Instability -- or -- Why Mana Failed in D1/D2... - Page 2

The way to make mana meaningful is by having spells that do more DPS but are less mana efficient and spells that do less DPS but use almost no mana; the more mana you have, the more damage you can do.

But even then there is an upper limit (100% usage of the expensive spell) beyond which more mana is useless and you wasted your points into the cheap spell.

......

Sorcs before LoD had something like that: their main build used the very expensive FO and the very cheap SF, which however became less and less effective the more the monsters were damaged. Having more mana meant you could switch to FO at higher monster hp, do more damage, chill monsters better etc and helped your energy shield.

It didn't really work because SF actually did more damage until the monster was already near death so you needed very few FO to maximise your damage potential; and Frostburn took care of that. Actually, when you found Frostburn, you now had too much mana and were forced to reroll and put fewer points into energy. Fail.|||Curiously enough, they seem to be recycling design elements from the earlier builds of the Wizard, for the mage in WoW.

Namely im talking of the arcane talent that would have made you deal significantly more damage when you had 100% mana.

And now look at what they announced for the wow mage, that the arcane mage gets mana adept as its third mastery. Where you deal more damage the more mana you have.|||I think the point is that you'd do more damage at LOW mana, not high mana.|||Read it closely:

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.|||I was talking about instability actually. |||Instability would be doing more damage the higher it is.|||Yes, but i thought you were talking of the Mage change because the wizard doesnt use mana more. They are changing it for instability.

Spells are essentially free to cast now, but the more you chaincast them, the greater the damage buff and vulnerability. So unless you pace yourself, you will take a LOT of damage if you dont have a friend to occupy the attentions of the mobs.|||It would be more viable the 'D&D Online' way: have mana fountains and have these be the only way to regenerate mana. Spend all your mana on frozen orb spam in 20 seconds? Too bad, enjoy normal attack for the next minute.|||Well, if "normal attack" happens to be "magic missile" for a sorceress, why not ? I never was happy with the fact that a normal attack from a spell caster is flinging a stick in the opponents face. It's a fireball !! MO4R FIRE ! roar...

But just stopping the player because he overextends isn't interesting. On the other hand, giving him the chance to overkill on spam/power/spells is nice, but there's a catch. Danger looming, curses coming, enemy buffs/personal debuffs, and there we are, we have instability ! The more you twist the world with abusive magic, the more the world starts fighting back, and in the end, your fighting the very fabric of the world, as all that instability you created starts to backfire.

There, instead of a simple cap on how much one can do, the cap becomes "how much can you handle ?". I like this idea. When's blizzcon 2010 already ? We'll know for sure then...|||Great description Dragon.