Mana cost progression

Good day!

In the current version of the game, the mana cost of skills increases proportionally to the increase power granted by Gem. That is, if a spell gem begins to deal 15% more damage, then it receives 15% more mana cost.
Seems fair? But if you look at it from the other side, deeper.

In PoE 2, special attention is paid to the fact that Mana is a resource, an important resource. And this resource is limited by the pool. This limitation affects how many spells can be used in a row.
And it turns out that the potential damage dealt is directly dependent on the mana cost.

Let me give you an example.
A character has 1000 mana, there is a skill with a mana cost of 200 that deals 1000 damage and is used 2 times per second. And also 100 mana regeneration.
Using our mathematical knowledge, we calculate,
1 second -400 mana +100 mana regen (700) 2000 damage
2 seconds -400 mana +100 mana regen (400) 2000 damage
3 seconds -400 mana +100 mana regen (100) 2000 damage
4 seconds no mana pool +100 mana regen(200) 0 damage
5 seconds -200 mana +100 mana regen (100) 1000 damage
Result - 7000 damage.

Now imagine that we got +1 level of the stone - 15% more damage and mana cost
1000 mana, mana cost 230, 1150 damage, 2 uses per second and 100 regen.
1 second -460 mana +100 mana regen (640) 2300 damage
2 seconds -460 mana +100 mana regen (280) 2300 damage
3 seconds -230 mana +100 mana regen (150) 1150 damage
4 seconds no mana pool +100 mana regen (250) 0 damage
5 seconds -230 mana +100 mana regen (120) 1150 damage
Total - 6900 damage

Upgrade?

Before I started the calculations, I expected to see that the damage would not change. But the numbers say that to get these +15% damage, you need to not only increase the level of the stone, but also get a significant increase in mana regen and mana pool (especially since they are interconnected).

And so we come to the fact that increasing Gem level without investing in mana stack is almost meaningless. Without increasing the maximum mana, you cannot achieve significant mana regen. Inspiration is not a panacea. And this can become one of the roots of the problems, since there are already problems with the balance, and the mechanics that allow you to increase damage several times limited by mana cost aggravate this.

I would suggest either reducing the increase in mana cost by 2 times, or adding more powerful sources of mana regeneration. After all, if on bosses there is an opportunity to dodge and wait for resources to replenish, then when clearing maps, monsters will not wait for you. This will be especially pronounced in the case when the mana cost already exceeds 500, and the mana pool is still 1500. And in addition to this, there are utility skills with 200-300 mana cost. Scary.

Kind regards.

As you just said, mana is important resource in PoE 2, and you shouldn't get more powerful skills than you have mana for, it's one of limitations you should think about. Don't see the reason to simplify it. And btw, most skills at last few levels have significantly larger increase in mana cost than in damage, so you should think carefully which skills you want to upgrade to which level.

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Suchka_777#4336 wrote:

As you just said, mana is important resource in PoE 2, and you shouldn't get more powerful skills than you have mana for, it's one of limitations you should think about. Don't see the reason to simplify it. And btw, most skills at last few levels have significantly larger increase in mana cost than in damage, so you should think carefully which skills you want to upgrade to which level.

The fact that there is a concept of this correlation does not mean that the current version is normal and does not require revision. This is a huge and common mistake. You can always do better. It is not about simplification but about balance.
There are other ways to increase damage that do not entail such a need to scale the mana resource. But you cannot rely on them alone. Sooner or later, there will be a need to become stronger, and passive points distributed between damage and survivability will have to be spent on increasing the mana pool in order to ... lose damage and survivability, because not everyone wants and can use Archmage and MoM.

The mana consumption curves for higher-leveled gems need to be adjusted I think. Some builds like Ancestral Totems need high skill levels to scale well in terms of damage so settling for a lower skill level won't cut it.

Sure, there are workarounds to mitigate the mana issues, but it feels kind of awful compared to builds that run around with seemingly infinite mana, kill everything in one hit, and still have tons of EHP without needing to spend many passive points to get around the issues.

