If VI only changes one thing with the current druid spell lineup before the release of PoP, I hope it is to upgrade Mask of the Forest.

The spell is not a significant upgrade over MoTH or MoTS which rangers will be getting at lvl 65. VI had no problems giving shamans the most godlike ability in the game with the release of luclin and yet druids are still stuck with our incredibly high casting cost spells and mediocre mana regen.

Upgrade MoTF to 8 mana per tick. Its still nothing like 1000 mana every 3 minutes but at least it would almost be a noticeable change over our lvl 60 counterpart.

Plz change this spell.

The tricky part is that mana regeneration is about in the right place, and maybe bordering on over-powered, on end-game casters.

Certainly, that's a different kettle of fish to someone that's just made it to level 60 (65?) and relies on PotC-Hunter (PotN-Forest?). There's only so much one can add before the scales tip a little too far.

Perhaps the only solution, if Mask of the Forest were to be made better, is to nerf higher-end items so that they didn't give so much mana regeneration... but retro-actively nerfing items isn't entirely pleasant, as you'll be aware. ^_^

Look at it this way:

In Luclin, you can buff yourself to +9 mana/tick, with PotC and Mask of the Hunter/Stalker.

In the Planes of Power, you can buff yourself to +12 mana/tick, with PotN and Mask of the Forest.

An increase of 25% is pretty decent. You might want to wait and see how far the cap on Flowing Thought items is being raised before you make any further judgements on whether or not an extra 25% self-buffed mana regen is good enough for you. ^_^


Toodlepip,

Rebecca

I was actually talking to Lotus the other night about this, it is quite possible that mana-regen is going to the be end-all-to-be-all stat in some PoP encounters (and current encounters under the revamp list).

It makes the disparity between the top guilds (hers) and the just below the top guilds (mine, sort of) that much greater.. ;)

In short, our equipment will matter again..


MotF is 'balanced' how VI sees the vision of what mana regen should be like. Their goal is for PoP to NOT be beaten quickly at all, even by guilds such as FoH. Going to be a challenge, hope we can survive it!

But if thats the problem, whats the point in upgrading that spell then?

Slap 100 hps on it, and make it 6-8 mana/tick, and we call it a worthy level 65 spell, but 1 extra mana regen over the level 60 version is a slap in the face.

If that's the case...

/em goes into his breifcase...

Ah! There it is...

/em slaps you with a trout!


haha

I could really care less what they do to our spells. If I cared a lot I would change my major, start over, get the necessary skills, and work my way into the programming and development department at Verrant Interactive. Its a game, just take what they give ya ;) I never don't have MotS up, but its so commonplace I don't even notice that its there (except the icon on my buffbar). MotF will be the same.. /shrug

Now if I were going to work my way into VI and change things myself, I'd make a damn Illusion: Brownie spell that is self-only for druids. That'd be cool. I'd rather be a brownie than a tree anyway day...

If the game is truely going to be balanced with FT gear then, and not with regen spells, it needs to be more accessable in PoP that it is in Luclin. My massive 1 point of FT comes from the PoTC quest earring.

Balancing mana regen based off of FT items wouldbe fine if FT items were reasonably obtainable to serious players who just dont happen to be in an ntov/vt capable guild :/

Spawn rates on uber mobs can only support so many uber guilds. Should everyone abandon their current guilds and join up with more higher end ones just to keep a comparable level of power to others their level?

Yeah maybe every server should have a max of 5-10 guilds and everyone belongs to one of them.

It doesnt have to be super easy, but by comparison how many haste items are there out there that are 1 group obtainable vs how many FT items. ?

On top of this, as druids we are pretty low on the totem pole for being awarded FT items. If you're in an award based guild then you're probably used to seeing FT items going to clerics and wizards.

I have to agree this spell is a major disapointment, if there's anything druids are hurting for in all our roles it's mana regen.

Flowing Thought, in my opinion, should have been a bigger part of caster balancing for all levels. Instead of assigning various focus effects and worrying about which effect was most appropriate (got that wrong anyway), and worrying about how trivializing encounters, they could have simply opted to assign FT effects on many items.

