Bye Bye, Crazy Mana Regen

Well, the changes to mana regen across the board are all over the forums today, as well as all over the blogs. For the actual words from Bornakk, check the link to Banana Shoulders.

Divine Plea is getting nerfed. Instead of losing 20% of your healing while it is active, the number is being upped to 50%. The devs say they want it to be a decision for Holy Paladins, rather than a "use on every CD" ability. It was apparently originially intended for Protection/Retribution.

On Heigan the other night, we had 4 people left alive after the second "dance." Me healing, a Ret pally, a Prot pally, and our MT warrior. I was able to heal the rest of the fight (very little damage actually), and end at nearly full mana because of Divine Plea. The fight took 15 minutes, but we got it done, and I easily solo healed it with absolutely zero mana issues. Without Divine Plea, it probably would have still been possible, but certainly mana would have been a more pressing issue.

This change could be huge. In fights like Heigan, there is minimal damage being done, so Divine Plea can still play a roll, esepcially if you have others healers alive with you. In fights like Patchwerk, where you probably cannot stop healing for even a couple of seconds, mana becomes much more of an issue. Mana pots are down to 1 per fight, illumination only goes so far, and you may not have Innervate/Replenishment (although Innervate will be nerfed a bit too because of the changes to "spirit based" mana regen) in your 10 man group. Mana regen is getting tougher, but luckily paladins have been optimal in this area, so a nerf like this may just bring us back down to "good."

Blizzard also says that they design things around Replenishment, even in 10 man situations. My group that I run with honestly has no ret paladin, survival hunter, or shadow priests. If they are to design encounters around the assumption that Replenishment is in the raid somewhere, then I may be having more mana issues in future encounters. They have stated they are looking at adding Replenishment to more classes, which could help, but we'll just have to wait and see how this and other changes go down in the 3.1 patch.

(And, for the record, we Safety Danced our way to an easy Heigan kill this week, even with a new DK in the raid group)