The flip side of the mana coin is the saving of it. Using less mana for a give spell also makes you sweet blueness last longer, and this is why we choose certain talents.
The Discipline Tree holds some nice talents that help tremendously with saving mana.
In the second tier you’ll find Inner Focus, which gives you a free spell cast once every three minutes. There is a trick to this talent, and that is to actually remember to use it. I have worked it into a macro to help save the toll on my excellent but very short memory (I'll get to the macro section later).
The second tier also houses Absolution, which reduces the mana cost of you dispel magic and cure/abolish disease spells. 3 points to max out this and get a total mana cost reduction of 15 %. Worth it? No, I don’t think so, the raid encounters that need heavy dispelling ain’t that many (the Maiden and Nightbane in Karazhan are those that come to mind requiring a lot of dispelling, maybe Jan’alai in Zul’Aman too).
In the 3d tier you’ll find Mental Agility, which reduces the mana cost of all your instant spells by 10 % if maxed out with 5 points. The spells affected by this talent is quite a bunch actually, Renew, Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing (if you have that one, 41 pt talent in the Holy tree), Dispel magic, Abolish Disease, Cure Disease, Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death. Don’t know about your healing spell preferences, but the first three ones are pretty much my staple healing spells, coupled with Greater Heal for tank healing, so you don’t see me leaving home without this one.
The 4th tier has Mental Strength, which if maxed with 5 pts gives 10 % more mana, which is pretty good. I have around 10 k mana raid buffed, so this would mean another 1000 mana, or 2,5 renews or 1,5Gheals. However, going this deep into the Disc Tree requires sacrificing a lot of the goodness from the Holy Tree, and if you do wanna do this dive into Disc, the sweet talents of Divine Spirit and the Improved Variety is just beside it.
2 tiers further down you’ll find Pain Suppression, which for 16 % of your base mana will give you a 20 % mana cost reduction for all spells for 15 seconds every 3 minutes. Getting this means that you have spent at least 31 talent points in the Discipline Tree, and that’s simply not viable for a raid healing priest unless in very specialized encounters of which I can’t think of any right now.
Same goes for Enlightenment – good talent but way too deep in the Disc tree to be a possibility for a healing priest.
So, Discipline Tree talent summary from a mana-saving healing perspective:
Inner Focus – get it.
Absolution - skip.
Mental agility – get it unless your healing style relies heavily on cast spells like Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Prayer of Healing (maybe not all 5 points if you have something else you really really want).
Mental Strength – skip.
Pain Suppression- skip.
Enlightenment – skip.
Holy Tree
In the Holy Tree you have to dive down to the 4th tier before you find a talent that reduces mana costs, and the use of Improved Healing is a somewhat debatable one. 3 points for 15 % less mana cost for a single spell (come on, how many times do you use Lesser Heal or Heal?). But these point means that your Greater Heal will cost 701 mana instead of 825, and it is one of your mostly used spells, so I’d go for it.
Healing Prayers in the 5th tier – 2 points for 20 % less mana for Prayer of Mending - frisbee bouncing back and forth ftw! Pass it forward and keep it up! - and Prayer of Healing, a spell not used quite as often but still often enough that the mana reduction with this talent is pretty tangible.
The 7th tier holds Holy Concentration. 6 % for 3 talent points may not sound much but it feels like it procs a lot and it actually often helps you regenerate mana as well – the WoW-gods don’t realise that you have cast a spell because you are not using any mana and thus they let your sweet bubbly 100% mana regen kick in while you secretly laugh at them and drop the mana-free Gheal on someone who really needed it.
And that’s about it – no more mana saving talents available in the Holy Tree.
So, Holy Tree talent summary from a mana-saving healing perspective:
Improved Healing – get it.
Healing Prayers – get it.
Holy Concentration – get it.
Shadow Tree
The shadow tree has nothing a healing priest want. Period. The Spirit tap may sound alluring but it does not kick in unless you are the one that kills the target, and how many killing blows have you managed to get off on raid trash or mobs?
So, Shadow Tree talent summary from a mana-saving healing perspective:
Void, null, not applicable. Get back to the holy tree if you wanna heal.
