POE resource management woes

I think POE has some serious resource management issues. Let's examine all the resources players can use to manage their skills:

Mana:
You regenerate a flat amount of mana based off of your maximum mana pool every second. There are passive skills to increase your mana and mana regen by percentage-based amounts in the passive tree.

You can increase your max mana by a flat amount with a reward from Alira or from the gear you equip. You can increase your mana regen only by a percentage amount, except for clarity, which provides a large amount of mana regeneration to all nearby allies (it is an aura).

You can also increase your "Emana" or your "effective mana" by using mana flasks. Mana flasks restore a set amount of mana over a short duration, unless you hit your cap, in which case they expire early.

The benefits of mana:
-You can reserve portions of it to use (intentionally) powerful support skills: auras. Mana acts as a separate resource bar and does not impact your life in any way.
-By being its own resource, it does not directly reduce your defense when used.
-Mana also interacts with a certain unique (Ondar's Flight)

The drawbacks of mana:
-Requires you to find accessories that grant increased mana regen
-Requires you to find items which increase maximum mana
-Requires you to plot passive skills so that you can acquire % increases to maximum mana and/or % increases to mana regeneration

The goals of mana:
Stack auras. Because "mana that is hanging out" serves no purpose, it makes the most sense to utilize any excess mana by reserving it for stat bonuses relevant to your character. You want the highest regen you can acquire to negate the mana cost of your skills so that you have minimal or no down-time and can utilize all your abilities when you wish to.

The problems with mana:
1. There is only one significant source of flat mana regen aside from increasing your max mana, Clarity. Clarity reserves large amounts of mana (around 320 at rank 15 or so). This is self-defeating, as it means you are reserving mana in order to use mana. You cannot turn otherwise 'useless' mana into stat bonuses (these stat bonuses were also largely nerfed across the board recently).
2. Increasing your maximum mana does not significantly increase your natural mana regeneration.
3. Using mana flasks in an optimal way is difficult, finding a mana flask which regenerates just enough mana so that you don't cap out (resulting in lost Emana) and doesn't consume numerous slots on your flask bar (that you otherwise might need for life, resistance, quicksilver, granite, or some other future utility flask) - is challenging. On my CB Freezing Pulse Shadow, with CI, I would be stuck with 3 or 4 mana flasks to keep 100% up-time (and no obnoxious portaling to refill all my mana flasks) -- mana flasks as they stand are not very effecient or fun, partially because you are left with little mana after reserving it all and because the difference between your max mana and the number of casts is... well...

-

Let's put it this way: Ice Nova's base cost at around level 10 is 34. If I use enough supports so that it's now 68 (easily possible with even "cheap" supports") and I have a cast time of 0.5 (easily possible), I am consuming 136 mana per second. Without eldritch battery, a reasonable amount of max mana for a tanky ice nova caster (ice nova casters are going to be tanky unless totems are going to be casting the spell for them) is 600. This is from my own in-game experiences with multiple casters -- hitting 600 max mana is not a trivial task and requires some meaty investment in intelligence, gear, and passives, though I'm sure 1000 is possible if you try hard enough.

This means, barring regeneration, you have a whopping 4.4 casts of this skill before you're dry, or more accurately, you have ran out of mana in a little more than 2 seconds.

In order to regenerate 600 mana in 2 seconds, you need 300 mana per second. Because there is no way on earth you can get 300 mana per second with a max mana pool of 600 without clarity, clarity MUST be used. Because clarity MUST be used, we have a problem. I don't think it's intended for casters to be forced to reserve 300 some mana in order to cast a 4L or 5L spell, let alone one as awful as ice nova. Even with clarity, it's going to take - this is a total guess - but a reasonable one - of at least +200% increased mana regen from gear and passives, in order to reach 300 mana/sec, in order to spam this spell consistently.

(This explains partially why totems are/were so popular: Although Totems are a 250% modifier, once it's down, it keeps on casting. You only need to get enough mana to cast the skill once and the skill will be used many times over. I think this is a very fun mechanic in and of itself and requires players not worry so much about their mana regen, but their max mana in conjunction with mana flasks, as you can plop down 2 totems and then recharge your mana with flasks in time to plop down 2 more 30 seconds later -- there's no need to spam skills yourself.)

