The Importance of Mana in Last Epoch

General
21

AS i outlined, i do like alot of the more creative ways to regenerate mana. and i do like htat you have to think about what you want to do with mana regen and you possibly need to sacrifice a skill slot or several affixes on gear.

Mana Leech would have so much power creep or balancing issues coming with it.
Basically every or almost every build will go for it, because you could regen mana by just doing damage with the best skill possible.

I already mentioned that that should be nerfed^^

I do agree, IF there is a class that should get inherently easier support for mana regen it’s probably sorc. Not so much that it’s suffiecient to just spend passive points, but at least some mana regen a little bit better than comparable nodes in the shaman tree(i think shaman has the best support for pure mana regen atm, but it’s still not enough to me impactfull)

Using Health as some ressource is a totally different discussion, but is already waaaaaaaay mroe balanced than anything close to mana leech.

Agreed, while the base effect of that item is very nice, the numbers are very low. But making it stronger really is a balancing thing, it can get out of hand quickly.

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22

Yeah, they could change that by requiring the skills to hit to regain the mana.

Just because you dislike the current implementation (not requiring a hit to get mana from Vengeance) doesn’t mean the alternative is good, or doesn’t have problems. And Smite does require a hit, though that is only 1 of the 3.
The problem with mana leech is that it’s dependant on damage, so high damage skills/builds will be able to regain mana with it much faster than lower damage builds/skills. It’s 1 step better than the current implementation of Time & Faith, but only 1 step since it requires a hit.

No Sorcerer passives have mana gain on crit.

Yeah, I think it’s a nice change & thematic for Marrow Shards & Transplant to use health, but if the Lich didn’t get so much leech then they’d be required to use Rip Blood to regain hp, would that not be as bad as requiring Focus on a Mage?

Or you could not take the Dark Moon node & not have the mana issues… Having the DO stationery isn’t a problem, especially when you need more of them on a boss.

I agree, how about you get more mana regen per skill you’ve used “recently”.

23

The problem with vengeance for instance is unfortunately deeper than just the mana regen.
It tackles the problem of diversity of builds or rather the illusion of diversity.
Out of curiosity I went to check all the sentinel builds on the compedium thread.
2 observations :

  • An overwhelming majority of those builds use vengeance. Only a few doesn’t (dark cleric or your paladin build for instance).
  • ALL of those builds skills vengeance the same way

So 2 problems here :

  • Vengeance skills tree is incredibly unbalanced as it seems that only 1 way to build is viable for this skills as all builds skills it identically
  • Vengeance is pretty much mandatory/required for 80% or more of sentinels builds therefore the problem of illusion of diversity.
24

Yeah, but most of them are made by ~2 people, plus you could easily swap Rive in for mana generation & higher dps than Vengeance, IMO the main problem is your next point

There aren’t enough interesting nodes on Vengeance to give us multiple different ways of using it. You go left to get the damage mitigation node & then up for attack speed &/or damage and more riposts to allow you to keep the damage mitigation up for longer.

I would argue that that’s for the damage mitigation bonus as much as it is for mana generation. I even included it on my Smite caster Paladin build even though I very rarely used it…

25

Agreed on that.

Coming back to the subject of mana, for the moment each class has pretty much its own way to deal with mana management. What is lacking now in the game is a feature that comes across all classes that would be less efficient than the class specific ones but still valuable enough to get rid of vengeance or rive and therefore free a skill socket for builds.

What was exposed in the other thread about this subject could be a partial solution, like linking mana regen to the mana pool value. Or add a “added mana regen” shard like there is for health.

26

I have played LE for just over 500 hours. I wasnt going to post again but ive realised this game overall isnt really for me and one of the main reasons is Mana in this game and just wanted to leave some last feedback about this mechanic in this game

Personally I cannot stand the way mana functions in this game and its stifling nature of forcing you to play ‘this’ exact way if you desire to actively spend mana to kill monsters. Note ive played basically every aRPG thats worth even playing from D1 to PoE to Van Helsing and they all manage them differently however at a point almost all of these games Mana becomes a chore that goes away it goes from becoming a major obstacle early game to something trivial end game because the game introduces new mechanics to deal with which usually pale in comparison to Mana regen - usually staying alive.

The game closest to Last Epoch is actually Diablo 3, its almost exactly the same in the way the game manages mana - no potions, no leech and a ‘base’ regen. Also D3 has unique ‘Resource’ mechanics per class and skills are separated into Movement/Buffs and Generators and Spenders. Spenders almost ALWAYS being much stronger than generators (unless niche case) but the classes have innate regen styles - Barb gets Rage when hit from memory, many mana gain on skill use cooldowns

However the fundamental difference is Diablo 3 gives you many many options to deal with it, to the point it can become trivial on some classes/setups etc it feels like a major obstacle to overcome but isnt rammed down your throat with barely anyway to combat it

Last Epoch to me feels like you are fighting Mana everywhere you go in the game and for a game that puts massive emphasis on Mana, the game seems to be against the player in every aspect.

