I really can’t stress enough how easy it is to manage my mana pool now with Replenishment and Improved Spirit Tap. Keeping Replenishment up is as easy as Mind Blasting on a normal rotation and if it crits you gain EXTRA mana through Imp Spirit Tap.
I know this isn’t BC or beta testing but our group ran LBRS which is a pretty lengthy instance (I’d say it’s about as long as Shadow Labs or Arcatraz if your group knows where they’re going). I had to drink maybe 4 or 5 times and only ran OOM once (during the final encounter with Wyrm).
What I like the most about the new Replenishment system is it’s ability to regenerate mana without me having to constantly pump out damage and burnt out like the previous method. Party members only got mana if I had mana.
I open every fight with Vampiric Touch and Mind Blast to get Replenish going and usually Mind Blast before either the VT DoT is up or before the mob dies to keep it going out of combat. If Mind Blast crits, I get a pretty sweet regeneration bonus in combat as an added bonus.
How am I saving mana with patch 3.0?
Improved Spirit Tap – Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death crits give a 10% boost in spirit and 20% mana regen for 8 seconds in combat.
Shadow Word: Pain costs 22% of your base mana. The new Pain and Suffering talent gives your Mind Flay spell a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of SW:P, basically preventing you from spending 22% of your base mana every 18 seconds. Putting 2 points in here should refresh it almost every other Mind Flay.
*Some clarification on how this talent works – When the duration is refreshed, it DOES NOT reset the tick counter of the spell. SW:P ticks every 3 seconds and will continue to do so as long as its on the target. Reseting the duration will still cause the spell to tick as intended.
Shadow Focus lowers the cost of all Shadow spells by 6%.
Focused Mind lowers the cost of Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear (level 75 spell) by an additional 15%.
Lastly, the new talent that replaced Improved Fade also lowers the cooldown on Shadowfiend by 2 minutes. (The name escapes me at the moment.)
Lets see if I still keep my positive outlook when I hit Outlands tonight since Abigore hit 56.
