Manaward - revamp the revamp

[Outerspace]

Having played a little time on the test server and tested the changes - most of which are pretty good and progress the class to the kind of levels we have been begging the developers for - I never once found a use for Manaward.At the moment its basically an emergency heal with a long recast timer: except on the other hand its not an emergency heal because it's not instant cast. I don't think this is particularly useful for a soloer, grouper or raider. Sure there may be one-off occasions on raids where you might save a wipe by pure luck if you timed the cast correctly but apart from that I can't think of any decent reason to have it. The other three finishers seem much more desirable.I see some scope for the ability to sacrifice power for a ward, however. Here are some thoughts:- Make it instant castSelf explanatory really. In its current state its an emergency tool but invariably when running from encounters you don't want to stop to cast a ward and invariably on a raid if you see your MT's health hitting rock bottom it's too late to cast it.- Remove the ward's duration.Removing the 30 seconds duration would be a small improvement for soloers. The ward would expire when depleted, so it would be beneficial to have the ward up when grinding mobs or trying to solo heroic content.- Change it to a toggleable ability.When activated you lose no power, but when the target takes damage a percentage of this is absorbed by the coercer's power pool with some kind of ratio until Manaward is toggled off or the coercer runs out of power. Would be decent for soloers as well as raiders.- Change it to be a fixed amount of power taken per cast, make it instant cast and reduce the recast to 30 secs or so. Could even make it self only.This would in my opinion make it useful to every type of player. Here I'm thinking of the mage's mana shield in WoW.

[Wrapye]

What is worse is that none of the abilities that need to be taken in order to get manaward are worth anything either, except for the recast reduction on Channeling.  So take a bunch of AAs that improve mana regen abilities that lost their importance in the sea of power regen items in RoK, in order to get a slow casting, slow recasting ward that takes all your mana and can be cast as a pre-ward before combat.Ayup, there's something everyone will be clamoring for...

[Kerri]

<p>Since I also play a Defiler Manaward pretty much use the same mechanism as Soulward. Instead of using HP like Soulward it uses Power instead. The larger your power pool the larger the ward will be. It's going to be used in the same situation as Soulward where you want to prevent any damage coming in to the tanks and give your healers time to catch up and get the tank back to full HP or stabilize. 30sec might not seem much but most healers don't have any problems getting a tank to full HP in 10secs with what they have available.</p><p>What I wish I could test is if Manaward and Soulward would stack. If they do then you can have a big ward on the tank when everything goes wrong.</p><p>Besides Channeling and maybe Link the whole AA line is not really worth taking thou. Like Wrapye said with all the power regen and proc gear in RoK the whole AA tree has little use.</p>

[Outerspace]

Well exactly the current Manaward is rubbish. The revamped one is rubbish.If they want to make it viable they need to make it worth spending a shedload of AA points on.Is Soulward instant cast?Coercer is not a healer class and shouldnt be given a 5 mintue emergency heal as a final AA ability. I just think they should look for a more appropriate and more useful way of revamping Manaward.

[Calm]

<p>Does the ward happen before the templar and fury's reactive/dot heals are applied?  If so, it seems that whenever manaward is cast, your power will go to 5% pretty quickly, whether it was needed to save the tank or not.  Getting power back up is not as easy (without the mythical epic) as health would be for the defiler.  I can see it saving the tank occasionally, but generally it would just seem to deplete your power with no other long term affect.</p><p>On future raids when the tank goes down, I'll try to determine if I could have made a difference with this spell, but as for now, I think I'll pass.</p>

[Outerspace]

When you hit Manaward currently, your power drops to 5% and the target gets a ward of 6-7k depending on your power.Then 5 mins later you can do it again.

[chily]

<p>To get your power back you have 2 options.1. Power share: with max reuse you can drop channel/channeling to 7.5 min from 15min that means if you don't have mthyical you could use it every 7.5min in the best case</p><p>2. With mthyical: start manaflow a group then cast manaward you have full power back mostly.A Power drain when the tank would mean that on 2*4k hits that you have problems to get power back easy.I think the most use will be while raid rather.If you solo you can stun a mob for like 20 seconds and root or mezz it, to prevent to take anydmg at all.Well i rather stun/stilfe/mez/root a mob when i take to much dmg, and with the change of the dps it's far more fun to stun mobs hehe <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Outerspace]

Thing is Chilli it's still far too situational and 95% of players will have no use for it whatsoever.My proposals, particularly the last one, make it much more useful for all types of player not just the hardcore raiders that have mythicals.

[Rijacki]

<cite>Outerspace wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thing is Chilli it's still far too situational and 95% of players will have no use for it whatsoever.My proposals, particularly the last one, make it much more useful for all types of player not just the hardcore raiders that have mythicals.</blockquote>Most of the Achievement end-points for sub-classes, for ALL sub-classes, are situational and mostly more effective in raid situations than out of raid.How beneficial it is to your own playstyle and what role you have while playing is what makes each of the end points a -choice-.  Making this one more beneficial for its purpose brings it in line with being a choice.

[Outerspace]

I take your point, however I do feel that the ability needs opening up to more than the 3 or 4 people per server that have the coercer mythical.But even then I don't think it's that useful at all when epic mobs are hitting your tank for 9k and you can throw up an awesome 6-7k ward every 5 minutes. From what I have seen so far, raid mobs don't have a unique burst ability that they use every 5 minutes that this could be useful for. Useful for a pull maybe? Pre-ward? Nope, can't do it out of combat.None of the finishers for coercer benefit soloing except Tashiana in a small way for 13 secs out of every 120. Thought Snap doesnt, Coercive Healing doesnt and Manaward doesnt. Manaward could have been a cool soloing tool that helps those players of all levels that are having a hard time with mobs beating them but currently it's pretty pointless in my opinion.

[Grimlux]

<p>I do not have my mythical. I raid. I solo. I join PUG's ALLLLLLLL the time. I can think of Eleventy thousand times I wish I could have had this Manaward currently on test... maybe thats just me though.</p>

[Outerspace]

Not being funny but.. I can't think of any times that it would have been useful. If you get a bad pickup group, a 6k ward every 5 minutes isn't suddenly going to make it awesome. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Chances are if you need to use it you're dead anyway.Nah, seems I am in the minority and that everyone seems to like it like this, which is fine. I don't have to spec it after all <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Wrapye]

<cite>Chillispike@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>To get your power back you have 2 options.1. Power share: with max reuse you can drop channel/channeling to 7.5 min from 15min that means if you don't have mthyical you could use it every 7.5min in the best case</p><p>2. With mthyical: start manaflow a group then cast manaward you have full power back mostly.</p></blockquote>3. Crystal Gift.