These constraints are too harsh and although it is possible to navigate them and create functioning builds, players are side-stepping them with certain mechanics:

Blood Magic:
Because the benefit of using mana is being able to stack auras, blood magic proves to have a harsh downside - you can't use auras. But because of recent changes, you can't use auras with mana anyway. So many players are turning and saying, "Marauder/Templar is the better caster than Witch/Shadow." Because it's ABSOLUTELY necessary to stack life in POE and because life regen scales hugely (because of abundant/toxic % life regen passive skills), it is possible to greatly scale up your hp regen. I've gotten Marauders and Templars in recent history (<3 months from today) to 200-300 life regen/sec -- note how that's approximately the amount of regen one might need to do a proper ice nova build. And because one is always being damaged in combat, it is much harder for flasks to "eclipse" compared to mana flasks, you have more effective resources with Blood Magic than with normal mana, nevermind that there are also an abundance of reduced mana cost nodes near Blood Magic, making support gems less harsh.

And because passive skills do not significantly scale spell damage compared to support gems, the use of Blood Magic may be absolutely necessary to make many spell bulids to work.

Eldritch Battery:
But of course, Blood Magic isn't absolutely necessary. We have EB as an alternative for Templars/Witches (though this sadly leaves Shadows/Rangers high and dry). EB allows you to obtain 1200-2000 maximum mana. This allows you to reach the high levels of mana regen required to use 4L+ spells and synergizes with some of the "forced" energy shield passives intelligence classes get (I believe most players are taking the Body and Soul [and similar] clusters for their early-game elemental resistances, not for the ES; the fringe benefit is that it generates mana necessary for late game).

And I'm tempted just to end the post here. This is all obvious, right? EB and BM are the main ways to make builds /work/ because support gems are such a necessary (and fun) part of the game, we need these keystones, often, to make these builds work. Of course, some builds can survive on using Clarity alone, but again, they are forced to use this skill. CI offered the only sanctuary really - you could give up life flasks and run 5 mana flasks, potentially, but since CI is no longer a bastion for build-making, you need life flasks and so trying to utilize a large pool of unreserved mana is simply no longer beneficial.

I do not forget about mana leech when I bring up all this, of course, but mana leech is not in significant supply. It consumes a vital support gem slot for early builds relying on 4L gear, reducing potential damage or survivability of a build, it is generally more difficult to get on gear compared to mana/mana regen, and there is only one passive that grants it. It is also harder to optimize, you need a set amount of physical damage per second in order to neutralize the cost of your skills. The mana leech support gem is not ever going to (on its own) neutralize the cost of any offensive spell either, so spell casters need not apply.

I am proposing a set of solutions here that I think are more or less-long term in focus, but should be intuitive:

1. We need flat sources of mana regen that aren't clarity. I suggest a future A3 quest reward, similar to the bandit quest rewards, gives an option of flat mana regeneration. But having a mod on gear or a series of passive skills - or something - which grants flat mana regeneration, is something that should be ultimately considered.
2. We need reasons to not use EB or BM. ES needs a more impactful defensive property that EB is giving up. If GGG does not like the mass-use of auras, then using mana over BM needs to be more than "one can use % auras and one cannot".
3. In short of 1), I think maximum mana passives should be raised from 8% to 10%, or the mana gained from intelligence.
4. We need more keystones for resource management:
Stamina
Rage
Energy

Are some "familiar" ones. These would work excellently as keystones, in theory, "Your mana is replaced by a flat (some unimprovable number) amount of stamina. Your skills consume stamina instead of mana. Stamina regenerates at a rate of 10 per second. Your skills cost 50% less mana." Is a vague keystone idea - but I'm sure there are better means of implementation.

I run two auras (grace & cold damage) and I'm fine. All I really need is to keep frenzy refreshed and throw out the occasional poison arrow or ice shot. If I want to slaughter a whole bunch of things at once, I empty my mana pool, pop a potion, and right-click spam frenzy as I cast it every time the potion brings me past the minimum mana cost (woohoo 5-charge super attack speed!). I can do the same thing with burning arrow for single target.

And I don't even have the mana support gem slotted (yet) or the mana leech passive (yet).

Where are you getting the idea that any character should be able to support nonstop casting of an ability forever? Rotate in less costly spells and throw out some basic attacks.

"

xara wrote:

Where are you getting the idea that any character should be able to support nonstop casting of an ability forever? Rotate in less costly spells and throw out some basic attacks.

Well, I think non-stop casting should be possible, perhaps not on all kinds of things - I don't want to suggest that GMP+Chain+Totem+Faster Casting should be "non-stop castable" under anything but the most extreme of circumstances, but when you consider the mana cost of certain spells and attacks and the fact there often time isn't a cheap alternative to switch to (If you're doing an Ice Nova build, what are you supposed to do while you have no mana? Auto-attack with wands while you wait? It's not like there's a spell even cheaper than freezing pulse at this point).

I suppose your question is so philosophical only GGG can answer that.

