As of April 17th, we see Blizzard going back on their word already, and instead of removing all the Mana CDs current to MoP they are just COMPLETELY remaking most of them. Its possible this could be another late April Fools joke, or gets reverted quicker than I can type this article, but I can’t see the future, so for now let’s discuss!
We will start where is most logical, and discuss each potential strength, meta usage, and give opinions.
Holy Paladin
Divine Plea- Instantly regain 4.5% of maximum mana. Paladin – Holy Spec. 3 Holy Power. Instant.
Probably the singularly strangest thing I’ve ever seen as a component of a healing spec in the game. I’ve played this game for a longgg time and healed for more than 80 percent of that time, and never seen something this strange. Maybe other games are doing this? Regardless, if it operates as it states, this will be a spammable Mana Regen ability with no cooldown or cast time that can be used every three globals if necessary. Where it gets really strange is that building HP quickly (at least right now) would equate to much more mana than this restores, but the 75 point tier makes this right back into a concentrated CD depending on selection. If you pick Holy Avenger or Sanctified Wrath, you can pretty much control a massive income of mana, and if you choose Divine Purpose then you will often get free mana for no reason.
The meta strategy behind this spell immediately seems, given the current model, that if we have HP and have to move, use it on Divine Plea. If we have a Purpose proc, use it on Divine Plea. And if the fight is too long, use Divine Plea instead of the ludicrous cast time spells known as Word of Glory and Light of Dawn!
Overall, I see this not making it live. Having a Holy Power spender regen mana on no cooldown is just way too strange given the Holy Paladin spell kit, but I’ve been wrong many times before. We shall see.
Mistweaver Monk
Stance of the Wise Serpent – While in Stance of the Wise Serpent, Crackling Jade Lightning costs no mana and refunds 2% of maximum mana if channeled for its entire duration.
Much less strange the the Paladin option, and much more recognizable to the Shaman’s Lightning Bolt option that already exists. The biggest issue I see here is that it has to be channeled for its duration to receive the mana, and there are a lot of reasons right now that doing this can be more for difficult. Either way, it should work nearly identical as LB for a Shaman. in down periods, you use this and regen some mana. It’s important to note that the channel time has gone down to four seconds, from six.
There is no real meta strategy to be perceived for this ability, but may be some application with “stance dancing.” It seems as if the new stance and its associated play style will make for many opportunites to switch between, and one special purpose may be to be able to use this free of charge + regen some.
Resto Druid
Innervate – Causes the Druid to regenerate 2.50% of maxmimum mana every 4 sec for 8 sec. This effect is cancelled if the Druid spends mana on a healing spell. Druid – Restoration Spec. 30 yd range. 2 sec cast.
The more I look at this, the less strange I find Divine Plea for Paladins, but still even this seems more real. Either way, read what that says and let it soak in. First of all, its a two second cast… Why the hell would this need a cast time? That seems ridiculous given the fact that it can only potentially give you 5 percent of your maximum mana back after EIGHT seconds of not casting. You might get that much back just from not using spells! The even crazier stipulation is that you can’t spend mana on heals. They did take the Omen of Clarity and clearcasting requirements away from Nourish, so to meta game this spell you would use it before using that proc and hope to get lucky, but either way it seems like a huge pain.
What may not seem obvious the first time you see this is that there is potential to dish these out to other healers. You are the only one who can’t cast, and this has no cool down, so what you can do is take Heart of the Wild, cast it, do as much DPS as you can, and keep refreshing it for whomever needs their whole mana bar back. By the time you are finished DPSing (which won’t break the mana restore, as it much be mana cast on heals) that person should have received a HUGE chunk of their mana back, provided you were able to give them it on CD. Another annoying thing about this is that the druid will need something to monitor exactly when its been each 4 second interval. Immediately it seems like this would be quite difficult to track without a weak aura, but hopefully Blizzard recognizes this and incorporates something. I don’t know though, maybe I’m missing something, but this just seems like an insane ability to have all of a sudden. Can’t wait to see what happens with it.
Discipline Priest
Penance now costs 2.9% of Base Mana, down from 3.1%. Now also restores 2% of maximum mana when damage is done,
Atonement no longer works with Penance.
First of all, let’s have a moment of silence for Penance. There will likely be no more cast-while-moving as it is, and now it doesn’t even do healing 🙁
Either way, now its a mana restore, nearly identical to the MoP Lightning Bolt, but has a small CD. Not much to discuss here, except what this may do to atonement healing, especially in five mans. Maybe the spell will retain its movement, but either way, it went from being dealing crazy damage, healing for high amounts, and being usable on the move… to this. RIP.
Better go Holy. jk
Holy Priest
Chakra: Chastise – Increases the damage done by your Shadow and Holy spells by 50%, grants a 10% chance for Smite to reset the cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise, causes Smite and Holy Fire to cost no mana and refun 0.75% of maximum mana, and transforms your Holy Word spell back into Holy Word: Chastise.
The underlined words are whats new, and to no surprise! Welcome back to “stance dancing!” Of course, there are many options for making use of this, but since it regens so little mana you’ll likely have to sit in Chastise Chakra for quite some time. They have already changed the way things operate revolving this mechanic, and much to my dismay. I expect to see it go away entirely, but I suppose this makes things a bit more interested. Now, you have to make better choices, and hopefully see high rewards on down periods when you can afford it. This also makes you do a lot of damage while restoring mana, so nothing wrong with that! Should be cool in progression raiding, just pretty much useless in 5 man content.
Restoration Shaman
Telluric Currents – Your attunement to natural energies causes your Lightning Bolt spell to restore 1.25% of your maximum mana instead of costing mana.
This is the “zero” if you understand me. This was the baseline for every other change that we have seen. Some were strange, some were awesome, but they will all take some getting used to. Meanwhile, nothing changes for shaman. They removed the fact that it costs mana and restores mana, likely to bring it in line with the other spells. Either way, now that this can’t be cast while moving, even this is a huge nerf. The spell was such a great filler for moderate movement.
*On top of this, you should also be aware they have reduced the base mana cost of nearly every heal in the game by some amount.
That’s a wrap then. Care to take a vote on what will change and stay as is? I imagine none of these, honestly. Given the fact that they first said they would all be removed, anything can happen!