POE resource management woes

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lethal_papercut wrote:

I was quite vocal in CB about my feelings on GGG's agenda to make Mana a finite resource.

Quotes like:

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Chris wrote:

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Hilbert wrote:

You guys seriously hate mana don't you?

Yes, we want resources to be constrained so that they are stronger game mechanics.

Made me sad.

The nerfs to Clarity twinned with the low amounts of Mana Regen passives made me realise that GGG want Mana to always be in short supply & my dreams of being able to spam high cast speed spells would always be constrained.

At least the Duelist got some mana!...better luck next time Shadow.

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RogueMage wrote:

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gonzaw wrote:

If the sole point of mana is "strategic consideration", then I'm sure it's not the ONLY way it can possibly happen right?
I guess nobody ever thought of a "perfect" way to include strategy and balance without mana in ARPGs, but could removing mana somehow solve the whole "mana is a nuisance" problem, but keeping that "strategic consideration"?

The thread you linked to above proposes to substitute skill cool-down timers as a replacement for mana management. I think that's a terrible idea. Cool-down timers are inflexible straitjackets that tend to reduce your combat tactics to mindless attack spamming. I'd much rather have the flexibility of choosing between transient burst-fire versus moderated sustained-fire.

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Strategic consideration is not the ONLY point of mana management, but it is no less important than tactical issues. If there were no mana management issues, there'd little point in using anything but the most powerful attack skills available. Good tactical balance requires the cost of using a skill to be proportional to its power. Otherwise, the only viable strategies will be those that make use of only the most powerful skills.

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gonzaw wrote:

What exactly is "terrible" about [replacing mana management with skill cool-down timers]? How would my suggestion "reduce combat tactics to mindless attack spamming", and how does the current system not do that in a similar way?

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CanHasPants wrote:

I contend that most of the "problems" (see also: the recently popular aura stacking nonsense) people QQ about and misguidedly demand short-sighted solutions for, are only a symptom of a dysfunctional mana system. In its current state, mana as a resource either doesn't work at all, or is otherwise too much of a nuisance, given that it is the natural tendency for (imo most) players to want to endlessly spam their skills in an aRPG (or at least not have their action interrupted by the nuisance of having to manage too many resources). Such that, it is the natural tendency for those players to seek a solution, and those solutions (EB, BM, Clarity, Leech) work too well with little to no middle ground in between. Mana either doesn't work, or it works too well. When it works too well, players have an over-abundance of mana that, as a resource, will be wasted if not applied elsewhere in some way.

To the recently popular aura stacking QQ nonsense, aura stacking is not "the only way to build" because people spec specifically to stack auras, but because people spec specifically to rid themselves of the nuisance of mana, and when they do, the only thing left is to channel that overflowing abundance of mana to something productive.

Focus on fixing the root of the problem, and not its symptoms. Too many symptoms have been bandaid fixed recently, without much effort focused on their causes. This creates a top down meta which nurtures deplorable things like power creep, homogenization of diversity, and a witch hunt against min/maxed builds, and that is an environment I enjoy significantly less than the one I fell in love with in 0.9.xx.

So yeah, enough rambling: I don't hold the solutions, but +1 to this entire thread. Hopefully something productive comes of it.

Edit: But I can assure you that there can be no solution that replaces mana entirely. It is too firmly rooted in the core mechanics as a counterbalance to attack/casting speed, linked supports, etc, that it would require far more consideration to implement properly than a 20-some person team can manage while otherwise also engaged in other priorities. Every time somebody mentions CD's as a solution, the community is pushed one step further away from discussing what could be an actual, viable solution.

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RogueMage wrote:

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gonzaw wrote:

What exactly is "terrible" about [replacing mana management with skill cool-down timers]? How would my suggestion "reduce combat tactics to mindless attack spamming", and how does the current system not do that in a similar way?

Before Blizzard imposed cool-down timers on Diablo II, you had the strategic option of boosting spell DPS by stacking Faster Cast Rate at the expense of foregoing other desirable gear mods. In addition, you had to pump your mana reserves high enough to handle the cost of sustained use of high-level attack skills. It was a genuine challenge to plan and execute a build with an optimal balance of skill power, cast speed, mana reserves, HP and passive attributes.

Cool-down timers flattened it all into cookie-cutter spell-spamming. "Optimizing" an attack degenerated into dumping max skill points into it. Frozen Orb, for example, became this monotonous once-a-second slush machine that demanded no more tactics than keeping your finger mashed down on the hot key till you were done. That's what I mean by "a terrible idea".

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gonzaw wrote:

Anyways, what would be the difference between casting the "overpowered orb", and waiting 1-2 seconds for your mana to regen, then cast it again, then cast it, then wait the mandatory 1-2 cooldown seconds, then cast it again?