But allow me to say, that even with Shock Nova's reduced cost in 0.10.0, even with clarity, even with EB, even with mana flasks, I was BARELY able to keep constant consistent DPS with a 4L shock nova (with relatively cheap supports, faster casting, lightning pen, and added lightning damage), I was still running dry, alternating between the much cheaper arc and the much more expensive shock nova, and I wasn't having a good time. My dps was pretty pitiful compared to something like a bow build (which has relatively cheap mana costs for its skills) and it felt like I had already spent way too much trying to get my character to a stable state. It's not like spell casters have a reliable auto attack to fall back on either. I guess we're just supposed to portal and refill.

Consider the above scenario with Ice Nova. Is 100+ mana per cast really feasible when the most mana you can realistically get w/o EB is 600-1000? When Ice Nova has 300~ dps at the mana value I'm quoting from? Something is wrong here, there are lots of spells - you know - ones other than FP, Spark and EK - and even of the really powerful spells, like FP and Ice Spear, how many players aren't sticking these things on totems? Totems provide a degree of safety, but they are also much more mana efficient than trying to cast the spell yourself multiple times.

It's why many players fell back on diamond flasks, because focusing on critical damage to wipe out monsters in two or three swipes was way more effective than trying to optimize mana cost vs max mana/mana regen.

Just to clarify something you said anubite, when you say that peeps that use EB get 1500-2000 mana, they are using pure cloth armour? or are they using hybrid armour? Curious as I'm building a HP EB witch and planning on using Hybrid gear. it really doesn't sound like I will be able to get enough mana without full cloth.

Secondly, it would be good to get a devs view on just what sort of up time an int based character should get casting spells.

And I agree with you, I can't even get 100% uptime at the moment using clarity and a single supported FP (LMP). The build isn't finished yet, so I don't have EB and a crap ton of man boosts, but still.... I'm not even close.

"

StillSingle wrote:

Just to clarify something you said anubite, when you say that peeps that use EB get 1500-2000 mana, they are using pure cloth armour? or are they using hybrid armour? Curious as I'm building a HP EB witch and planning on using Hybrid gear. it really doesn't sound like I will be able to get enough mana without full cloth.

Secondly, it would be good to get a devs view on just what sort of up time an int based character should get casting spells.

And I agree with you, I can't even get 100% uptime at the moment using clarity and a single supported FP (LMP). The build isn't finished yet, so I don't have EB and a crap ton of man boosts, but still.... I'm not even close.

If you run discipline and get both Body&Soul clusters, I think you can hit 1500 mana with good hybrid ES gear, but don't quote me on that, I haven't recently done a hybrid EB character. I think it's reasonable to say that 2000~ is only possible for cloth, but 1500 should be possible with hybrid gear (I have 800 ES on my 58 templar w/o discipline and although he's using mostly cloth, it's shitty cloth, ES on hybrid gear could get as high as the cloth ES I have).

I think auras are at the source of why mana sucks so much. Auras are cool and attractive. Some are even worth their cost, like Hatred, simply because it adds cold (slowing) damage. Or Grace, because it's like wearing a second chest piece.

So much power with seemingly no drawback. It's a noob trap. When people have mana problems, their first reflex is to see how they can get more mana passives, not to turn off auras. Then EB or blood magic become attractive...

The fact is, that if you force yourself to not use auras, you can play with 1, max 2 mana pots, not invest in a single max %mana passive, and have no need for mana leech until maybe you have a 5L with expensive supports.

I think GGG went in the right direction with the Discipline and Clarity major nerfs. They need to apply this to Grace and Hatred. Auras, by definition of what they are, should be good for group synergy. The cost should never be worth it if you're soloing, unless you decided to build specifically for auras.

If auras were fixed, mana would not be a problem. I also think base mana regen (105% of max mana per minute) should be doubled.

"

Thalandor wrote:

I think auras are at the source of why mana sucks so much. Auras are cool and attractive. Some are even worth their cost, like Hatred, simply because it adds cold (slowing) damage. Or Grace, because it's like wearing a second chest piece.

So much power with seemingly no drawback. It's a noob trap. When people have mana problems, their first reflex is to see how they can get more mana passives, not to turn off auras. Then EB or blood magic become attractive...

The fact is, that if you force yourself to not use auras, you can play with 1, max 2 mana pots, not invest in a single max %mana passive, and have no need for mana leech until maybe you have a 5L with expensive supports.

I think GGG went in the right direction with the Discipline and Clarity major nerfs. They need to apply this to Grace and Hatred. Auras, by definition of what they are, should be good for group synergy. The cost should never be worth it if you're soloing, unless you decided to build specifically for auras.

If auras were fixed, mana would not be a problem. I also think base mana regen (105% of max mana per minute) should be doubled.

