Mana Costs are Weird in 3.25, What Happened? | Path of Exile

#PathofExile #PoE #SettlersofKalguur

00:00 Latest Mana Cost Nerfs
04:12 The Cost of Fixing Mana
07:15 Cheesing Mana
10:07 Attack-Based Builds
11:26 Non-Archmage Casters
12:56 Biggest Issues & Potential Solutions
16:49 Conclusion

[Palsteron]

Hope I didn't make anyone hungry with the amount of cheese I threw into the vid.

[Er_Official]

On the point of mana leech on attack builds vs spell builds, i think its a balancing decision. I think from their perspective each archetype must deal with certain problems and overcome them, for attacks this is accuracy, and for spellcasters this is mana. However as you said there are multiple "cheese" options that favors some builds heavily, while other builds struggle. So it needs a change for sure.

[RainClloud]

Im a huge fan of gaming companies running out of ideas for making their game better, so they instead make it worse and then give us a solution later.

[Sidnv]

I've hated the spellcaster mana situation for a while now. As you said, the only efficient way to solve it is cheesing it. The mana costs on some spells are just outrageous. I personally think spells don't have mana leech because attacks have to invest into accuracy, but the balance is very off atm and spells can't get to reasonable mana costs without much higher investment than attacks have to make into accuracy.

Fundamentally, I don't think mana management is that fun, and the way GGG has implemented it currently is really miserable. Being able to cast your spells smoothly is mandatory for a build being enjoyable to play. Requiring some investment in mana as a tax on a build is fine, but only if the mana investment is at least reasonably efficient.

[antonmoroziuk]

Thanks for the great video. It’s really interesting for a fairly new player as I’m not ready yet to make my own builds and such kind of videos are very helpful and hard to find

[aeowinh]

even archmage builds have to use inspiration and clarity mods to sustain mana, even when you lose max charges super fast and the dmg increase is really small but you need that cost reduction to even play the game at all, specially when, as you mention, you start to get more cast speed. Mana atm is a pain in the ass to deal with.

[AuroraTheFirstLight]

Now I understand why EB contagion is terrible besides the fact that is a two button build

[Milldredd]

I couldn't agree more. Last four leagues I played self-caster on right side of the tree - mostly pathfinder, but also trickster. It was possible, even with the trickster which was CI Soulrend of the Spiral and I had to use Inspiration even with this chaos spell. But now it's just not possible. The only way is to do what Subtractem did last league and use EB and Replica Sorrow of the Divine and press your life flask every five sec to sustain your ES. Otherwise you have to sacrifice too much to sustain your mana... Or yeah, you can press mana flask over and over... But I just don't want to click any flask, that's why there is a mageblood and/ot pathfinder with flask sustain so you don't have to press flasks. And now you can tell me "just play attack build then" or "just play hiero archamge then" but that feels at least to me completely against the PoE philosophy to be able to play what ever you want on what ever class you want.

[JohanCardel]

Great information you gathered here, just in time for me before I start my next build.

[IcaroOito]

When I saw what they did to mana, I got confused reading the patch nodes.
Didn't they wanted more build diversity? Wasn't that the whole purpose of doing some nerfs every new league... Not get so many players doing the same thing? Also, they even got rid of quant because "too many uniques was placing restrictions in what build you could play".
I think... GGG could be more honest. They removed quant because they couldn't fix the economy. Necropolis was an inflation sh1tshow. And that scared away too much of the player base, specially the wales and people that play the game for many years already, That's why. They couldn't care less about build diversity. They are just following an industrial recipe. That's what this nerfs are. They are there just to give an impression of novelty and to fix the trade economy.

[MyNameIsSalo]

mana is such a bitch on any COC based builds right now. I've tried a few and you always have to do the most weird shit to make the build playable. One of them I just gave up on, wanted to do COC VD/DD with squire and the fire trigger axe and it was consuming at base ~500 mana/sec, and I wanted to force it on a CI trickster because I like the ascendancy. So no bloodmagic, no EB, no archmage. Stacked as much reduced mana cost as I could, cucking my damage by way more than half, and even then I couldn't sustain. Gave up on the build eventually, though it did clear maps comfortably as DD of chaining is insanely OP.

