nerf tea with shugar

[Rat2156]

Does the thought of somehow not hammering your spell keybinds 100% of the time terrify you? Those concerns really can only be conjured by a parsebrain or a DPS meter whore.

Running out of mana and having to slow down your DPS is a completely natural part of vanilla, if it's not something you can stomach, you should be playing retail instead

[Balake]

It's not called being a parsebrain or a DPS meter whore, it's called not being a liability for your team.

It all comes back to the class design. If there are battery classes and infinite resource classes, then the battery class should always be stronger and have more tools until it exhausts all its battery.

It would be a huge balance disaster if casters were the top dps while their mana bar lasted, and the last dps once they went oom. Blizzard realized this and just axed it entirely, giving all casters cooldowns and tools to smartly generate their mana. Spriests in WOTLK got dispersion and shadowfiend, in both cases it was necessary to use it in the best moment to maximize its efficiency and not go oom, that meant using shadowfiend snapshotted with haste effects, and using dispersion to double as both a defensive cooldown and mana generation.

Vanilla on the other hand, shadow priests really have no depth to this. You put on your vampiric embrace and you start your dps rotation, and you hope the warriors and rogues kill the boss faster than you oom. Telling the priest to downrank or just afk is abysmal. The spriest gained no advantage by having a mana battery, all it got was an expiration time where it becomes useless. Coincidentally, long fights are commonplace in progression. The result of that is progression discourages people from using many casters especially the less optimal ones (not to say meme specs), and would rather just stack warriors and rogues that can keep dpsing and dpsing forever.

It's ridiculous to claim this is natural so its good (also the go to retail argument again lol). It's clearly horrible design.

[Xudo]

What really IS mana management in vanilla. Downranking? As a dps? A moonkin has two things to do, either they cast or they afk. A mage can evocate to extend their casting time somewhat but once all their tools are over they're left wanding.

Actually, shamans, druids and arcane mages have some active non-braindead mana management called Elemental Focus or Clearcasting. In theory you cast spells with good DpM and then talent procs, you cast something with good DpS and bad DpM.

Even "battery" classes has infinite resource DPS. It is called Wand.
During leveling it is most reliable way to kill enemies for priests and warlocks. There is such feature in the game, there are talents to make this feature stronger.
Wands has less DPS than geared player can do by spells, but they also free in terms of mana.
So it looks like Spriest have high DPS at a start, but during long fight, it fall back to baseline provided by wand. After some wanding it can do high DPS again.
If casters get their wands scaled by SPD, it will be good enough baseline in case of OOM.
Gear of warriors and rogues improve white damage first which results in improving their yellow damage.

Does Seal of Wisdom gives mana on wand attacks here? If it is, then you can recharge during "really long fights".
Clearcasting for druids and shamans works from melee attacks. I think that hybrid classes should fully use their potential.

But this server is notorious for making first half of a change then stalling months to do the second half.

Well. I agree that meme specs should be buffed first and then nerfed.
I see that after they removed WB, devs started to change classes. They do small steps every week. It will take time to make it better.

The bloat of passive consumables that you have to drink up after wipe should definitely be sliced up though, and that's by slowly moving it to class buffs. Tea can have its uses cut down by buffing healthstone up to its level.

QFT. Glad that we agree on this point.
TBC consumables system with guardian and battle elixirs is much better than classic one.

[Balake]

>Actually, shamans, druids and arcane mages have some active non-braindead mana management called Elemental Focus or Clearcasting. In theory you cast spells with good DpM and then talent procs, you cast something with good DpS and bad DpM.

In theory. In reality that's not the case at all. You're always spamming one button. Druids don't cycle wrath and starfire, it's always better to simply starfire.

>Even "battery" classes has infinite resource DPS. It is called Wand.
During leveling it is most reliable way to kill enemies for priests and warlocks. There is such feature in the game, there are talents to make this feature stronger.
Wands has less DPS than geared player can do by spells, but they also free in terms of mana.
So it looks like Spriest have high DPS at a start, but during long fight, it fall back to baseline provided by wand. After some wanding it can do high DPS again.
If casters get their wands scaled by SPD, it will be good enough baseline in case of OOM.
Gear of warriors and rogues improve white damage first which results in improving their yellow damage.