First base Mana regen NEVER changes per level ups, what is it 10 mana? why does my Mage have 10 base mana and so does my Sentinel. Infact I just logged in to check every character of mine has 10 mana regen. My Spellblade technically has 8 mana regen if I use Ice Shield so actually the lowest of all classes. Theres no identity here at all

Mana regen affix on gear is largely a wasted affix. it rolls on Rings/Gloves and a Relic. T5 Mana regen is 14-17% if you get T5 Mana regen on both rings at 15/16% you go from 10>12>13 mana those numbers being 1 ring then 2 -this is nothing for such a huge investment.

Skills that cost no mana in this game are too strong in comparison. I made a Forge Guard a very long time ago (prior to Vengeance mana on use) and when I unlocked Forge Strike I could use it 3 times and be out of mana. I had no idea what to do and seen no reason to play this character so I logged them out at lvl 44 - just logged in that old character and Rives 3 hits do the same damage as 1 use of Forge Strike but costs nothing plus can proc ailments easier and can also allow me to use buffs without compromising my mana. Why would I ever use Forge Strike when I can just use Rive?

Ive looked at all my characters and all of them dont actively spend much mana OR they are just set to autocast spells on cooldown and I have enough to just sustain when they come off cooldown. All my damaging abilities are free or virtually free, attack speed is actually a great stat when you dont have to spend mana

I think using a skill to attack thin air to regain mana is awful gameplay and actually makes no sense to me. My favorite skill in this game is Warpath and its just unplayable now to how I want to play, I do not want to stop spinning to stab something to allow me to gain the ‘energy’ to spin more

I just found a video I recorded a year ago to showcase LE on a controller and im playing my old nerfed Holy Fire Paladin with 100% uptime of Warpath - I cant remember what nodes allowed 100% but im regaining mana while spinning - its obvious the game is designed to put pressure on you so you have to deal with extra things but im not really interested…I just want to kill hordes of monsters, some bosses, collect loot from their corpses and increase my level and actually enjoy doing it. I want the difficulty to be in the combat from monster mechanics/damage instead of managing a blue bar

Im not wanting the game to change as it seems people enjoy this style of mana management but its not for me

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27

Nowhere near those hours or experience yet, measly 160h so far on 0.79f only, but I get your point already.

I have found that managing mana is quite tedious. When your focus changes from damage & defence to managing mana, things can get a little frustrating.

Normally, you build up your char… how much harder can I hit… oh crap, that fireball almost one shot me… how much more fire protection can I get… hey, I almost one shot that rare, need a better sword… oh crap, that poison spiders dot is killing me… how much poison def can I get… oh, hold on, this unique changes void to fire… how to change my gear / def to work… rinse & repeat.

I have found that running out of mana, while definitely happening in that cycle, seems to be much harder to resolve without considering fundamental changes to builds and playstyle… sometimes that can seem more like “work” than fun - especially when a game like LE has very limited solutions around mana. Repeat that once too many times and I could quite easily understand someone throwing their hands in the air and saying “had enough with this s##t”.

Take a break… give it time… 500h is more than enough on a Beta… come back fresh when they release it… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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28

Ive played on/off since August 2019. I primarily play PoE until I quit the league and play other games in the downtime.

See im used to crushing disappointment in PoE - exp loss, disconnections losing my map/area or worse losing a boss run that took hours to spawn, wasting much currency and achieving nothing out of it. So the crafting/death in monoliths/boss difficulty is absolutely fine. If I die to a boss its only 5-10 mins til I can try again, if I fracture gear ill just get more. But the mana…I just feel strangled and I just avoid many skills that exist because of this, and its not a way I want to play an aRPG

The thing I cant see to get my head around is to be running out of Mana is a fundamental issue with your build in aRPG in general (unless niche build spending all mana for a reason) and aRPGS to me are all about starting extremely weak and turning into some kind of god at the end of the cycle, doesnt mean you necessarily trivialize the game but certain aspects are just well and truly solved and dont need to be bothered with anymore (in my opinion)

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29

Tempest Strike … I wish developers gave it more love. My experience with cold tempest melee Shaman build is … let’s say not great.

30

The issue as I see it is stems from the fact that the devs don’t want mana costing skills to be spammable. I actually like this philosophy. It leads to imbalance in classes when that isn’t a constant thought though. It seems bad when the free skills just seem better than the mana cost abilities. I don’t really want the free skills nerfed. I like Vengeance and Mana Strike. I think that maybe mana abilities could be better balanced between power and mana cost. I would still like the idea of having toggle on abilities that reserve mana.

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31

I’d also like the different classes to have different ways of dealing with mana shortages. Maybe one class has mainly big DPS skills on cooldowns rather than spending mana, one gets mana back on hit (Sentinel with Vengeance/Rive/Smite & Time and Faith), another gets a big regen skill (Focus), etc. It can be used to change how the classes play & approach problems.

32

It doesn’t even seem to be that, it seems that they don’t want high mana costing skills to be used AT ALL. The class imbalance stems from some classes actually being able to USE their damage skills, not just from skills simply being too high damage for their cost.

