Does anyone even try to conserve mana anymore?

[Chette]

My level 20 Cleric is fully heal speced. Over 500 hp and over 2000 sp. She's not the best she could be, and can't keep up with the Favored Souls mana-wise, but I'm pretty happy with her. If I'm playing with a good group I can make it through pretty much any raid in the game without using potions. So why is it that so many healers out there just toss out strings of mass cures (so inefficient!) and then start chugging pots, or worse yet, just stand there with their auras on when they run out?

Mass heal is the most effective heal spell in the game, yes it has a long casting time, but if your party members don't have enough HP to survive the cooldown when you are quicken-chain casting it, they deserve to die. Yes, I throw a few mass-cures if the situation is dire, but not when people are at 90% hp. Please, please think a little more when you are casting. Anybody can sit there and press 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 chug 1-2-3-1-2-3 over and over. Be smarter than that.

/end rant

[Lorien_the_First_One]

While you aren't wrong...can I say I find "anymore" and a 2010 join date amusing.

[PCNONSENSE]

No, sorry, its not a priority.

[Phorgiven]

WARNING: You have just upset the devs/Turbine! Healers are asked to purchase mana pots through the Turbine store or risk having their account frozen. Chug away healers-we are open 24/7 and accept all forms of major credit cards!

Ph

[KoboldKiller]

While you aren't wrong...can I say I find "anymore" and a 2010 join date amusing.

Come on now you know the old saying "my forum join date doesn't reflect how long I have played".

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Come on now you know the old saying "my forum join date doesn't reflect how long I have played".

True, especially with the influx of Euro players. It just struck me as a funny combo. Maybe I amuse easily

[ArkoHighStar]

The main reason at least in raids where this type of mass heal scenario is most likely is lag, plain and simple. The amount of lag made it pretty much a necessity in some cases to just spam heals and hope for the best. This does not always equate to having to chug pots., which is really a personal choice of the player. Most raid parties who plan ahead simply chain healers having the sceond only come in when the first is out

[Chette]

While you aren't wrong...can I say I find "anymore" and a 2010 join date amusing.

Oh I wasn't by any means trying to sound "old and grissled", anymore in fact refers to the fact that when I was lower level I had to eek out every measly sp I could. Now that I'm playing with the big boys mostly seem to be opinion that infinite resources can solve any problem.

The main reason at least in raids where this type of mass heal scenario is most likely is lag, plain and simple. The amount of lag made it pretty much a necessity in some cases to just spam heals and hope for the best. This does not always equate to having to chug pots., which is really a personal choice of the player. Most raid parties who plan ahead simply chain healers having the sceond only come in when the first is out

I can appreciate this too, but again, chain casting mass heal should be enough, especially if you have two healers who watch each others animations and offset. I am often in raids where the healer doesn't cast heal once, just cure mass light-mod-serious over and over.

I guess I'm just frustrated by the play style because it gives people the impression that clerics have a closet full of pots, and I certainly don't (as Lorien_the_First_One was so keen to observe, I have not been playing terribly long). I chose to conserve my mana because it adds strategy to what many consider to be one of the most boring toons, the heal-bot. Nobody dies on my watch because I'm conserving mana, unless they're a 250 hitpoint rogue. You play smart and I'll play smart, and we'll all enjoy the game a little more

I'd be curious to see your build and gearing for this toon...

My toon is Lailki on Ghallanda so you can myddo her if you want. She doesn't have anything particularly special, just an upgraded ToD ring with exceptional constitution and some corcordant opp goggles.

[grodon9999]

My toon is Lailki on Ghallanda so you can myddo her if you want. She doesn't have anything particularly special, just an upgraded ToD ring with exceptional constitution and some corcordant opp goggles.

I will attest that she is a damned good healer. I know my word ain't worth much but this girl knows what she's doing. She's healed my elite ToD run as well as many epic quests/raids.

I chain-cast mass-heal with a mass-cure-moderate Scroll thrown in while mass-heal is on cool-down. It's enough to handle nearly everything. My cleric has fewer SP than you and I get away with it, I know I have to drink a pot once in a while because I'm a split class but I accept it.

here's the reason why a lot of people don't use quickened mass-heal like you and I do - habbit. Until recently, mass-heal only affected 6 people so you could NOT use it for a raid. That's it, it's that simple.

Remember mass-heal is also a 9th level spell and I don't believe they were even available before mod 9 so the "old grizzled" vets didn't have it for years. Old habbits die hard.

[BangsLiekWhoa]

I will attest that she is a damned good healer. I know my word ain't worth much but this girl knows what she's doing. She's healed my elite ToD run as well as many epic quests/raids.

I have to second this. I run with her all the time and she is an excellent healer and player in general. When I heal an epic raid or whatever that needs two healers, there is a noticeable difference between a good healer and a bad one. She is a good one.

If the cleric needs to chug pots then the raid leader needs a big kick in the junk for not building a group capable of handling the quest. if you don't bring people with enough skill and enough DPS then the raid deserves to wipe. If we carry groups that aren't capable of getting the job done they'll do it again, it's like natural selection. When the weak die, they'll learn from it and get better (hopefully) but if we (healers) carry them through quests they'll never know that they need to improve.

