The Magician's Tower

There are two avenues we should seek to increase our mana regeneration - Spells and AAs.
Mages have no AAs to regenerate mana unlike wizards.

As it stands right now, ethereal symbiosis rk2 gives 18 mana per tick, which is 1080 mana per hour.
Empyrian Guardian rk2 gives 21 mana per tick, which is 1260 per hour at a cost of 871 mana, or a net gain of 389 mana per hour.
These add up to 1469. Which means over the course of an hour, we regenerate maybe 5-8% of our mana pool ONCE - which results in allowing us to cast 1-2 additional nukes after.
This comes with the added penalty that ethereal symbiosis must be recast every 5-9 minutes depending upon gear/AA, thus meaning that it permanently takes up a spell slot to allow 1 nuke per hour.

Thaumatize Pet rk2 gives a base of 150mana/tick for up to 5 ticks for a cost of 240 mana. If you average 175 mana/tick per cast, that is 875 mana per 2 minutes, or 53 per tick after the casting cost. There is also the added annoyance of requiring it to be recast every 2 minutes, which absorbs another spell slot.

The changes that need to be made are
1) The Ethereal Symbiosis line needs to have its duration dramatically increases - by about 10 times.
2) The upgrade to Thaumatize Pet needs to have its recast time and recourse both increases significantly. Requiring us to recast a spell every 2 minutes is pathetic. Remove the damage component and make it simple mana regeneration. Make it recastable every 6-8 minutes, and increases the benefits by 3-4 times in turn. This doesn't make the spell more powerful, but reduces the annoyance cost. This is a game, it shouldn't feel like a micromanaging task.
3) The mana regeneration components of the ethereal symbiosis and empyrian guardian lines needs to be increased. They each give us little more than 1 nuke per hour in mana. They are arguably not worth the time to cast.

In both the spell and aa master list, I have the following:

"Mage #2 priority is mana regen, whether it be from super mod rods, vastly beefed up Thaumatize, vastly improved water elemental form, and the like. The only exception is a big NO if it was an extension of the pet reclaim functionality."

Then in the aa list under must haves, I have "tons'o'folks - mana regen - self explanatory", and in the spell list I have "Upgrades to our mana regen capabilities"...

So is that sufficient? Or are we wanting to dictate exactly what manner they should implement the change?

I think giving specific examples will help our cause.
Chances are there will be a single dev who gets like 1-2 weeks to do all spells and effects for the expansion. Examples can help him see what we are trying to do

deadman1204 wrote:...............As it stands right now, ethereal symbiosis rk2 gives 18 mana per tick, which is 1080 mana per hour.
Empyrian Guardian rk2 gives 21 mana per tick, which is 1260 per hour at a cost of 871 mana, or a net gain of 389 mana per hour......

While I agree with your concept, I think your math is wrong. For example, symbiosis gives 18 per tick. 18 X 10 = 180 mana per minute. 180 X 60 minutes gives 10,800 mana per hour. (10 ticks per minute.) Similar mistake for empyrian I believe.

Also don't forget that the thaumatize recourse is extended by beneficial duration focus effects and AAs. I think it lasts for 7 ticks on me with my current level of these, adding another 350 mana (using your 175 mana/tick assumption).

Doesn't really impact your point though. And the math being off for symbiosis/empyrean doesn't have much impact either since you're talking about over the course of an hour. I guess the adjusted math comes out to about 22,500 mana an hour from both, so about 25 nukes an hour. I guess that's nothing to sneeze at, but how many nukes do you cast an hour? 200-300? And in a raid situation you're really looking at 2-5 free nukes, which is pretty pitiful.

deadman1204 wrote:
As it stands right now, ethereal symbiosis rk2 gives 18 mana per tick, which is 1080 mana per hour.
Empyrian Guardian rk2 gives 21 mana per tick, which is 1260 per hour at a cost of 871 mana, or a net gain of 389 mana per hour.
These add up to 1469. Which means over the course of an hour, we regenerate maybe 5-8% of our mana pool ONCE - which results in allowing us to cast 1-2 additional nukes after.

Your math is wrong. A tick is 6 seconds, there are 10 ticks per minute. You missed a zero or something along the way.

18 mana per tick = 10800 per hour
21 mana per tick = 12600 per hour

The math was wrong, but the point remains valid... our mana regen spells have in no way kept up with spell cost and mana pool increases over the last few expansions.

Thaumatize was a step in the direction we needed but as the OP said, underpowered and pretty annoying. I have no problem with his suggestions although i would like to add a faster cast time in there as well.

Significantly longer duration would help as well. What would also help would be removing the counter that's on it - it seems if you get hit, it knocks it right off...

Do you have one of the mana recourse augs? Since I got that my mana hasn't been as much as a priority as dps / burst dps.

I have the mana recourse one from Fungalshock (forget the aug name at the moment)...and while it helps, for battles that stretch on a while mana regen becomes more of an issue. Were our regen improved, then our DPS would improve because we would have more mana to work with overall. Having to sit around throttled back lowers our DPS. So sure, if the fight is short enough the mana regen problem isn't there, but overall it impacts our DPS becauses it is a limiter on how long we can full burn, etc, etc.