Let's say you have 600 mana and are reserving 80% of it for powerful auras.
This leaves you with 120 mana.
Let's say you have a spell which costs 80 mana and you need to cast it every 0.66 seconds - you need to cast it because it's your main source of damage. The mana cost cannot go lower because you need all those supports to have good DPS (this is not an exaggeration, the difference between a 2L or 3L spell is huge and can result in you killing monsters 5x or 10x slower, which results in survivability issues). PLUS using supports is fun. Are you saying I should be having less fun now? DPS isn't that big of a deal, but I like being able to modify my spells...

At 121.212121212 consumed per second, you can cast this spell twice and then you're dry for a beat, while your mana regenerates. Let's say you have 50 mana per second (this amount is impossible w/o clarity). This set up isn't going to work because of how mana flasks eclipse and stop working, because you can't nullify the mana flasks's regeneration rate on top of your passive mana regeneration so you only get an extra cast or two out of the mana flask.

Unreserving both of your auras gives you 600 mana. Let's pretend this isn't hurting you defensively or offensively and that these auras were purely for your party.

At 120 mana consumed per second, you need 120 mana regenerated per second to break even.
You will run out of mana in 7.5 seconds w/o mana regen.
You will run out of mana in 8.5 seconds w/ mana regen.
That's 13~ casts of this hypothetical spell.
Can you kill a pack of monsters in 13 fireballs?
13 Shock Novas?
13 Freezing Pulses?
It depends. Sometimes it's possible, sometime's it's not. But what's true is that you will run out of mana in 13 casts when you unreseve your mana. That's definitely an imporvement over 2 casts, so you're not wrong there, but where you are wrong is mana flasks fixing this issue. If you're dry in 13 casts and 13 casts cannot kill a pack of monsters (pretty likely for most spells), then you need to consume a mana flask. Assuming that mana flask lasts 5-7 seconds and assuming that mana flask gives you "free spell casting" for the duration, that means you will get <= more 13 casts per flask drink.

If it takes 3 packs to recharge a flask (an estimate, but from my play experience this is reasonable), and if you're consuming 1 drink per pack and each flask has 2 max drinks, you're going to run out of flask charges unless you have at least 2 flasks. If you encounter monsters with elemental resistance, life regen, auras, or any combination thereof, you now need to accomodate even more mana recovery, 3 or 4 mana flasks may be necessary to be accomodate your mana needs. Because CI is now less of an option (gone, in my opinion), you need life flasks, at least 2 of them, so you cannot have 5 mana flasks.

Do you see where I'm going with this? These numbers aren't from any concrete character, but they're reasonable numbers that are coming to me from play-experience. I have had recent mana troubles on my Witch and Templar, so this isn't coming from thin-air. Things sort of work out in the example above, but only because you're using clarity that doesn't reserve mana (uh oh) and because the spell only costs 80 mana (uh oh) and because the cast speed is only 0.66 (uh oh) -- in actual game-play, clarity takes away 300+ mana (uh oh), spells tend to cost much more than 80 mana (uh oh) and tend to cast faster than 0.66 seconds (uh oh).

Mana is a big issue. Nerfing or adjusting auras wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, but it was a half-step, it only brings light to the greater issues with mana. There is a reason why most players will gradually switch to EB/BM over time and fully abandon trying to use clarity (or heavens forbid, no-clarity, no-auras, pure-unchecked mana).

--

As for auras "seemingly having no drawback" - they do. You have to use mana to use them (except in the case of flat auras, if you're willing to pay with life, which you can and it's probably easier than paying with flat mana). Blood Magic is a powerful otpimization tool. Without auras there would be (seemingly) no reason to not use Blood Magic.

I agree that the current mana system definitely has room for tweaking, because it seems like every endgame build requires EB, clarity, or blood magic. I don't like such narrow restrictions.

"

anubite wrote:

*Snip snip*

As for auras "seemingly having no drawback" - they do.

We're arguing the same thing. "seemingly having no drawback" means that "they appear to have no drawback", implying the opposite is true (despite appearances, they have drawback).

Anyways, I think auras is just the root of mana problems... Was there a time in Closed Beta where auras were not implemented? I wish I'd been playing back then.

"

Thalandor wrote:

"

anubite wrote:

*Snip snip*

As for auras "seemingly having no drawback" - they do.

We're arguing the same thing. "seemingly having no drawback" means that "they appear to have no drawback", implying the opposite is true (despite appearances, they have drawback).

Anyways, I think auras is just the root of mana problems... Was there a time in Closed Beta where auras were not implemented? I wish I'd been playing back then.

I've been playing since August '11 and I vaguely recall there being auras... I know Anger and Wrath have always been in the game.

And I thought you were suggesting that they actually have no drawback lol