Increasing mana regen solely through FT wouldn't give a huge boost for chain casting as do "improved damage" and "spell haste" focus types. But faster mana regen enhances the caster's overall power in a way that is far easier to maintain balance, for both spells and content.

Furthermore, without worrying about imbalance caused by saving mana both through focus and flowing thought, VI could have implemented the FT system without any predetermined cap on the number of FT points allowed. For instance, DDs would do exactly the amount of damage listed, but with higher mana regen the caster would be able to use that spell a bit more often.

Most individual encounters wouldn't have been affected, but players would have had less downtime and would be more willing to crawl through dungeons instead of making every attempt to skip as much content as possible to arrive at the bigger targets more quickly.

In my opinion, the effects of focus items are far more powerful than small incremental increases in mana regeneration. Such effects as "mana preservation" and "improved damage" should have only been assigned to the high-end reward items for defeating uber boss mobs; and FT effects should have been used throughout all levels to balance casters.

~Firemynd

It should be noted that the flowing thought cap is only something a very very tiny percentage of druids will ever be concerned about. I agree with the logic, but I think there should be more concern when using outliers for balance.

Hopefully, PoP will make FT items and Focus items as common as they should have been.

FT items buyable or one/two groupable.

Boots of the Flowing Slime FT III, A Swirling Red Mass, CT
Choker of the Wretched FT I, Narandi the Wretched, GD
Bile Coated Codex FT I, A Restless Burrower (Acrylia Caverns)
Tome of Self Reflection FT II, Zelnithak, UP
Earring of the Solstice FT1, quest
Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl FTIII, quest

3+1+1+2+1+3= FT11

FT 11 and all you need is 10 friends and some plat. Thats two more then I currently have.

Yeah, I'm aware of the "technically" possible, but I doubt you'll find anyone with remotely near that setup. Basically, any solution to get more than say 4 - 5 ft and not being in an upper tier guild is going to involve "a lot of plat." Probably to the tune of 40 - 50 k.

I'd suspect the average of FT for upper tier druids is around 6 - 9 with the upper high end being 15 - 21 ft.

The point is FT isn't really widely available.

The tricky part is that mana regeneration is about in the right place, and maybe bordering on over-powered, on end-game casters.

Luclin gave every class with manapool more than just mental clarity for additional mana regen. Oh wait, except druids. In the extreme case you have shamans who got Canni 5 giving over +30/tick for crying out loud. Guess what, now with PoP shamans (and everyone else) are getting a 0.4 efficiency boost with a 3.1:1 nuke, why not increase the efficiency while increaseing mana regen... oh but wait, not for druids, druids get 0.08 boost with our top non ancient nuke, 3.67:1.

If there is a mana regen problem it's not going to be seen in druids first, wizards have higher mana regen, more efficient spells and do more damage with them, shamans, necros, blah, it's crazy.

And then VI goes and does the worst possible thing... they upped bardsong mana regen by a huge amount and upped KEI noticeably instead of the just upping the self buffs. On a raid I might be looking at 70 mana/tick standing but once I get a group my mana regen gets crippled to feeble levels and that +30/tick from shaman canni goes from being massive to being overwhelming.

Perhaps the only solution, if Mask of the Forest were to be made better, is to nerf higher-end items so that they didn't give so much mana regeneration... but retro-actively nerfing items isn't entirely pleasant, as you'll be aware. ^_^

Mask of the Forest could be upped to +10/tick and druids still won't be on the leading edge of mana regen, it certainly won't tip the scale.

It would probably be a good thing too. However if you insist on lowering mana regen I think where that should come from is from shared buffs. I go on a PoP raid and +22 from bardsong +9 from beast +18 from enchanters +X from magicians and maybe +mind wrack from necros. Drop the new bardsong by 6 and all the other shareable buffs and manaregen by 2 or something and increase self buffs or base mana regen. Say a +1 mana/tick standing mana regen per level over 60 and up MotF to 10 or more.