Today over at WoW.com, Grandpappy Frostheim is back, this time rambling about mana.
You hunters these days and your love affair with mana. All I hear from kids lately is, “Waa! I don’t want focus. I like my mana!”
Well listen up, pups: You may think you have mana right now, but you don’t. I don’t know what that little blue bar you have really is — some kind of frilly decoration that has something to do with “feelings” or “positive reinforcement” or some such nonsense, I imagine. But whatever it is, it ain’t mana…. Read More.
*two thumbs up*. Mind you I didn’t play much during vanilla or BC, but I’ve heard the tales and lores. I commend people for making it through vanilla with those mechanics….I for one would’ve dismissed WoW as fail and went to something else back then.
Speaking of mana and mana regen, are Survival still going to be providing Replenishment via Hunting Party talent or is that being replaced by the attack speed buff? Both would be nice; as it would give us some good utility to be on par with Marks.
Awsome one Frost, SP part made me laugh, and also u bit bring that nostalgic emotion in me of these ol days
A refreshing romp down memory lane. I remember those days in MC and BWL, I was always in group 6 – usually 5 hunters and the one Lock we carried with us. Hunters never got the soulstone, we just ran to the back corner and blew up… on other fights it was FD and drink…then they took that from us. I must say I don’t think I will miss mana.
What I want to see is Hunter’s having to do the pulling again…I miss those days… or better yet using Eyes of the Beast and our pet to make a pull like we did in MC.
@Inzilbeth Shame Eye of the Beast is gone. It’s fun to just play with the pet.
As for vanilla, ahh, those were the days :p was an holy through mc, bwl, aq40 (grr c’thun not done) and god the mana management was stressful.
Exactly as Frost said, pot as soon as “mana missing = pot almost max mana recoverable” and then an hidden timer in the head start “2 min remaining … don’t go oom”. Management, management :p renew, wait for tank to be at 50% for flash heal, 25% for greater heal, now. always to maximize the 5s regen rule (or was is less?).
And on big fight like onyxia, had to choose who start healing first, who got the better renew because it couldn’t stack more than one on the MT. A dot of pain on the boss = 1 place of debuff taken = bad priest bouh! and it wasted mana.
And if a priest wasn’t wanding on the boss, bouh again ! XD (ah ! pallys, someone judge wisdom quickkkkk! *wand wand wand heal wand heal heal w…)
And special note to bandage (like baron geddon), the melee class running for fire aoe, waiting for our bandage on them to finish rather than running back to the fight. (ah thinking about their own survival and our job). And because it didn’t messed up the 5s regen rule. healing with full regen, priceless.
I love your Grandpappy Frostheim articles. I wasn’t around for the Pre-BC era. I started in BC and didn’t hit level cap until well into Wrath. Even so, I love hearing about what it was like back in the day.
Fantasically entertaining article as always
Grandpappy Frosthem and Grizzled Ol Petrus served together in the gaming equivalent of ‘Nam and now have the bum knee and war stories to show for it.
I was surprised at the omission of our patented Feign & Drink maneuver, which generated more caster hate than spell reflection or silence ever could! Feign & Cables was also a fan favorite that saved more than one near-wipe.
The Parable of Vael completely left out Essence of the Red!! Mana, rage, and energy concerns flew straight out the window, so our rogue-led guild naturally had the rogues soulstoned
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=23513
Omg. Are you serious?!? I did the 40 man heal chains in EQ, you had to because it was a ten second cast but…. That’s just crazy. And people said WoW was the easy game?
After thinking about it further, I see what you were going after with how you described Vael
Since Essence of the Red is only cast at the raid at the start of the fight and because Burning Adrenaline only affects the current tank and mana users, hunters had the distinction of being the only mana user that could respectably contribute after being rezzed by a soulstone at very low health and mana. Damage casters and healers could wand and /dance and very little else in that situation.
Brb, building a time machine and demanding a soulstone AND resto-only innervate!
Eh, focus will be different, but the good hunters will adapt. I could care less really, as long as it works. I did hate that if we have no ret pally now, we hunters are doomed to viper way too early. Being dependent on a resource that we are 100% responsibe for might be refreshing.
What a awesome story Frost , really enjoyed that one since i only started playing in BC and I have never done BWL infact I am not even sure were it is lol . But after that story sounds like I am going to check it out from myself , I realise with our gear these days its a easy fight but its still good to learning different mechcanic’s and see new or old content for the 1st time.
You stay outta my diary Dwarf!
It would be nice – more than nice – if we could play that content as it was meant to be played. I don’t quite understand the point of having created all of that and then letting it rot. There should be an option to play the game “Vanilla style” – or TBC style – or after Cataclysm comes out, Wrath style. With phasing now done easily and correctly, no more glitches (or a lot less glitches) it shouldn’t be at all difficult to let people “phase” into a earlier “WoW era” – people talk about “old time” – it was only 5 years ago, not exactly ancient history (unless one is a 16 year old in which case I guess it would seem to be ancient history).
Alternatively, re-tune the instances, and I mean all of them, for current play. Or both. I see some guilds that try to do this, “Retro” and other similar guild names, they turn off exp at level 60 or 70 and play with the best gear they would have been able to have had when 60 or 70 was the level cap – no gems for 60s since they didn’t exist and so forth. It’s very hard to do given the changes in skills and abilities; hence the idea to phase to that time period and play the game as it was played then.
I don’t know how much interest there would be; certainly not a great deal from those of us who played that content through and through when it was live and real; but there are so many who haven’t, and rather than dealing with bored “okay we conquered that what now the next expansion is a year off” players, many of whom were not around at that time, let them go and conquer the other content as it was done then.
Whether this would be viable would depend on the number of people who would be interested given that there would have to be a cost-benefit analysis done. But there is so much content, of which only Naxx was brought forward in Wrath – challenging, enjoyable content that people have never seen or if they have, it was with a bunch of 80s romping through for an achievement.
Walksoftly, Everquest has something like what you are talking about. It’s called an Old Man Mission, you talk to this crotchety old dwarf (imagine that) and then it puts you in an instance as his old school party. You run classic EQ dungeons with level 50 characters which was the max back then. I’d imagine Blizzard could come up with a similar mechanic and throw it into the caverns of time for instance. And I agree it would be damn cool.