I only have to chug pots on rare occasions, and mostly when I am having to share healing duty with a gimp healer that insists on burning through their SP as fast as possible and over healing like crazy.

I have a 20 FvS (452HP, 3012SP) and I stick with quickened mass heal alone on raids, unless the damage is coming in really hard and heavy. If that is not enough to keep someone up, they die. Period. I will rez them after the fight, or wait until someone else does. I refuse to waste extra mana on gimp characters as this will only lead to me having to use resources.

I have seen plenty of healers (and other casters as well) blow all their mana like crazy then chug pots like mad just to repeat the process over again. I did a VoD on hard (IIRC) one night and just was amazed at the other healer who would cast over my healing until he was empty then gulp, gulp, gulp and do it again. (Yes, we had discussed me healing first.) That guy must have gone through 25-30 mana pots in one VoD. It seems that this is the mentality of many new players. Sad but true-ah.

[grodon9999]

I guess I'm just frustrated by the play style because it gives people the impression that clerics have a closet full of pots, and I certainly don't (as Lorien_the_First_One was so keen to observe, I have not been playing terribly long). I chose to conserve my mana because it adds strategy to what many consider to be one of the most boring toons, the heal-bot. Nobody dies on my watch because I'm conserving mana, unless they're a 250 hitpoint rogue. You play smart and I'll play smart, and we'll all enjoy the game a little more

If the cleric needs to chug pots then the raid leader needs a big kick in the junk for not building a group capable of handling the quest. if you don't bring people with enough skill and enough DPS then the raid deserves to wipe. If we carry groups that aren't capable of getting the job done they'll do it again, it's like natural selection. When the weak die, they'll learn from it and get better (hopefully) but if we (healers) carry them through quests they'll never know that they need to improve.

Talk to me about this tonight.

[Chette]

Thanks junk, that means a lot.
I've never had any problems in any of our guild raids, mostly with pugs. I was in, of all things, a normal VoD the other day. A raid where if played smart you should be able to keep most of the party up just with your aura, needing mass heals for the orthons and such. Yet the other healer in there with me was out of mana about 1/3 of the way in. I still had nearly full. They started chugging potions and I felt bad because there wasn't anything I could do. Me healing more wasn't going to stop them from over-healing and burning through their blue bar.

[BangsLiekWhoa]

Thanks junk, that means a lot.
I've never had any problems in any of our guild raids, mostly with pugs. I was in, of all things, a normal VoD the other day. A raid where if played smart you should be able to keep most of the party up just with your aura, needing mass heals for the orthons and such. Yet the other healer in there with me was out of mana about 1/3 of the way in. I still had nearly full. They started chugging potions and I felt bad because there wasn't anything I could do. Me healing more wasn't going to stop them from over-healing and burning through their blue bar.

Happens to me all the time. You just have to let them go nuts and mind your own business. The worst part is that if you let them and their mana pots heal without helping, they will still have people dieing somehow.

[Junts]

Thanks junk, that means a lot.
I've never had any problems in any of our guild raids, mostly with pugs. I was in, of all things, a normal VoD the other day. A raid where if played smart you should be able to keep most of the party up just with your aura, needing mass heals for the orthons and such. Yet the other healer in there with me was out of mana about 1/3 of the way in. I still had nearly full. They started chugging potions and I felt bad because there wasn't anything I could do. Me healing more wasn't going to stop them from over-healing and burning through their blue bar.

Good healers don't need mass heal to be efficient, and mass cures are just straight up better for a wide range of tasks because they are fast.

Knowing when you can and can't turn off quicken is important, as is learning not to overheal when it seems like a lot of damage is happening. It so rare that more than mccw or mcsw is required, especially with ardor belts. If you're not healing with ardor up all the time, I dunno what to tell you.

There are, of course, a lot of bad healers out there, too. But mass cure spells are far from the mark of a bad healer: in fact, overreliance on mass heal is more likely to be the sign of a healer who isn't up to a given task, since mass heal is a very limited spell and requires either very regular, relatively slow damage, or for you to have another healer. About the only things you can solo heal with mass heal are shroud and epic dragon.

[hecate355]

If the cleric needs to chug pots then the raid leader needs a big kick in the junk for not building a group capable of handling the quest. if you don't bring people with enough skill and enough DPS then the raid deserves to wipe. If we carry groups that aren't capable of getting the job done they'll do it again, it's like natural selection. When the weak die, they'll learn from it and get better (hopefully) but if we (healers) carry them through quests they'll never know that they need to improve.