33

I think the whole hitting air and getting mana is a bit trivial. But a few different methods of getting more mana could be

Mana regeneration +15% if recently been hit
Mana regeneration +15% if recently crit an enemy
+(enter flat number here) mana gained on crit hit
+(enter flat number here) mana gained on hit

Unique that converts ward into mana and 2x its value every 10 seconds (mana can exceed maximum but decays at 10 mana/s)

Unique that increases mana regeneration by 100% when not moving.

Mana gained on kill affix

Unique that gives 1% more mana regeneration per 25 mana that you have

% of potion converted to mana gained

Mana gained on dodge

Mana regeneration +5% per different skill used recently

Unique that when you hit 0 mana if you have ward it consumes all ward to give you mana at half the amount of ward consumed

Change mana regen to % of maximum mana

Lots of things they could do

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34

I’m looking for affix options that is easy to plan for. Meaning I can calculate how much mana I spent per second and have a specific mana regen number that can support that expenditure. Mana management is done really through skill selection. Either you specialize on a mana regen skill or you specialize in a skill that spends no mana.

It’s a tough balance to have a system that doesn’t trivialize resource management and at the same time not make it cumbersome and boring. But there are things that EHG could probably put in that can tilt things in the right direction. Flat base mana regen needs to go up as characters level up for one. Take out percent mana regen affixes and put in flat mana regen affixes. Increase high mana cost spell/skill impact and lower impact on skills that don’t cost much mana. Damage and impact should increase as you spend more resources. Logically higher energy investment should equal higher return. If you’re slotting precious affix slots or skill slots to mana regen or efficiency then it should feel worth it over other affixes.

35

No, they just don’t want them to be spammed because they’re high damage. I suspect they don’t want their game turning into PoE’s zoom zoom nuke the screen with 1 click meta.

You may not like it, but there’s a difference between using them infrequently/as burst and "not being able to use them at all…

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36

There can be a happy medium though and LE currently isn’t there. A lot of the zoom zoom is because resource management is almost non-existent. I think the right word for the current situation is “clunky”. Does it work? Sure. But does it feel smooth? Not in my opinion. My experience so far has been either zoom zoom with 0 cost skills or empty out my mana bar and then proceed with filling it up again with a mana generating skill.

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37

Except the high cost spells require around 5 seconds to get their mana back. Waiting 5 seconds to cast a spell is just asking enemies to kill you. Infrequent casting is waiting 2 seconds between casts, not 5 seconds.

And this is just for ONE cast, some enemies take more than one cast to kill, so take that 5 second wait and multiply it by the number of times you need to actually cast it to kill the enemy. You can end up waiting 10 or 20 seconds just to kill each mob pack.

There is a world of difference between not being able to spam these spells and waiting so long that you would probably be dead by the time you can cast it again.

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38

High cost skills aren’t supposed to be used as the sole clearing mechanism. The point is for it to augment regular attacks/spells. Some of them are big AoE for occasional use.

You get 5 skills. Maybe you shouldn’t be only using 1 offensive skill slot.

The issue with them is that they are easily out performed by the free skills. Not that they cost a lot of mana or have a high CD.

39

I accept the argument that the balance between generator/spender or spender & regen rate is not where some people want it to be, but the following

just screams to me that you’re not making full use of the tools you have available. Every class has some form of mana generating skill (though some could be improved & some are too powerful/effective) or zero cost skills that you can use while you’re waiting to get enough mana to use your big skill again.

On my builds that have a big spender/nuke, I’ve never just sat around waiting for my passive regen to kick in & get me back to being able to use it again, as @darkdeal said, you’ve got 5 skill slots, you can use them.

On my last Void Knight that used Erasing Strike, I’ve used Erasing Strike a few times till I was OOM, then Rive till I was back at full mana again. One can argue that Rive is “too effective” and that you’d be just as effective if you just used Rive.

On my Meteor build, I would alternate between using Fireball to regen mana (with the Craterborn node on Meteor) and using Focus (depending on my mood). At no point would I just be standing around for 10-20s twiddling my thumbs.

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40

Virtually every class has ways to get mana back. It might not be perfect balanced and consistent yet, but that’s the whole point of my thread here.

The way you describe it you HAVE TO us high mana skills and then do nothing.

They are No-Mana Cost Fillers or skills that give you mana back when you use them/hit enemies.
Those might be not as strong, as the high mana skills, but that’s the whole point.

LE has a Spender/Filler rotation most of the time. There are some creative ways for no Spender/Filler builds, but those require some investment most of the time, which is fine.

Also you can have 2 “spender” skills in your builds if you want, some for smaller trash mpobs and some for tougher mobs, that works also.

There are ways to deal with this kind of stuff.

Just to recap. I still think we need some more ways, especially on some classes/masteries to get better mana-management.
But the way you portayed it is, that the game is “clunky” just because you can’t use high mana skills all the time. I just strongly disagree with that statement.

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