Obviously in hindsight you go archmage, but I was really trying not to because it felt like a waste playing a non-heiro archmage build and I wanted to play trickster. I've also found a lot of success with discipline ES on hit watchers eye with EB, even on builds that can't stack much ES at all you only need ~100 or so ES and the watchers eye covers the rest. Not a bad cost for 2-3 passive points and 35% mana reservation, the watchers eye mod is basically free too so you can usually get a 2 stat jewel easily enough

[knicklichtjedi]

I played VD DD Bow Elementalist in Sanctum I think, and the mana cost per second were so incredibly high.
My only option was masteries, mana nodes, reduced flat mana and the 25% from the last. That was just barely enough, even with Inspiration.
Played BAMA with EB last league, because otherwise it was too expensive to cast every 3-5 seconds.
Now playing Holy Relic and I can't live without a mana gain on hit somewhere just for my trigger LSoS.
It would be very nice to be able to solve some of these without always trying to reach as close to 0 mana/s as possible.
(Note: Since minions can't usually gain charges in that way, Inspiration being universially wouldn't help them as well)

[FharaohMal]

If you're going to make me spend points AND a support gem on it, as well as make it so there's a map mod I can never run, that's fine, but it should solve the problem.

I don't mind mana being a puzzle I'm supposed to solve for spell builds, and GGG gives us the tools to solve it, the tools they've provided are just completely impotent right now.

Make the cost of skills OR the regen nodes stronger on the top side of the tree, it feels impossible on non-archmage to get mana regen that oversaturates cost, and it feels impossible to get low enough cost of skills for really high cast rate playstyles (the most fun playstyles of spells in my opinion). I don't mind being forced to consider those stats due to not having access to leech, but when I consider them but am genuinely incapable of fitting enough of them while still making a solid build, the points are just too inefficient on the tree.

Archmage is a fun playstyle but in my opinion it's way too strong compared to other styles of building a spell build right now, it solves every issue a build might have by just clicking more mana nodes. This isn't necessarily an issue, I think stat-stacking builds are basically only viable when that's the paradigm they're opting into, but it feels really bad when the best way to build literally any spell you might think of is to just go a Heiro and stack mana. Feels like other build styles have way more hoops to jump through to be functional with way less payoff in defenses and damage, and that's just not good balance.

[FluffyFractalshard]

GGG is constantly nerfing the fun out of this game because they balance it around the 0, 1% who play 12 hours a day to completely break the game and it sucks.
People who love this game but still do have a real life are left in the dust..

[chem]

Chaos skills don’t need archmage but chaos skills are worse than every other spell. Doesn’t mean I haven’t had fun with void sphere of rending.

[wzz_yt]

It definitely has pushed blood magic as a very viable alternative in a lot of cases, which is kinda interesting. Do I think it's worth killing off tons of different build archetypes and making the game feel worse in general to play for builds that can't interact with any mana cheese mechanics? Of course not. But, it's interesting to see the ways people find to cope with the changes. PoE players will always come up with creative solutions!

[locken]

I feel they should damage AND mana regen/reduce mana cost nodes in the tree. You should never feel punished for taking mana sustain

[marc-andreblais]

that explains why one of my favorite builds in std does not work anymore, i used to have 0 mana cost and with the inspiration change, im up to 22 mana cost so i cant do anything. big rip.

[DarkWrith]

I'm playing the chaos damage version of Molten Strike of the zenith. I just have basically every skill except my mark on hit sniper's mark linked to a Life Tap. It let me reserve 91% of my mana as I don't need much to cast sniper's mark.

[EvilWeiRamirez]

I used trickster EB a lot. Eb/mom is basically corrupted soul. You get a ton of es sustain. Throw call of the void on with tricksters built in chill and freeze defense and that was my go-to starter defense.