Why mp5 is not my Friend
MP5 is an incredibly important stat, don’t get my wrong. And this post shouldn’t be taken all to seriously. But nonetheless, actual discussion about the future of mana regen have gotten me thinking about:
- Why do blue posts again mention spirit based classes and how their mana regen is going to be, mention paladins but don’t waste a second to let us shamans know how our future of healing might look like?
- How why might be gearing up after 3.1 and
- the role of mp5 in BC, now and in the time to come.
Before I’ll tell you why I don’t like mp5 at this point I’ll sum up what mp5 was like in BC: Due to downranking shamans could reach a kind of steady state with a good portion of mp5. Our downranked chainheal did a great amount of healing while being very cheap to cast. And mp5 helped us to stay in the game and go oom very late in encounters, and even then, chain mana potting and casting an even lower rank for some seconds made us ultimate chainheal spamming machines.
Now this has changed. Our max rank of chainheal is expensive. We do run out of mana. And mp5 is still good, but has lost some of its uberness to INT, which not only pushes our +heal and crit but is a decent mana regen stat and even more desirable to gem for than mp5. And lets not forget what mp5 is for us shamans: it is pretty much all we have to regen mana apart from INT. No spirit for us and crit, while fun and good, is much less important for us than for paladins, especially now where cooldowns on CoH and WG will push us again in the direction of chainheal heavy tasks.
And that’s why I don’t like mp5 that much. You could see it as a great mana regen stat for shamans but to be honest: we just don’t have anything else. And that is why our resto Tier gear is packed with mp5, no other healing class has that much mp5 on their gear set. And the more Tier gear you get, the more INT you have, the better your dps is equipped the less you need mp5 on your gear. But if one would want to replace mp5 heavy gear he’s competing with dps caster classes and those should have priority, so it’s likely you will wait forever for an update.
So here are my three main points why mp5 is just not that much fun:
- As mentioned above: mp5 is a fantastic stat if you start out in heroics. You will struggle without very mp5 heavy gear. The more you progress though the worse mp5 get, INT alone will give you a good amount of mana regen. Yet still mp5 is there on nearly every healer item. And thus mp5 becomes often a tool to make loot distrubition easier and help loot master decide if it’s a healer or an dps caster item rather than a very desired stat by healers.
- MP5 has no synergy with our talents whatsoever. That’s the worst thing about mp5. It’s just there, boring, static, not scaling with anything. If compared to spirit or crit in the case of paladins which are webbed into those classes talent trees with multiple purpose (mostly mana regen + healing output) I’m just a sad panda.
- MP5 is a fuzzy stat. Everyone knows that we healers need some. We all have plenty, just because it’s on our healer gear. But it is hard to calculate how much you really need. Most of the time I just stack mp5 by pure feeling. Do I run out of mana in the average boss fight? – If yes -> more mp5/INT, if no -> drop mp5 until close to running oom.
I do hope blizzard has more plans for shaman to make mana regen more fun, interactive and not depend to much on shamans just pumping their gear full of mp5. Improved water shield was a nice try, but as it stands right now: nice tool, especially for single target healing, but the more we cast chainheal the more useless it gets. I think the coolest solution would be to find a synergy with one of our talents for mp5, I’m thinking somewhat of a little mp5 helps our healing output conversion.
The problem with mp5 being a fuzzy stat lies just in the matter of healing. I think in a way it can be compared to hit for dps classes. Both are stats you need to maintain a high output of damage or healing during a fight. But while hit has values where you cap out or where other stats will be better, healing depends a lot on the length of the fight and the other healers. So I’m OK with that.
Any thoughts on shamanistic mana regen as it is right now or how it might look int the future?
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Ya, I was a little upset nothing was mentioned about us shamans either. I agree with your points though, I base my need for mp5 by pure feel.
I just hope the worst case scenerio doesn’t happen and we don’t get shafted because they are trying to balance elemental spec mana regen or somthing to that nature…
We shall see….
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I hope we will see a blue post with some clarification for shamans soon. I do understand mp5, I know how it works and I know how good or bad it is compared to INT. And I think absolutely every healer should have a base stock of mp5. Every healer should get a good chunk of mana from replenishment as well, I love how that works.
And in addition to that spirit based classes have additional regen through spirit, paladins have Illumination and shamans have: Watershield, which is more or less mp5 and we have tons of mp5 on our gear. That’s just boring, c’mon blizz, you can do better.
Agreed, entirely – I was somewhat dissapointed to hear that they did not mention shamans and am somewhat annoyed at some druids and priests who seem to think we’re going to be ‘better’ when, in fact, Blizz has stated that they are bringing other classes down to our level of regen.