Wand is very low damage, less than a holy paladin autoattacking. I think they should be affected by at least spell crit and hit chance, and some coefficient with spellpower.

The problem with this theory is, we think "caster does high dps, then wands, then back to high dps" but the truth is "the caster does mediocre dps, then wands for abysmal dps, then back to casting for mediocre dps"

Does Seal of Wisdom gives mana on wand attacks here? If it is, then you can recharge during "really long fights".
Clearcasting for druids and shamans works from melee attacks. I think that hybrid classes should fully use their potential.

I don't know man, expecting this kind of stuff from specs that already do very low damage will ruin them more and more. Ele shamans and boomkins are too squishy to get into melee range for their clearcasting.

[Bayanni]

What really IS mana management in vanilla. Downranking? As a dps? A moonkin has two things to do, either they cast or they afk. A mage can evocate to extend their casting time somewhat but once all their tools are over they're left wanding.

Actually, shamans, druids and arcane mages have some active non-braindead mana management called Elemental Focus or Clearcasting. In theory you cast spells with good DpM and then talent procs, you cast something with good DpS and bad DpM.

Even "battery" classes has infinite resource DPS. It is called Wand.
During leveling it is most reliable way to kill enemies for priests and warlocks. There is such feature in the game, there are talents to make this feature stronger.

Clearcasting for druids at least isn't vanilla. I can't speak too much on shamans or arcane mages but I can say they also received buffs on TWoW to their mana usage to give them some longevity. However, they all still go oom because their max-ranks aren't enough to compete against others with both better management and flat better damage, on paper at least.

Also, the issue is the mana battery classes have the wands while non-batteries don't and they're noticeably worse on dps for it. The buffs made them viable WITH current tea, giving them an actual way to greatly extend their total viable dps time which has made arcane mages and boomies almost (but not completely) viable. Ele shamans are still no where close and I don't think turtle will make them PvE viable anytime soon due to the PvP implications.

Also, spriests now can last far better than the other specs mentioned and are fully raid viable. Haven't seen them not do well in literally any 40-mans I've had them with and they're always great on the meters. Havent' seen one oom except on specific mana-draining fights and maybe c'thun and KT, but it's a big maybe.

[Bayanni]

Does the thought of somehow not hammering your spell keybinds 100% of the time terrify you? Those concerns really can only be conjured by a parsebrain or a DPS meter whore.

Running out of mana and having to slow down your DPS is a completely natural part of vanilla, if it's not something you can stomach, you should be playing retail instead

The specs that need tea are already using slowed down dps. These fights often have enrage mechanics, you can only go so slow before you flat die and healers' mana is another soft cap on total fight time. It's not about meter watching or whatever insane rant you're on about; it's about actually beating the fight. A raid with only boomkins, ele shamans, and arcane mages for dps will not clear BWL.

I don't parsebrain, I play boomkin like an idiot, and I can tell you I wouldn't be able to raid Naxx without items like this. Half the fights I would do more of a detriment just being there due to scaling.

[Ugoboom]

Mana management is one of the most interesting parts of classic.

For healers maybe. Healer classes can push HPS by stopping downranking and using the less HPM efficient spells. Mana management is good for healers.

For dps no lmao not at all. Mana management is not fun. Mages and warlocks had no need for this, only the meme casters have problems and would ever need to downrank and then their dps plummets. Not fun at all...

Really, what needs to be done is all the meme specs need way way way more mana efficiency built into the class or via talents, so that they don't need to be reliant on the mp5 that these two mana pots provide. then +spellpower+mana potions can be added like TBC, so that these classes will consume them to push dps.

This splits mana pots from having to be balanced around both casters and healers, into two types of pots that are balanced around healers and casters separately.

Then, and ONLY then, would I support a tea with sugar nerf, down to being a dark/demonic rune alternative, instead of superior.

Until then, Bayanni is right.

[Xudo]

>Actually, shamans, druids and arcane mages have some active non-braindead mana management called Elemental Focus or Clearcasting. In theory you cast spells with good DpM and then talent procs, you cast something with good DpS and bad DpM.

In theory. In reality that's not the case at all. You're always spamming one button. Druids don't cycle wrath and starfire, it's always better to simply starfire.

