Mana Management

[Dwin]

I thought I'd share how I manage mana in XP groups. If people have other strategies, please post so we can all get better. Hopefully my opinions aren't too biased towards either healers or DPS, since I often end up playing both roles.

Under normal circumstances (no adds), I "burn" down to 70% mana and try to maintain my mana at 70%. Maintaining mana means using my most efficient nuke (or dots if mobs live that long) instead of the big showy nuke. I also use any clickies I have at this point, while waiting for mana to get back above 70% for the next nuke.

Why do I hold on to so much spare mana? In case of an add or other unexpected event. As a healer, keeping 2 tanks up takes at least twice the mana, or more if I need to spot heal. Also, the secondary tank is typically not as well geared, leading to more mana spent. In a DPS role, we want extra mana to burn down that add as fast as possible, before the healer goes OOM.

My long term goal is never to have my mana bar hit either full or empty. When I'm full mana, all my mana regen is being wasted instead of going to kill a mob. When I'm OOM as a healer, that means downtime. In a DPS role, OOM just means less ability to deal with adds, and so more chance of deaths or having to evac (downtime). I've found that 70% is a good balance, where I almost never hit full mana between pulls, and I've got plenty of reserves for when things hit the fan.

Why is downtime so bad? As a caster, it's easy to let your mana bar fill up, dump it all on a mob, then sit and med it all back again. This bursty method has the same long term average DPS, so why not? Melee characters always need a mob in camp to beat on. They can't save up their sword swings to dump on the next mob. Any time spent without a mob in camp is lost melee DPS.

So, enough rambling from me, I just like the number 70.

[Redleaf]

Great post Dwin and well said.

[Rheyn]

I try to do something very similar, however it is more based on what each spell I have to cast costs me and if it would be viable to Canni between mobs if needed...however, most of the time, if all is going well, I'm above 80%.

I won't get into too many details since I'm running out the door now () but I will repost/edit to explain more if anyone is interested.

But that's the gist, thanks for the post Dwin.

[Bora]

Thanks for the post Dwin! As a melee I tend to ignore if a caster other than the healer is OOM. I always figure, hey it's their problem if they like to sit there and watch while they regen some mana back.

But, when I play my Druid, I am always struggling to find a balance because I hate sitting and waiting for mana. Often when I do get a chance to play my Druid I play with Ed on his Druid as well and in that case one us plays the healer the other plays nuker/dotter. I tend to play healer more because Ed being a caster type to begin with is much better at his mana management than I am.

But, this post explains and gives me a better idea of how to find a balance. So, thank you!

[Cromis]

As a Cleric, I tend to have a slightly different different view (at least when I am the only Cleric there).

I tend to want to keep my mana as nearly full as I can. The reason for this isn't to try and keep my DPS consistent and allow some wiggle room. For the Cleric, I need to have my full mana pool available the moment all hell breaks loose. That is, it is my job to ensure that there isn't any downtime due to the healer mana pool.

My DPS in EXP groups then is almost never the nuke kind (and even when it is, Cleric DPS is not that good, or that efficient). I melee with my hammer, I might send in a hammer pet (I would do this more often if I had a clicky pet), and use other clickies and so on.

When fighting against caster mobs though, I usually pull out my Mace of Dark Thought. It procs a Mana theft of 400 points. Unlike the hammer, it has a normal proc rate, which means at my 300 Dex, it usually goes offer every 20-25 seconds. Over 24 seconds, I lose just under 100 mana from not medding, I gain 60 mana from Yaulp VI, and I pick up 400 mana from a proc. That's a net gain of about 900 mana a minute (about 13 or 14 percent of my mana pool). On a good sequence in Tactics I have collected as much as 40 percent mana on a mob.

Generally, I haven't had to deal with downtime in a long while (unless we had a bad pull and I had to tank 2 or 3 of them for a while - self healing seems to be the fastest way to lose mana). This is also why I prefer Grind groups where we get the occaisional casting mob.

[Zorblak]

In my experience, the most important thing in a group is balancing mana between the players. If I'm going OOM and the healer is FM, I'm nuking too much. If I'm FM and the healer is OOM, I'm not nuking enough. Even if I'm losing mana, if the healer is losing mana at the same rate, that's OK, because we'll both need a break at the same time.

The balance between healer mana and DPS mana might not be immediately obvious, but it works out. The faster a mob dies, the less damage it does to the tank, so the less healage he needs. So if I overnuke, the healer saves mana per mob, and if I undernuke, the healer needs to spend more mana per mob. So working out the balance between healage and DPS allows for the best long-term gain in a group.