Talk to me about this tonight.

its same concept as making the world better place to live in by your own actions, while i see logics and good reasoning behind what you said, i dont think it will actually work out that way, it simply wouldnt draw critical number of players, to push something like that into motion you need to convince critical number of players to play that way, right now i sadly cant see it happening

its question whether single person action changes the way things work, do we even have an impact on such things?
currently the system tends to be against it

[wax_on_wax_off]

If the cleric needs to chug pots then the raid leader needs a big kick in the junk for not building a group capable of handling the quest. if you don't bring people with enough skill and enough DPS then the raid deserves to wipe. If we carry groups that aren't capable of getting the job done they'll do it again, it's like natural selection. When the weak die, they'll learn from it and get better (hopefully) but if we (healers) carry them through quests they'll never know that they need to improve.

Talk to me about this tonight.

You notice though that in human society we don't let the weak perish? We help them, compensate for them etc.? I pretty much refuse to use resources on a regular old shroud run. Either the DPS is good enough or it isn't, an SP pot isn't going to change that.

The times when I think it's appropriate to use some resources is if something happens that is out of the DPS groups control. Second healer leaves, I screw up something etc. Then there is a quick judgement call as to whether the resources invested will get a win or if it won't matter. It just happens.

Nobody should be in the Shroud with <300 HP. That's just how it is.
I'd go on to say that no Arcane Archer should be in the Shroud without Slayer Arrows too.
Also, no DPS should be in the Shroud without appropriate boss beaters.

Party leaders who PUG Shroud will go in to it realising that it is unlikely they will get an "ideal" group. The trick is to just minimise the shortfalls and make sure that there aren't too many of them to hopefully get a smooth run without too many unforseens.

[The_Great_Samulas]

I conserve mana on all casters I run. I have noticed the same trend the OP brought up in players, but I think this is just a combination of lack of experience and running things at normal difficulty to much. I much prefer spending my TPs on other things than mana pots. It requires alot of experience and skill to heal efficiently. I always attribute the use of mana pots to poor play either on the part of the healer or the strategy being employed in the raid/quest.

As far as mass heal, I take the entirely opposite view. Healers using mass heal are using the easy button, in my opinion. It is definately more efficient than punching all the buttons as fast as you can (which is what many of these clerics used to do). From what I've seen those using mass heal don't pay any attention to health levels as they do it, they simply punch mass heal as often as possible. Same strategy, different spell. What saves them mana is the casting time of the spell prevents them from hitting other buttons. I've seen multiple healers using mass heals at the same time on tanks in the shroud and their HP bars never moved. This happens all the time at various levels. Mass heal is easier because 1) you get to blame anyone dying on hp issues not your own abilities (as the OP did), 2) you don't have to combine mass healing with spot healing, and 3) you don't have to gauge efficiencies of mass cures vs. need - you just overheal everyone. I have done an analysis of mana efficiency of mass heal vs. the other mass cures and actually have found mass cure critical wounds to be more efficient from strictly mana useage reasons for a radiant servant. Then you have the added benefits of quicker reaction, not needing quicken (I don't even use quicken on epic dragon healing), and additional time not casting that can be used for spot healing with scrolls. For these reasons, I use MCCW as my default mass spell with spot healing off of scrolls as needed.

My analysis is in the Path to Enlightenment thread on page 7 here. Items that can greatly increase the efficiency of the mass cures but not mass heal even farther are the free maximize spell clickie from the abott (Noxious Embers).

[dranreb]

If the cleric needs to chug pots then the raid leader needs a big kick in the junk for not building a group capable of handling the quest.

/roshambo?

[hecate355]

1: because sometimes its better to overheal little bit rather than clean all that raise, rebuff mess
2: at times there is hard to predict if people live through quickened heal casting delay or not, failure there leads to same problems
3: cause sometimes it really doesent matter, if i see that we have more than enough dps and healing in shroud for example, ill just heal the way that is most relaxing to me. for same reason i dont always play safe when im sure from my experience and by the way quest has progressed that we cant possibly fail due to lack of mana.

simply dont come crying to me about my play style not matching your 'ideal' while we make from shrine to shrine just fine. iv seen quite some cases where clerics try to control everything around them constantly bossing around, do this that way, dont go there do that, who cares if you came to heal, heal; if it sometimes needs slightly faster fingers, the better for you, you dont fall asleep or die to boredom plus you practice some targeting skills for dire times when it really does matter. sped up easy runs can be almost as educational as hard quests being done in slow pace.

problem is that everyone sees things different, the situation that looks reckless and dangerous to some people can be fully acceptable to others who know how to deal with it


saying that the ones who dont live from mass heal to mass heal dont deserve to be alive is true in theory, in practice, you wanna complete quests right? have to strike balance somewhere, i balance it with having only handful of potions, not some 100, having many potions with you will be pure waste, you will start drinking em for 'just in case'

[hecate355]

ohh and by the way im not one of those who chug potions with all kind of having fun and such arguments, i use potions rarely, usually i have some 3-10 with me, however its serious ******** when 200 hp rogue from shroud tells me after we failed that 'clerics should always have some pots'

i was like ***, really? after i found out his hps, 200 hp melee in shroud is bigger mana waste than few mana pots can cover up; chaining emergency aoe cures like crazy just to keep few such ppl on feet, guess at times i have to learn when it is better to let em die, such calculations are however hard to do in heat situation, where would i draw the line...