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Stay tuned for the next part: How to use macros and addons to help you keep that blue bar bubbling up.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Making the most of your mana
Mana regenerating
Have you ever started out to explain something really simple and, as you were at it, humhummed to yourself thinking I’d better explain that too since its kinda related, and might throw in a few words on this since it has bearing on the subject, and while I am at it why not cover this adjacent area as well, ending up with something huge and bloated and not at all what you had intended from the start?
No? Well I have, many times, and I’ll give you a great example of it here. I set out to make a small post with a few tips on how to make your mana last a whole 5-10 minute bossfight, but what I ended up with was this several post long article.
(Disclaimer: The following are my opinions and gut feelings for a holy priest that’s currently venturing into 25-mans like Serpentshrine Caverns and the Eye.)
Regenerating mana
1. Your blue bar is full.
2. You cast a spell.
3. Your blue bar is not quite as full as it was before.
4. Rinse and repeat.
You keep this up and eventually there will be no blue left at all and you will be that horrible shameful thing - out of mana!
Luckily, some of your blue mana will trickle back and fill up the bar again, and you want this to happen as fast as possible so you can keep up your spellcasting, right?
The mana regeneration rate comes in two flavours – a sweet bubbly champagne for when you are not casting (= out of combat, fiddling your thumbs while watching your party take damage, or whatever excuse you have for standing around not doing anything useful), and one not quite so bubbly for when you are casting (=in combat).
You want a) as much of the bubbly one as possible and b) to make the not-so-bubbly as bubbly as possible. Makes sense, right?
Now the WoW-gods are a little slow (lagging, maybe?), they don’t understand that you are not casting unless it’s been 5 seconds or more since you finished casting a spell, so once you start fighting you will have to rely mostly on your not-so-bubbly mana regeneration to keep the blueness trickling back.
If you want to know how much time the WoW-gods think you spend casting in every fight check out the Fubar plugin RegenFu. For me, a holy priest, it somewhere between 75-90% of the time, and for a more in-depth explanation of what the so-called 5 second rule is please check out WoWwiki.
So, how do I get that mana juice flowing?
Mana regeneration is made up of two parts: a spirit/intellect-based one and a “restores X mana per second”-one.
According to the same WoWwiki, the formula for the spi/int mana regeneration for a lvl 70 priest is
MP5 = 5 * (0,001 + sqrt(Int) * Spi * 0,009327)
and without talents this will only happen when the WoW-gods are really really sure that you are not casting a spell, i e out of combat or at least 5 seconds after you finished casting.
However, with the priest talent Meditation from the 3d tier in the Discipline tree you can get 30% of the spi/int-regen to continue when you are casting. Take this talent. It’s a must for any priest, holy, disc or shadow, so I'll say it again: Take this talent.
Some of the gear you will encounter has an on-equip use that goes “Restores [a number] mana per 5 seconds.” This is a flat mana regeneration that’s always the same, no matter if you are casting or not, and is usually referred to as mana regeneration from items. There are also gems and enchants with this stat.
So, to summarise:
Really sweet bubbly mana regen = only when not casting = int/spi-based regen + mana regen from items.
Not quite so sweet and bubbly mana regen but hopefully not too flat = when casting = 30% of the int/spi-based regen + 100% of the mana regen from items.
Aha, you might think here, let’s stack up on the mana regen from items since it keeps ticking 24/7! Well, yes, it will, but there are more advantages to going for Spirit and Intellect instead.
Ok, short brief:
Spirit gives mana regen and also health regen and increases healing bonus when talented with Spiritual Guidance.
Intellect gives mana regen and also increases your crit chance with spells and it gives you a larger mana pool to start with.
So, when it comes too stats, Spirit is your dearest friend, Intellect comes pretty close and the cousin from the country Mana-regen-from-items is tolerated but not invited unless the other two are out of town.
Stay tuned for the next part: Saving Ryan’s Privates, eh, no that was not it...ah I have it:
Stay tuned for the next part - The flip side of the mana coin: saving it!
