Mana Cost per Skill level

It seems that mana skill cost per level needs reviewed by GGG. Ice Strike seems really can not be optimized because the Mana cost is so high and the available options to lower mana cost of skills are so low. With a high regeneration and high leeching employed and the one reduced mana cost or skill 8% there is no way to optimize to the greatest skill damage levels by having weapons with + 7 skill levels. Those weapons also required high level Dexterity which robs intelligence which robs Mana. It's a shame that this build works great for mobs but can't fight bosses because it is not possible to manage the mana for the extended fight times.

it seems
lower skill level mana cost
or increased mana regen
or increase lower mana cost options

else I don't see a way to optimize at least not this monk build

Just some thoughts to consider

Mana cost is not supposed to be trivialised.
It should require investment for high level gems.

Not sure why anyone would think it was trivial and that I had not thought about it, but sure whatever.

That is a basic concept that I understand, as stated the balance is not really possible for the monk to support mana attacks with high leveled skills, there are only so much that can be done to either get higher mana regeneration, mana leech or lower skill cost to support higher mana cost. There is limited support on the tree and no matter what support I apply to gear it is not sufficient to battle bosses with the higher skill levels and thus higher DPS. I was running 74k DPS for ice strike and have had to lower the skill level by 7 to get to a maintainable mana pool so it is possible to fight the bosses and not just run out of mana.

I believe there is a balance problem not based on I just feel like it but more based on I have worked on it for a while and spent a lot of divines trying to get to some form or balance for higher end damage and mana generation.

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MagosX#1099 wrote:

Mana cost is not supposed to be trivialised.
It should require investment for high level gems.

That's more a problem with how damage scales with skill gem level than anything else. Weaker skills who need those gem levels will suffer more as a result of the strongest skills needing to be hamstrung by absurd mana costs to "keep them in line."

Figuring out how to afford to cast skills is just a very boring puzzle to solve - especially for melee classes with far fewer options to solve the mana cost issue. Mana costs being the 'gate' for more damage heavily favors Int-based classes who stack mana naturally as part of their builds.

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MagosX#1099 wrote:

Mana cost is not supposed to be trivialised.
It should require investment for high level gems.

but gem levels already require investment?

this is some dumb take

if it should require investment, why do mind over matter builds get free infinite mana when they scale mana for archmage and mind over matter anyway?

that's fair and certainly true. just seems there should be some more opportunity to offset the higher cost other than what is available in the design right now.

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MagosX#1099 wrote:

Mana cost is not supposed to be trivialised.
It should require investment for high level gems.

Attacks are suppost to care for accurracy not as much for manacost.

strenght attacks are like 1k mana per attack when passives is filled with reduced maximum mana.

861 manacost