Managing Mana - Tips n Tricks?

Managing mana is always one of my most difficult obstacles when I'm making a new build. I love that the mechanic makes me think hard about my build, but most of the time it's just infuriating, especially if I have to rely on a mana potion and/or can't allow myself to reserve a big chunk of my mana.

I've got a small list of methods and tricks to manage mana with builds, but if anyone has something I'm missing I'd be all ears because this is usually most annoying thing for me to fix in a build and I feel like I'm always making a huge concession to do so.

1. Elreon jewelry. My go-to method lately, you can usually get one quickly at the start of a new season and just smack some life on it with a craft. Kind of gimps your ring/ammy spot for awhile until you craft another or buy a better one, but it's a very nice fix for many mana issues.

2. Clarity + mana regen passives. Since %regen scales pretty well off the flat mana you get from clarity I usually try to combine these. Unfortunately at higher levels clarity's reserve starts to get really expensive so lately it's been hard for me to justify using this method of managing mana. I also often feel like I need to leave a decent amount of mana open with a Clarity build, because the regen still often doesn't quite cover the cost of the spell so you need a small pool to fall back on for continuous casting. This seems to be the least intrusive way to deal with extremely high cost, 6-linked spells but it also heavily limits your options for Auras.

3. %Mana Cost reduction passives and jewels. Usually these passives seem like very high cost, and it seems like they give very little in return. Spending an all important jewel stat on 5%, or speccing 3+ points into mana reduction on your tree to knock 3-15 mana per cast off of a skill rarely seems to do the job for me. Combined with Elreon jewelery sometimes it can help though.

4. Eldrich Battery. One of my favorite new additions to awakening, the rework on this passive is awesome especially when used in conjunction with +energy shield per enemy hit with attack jewel mods. It's essentially a nice way to reserve 100% mana and keep casting by using faux mana on hit jewels. Unfortunately doesn't work well with spell casters which is usually where my mana issues lie.

5. Leech/On-Hit. Attack based styles got some really great nodes in awakening for mana leech. I'll still maintain that Spirit Void is OP as hell. Outside of that, warlords mark is pretty good for casters and attacks, but it can make curse immune very oppressive if you rely on it so I usually try to avoid that.

6. Blood Magic. I have very little personal experience here. Blood magic scares the piss out of me, especially because I like to play squishy characters that rely on vaal pact and reducing my life returns from leech doesn't sound like a good idea. If anybody has comments on effective ways to use blood magic I'd be interested to hear them.
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So if you got through that wall-o-text and you have anything to add, I'd be glad to learn about it. Personally would love to hear any unique ideas on how to solve mana issues on caster characters with low mana pools that have a harder time utilizing clarity.
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Flat mana on gear is very underestimated stat, when it comes to mana builds. U need some flat stats to increase.

Rallying cry is also pretty good.
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Nasreth wrote:
Personally would love to hear any unique ideas on how to solve mana issues on caster characters with low mana pools that have a harder time utilizing clarity.


Right, this can be very tricky, with low mana pool your base regen is low and you also don't have room for high level clarity. It's probably the bane of caster shadows in early game and crappy mana nodes are the problem. Templar mana nodes also have cost reduction and Witch nodes also have life, the cluster between them has life + mana regen. All of those are very attractive but shadow has mana on kill as his trademark which is kinda crappy, it works well for clearing trash but you run out of juice in a jiffie versus tough rares and bosses. That's also the time where you're actively chugging your life and utility flasks while paying attention on all kinds of shit so babysitting mana pool can be one thing too many on your plate.

Now, I'm not really against drinking a mana potion now and then, I'm using a Scion caster in temp league which most of the time gets by splendidly on high mana pool and regen, no clarity needed for everyday slugging. On things that take a lot of time to kill I have to use the potion, but that's perfectly fine because she doesn't need much to get out of negative balance and has a decent amount of free mana so a gulp of the smurf juice keeps her casting for a long time, meaning her mana isn't spent quickly and isn't refilled too fast either.

