I know this to be a problem for hybrids since the beginning of time more or less, but with the dicho changes how will your playstyle change? Personally with the guild i'm in (lower dps) I will likely have to swap mainly nuke spam again being a beastlord, I don't think a 15 minute fight could handle me using DoT's.
This is going to affect some classes more than others (rangers, and berserkers mostly, I'm assuming), but there's a couple ways you can get around it. You probably will have to sacrifice maximum dps a bit, but hopefully not too much. Firstly you can make yourself a Gift of Mana audio trigger so you can fire your DoTs and dicho, when they fire, as appose to every time they're up/needed. And being a bl with your self "canni" ability, consumption of spirit (I think), and your paragon, you should be able to mitigate some of the hit on the bard dicho. Also another little tid bit that I use on my toons that have problems with mana/endurance is have a few stacks of Arx Mentis Medicine: 1: Increase Hitpoints by 4000 to 4000 (random) 2: Increase Mana by 1250 to 3750 (random) 3: Increase Endurance by 1250 to 3750 (random) You'll probably still have some problems with mana, but the mana return on Bard dicho was too much, and it was only a matter of time before something happened with it :-/
wow Draig, tell us how you really feel. Burn behavior will need to change now that bard songs aren't broken. You cannot just reject anything that isn't what it was before.
Manage mana like a finite resource instead of being in burn-all-things-the-instant-they-pop-all-the-time mode? Unpossible!
How many of you are actually beastlords? We can barely make it 3 minutes using canni, modrod, big para, focused para without going oom now (this is sustained dps, not even burn) - some fights for my guild last 15 minutes, without dots you lose about 30% of your damage.
I play a bl, he used to be a boss, but its been a while since I've logged him on to do some work with him. Like before DoTs became not suck. But my advise is still sound, I wouldn't hold off dicho for GoM, but I would hold of DoTs. I'll start playing my bl again just to show the trolls up, but my rogue and zerker and taking up quite a bit of my time, so PLEASE don't make me do it!
I would drop down to 20-30% mana as is with bard dicho playing while I was burning with Scarlet Cheetah Fang. Without it, I will run OOM before all my charges are used up and with no way to regain mana other than a mod rod, rangers are hosed. Our mana cost to dmg ratio for spells sucks as is, so this is a major kick in the nether region. Our only hope is if they add some form of AA that regains mana for us in the next expansion, but with Elidroth back on AA's that won't happen, that guy hates rangers and the ranger community with a passion, he'll stick it to us out of spite. The whole expansion was about increased Mana use in spells and AA's, hell, they balanced Scarlet and our useless arrrow proc aa's with huge mana costs due to the abilities of other classes when grouped with them. A good fix would to move the burden of our DPS off of the Blue bar and have the Yellow bar pick up the slack. Least then we could use breather to help half of our DPS pool regen. Move the arrow spells, Focused, Anticipated, Dicho to Endurance use, this would relieve some of the pressure on our over stressed mana pool, and fall in line with the whole Hybrid thing the like to shove down our throats.
Plenty of good ways to regen mana in raids or groups. Bard ask for Rallying Call Cleric ask for Quiet Miracle Mage ask for mod rod beast ask for para or focused para Enchanter second spire i think. Also bards can use Pulse of Sionachie in there rotation for more combat mana regen. As a ranger you dont have any tools to regen but other classes have plenty to help you.
You're going off on a whole different issue, Raptour. You really can't be complaining about going OOM while under the effects of, what is now IMO, the most OP ability in the game, Cheetah fang. First off it doubles the mana cost on all of your spells. That is the reason you see rangers burning like berserkers. I think going oom faster than a snow cone melting in hell, is a reasonable trade off for doing stupid amounts of burst dps. I think that could be an issue, when you're trying to use it to sustain your dps, its not meant for that, its meant for you to pump out a massive amount of damage within a very short time, forceful rejuv. is a good ability to use with it. Its not about trying to use up all the charges (because there's too many of them anyway).
All you beasts should make a /t hotkey for all the ranger's that are going to inevitably asking you for para.
It's not a "whole different issue" as you put it. The issue is mana consumption and regen w/o the bard dicho. Yes, bard dicho was broken, fixing the bug would have been fine, but they went miles beyond that and nerfed it to uselessness. Now we are made to suffer for poor design choices based on a broken ability that was left broken for over 10 months. It would have been less of an issue if they also reduced mana costs of some spells with the dicho change. All of this could have been addressed in TBM beta if the devs would have bothered to communicate with the player base. As for getting mana in a raid setting, this stupid list Bard ask for Rallying Call Cleric ask for Quiet Miracle Mage ask for mod rod beast ask for para or focused para Enchanter second spire i think. No ranger will ever be given a Qm, Rally, or 2nd spire over a pure caster or dead cleric, just won't happen, so we are stuck with mod rods and a para, since the focused will be on cooldown, the beast will now have his own mana issues to deal with. It sounds like you guys prefer to remain sub par, that's fine. But your ineptitude and lack of caring is bringing down those of us who strive to be more than an auspice/buff bot in a raid.
A few things I am pondering. One is too start using 3 of the Fire and Ice nukes I haven't mem'd since House of Thule. Two is to be as vigilant with only casting Dicto when GoM fires as I am with our revamped DoT. My mind set is to cast Dicto as soon as the gem refreshes and that must change. Three is to start using Focused Storm of Blades when Fang is going to try and use the charges. In any event, gone now are the days of using all my Scarlet Cheetah Fang charges.
Raptour does have a point, though. Pretty ridiculous bsts can blow through a mana bar at a rate of 3 to 4x what other classes resource expenditure is while our endurance bar stays completely full for the most part. Bst discs surely don't have short enough cds to even dent it more than like 6% - which is easily regenned over the course of a fight. Add to that our Dichotomic is almost a carbon copy of one of our discs, but uses mana. That makes absolutely no sense to me. But I wouldn't even dare suggesting a change because just our luck they'd make us run out of end on top of running out of mana or completely break the RF->DF synergy.
You lose next to no DPS as a beastlord by cutting dots out, swapping to mana shawl (prayer aug) and doing the 6 nuke rotation on a burn. We however, are suffering very hard on long sustain from this nerf. I have done three events today since the patch and so far the only time I made it past 3 minutes with any mana was when I began with paragon up, we chained paragon until no one had it left, I canni'd at 85% mana and rod'd again at 85% mana and still only made it to about 165 seconds into high bokon. The real killer I didn't take into consideration was dicho, it's destroying my mana. If I had done nothing but cast dicho on cooldown for the 12 minute fight I still may have run out. I am trying only cast DoT's with GoM up but sometimes you get three in a row, sometimes you get none for 5 minutes...starting to feel like a wizard around here. Honestly I should probably make a wizard, if I can't even maintain the mana to give my ADPS whats the point? In order to do a 'proper' HHE rotation you'd usually dicho > rf > dicho > rejuv < dicho that's 30k mana in 80 seconds. Another 60k to maintain your three dots for those 80 seconds. That's 90k mana gone in 80 seconds, not even including any nukes or heals or anything else. Hell there are some events I cure and heal just to smooth it out, I can't even dicho now much less help heal.
Where are you getting the 6th from? There are only 5 that don't share cds unless you go all the way back to Blizzard Blast. Not sure why you are having problems maintaining Dichot if you are dropping dots or GoMing them. Consumption, Focused Para, and rod on cd with the occasional MGB Para worked just fine for me as best as I can remember before the dot revamp for the times I didn't have a bard. Unfortunately, I won't get to experience it first hand again for several more days.
