Base mana regeneration is just too low

Just a quick disclaimer: the whole post is aimed at solo play.

Having played several characters on a very high level now (my current main is on lvl 68), i can safely say that basing your main mana resource "regain" on mana regeneration without skilling eldritch battery is a huge waste of time.

Even as a complementary source of mana regain it just isnt working out for builds that neither skill blood magic nor eldritch battery, but still want to use atleast some auras.
This mainly means characters that dont use spells, but deal most of their damage as elemental (thus they cant use mana leech on gear to fix their mana problems because that only applies to physical damage).

These guys are forced to get mana leech support for their main attack with their 5 link the latest, maybe even on their 4 link, because they just cant cover their costs in a proper way.
This mainly is the case for dex/str based characters that dont have a large mana pool (because they dont have much int through the skill tree) but didnt skill eldritch battery or blood magic either.

They have very small mana pools and their mana regeneration is abysmal.
They can skill %mana in their skilltree, but even with 12-15 points invested into reducing mana cost of skills and increasing mana regeneration and mana pool, their mana regeneration is so abysmal that it doesnt even matter. (skilling more points than that into mana is suicide, due to how insanely hard the game was made, you are forced to skill towards a lot of life and defense/resis, but also towards atleast some damage otherwise you just cant kill any of the high health enemies).
Their only source of proper mana regain (outside of mana leech support) are flasks, and here is where the problem is.

Due to the insanely high amount of health most mobs have nowadays (even on the first map tier), you cant really kill some of the high health rares without chucking down all your mana pots.
Once all your mana pots are gone, you might manage to kill that rare, but your flasks arent going to refill from a single rare kill.
Even with alchemist, additional charge recovery on flasks, and additional flask recovery on the belt, its still near impossible to maintain a proper flask equilibrium against rare enemies that specifically have a lot of life.

Turning off auras isnt an option, because there are builds that can utilize auras and use their skills at the same time, instead of turning the auras off it is more viable to roll that particular build instead.
With clarity nerfed, there isnt much of an option except for mana leech support, just to make the build viable, and that means your build only becomes viable once you have a 5 link armor (you cant afford to use it on a 4 link considering how much life most mobs have now, if you cant kill them in time, your survivability will run out of time and you will die).

Base mana regeneration from base mana needs to be increased in order to make these builds (that arent int based) that dont utilize neither eldritch battery nor blood magic, more viable.
If base regen was a little bit higher, skilling about 10-15 points into mana would help these builds out a lot, instead of being wasted points.
Additionally buffing alchemist to also increase the amount of charges that your flasks can have would be a welcome change.

On a general note, the amount of charges on flasks is outdated in the current metagame.
Enemies have a lot more life and deal a lot more damage, therefore most fights go on much longer than what your flasks can recover, especially in groups that arent geared well yet, and im not even talking about boss fights.
Killing that ultra high life rare is hard for these groups, and once they manage to do it, only 1 guy has his emtpy flasks replenished, while everyone else is out of luck.

This issue wasnt as apparent during closed beta because most builds could 1 shot anything they encountered up to even the highest level maps, thus they were able to easily recover all their flask charges and manage their mana just fine.
With the current amount of life on mobs, this isnt really possible until you have really great gear (1 shotting everything that is) and thus you are bound to run out of flask charges, even with all the recovery increasing nodes and modifiers on flasks and belt, at which point you are only left with abysmal mana regeneration.

Only other option: play an intelligence based character (shadow, witch, templar, because that way you get a base amount of int from the tree and thus have an easier time to skill mana/manareg in the skilltree), or skill blood magic or eldritch battery on the remaining characters.
Being limited that much on the mana front is quite bad.

I think you'll find this was discussed in CB. Zaka actually posted a spreadsheet link to help determine what would be best to help get your main skill up and running for longer.

From memory (feel free to correct me), depending on the circumstances of your character depended on what kind of mana passive was needed (either increased mana, mana regen, reduced skill cost). I think he also suggested that he managed to get a regen character to work. But it had a massive gear cost, and very large passives cost to make it support 5 (i can't remember if it was 6) link skill.

There was also another long thread basically stating that you had to use either Blood Magic, or Mana Leech gem to support anything above a 4 link. (I think the title of the thread was BM is overpowered).