But why?
It is like:
players (spam starfire, drink tea): we need more mana efficiency!
devs (allow clearcasting for spells to enable wrath-starfire rotation): ok, now you can be more efficient!
players (spam starfire, drink tea): 1 free starfire per 10 is cool, but we need more mana efficiency!
devs: wtf, why they keep spamming one button?

[Balake]

Xudo because the math was done, and it was shown that with clearcasting it was still best to spam starfire.

The general logic is: Fish clear casting with best damage-per-mana spell, use it with best damage-per-cast spell. Theres a niche leveling build of mages where they fish clearcasting with arcane missiles and use with pyroblast.

in boomkin case, their best damage per mana AND damage per cast are both starfire. Theres really no other way to play it, the players are never "playing their spec wrong", its the devs that failed to fulfill their wanted philosophy.

[Heine]

I see people spam this crap on battlegrounds as well

[Piffo]

That you can go oom as a healer is needed to balance the game and getting more total healing out by downranking is just standard.

I think the discussion should focus on the builds for dps/support. Around 50% of the raiders are in that department.

For example, with 4k mana and an item that you can use once or twice in a fight to get ~1k extra mana you can keep up your rotations without the need of mana potions, mana oil, down ranking, meditation, innervates, fd and eat, mp5 food,...

The whole aspect of mana management is wiped of the table for half the raid.

Sure some play styles are more viable with the extra mana, but all in all its a bad idea to help a view builds out by gimping the whole raid content for the others...

[Geojak]

Similiar arguments were made pre World buff removal that it would harm memes by enforcing strikter meta play.
We don't see that now.
I don't think we will cause this here either if tea gave rougly 700 mana instead of 1400

[Reploidrocsa]

Similiar arguments were made pre World buff removal that it would harm memes by enforcing strikter meta play.
We don't see that now.

then you haven't seen enough cuz they're gimped now

[Geojak]

They are even regularly topping meters in the mc, bwl, zg runs I see. Smite Priest, rets do rly great even when undergeared. Moonkins middle of the pack.

[Ibux]

they should change winterspring tea leaf to always drop even without the quest. and let us stack up more then 20 winterspring tea leaf to deliver for more quests. they should also be sold on auction house.

[Geojak]

And make tea with shugar a cooking recipe thaz needs shugar and moonkins leaves as ingredients. The current qeust is changed to one time give the recipe
Tea doesn't need to be soulbound either

[Tawneyturtle]

They are even regularly topping meters in the mc, bwl, zg runs I see. Smite Priest, rets do rly great even when undergeared. Moonkins middle of the pack.

If I played unarmed inner fire melee priest in ZG with 19 disabled hamsters I'd probably top the meters too but using that data for anything is beyond laughable. Use logs for accurate and consistent data not "I saw this in a dream, therefor it's good"

[Xudo]

Players should increase their size a bit after each use of Tea with Sugar.
Sugar makes you fat.

[Bayanni]

And make tea with shugar a cooking recipe thaz needs shugar and moonkins leaves as ingredients. The current qeust is changed to one time give the recipe
Tea doesn't need to be soulbound either

I'd actually be ok with this change

[Bayanni]

Similiar arguments were made pre World buff removal that it would harm memes by enforcing strikter meta play.
We don't see that now.
I don't think we will cause this here either if tea gave rougly 700 mana instead of 1400

Most of those arguments were for the impact it would have in AQ40 and Naxx. It really shows there just how impacted meme specs were. We didn't have the full-on apocalypse of memes some people were screaming about, but it's made it less possible to bring the off-meta in and on more than one occasion I've seen rets, enhance shammies, and elemental shammies asked to bench for someone more meta. Hell, my boomie got into a naxx once just because I was the only druid, I didn't have the numbers they needed but the buff was valuable, and this is just from the guilds I'm currently raiding with. Others I've been told point-blank they won't take more than a few (if that) meme specs because doing so makes their Naxx farms last 2 days instead of 1. It had an impact and we can see it today; you just need to get out there more.