And some people need to understand that we have limited slots for prefixes and suffixes on items. I can't have +mana and % mana regen on every piece of gear while having flat stats, resistances, and +skill levels as a Giant's Blood warrior.

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moonretealoud#1487 wrote:

The fact that there is a concept of this correlation does not mean that the current version is normal and does not require revision. This is a huge and common mistake. You can always do better.

Sure it can be balanced, nothing is properly balanced yet. But your suggestion to make increase in mana cost smaller than increase in damage would reduce amount of choices player can make, this is why it will never happen. It would be bad design choice.

Arcane Blossom[envy/despair/despair], Deep Trance[fear/ire/despair], Conservative Casting[disgust/disgust/ire], and Mental Toughness[envy/fear/greed] are all helpful nodes for Mana management. They may be worth Instilling into your amulet if they fit your build but are too far away on the tree.

I think the mana cost increase with skill levels is probably fine where it is right now, and if anything, could probably stand to increase even more post 20. Right now, everyone chases those +skill level items. That means they are worth it as they are. And that they often don't consider ones without skill levels means they are likely over-performing compared to other options. Especially given that people are doing this while having their mana regen halved and the costs of their spells upped by a % of their mana pool. Oh, and minion spirit costs part a certain level should probably start to increase as well.

But I will qualify that. Right now, thanks to poor balance on both the player (the entire defensive situation) and mob sides (locked in a small area, tons of mobs, for most of the poorly conceived "league" mechanics), there's a focus on offense uber alles, because you have to have that much to survive. But given that, probably best to wait until that's balanced before tweaking mana costs.

And that said, to further qualify it, I do think the bottom part of the tree needs looking at as well. Lack of mana sustain related nodes down there. So either some of those need to be added, or the cost of abilities from there need to be tweaked. Perhaps by, say, replacing some of those "mace swings even slower" lines with "mace skills cost less". Of course, knowing GGG, what they'll actually do is tweak the mace uniques again, this time adding an increase to mace skills on top of the slower attack speed they gave them in the recent patch ;)

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dear123000#3577 wrote:

The mana consumption curves for higher-leveled gems need to be adjusted I think. Some builds like Ancestral Totems need high skill levels to scale well in terms of damage so settling for a lower skill level won't cut it.

I'd say that depends. You are hopping to the assumption that the mana cost is the problem, rather than the performance of the totem(s). So plenty of things that could be done there, short of lowering all costs. To list just a few:
- Up performance of totems
- Add some mana related nodes to parts of the tree that currently are very devoid of them.
- Lower the cost of a few specific skills, like totems

Alternatively, additional gems relating to resource management could be implemented.

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Suchka_777#4336 wrote:

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moonretealoud#1487 wrote:

The fact that there is a concept of this correlation does not mean that the current version is normal and does not require revision. This is a huge and common mistake. You can always do better.

Sure it can be balanced, nothing is properly balanced yet. But your suggestion to make increase in mana cost smaller than increase in damage would reduce amount of choices player can make, this is why it will never happen. It would be bad design choice.

How will that limit the choices? There are tons of builds that don't need skill levels like crit builds and Corpse Explosion that scale better with other stats. It's not like everyone's gonna be pigeonholed into stacking +skill levels suffixes just because the mana costs are lowered.

Gear prefixes and suffixes are limited per a piece of gear. You can't have everything on every piece. This hurts quite a bit on builds that rely heavily on skill levels like Ancestral Warrior Totem because they need quite a few things, including skill levels, to get working, on top of having to worry about mana issues.

It still doesn't feel THAT good even when I anointed Deep Trance and spent points into "convert % of mana cost to life" nodes. That thing eats a whopping 1000 mana per cast by default.

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dear123000#3577 wrote:

It's not like everyone's gonna be pigeonholed into stacking +skill levels suffixes just because the mana costs are lowered.

I suspect that's precisely what they are talking about. The risk:reward may be too small for +skill gear otherwise.