I completely agree with you is what I'm really saying (on all counts). Base mana regen, even with 10-15 nodes pumped into it sucks. Hell, I've designed my witch to take eldritch battery and use clarity. That's how much I think mana regen sucks :P

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StillSingle wrote:

I think you'll find this was discussed in CB. Zaka actually posted a spreadsheet link to help determine what would be best to help get your main skill up and running for longer.

From memory (feel free to correct me), depending on the circumstances of your character depended on what kind of mana passive was needed (either increased mana, mana regen, reduced skill cost). I think he also suggested that he managed to get a regen character to work. But it had a massive gear cost, and very large passives cost to make it support 5 (i can't remember if it was 6) link skill.

There was also another long thread basically stating that you had to use either Blood Magic, or Mana Leech gem to support anything above a 4 link. (I think the title of the thread was BM is overpowered).

I completely agree with you is what I'm really saying (on all counts). Base mana regen, even with 10-15 nodes pumped into it sucks. Hell, I've designed my witch to take eldritch battery and use clarity. That's how much I think mana regen sucks :P

Yeah i also posted in these threads.
The thing was that you were still able to cover your needs with flasks for the most part, because you were able to 1 shot most of everything that you encountered, even if you had mediocre gear.
That isnt the case anymore, you cant 1 shot anything unless you have very good gear, thus your charges run out and then you are done for without some base mana regeneration that actually does something.
In order to get the mana reg up you need to spend way too many points into manareg/%mana/reduced mana cost.
You dont have these points available, they are already occupied in life, resists, defenses and damage.
You need all of that to actually be able to survive the current iteration of the game, and while damage was a luxury in closed beta, it became necessary in open beta because enemies have that much more health.
You can afford to spend a few skilpoints on mana and manareg, but they are mostly wasted points, because even with many more points invested into mana reg, you dont get any significant returns out of it.

Yeah very true.

Case in point. Playing Witch. An unsupported freezing pulse gem at char level 25 (so the gem is level 6 or something), can't be supported by 5 nodes invested in mana/mana regen + clarity level 3. That is ridiculous. mana regen boost 60%. increase in mana 28%. int >100. total mana regen incl clarity = 14.4/sec. Cost of freezing pulse per cast = 18. casting time .66 seconds.

Clearly mana regen is wrong. I don't think the mana pool is too low, but definately the mana regen is wrong.

Ninja Edit: unlinked freezing pulse is not supported even with 20% of passives invested in mana and another 20% passives in intelligence and using clarity. Considering you need passives invested in life, damage, resists, defence AS WELL, mana regen is in a bad way.

I always have enough with Clarity and 40-60% mana regen from passives. The percents can come from gear instead, I just wouldn't want to depend on that. This has been more than enough mana sustain for any build I've tried so far except if I was chain-casting zombies on my summoner.

What skills/supports were you continuously casting (ie broke even on mana regen vs use/sec)??

What was the cost of the skill(s) you were using without losing mana? how many uses/sec for those skill(s)?

What level was the character?

all important questions that need to be answered to lend credence to your claim (Enqvist).

This is especially bad for rangers, since they have minimal access to both int and BM, which are the main mana resources.

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tinghshi wrote:

This is especially bad for rangers, since they have minimal access to both int and BM, which are the main mana resources.

you missed Mana leech gem, which is the other viable mana resource.

Either way, none of the methods you mentioned were mana regen through passives/clarity investment.

Let's look at what really matters about flasks.

Name, level, mana per charge 0% qual, mana per charge 20% qual
Small mana, 1, 4.2, 5.1
Medium mana, 4, 5.0, 6.0
Small hyrbid, 10, 3.5, 4.2
Large mana, 14, 5.5, 6.6
Greater mana, 18, 6.0, 7.2
Grand mana, 26, 12.0, 14.4 (big jump!)
Large hyrbid, 30, 7.0, 8.4
Giant mana, 34, 15.0, 18.0
Colossal hyrbid, 40, 10.0, 12.0
Sacred mana, 45, 25.0, 30.0 (big jump!)
Sacred hyrbid, 50, 19.0, 22.8
Hallowed mana, 53, 27.5, 33.0
Hallowed hyrbid, 60, 22.5, 27.0

Notice that it's per charge, which means: per kill. Except blues give 3.5 charges per kill, rares give 6 charges per kill; these harder mobs might screw you over temporarily, but you'll eventually get back what you put in.