[Paw]

This long thread for such an issue, lol. Just make sure to come up with a few alternative solutions then we can ask for a community poll and make it happen but if u find one final change you can all agree on that would be the best! I'm going judge on this. Since Balake, Ugoboom, Kairon, Xudo and Geojak stated their detailed concerns about this change at the beginning I give you the ultimate veto. Given 3 of the 5 can agree on a sollution (I should give you a timeframe here but there is no need) until the next 3 raid locks clear. (Okay, maybe some restriction tho) Given you agree on sth I will do my best praying method to praise and appease Elune for her blessings for this change to happen. Badaboom! /Hammering th table rapidly, Silence in the courtroom!.. Procceed!

[Bayanni]

>Actually, shamans, druids and arcane mages have some active non-braindead mana management called Elemental Focus or Clearcasting. In theory you cast spells with good DpM and then talent procs, you cast something with good DpS and bad DpM.

In theory. In reality that's not the case at all. You're always spamming one button. Druids don't cycle wrath and starfire, it's always better to simply starfire.

But why?
It is like:
players (spam starfire, drink tea): we need more mana efficiency!
devs (allow clearcasting for spells to enable wrath-starfire rotation): ok, now you can be more efficient!
players (spam starfire, drink tea): 1 free starfire per 10 is cool, but we need more mana efficiency!
devs: wtf, why they keep spamming one button?

I've been testing out multiple rotations and wrath is so very rarely used because it's just worse in every way than starfire. Less damage, more mana used, no stun proc (occasionally nice to have for adds and trash, especially on C'Thun), etc. Insect Swarm is in the same boat but has the caveat of basically being 2% avoidance for the tank so has its uses. I believe Moonfire can fit into the rotation currently as the damage you get from a 1.5s global is more than half a starfire, so that's 2 buttons. If you have an on-use trinket, 3.

That's it. That's all you need and it's all you use. It's why a lot of boomies respec to something else, it's just boring to play for a lot of people and doesn't perform as well as almost every other dps spec/class. I do it because I enjoy trying to outperform mainline meta builds with a terrible meme, but that's not enough to justify a spec's widespread inclusion imo.

Also, the clearcasting proc chance is good but it's not enough to offset the mana issues the class faces entirely. The moonkin mana reduction and other built-in efficiencies added about 90 seconds to my total uptime on a raidboss before I need to use a consume to roughly 200 seconds, which is enough for many raid bosses honestly. It's not enough for any of the long fights especially with progression.

[Xudo]

...

Voting is not needed at all.
Discussion with long good explained questions and answers needed as food for developers brains.
They could come to very different solution.

[Geojak]

What Xudo said is right. devs hopefully read, think for themselves with the arguments made here to come to their own conclusion.

Not like we can agree on anything anyway.

[Paw]

Noone wants to read through walls of texts. It's a simple issue. If you found a good solution that'd be great. Devs are working on new raids, fixing bugs, partly moderating online users. I came here to help them helping you work together. This forum serves for discussions where players can weigh their opinions on new content to one-another and help the dev team with their constructive arguments. Noone wants pages long a lecture on sugar with tea. That's why I brought my hammer. You are already deep bug dugging the issue. I found it interesting personally. Main issue is that it outweighs the demonic stone and renders it useless. However if u make it up like a group effort proposing alternative ideas. I'm like talking to 10 people here and its not easy believe me especieally since my name ain't green I want white anywway. to make you cooperate instead of dungstorming each other's ideas. But that's diplomacy and I guess that's my day-time job right now. Communication. This is what I try to convey. Wish not to give you instructions. I hope you can work together and come up with an ideal plan that you can agree upon. I am versed in psychology and I can firmly state that your intellect quota rivals that of titans and give you have invested time and energy working on a solution I hope that your efforts will see the dday of ligth.
/Author of a Wall of text that noone wants to read./ #makeerrorswithoutgrammarly

[Xudo]

If tea will remain, it can be grown with Gardening. Stop Moonkin henocide!

[Astrallizard]

Sadly, instead of agreeing on some fair adjustments to the item we get comment after comment which are often not helpful and make this whole thread tedious to read.

Repeating my ideas from an earlier comment:

Suggestions:
1) disabled in PvP (battlegrounds)
2) weaker regular variant obtainable via the quest
3) weaker variant can be upgraded to original version (renamed to Tea with more Sugar) and is usable in Naxxramas

[Geojak]

I dislike the idea of a weaker version that can be upgraded. It just makes the process of aquirring tea more tedious without changing any of the balance conseens raised and it will still be used over anything else in game like runes or heslthsrones just with the added extra time wasted.