Now that my druid is 80 and specced resto I’m seeing how much of a difference spirit based oo5s regen can make – I hate to see healers nerfed but I must admit that I’m glad they’re focusing on oo5sr regen rather than simply reducing regen across the board or screwing with replenishment which would, in my opinion, hurt shamans more than any other healer at the moment.
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Ghostcrawler said:
I keep reading about these mana regen changes and checking off in my mind, “nope, doesn’t affect resto shamen.” We rely so little on spirit based regen and they haven’t mentioned Water Shield that I’ve been confused as well. But reading that last post I feel a bit more secure, though I expect we’ll get a nerf too.
Right now, in ilvl 200 gear I have no problems with mana regen unless something odd is happening. For example, I had to use a pot last night when we were doing KT and our DK MT died to a void blast, so our DPS DK picked it up and tanked KT + adds for the rest of the fight. We had three healers, and by the end I was basically just spamming HW an Riptide. I’m amazed I only felt the need to pot once and still had mana to rez at the end of the fight.
Even if they bring us down a little bit we should be fine. Though, when they’re talking about bringing other healers down to match our regen I start to wonder how awesome other class’s regen must be.
Thanks for linking to that blue one. Haven’t read it before and it is somehow what I expected a shaman regen bluepost to be: short and boring. I agree with the plan to bring other healing classes down to our level, the way mana is shooting back up if spirit based classes can take a little healing break is just insane.
I’m still hoping for a more interesting way to handle our mana in the future though. Stacking mp5 is just not fun.
This is a very nice post; thank you for putting it up. And you’re absolutely right about our mana regen being uninteresting and I do hope they fix it.
I also figured that shaman weren’t mentioned because Blizzard felt they were fine. This scares me because regen is the most frustrating aspect of playing shaman right now. There’s very little a shaman can do to manage mana usage, beyond not healing. Toss down mana tide, drink a potion, and pray that you can last long enough. Mana regen for shaman is heavily gear-dependent, which means that you almost have to be overgeared if you want to feel comfortable with your regen – particularly if everyone is learning the fights and things go wrong frequently. I wish Blizzard would consider that when balancing regen, instead of balancing it around top-geared, perfect Naxx runs.
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Well, I think the best bet would be to add a few talents and then an additional description to a spell or two. Such as a talent that increase MP5 when you crit with a healing spell to the resto tree, maybe change the improved Elemental Weapons so that instead of giving you a miniscule amount of +heals on your Everliving Weapon it adds an MP5 percentage bonus (+10%ish with 3/3). I don’t think it would be too difficult. I personally understand what you’re saying but I honestly like being set apart from other healers in how we manage things (using Mp5 rather than spirit). Granted it could be a bit more effective. I was thinking that they could give Resto shamans an ability with a 3 minute (or so) cool down that allows you to instantly absorb your orbs from your water shield and gives you a temporary MP5 regen buff as well (not long, 8 seconds or so) – you can recast water shield and still get a boost in mana (small but a boost regardless) it would work great for 50 percent mana during fights if you need a quick restock to keep you from getting too low or in between trash pulls.
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Also note that your post has intrigued me enough to promise to visit often and add your link to my own blog (as linked above on my name). Good show.
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The suggestions you make are fantastic. I’m happy as well without spirit, and I’m ok with blizzard not just copying paladin mechanics for shamans. Nonetheless making mp5 more attractive in similar ways as you described (I love both ideas, the synergy with crit or just like holypriest with spirit, gaining some +heal with mp5).
Improved watershield feels still a little bit clumsy. If mana is not an issue you just recast it when there is time. This means fantastic watershield uptime and you often have the time to recast it with still 2-3 charges left. In situations where a lot is going on I still don’t like it. Especially if we have to do a lot of spot healing, we consume a lot of orbs and sometimes this one global cooldown is just annoying. In situations like Sarth 3D where the raid takes really heavy damage and two tanks must absolutely not die I’d rather have the passive mana regen of my watershield than consuming orbs with every crit and getting into time without any watershield at all.
What I’d like to see for the shaman are more abilites on 6-30 seconds cooldown. I love those and I think they are fun to manage. Prayer of mending is an example, Rapture, CoH, PW:S for Disc, Druid HoTs (the “cooldown” is on the target, not on the ability).
Riptide is going in that direction and has added a lot to my shaman healing. The Problem with Riptide: while other abilites are extremly strong and should be used the second they come of CD, riptide is a little bit on the weak side: if the group takes heavy damage we spam chainheal anyways: if a single target is taking heavy damage HW(+NS) or LHW are often better options. They might land a tiny bit later but heal for a lot more. And for keeping up the Tidal waves haste buff chainheal is always a very strong alternative. So riptide really shines only when we are on the move, which is ok and great, but still I’d love to see more abilites like Riptide.