Last night my main server was down, along with a bunch of other servers, due to problems with network equipment. So, I didn't go to Naxx as I had planned. I tried playing on other servers, but got bored. So, I took the night off.
But that doesn't mean I have nothing to say. :)
Gear In-Between Stages
It seems that as you go from 5-man gear to 10-man gear you encounter that "in-between stage" of not being optimized.
I remember it happening on my Priest. My mana regen had been great for 5-mans but as soon as I started getting 10-man gear I started having issues. It wasn't until I got decked out in 10-man (and some 25-man) purples that my mana regen settled. I'm at the point now that when I'm running low on mana I can throw out my shadowfiend and get it back. By the time I'm out of mana again, either the fight is over, or the shadowfiend is available again.
I'm now experiencing that in-between stage on my mage. I mentioned recently that I had gotten three nice 10-man epics. Although they increased my overall stats, I'm finding that my mana regen is poor. Of course, I can't forget that, on the advice of mage forums and blogs, I have stopped using Mage Armor (that allows for mana regen in combat) and have begun using Molten Armor (which increases crit based on spirit). As a result my dps has jumped quite a bit. But, my mana regen has suffered. The interesting thing is that it seems to be suffering more now that I have this better gear.
One possible reason is that this new gear lowered my hit rating. So, I had to use swap out gems that had previously given me other stats (like SP, Int, Mp5) for gems that gave +hit. Previously most of my hit came on the items themselves.
So...I'm suspecting that when I get more 10-man gear I'll start seeing hit on the items again, allowing me to swap out the +hit gems and it will all normalize again.
Why am I saying this? No reason other than I think it's an interesting phenomenon. As you get better gear, you get more powerful but lose efficiency. That is, until you get just the right amount of new gear to bring back that efficiency. And when that happens...your power increases greatly.
Can't wait for my efficiency to come back! :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hmmm you could try arcane for a while to bridge any mana regen problems. Granted it's a completely different spec but deep arcane brings your evocation timer down to 2 minutes and the damage is comparative to deep fire. Comparative as in similar.
ReplyDeleteThat said you can really control how much mana you eat with arcane.
Of course take my comments with a grain of salt since my mage just recently hit 64, switched to arcane and my mana problems are gone for the most part.
Thanks for the tip. But actually, I'm already arcane. The 2 minute cooldown on Evocation is definitely helpful. But there have been a couple occasions when Evocation was interrupted before it could finish. So I felt the lack of mana more accutely.
ReplyDeleteLast night, however, we ran Naxx and I never ran out of mana. It does make a big difference when you have a solid group. Patchwerk, for example, went down and I had mana to spare.
So, I guess there are many more factors to take into consideration when analyzing this. I'm sure glad I'm not responsible for balancing elements in the game! :)