And that's one more problem for low mana users, mana pots just don't do much, they shoot you up to max in half a second and you spend all your mana in two seconds, a lot of that potion went to waste. Now, if you say it's perfectly normal to have resource problems if I haven't invested in mana pool size I'd say you're perfectly right and I'm usually doing just that, but on the left side only, right side mana nodes are just so bad I can't justify the expense. What would be nice is getting a small amount of flat mana regen per node instead of mana on kill. Sure, it doesn't really fit the 'assassin' theme as much as 'on kill' effects do, however, we should probably keep in mind just how much role playing does this game actually have (without the player actively pursuing it).
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Last edited by raics on Oct 6, 2015, 5:12:55 PM
Vaal Clarity. No mana problems for up to 16 seconds with just Increased Duration.

Of course not usable as the sole mana provider but it helps a lot for example on my Eldritch Battery + ES on hit Reave Shadow for when I hit air a few times or when there's only one target to hit (bosses). Might also be better than mana potions for a lot of low-mana builds (as raics hinted).
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Right side of the tree uses/is supposed to use skills that are both cheap and multitarget. Thus pretty much fitting perfectly into 'mana on hit'. I tend to not have any mana worries on the left side. I think that mana notables on the left side are perfectly fine for attack builds.

Casters mana..

It is a multiplier game. There are like 6 values: flat mana, %mana, flat regen, %regen, -%cost and -cost. You just need to find max of this function. In my case it means a bit of every stat. Huge regen on a small base is worthless. Items with +mana (like +50) can make a HUGE difference when one already has a bit of everything. It gets multiplied a lot.

Final way is to pick cheaper supports. I know it might sound bad but.. sometimes the opportunity cost needed to support desired 5 link is so big that one is better of using 'weaker' setup but being able to save affixes/passives/hassle

I use thiefs Torment ring and a fast hitting skill/weapon. (for one month leveling it was storm cloud bow). Handles my life/mana sustain issue as an elemental build. Item quantity is nice for finding currency too.
Why nobody mentioned using mana gain on hit jewels and claws?
They seem quite popular to me right now.
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Deadpeng wrote:
Why nobody mentioned using mana gain on hit jewels and claws?
They seem quite popular to me right now.


Attackers builds have lesser mana problems, casters are much more problematic, that's the reason probably.

I used to use old AA on most of my casters, so I don't see any mana problems now, my characters now invest much less in mana and rarely have problems with it.

Only on my RF incinerator I have to use Rallying Cry, but it's quite specific build, it's left side of tree, strenght based build with only 770 total mana and using 4 auras and yet, I cast incinerate on him purely from mana. I have like 100 m/s normal, 140 with Rallying Cry up.

I think my biggest m/s now is on my SRSer, I have about 160 m/s and to get this, I had to invest 4 points in _pure_ mana nodes and have 2 pieces of jewelery with mana regen.

But having 100-120 m/s is not big deal to get and it's usually enough for most casters' skills.
Anticipation slowly dissipates...
With Elreon gear melee shouldn't have an issue, and casters should have points in intelligence, and only need a few mana regen passives.

In my opinion you should never ever use Clarity, as it takes up a reservation spot that could be used for something more beneficial.
No matter what people will still use BM gem.. it is easier (yet pretty much always less efficient)

2×50% auras are a problem but there is a quest reward gem with 2%reduced reserve that allows even that to happen

I do not agree about clarity. I have several builds that use lvl 3-6 clarity to achieve perfect mana in-out balance. One of these even uses it on life with bm gem. Lvl20 clarity might be an overkil but lvl 4 costs little yet grants substantial quality of life.


A side note. One class that has worst mana nodes (esp little %regen) is templar. His -%cost nodes and that whooping 22%mana nodes are good but lack of regen hurts for a while.

Side note no 2: alira bandit reward. that 50(?) flat mana looks like a very good deal to me. Coupled with mana flows (duelist) pretty much feeds any melee 5link skill with no extra effort

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