MoM, unreserved mana, and mana regen

As someone who is experienced with MoM I don't recommend it if your manapool is under 1k. The ideal manapool is 1800.

Lightning coil is your best choice.

In this particular case (I'm running the same build as you, as you know), and a lot of play time with both, I clearly prefer Coil. This is just gut feeling though, no math behind it.

In general, I will avoid running MoM if I have less than 7-800 unreserved mana, ideally 1200+. That's not the whole story though ; mana regeneration while spamming your primary skill should be taken into account. Finding yourself getting pounded to the point of being OOM for your skills is extremely dangerous and will lead to death(s) eventually. Which is why I consider Coil better on a mana-hungry build ; if my skill takes 300 mana/sec (+ a bit from standing AA) and I have like 400 regen, then the remaining regeneration will not be enough to cover mana hits from MoM. I don't really have a target figure for "available mana regeneration", but I'd guess something like 150-200+ would be a good place to be at.

700-800 mana doesn't cut it for MoM, in fact I wouldn't even say 1,200 does.

Ideally, you want a roughly equal effective life:effective mana pool to get the most out of MoM. For example, if you're using cloak and have 4k life your "effective" life pool is actually 4,000/.6 or 6,600 life. This means that you would want around 2.6k unreserved mana to have an equal life:mana ratio (6,600 * .4). Going too far out of an equal ratio on either side will significantly decrease your total EHP.

Using the cloak example again and with 4,000 life and only 1,200 unreserved mana, the calaculation would be (4,000/.6)+(1,200/.4)/2 = 4,833 total EHP. Not very impressive at all versus the roughly 6,600 EHP you would have with 2,600 mana.

The MoM keystone allows for a little more wiggle room because it only accounts for 30% rather than 40%, but either way it's way more important to have unreserved mana than another aura. Not to mention the fact that you probably won't have great auras anyway because of the lack of passive investment.

Tbh, I don't think it's that important to have the equivalent of your HP for 40% unreserved mana - you don't get hit for all your HP like that unless your going crazy on reflect.

However, yes I agree 1k+ is very nice to have.

"

Chundadragon wrote:

Tbh, I don't think it's that important to have the equivalent of your HP for 40% unreserved mana - you don't get hit for all your HP like that unless your going crazy on reflect.

However, yes I agree 1k+ is very nice to have.

The thing is though, If you aren't using your mana primarily as a source of health, why bother bother with MoM in the first place? It's pretty easy to get 5k+ life with normal gear, there's no reason to have MoM if it doesn't tip your EHP above the norm.

I did a cloak/EB witch for ambush and played around with a lot of different gear combinations. I ended up with 4.3k life and 2.7k unreserved mana because it just felt MUCH more tanky than having another aura. It helped that she's a freeze pulser too since FP doesn't really depend on auras for damage, which I feel those types of builds are the best way to utilize MoM.

"

JahIthBer89 wrote:

either way it's way more important to have unreserved mana than another aura. Not to mention the fact that you probably won't have great auras anyway because of the lack of passive investment.

With summon raging spirit we actually take 70% aura effect.

But I don't agree about your unreserved mana point. The three mandatory auras for us are hatred, haste, and clarity. I think grace is mandatory too, since I take IR. With grace I have 700 unreserved mana, and 10.8k armor for estimated 51% mitigation. Without grace I have 1.3k unreserved mana, 4.3k armor and estimated 29% mitigation.

If I take a 4k phys hit with grace on: first it gets mitigated to 4000*0.49=1960. Then 30%=588 is taken from mana. The remaining 1372 is taken from life. Thus the original hit was mitigated to 1372/4000=34.3%.

With grace off if I take 4k it gets mitigated to 4000*0.71=2840. Then 30%=852 is taken from mana, and 1988 is taken from life, for effective mitigation to 1988/4000=49.7%.

Just for sake of comparison, if I have LC, 83% LR, 52% estimated reduction, and no MoM. The original hit gets split: 4000*0.6*0.48 + 4000*0.4*0.17 = 1424. This gives an effective mitigation to 1424/4000=35.6%. So lightning coil provides less mitigation against physical than using MoM, and it will provide even less mitigation against fire, and cold, but is the slightly worse mitigation worth not having to pay mana. It seems that the consensus in this thread is yes, it's worth it when you have little unreserved mana and free regen.

I never played mom (might very well be my next toon) but i was under the impression that the best case scenario is (considering mom takes 30% of the damage into mana instead of life)

You'd want to have 30% of your Max HP as unreserved mana.

That way lets say you have 4k life

You'd like to have 4000 * 0.3 = 1200 unreserved mana.

That way you can survive a hit of a little over 5k damage without dying (providing you your unreserved mana is at maximum).

Am I right or is this calculation wrong?

"

Krayken wrote:

I never played mom (might very well be my next toon) but i was under the impression that the best case scenario is (considering mom takes 30% of the damage into mana instead of life)

You'd want to have 30% of your Max HP as unreserved mana.

That way lets say you have 4k life

You'd like to have 4000 * 0.3 = 1200 unreserved mana.

That way you can survive a hit of a little over 5k damage without dying (providing you your unreserved mana is at maximum).

Am I right or is this calculation wrong?

This is right. The point of this thread is to compare MoM to non-MoM even when you have less than 30% of your HP as free mana. In my case I have around 4.8-5.0k HP and 700 unreserved mana. MoM still helps significantly in this case, but the question is whether it's worth it.

Ideally, you would have a 7/3 ratio, but that is not particularly easy to hit. I have an EB/MoM toon with 5k HP, so ideally I'd have 2145 Mana after reservation. I have 1800, and that's using EV/ES gear with full ES on the Helm (build also has Ondars so want Evasion as well) and mana on all accessories. Discipline is actually counter productive in this situation as while it gives me mana it reserves so much that post Discipline usable mana is less than without it.

Still, I am happy with my effective HP Pool of 6800 and it's effect on my survivabiliy is definitely noticed. I see some try with like 300 mana...and even with super high mana regen I just don't think it makes much sense. In that case I think I'd just take off MoM, max out AA, and call it a day.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

Well I have a build that runs 4-5 (4 if using MoM, 5 without) auras and has high mana regen. Basic guidelines don't apply.

The problem is that I have a small amount of mana, 500 with cloak and 700 with a rare armor. This small amount of mana provides a useful amount of mitigation, but often I will be out of mana after medium sized hit, or many small ones, so I can't count on having that mitigation all the time, like I would be able to with coil. The question I'm trying to ask is whether I can count on having it often enough to make MoM better than coil.

Check out my spreadsheet. The "Mana availability" multiplier is something I came up with to try address the above idea of not having full mana at all times.

I guess your point about specific monster fights may be what I have to do.

You really need more mana. I dislike MoM or cloak unless I have a lot of mana. My one build using cloak and AA right now has 5000 mana. Working great!