mana_adept.md

Why Mana Adept is broken

• Disproportionately disruptive to rotation, compared to T15 talents of the other specs and classes. Talents like that are typically reserved for the higher tiers, often the L100 tier. Examples: Glacial Spike versus Thermal Void, Kindling versus Meteor. These talents provide the most noticeable playstyle variations and are confined to the same row.

• MA would not even be the first disruptive talent to make the jump from T15 to T100. Ray of Frost probably never belonged in the first tier, and was moved accordingly. I'm NOT implying that simply swapping Arcane Orb and Mana Adept would completely fix the issue. It would just place MA into a spot where it's allowed to be tuned more appropriately given its overall effects on rotation. (Extra bonus: T15 gets an AoE talent that is good.)

• Enforces a constrictive rotation onto the player for a spec that is already rigidly synchronized with cooldown timings (Rune of Power, Arcane Power). Being unable to spend extra mana to take down a new priority target, break an absorb shield, etc., because you are locked to the 80%+ threshold does not feel good. Possible solution to this is to consider a benefit that scales with mana percent instead of a hard cutoff, similar to Words of Power. You would still "suffer" consequences for extra mana expenditure, but it would not completely invalidate your talent choice. (Side note: AM-based talents have a tendency to become more and more useless on AoE encounters, due to lack of casts.)

• While not the most optimal rotations, you can perform WAY too close to optimal when ignoring a majority of your spellbook. These are some of the early MA tests that still perform very, very well:

  • You can opt to never use Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage during conserve phase.
  • You can use an immediately-interrupted Evocation (instant mana tick only) when dipping below the MA threshold just to get back above it and return to the same rotation.
  • Sitting there doing literally nothing and pooling mana to get back above the MA threshold is often the best decision. This can lead to a tremendous amount of idle time.

• Arcane Charges are intended to be a major factor in optimization. Finding the points where you can safely build AC or stay at 4 AC to maximize damage output is the core of the balancing act between mana and damage. With Arcane Missiles not being affected by AC, this is another instance where Mastery has very limited interaction with the rotation. Its value would be for the increased mana regen only. Since the effect of the MP regen is minimal, and the effect of the damage bonus nonexistent, you can ignore AC (and subsequently Mastery) almost entirely.