This is also with white flasks. Clearly using blue flasks is better. A particularly good mod here is Saturated, which gives you 50% more mana per charge. "But it's slower," you say? It's still 21.4 mana/sec regeneration for 8.4 seconds per activation for a Greater Mana.

Now let's tackle a complaint from this thread.

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StillSingle wrote:

Case in point. Playing Witch. An unsupported freezing pulse gem at char level 25 (so the gem is level 6 or something), can't be supported by 5 nodes invested in mana/mana regen + clarity level 3. That is ridiculous. mana regen boost 60%. increase in mana 28%. int >100. total mana regen incl clarity = 14.4/sec. Cost of freezing pulse per cast = 18. casting time .66 seconds.

So first off, level 25 witch. Gain 1 more level and those problems will likely disappear, since mana per kill will double.

However, let's say he has a single Saturated Greater Mana Flask with 0 qual. That's 10.8 mana per kill with zero passive investment. Before the 60% regen rate bonus and the 28% max mana bonus, the witch has 7.9 mana per second passive regen rate; take away the level 3 clarity and that's 3.8. That's the competition. Also, keep in mind that you could easily double the amount of mana-per-kill by simply adding a duplicate flask...

So which do you think is a better source of regen... increasing passive regen rate, or increasing killspeed? ;)

A lot of people, especially on hardcore, have mana issues because they simply don't kill things fast enough. Killing things faster means less casts and faster charge accumulation, letting the flask system do its job. Killing things slower means an increasing need for some kind of secondary resource support system, which means investment in mana/mana-regen passives, Mana Leech support gems, and/or keystone commitment.

The DPS nodes (except for cast speed, that doesn't increase damage per cast) are your friends. Take them.

Good post Scrotie.

I disagree, but that's only because the way I want to be able to play a character by the end game. low level, i don't mind too much living on flasks.

My philosophy for building a character is that by the time I reach the end game stuff I shouldn't need to be relying on flasks to use my main skill. I should have enough regen to cover it. Currently that is not possible. Hence why you use blood magic, mana leech or eldritch batter with a lot of investent in mana nodes.

Based on the numbers you dropped though, mana from flasks is barely going to cover high mana cost spells supported by >3 supports.

Also, You haven't really compared apples to apples. Comparing using flasks to get the mana you need, ie actively having to use an item for EVERY fight, is markedly different from using a setup that requires no active participation in mana recovery.

ie: Blood magic. Used by high life + high regen characters. No need to hit a health pot to just use their skills. Their regen covers the cost.

ie: Mana Leech. mana issues gone. No need to hit a mana pot to cover the cost of the skill.

Yes there are costs involved in using BM (or the BM Gem),or the mana leech gem. However, the cost of NOT using one of those options is insanely high. That is what we are arguing against.

Costs for Blood magic: Double dip for defense and offense. Health nodes + health regen nodes. no percentage auras (unless you're freakin' nuts)

Costs for Blood magic gem: Uses a support slot. Double dip health and health regen nodes for offense and defense.

Costs for Mana leech: Uses a support slot. Small investment to improve max mana as leech is capped at 12.5% of max per second.

Costs for none of the above: Massive passive investment into mana max, mana regen, probably have to go get eldritch battery, expensive gear to further boost your mana regen. The opportunity cost for all of that...... less health.....less damage.....less defense (no ES, geared towards mana regen rather than better defensive stats.

So I see where you're coming from Scrotie, that flasks give you the mana regen you 'need'. But I think that only holds true at low levels with skills that have <=3 supports, and that if you don't want to use BM, BM gem, or mana lech gem end game, your toon will have large deficiencies if they invest enough into mana/regen to spam their main 5L 6L skill.

oh update on my now lvl 30 witch. got the better mana flask. using FP with LMP. or Ice spear with Increased Crit Dmg. The mana flask does NOT maintain enough mana for me to continuously spam my skills in Act 3 upto and including the warehouse sewers. Act 3 mobs have higher health and less numbers of enemies. So there is no efficiencies in AoE which helps flask regain charges.