IF tea is nerfed, then it doesn't need to be pvp disabled either, note that nighdragons can be used in pvp too.

[Geojak]

I will repost my ealier suggestion for a weaker version and quote kairion ,to which i agree.

"we got
Whipper Root Tuber for health (~800 health)
Night Dragon's Breath (~420 Health & ~420 Mana)
Major Healthstone (1320 health)
Dark / Demonic Runes (- ~800 Health & ~1200 Mana)

And then there is Tea with sugar for ~1400 Each.

Since we already got some Health option and even a mixed option for Both health and Mana without downside, but no mana only option without downside, making Tea restore about 800 mana and no health would give it an unique standing point without completely outcompeting the other options"

nigh dragon is 394-456 health and mana with a average total of 850 health+mana.

Tea currently: 1050 - 1750 mana and health
The higher number is 1.66 the lower value.

Suggested new values: 213-353 health (353=213*1.66)
+ 427-708 mana (708=427*1.66)
Average total mana and health gain is 851.
The mana gain is exactly, double the health values.


Like this Tea is more or less same powerfull as nigh dragon but weighted towards mana to fill the niche and has a higher range on the resources gained to keep part of its original design.

[Astrallizard]

The upgrade process would be a simple one. Something like a turn-in at the Argent Dawn vendor, maybe requiring some additional (easy to obtain) materials. This version would be only usable inside Naxxramas which was originally designed with world buffs in mind and is the main focus of the presented concerns in this thread.

The weaker version would restore less health and mana so that runes and stones become more relevant again.

[Geojak]

OK that sounds good. Now I got you.

So a weak version, maybe with my proposed numbers. And an upgraded version with the original values that is only usable in naxx, and obtained from argent Dawn, maybe requiring a mark of crusader in the procees of the turn in qeust (cheap, around 30s)

[Snakeman]

it's probably been said before in this thread, I just can't be bothered to read all of it. but for once I don't think people who aren't at least currently progging AQ40 have a horse in this race

I've played elemental shaman previously on this server, and even post class changes I could not have kept going for as long as I did before burning out without tea. Yeah, runes and night dragons are cool, but in AQ40 prog I was still regularly running OOM spamming rank 10 LB with full mana consumes, minus distilled wisdom (I used supreme power instead). Shaman in general is an incredibly mana hungry class; resto still uses a lot of mp5 on gear even in the tea meta. It feels so awful that it's NECESSARY to downrank your main DPS spell in that scenario that I stopped raiding on that toon entirely maybe 3 weeks into AQ40 prog, and swapped to my hunter (who hardly even needs mana consumes anymore due to st**dy sh*t spam, but that's a problem I've already bitched about at length)

It just seems like a weird hill to die on when you could be advocating for tweaks to other consumes and mechanics with extremely glaring issues. Like that 2% haste food that NOBODY uses because a raid's worth of food buff requires you to literally eat a full stack of essence of air, which (as far as I remember) are at least three times the price of a major mana potion. Or the fact you can't make use of the aforementioned wrath-starfire rotation as a moonkin, because the only nature damage debuffs in the entire game either have horrendous uptime (if a given raid even runs an enhance shaman to begin with) or just aren't up to scratch with the arcane damage buffs gained from Curse of Shadow (again, if your raid has a TF)

[Xudo]

Sadly, instead of agreeing on some fair adjustments to the item we get comment after comment which are often not helpful and make this whole thread tedious to read.

Feedback from druids and elemental shamans about their mana problems could be more valuable outcome of this thread than any tea adjustments.

[Balake]

Sadly, instead of agreeing on some fair adjustments to the item we get comment after comment which are often not helpful and make this whole thread tedious to read.

Feedback from druids and elemental shamans about their mana problems could be more valuable outcome of this thread than any tea adjustments.

I know right, this guy is genuinely saying "instead of agreeing with me, we get comment after comment of people having different opinions. How dare they >:c"

[Astrallizard]

I wish that you could read and understand what I actually wrote. My goal is to make fair adjustments while acknowledging the different opinions. Not everything has to be black and white.

As stated in some other comments, reading though walls of text can be tiresome. The main concern still remains Naxxramas (and probably AQ40), but that part of the game would not be affected by the suggestions I made.