investment. (casters and attackers alike- my EA quill rain attacker for example has over 700 mana/sec requirement; in pvp I fill up with Lavianga's Spirit to sustain: IMO it's undesirable to see legacy/league exclusive items required for sustain).

As is, I find too many of my characters depending on either berserker ascendancy or boot enchantments (2% of mana regenerated per sec if you were hit recently more than doubles your mana regen and it's easy to trigger; 0.6% of damage leeched as life and mana if you've killed recently also works fine it most cases). More options (and better options for mana invested characters) would be nice.

Edit #2:
Oh, and the reduced mana + blood magic gems should probably be buffed.

I like that mana is an issue for casters. Flavor-wise, it feels right that spells are more mana-hungry. And casters have gotten more options lately, with some ascendancies solving mana and the boot enchant "mana leech if killed recently" being almost good enough on its own.

But mana regen is pretty underwhelming. It's not possible for most spells to get enough regen to run reduced recovery maps. The amount of investment it takes to run regular maps is too high, which is why everyone uses WM. Mana flasks, though they were buffed, are still troublesome for long encounters.

Some Ascendancies are really good about this though. I'm running an Inquisitor and a Berserker this league. Both of those classes get mana 100% solved by their ascendancy, and it feels great. Hierophant and Chieftan also have nodes that help with mana, and Trickster technically does as well.

There are more options than there used to be, but mana regen specifically feels like it could use a buff; the numbers just don't add up.

My lightning berserker says mana leech is fine :DDD

Clarity and mana regen on the tree and sometimes if nessisary on jewelry makes it so on most casters all you have to do is leave just enough for the spell to cast and i never have mana issues and reserve most all my mana. I dont even lvl my Clarity to 20 either on alot of build unless i need to for some reason.

Mana leech is something more nessisary for Melee that why most of the Mana Leech nodes on the tree only work for attacks in the first place. Casters have options for mana. Casters also get way more mana than most any other build making regen the best way to sustain. Hell my spark build right now run voidbringers on a 6L and i still dont have mana issues. I tried out that Ice Storm staff with Voidbringers on with my inquisitor and still didnt have mana issues and that spell which is basically a 7L is pretty mana hungry.

I dont see the issue i have Clarity/Regen or WM for options on caster.. Melee has Leech nodes on the tree and gear as well as WM. Sounds about right to me. More mana leech options for spells is just gonna cause MOM to be broken again which right now if you do it right can be borderline broken already. Especially if you combine regen with WM.

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mana costs have been reduced significantly in 2.0 (?) and since then it takes extra effort to reach mana sustain issues, really.

They have... for attacks. Fireball has the exact same mana costs since its existance. Ice Spear saw a "revision" in 1.2 together with many other skills. I'm not sure if Fireball got the same, but essentially mana costs were lowered during midgame, but endgame stayed mostly the same.

And to be fair Freezing Pulse is rather cheap. For Fireball you essentially want Concentrated Effect and LMP or better GMP, but LMP does the trick usually you would use a Frostwall behind your target, but since this doesn't work anymore just ignore it and better not use Fireball but it got nerfed propably even harder than other skills by that, since it doesn't even eplode when piercing or chaining like Lightning Arrow or Kinetic Blast.

But still with those two you are already at 1,4 x 1,4 add Fire-Pen for another 1,4. Controlled Destruction is another 1,3. This will only bring you up to about 100 Mana per Cast, but that's not that much. Switching LMP for GMP already does a lot and you would likely add Faster Casting as a last one unless you already have a lot of cast speed, in that case Spell Echo might be a more mana efficient option.

tabula rasa made people conditioned to playing on 6link regardless of if they are ready for that or not - most frequently they arent: gear is not up to the task, not enough passives and 6 link even at lvl 40 can cost a fortune

talking about fireball - i have a fireballer too (6link), one centered around ignite/prolif and one cast is ~120 mana (just realized that i can test this on her:


and yes, in vacuum, talking ONLY about pure numbers it looks bad as i have ~290 mana unreserved and that is spent after 4 casts. note: that cost is bit too high compared to other spells.. i agree. for a starting spell with one-dimensional utility (burns) it is too expensive.


but.. and here there experience starts to matter: 4 casts? not vs thrash mobs as these are already charred corpses everywhere. not vs rares because prolif made them BBQ too. vs bosses? maybe - but bosses are dangerous so i have to move - when i move i spend no mana, i regen to full.

only way for me to run OOM is -regen map and me not being aware of that (for no regen i can always swallow my 'pride' and swap in mana leech gem.. because why not?)

same can be said about these 700 or 900 or 2000 mana/sec setups etc. these are maximum theoretical mana burn rates. but real gameplay cuts that to 1/4 or even less - you do not spend mana when moving and with this kind of mana cost i assume that these skills are killing stuff, am i right?

same with bosses - i value my xp past lvl80 and try not to die (and i do not log) that means that i build rather tanky and try to dodge bosses that want to kill me. when not facetanking i do the FPS stuff - move&shoot instead of 'press the button till everything die'

Mana regeneration on its own is really weak. Ever since the EB nerf, it's been too point intensive to actually rely on even without reduced regen mods. You're usually better off with a combination of flasks and mana gain on kill from the tree or gear.

I'd love to see mana regen buffed, but I doubt that will happen.