The necromancer unity AA is costing mana to cast. I was under the impression AAs were not supposed to use mana. Mortifier's Unity. I try to cast it after a death and have to wait quite a few tics.
Some AA now have a mana cost associated with them. Started around 1-2 expansions ago. That would be a bit, I do not want to say overpowered, but it would be a bit.... not right to get a rez then immediately be able to self buff without issues. Especially considering the spells you would have to cast do cost mana.
I thought that was the point of it. For example, battle rezzing back into a fight. It's not immediate, but granted it's still better than having to memorize everything and cast them individually, then re-memorize your regular spells.
Yes that is part of the point of the unity spell line. But just like casting the spell versions of them, it takes mana. You do not get a battle res and immediately start casting damage spells. Same thing with this. For a ROS raiding magician with almost 200k mana, it is about 3% of my mana. Which comes out to around 6000 mana or so. A mod rod gets me that immediately...
No, the point of the aa is that they were really hurting to add new aas to the expansion and came up with this. For a few classes, it is even pretty good considering you would have to mem several spells to do the work and you can easily put them now in a recovery macro from death/rebuffing/etc. For a good number of classes, the unity aa provides...exactly one spell. I'm not positive, but I think the idea of an unity line would consist of at least 2 spells. At least that's what my copy of Webster's says... ...and have to get a little dig in about necros...a necro complaining about mana cost...isn't that like a fish complaining he's thirsty?
These lines are a huge huge relief and so useful, So often I didn't use these spells because I just accepted the risk of dieing in regular non-raid play over the inconvenience of unmemorizing 3+ vital spells, memming the buffs, buffing, & re-memming the vital spells ( often on multiple characters ). Don't about the mana use, this is one of the greatest AAs ever implemented .
tnot...let me introduce you to a command: /memspellset x With this command and the liberal use of spell sets, you can easily mem any set or subsets of spells and go on with your business. I use these all the time and they really make your life easier...especially when incorporated within macros. For example, I have aura macros available for all my aura toons. Macro is simple...takes out the last one or two spell slots and replaces them with my mainstay auras, casts the auras, then switches back to my main attack spell sequence. One button press on a toon and I know I'll have the aura(s) up and running in about 10 sec with the toon ready for the next mob. The key is making subset spellsets. My aura spellset only has one (or two for cleric...chanter is special since the class generally uses a long term aura and a short term one) spell on it. So memming the aura spellset is fast (at most two spells change), which also means changing back is fast. And since most classes don't get new long term auras to use every level bump, the spellsets are good for awhile (in fact, I didn't have to change mine for RoS). I'm not saying the aa unity lines are not really nice for a number of classes, but there are solutions that don't need the aa for only a little more work. That said, I have incorporated the unity aas into my rebuffing macros and have made my life easier across several classes.
@Goodn and spellsets I use them, too, and they are very useful. My biggest beef with them is the time it takes to load the spells. Time to cast, time to cooldown.... could we please skip the time (or most of it) to mem them?
As is expected when reading the description imo - "casts the highest of... that you have scribed in your book". So it's not a "spell" of itself, just (regularly) casts the highest you know (according to the level you upgraded the AA of) directly from your spellbook - without the need to mem them. I view these as a shortcut - and i'd wish there were more of that kind, it'd save us the burden of /memspellset mid-fights. From a Dev's point of view i guess that kind of AA is a way to give us (effectively) more spellgems than the old system would allow. (and most keys are used already anyways, 14 is already using the whole top bar up to and incl backspace, which - if i'm not mistaken - defaults to the map)
I don't think any half-serious player needs to be introduced to that. And while you describe it perfectly well and illustrate well it's use, it's no match to the functionality of the AA mentioned. Also, some classes (necros currently probably the most, but also my CLR when i raid with him to some extent) use different spells mid-fight that would require them to go though the process of changing spells (and need to wait out the loading/refresh time) while also NOT having some spell at their disposal during. (stopcast or ducking out in an emergency from a hotbutton?) So this AA's functionality is a welcome addition imo. And while currently it's "just" self-only buffs, i hope for more of the kind in the future!
I am pretty sure the bard fade AA uses mana. They increased the mana usage near the end of TDS or start of TBM if I recall. I could be wrong but I think it always used some mana but the amount it used was rather trivial until this change.
Its useless during fighting, before fight starts sure can hit this and get rebuffed. But during a fight it is quicker to mem the buff you want, cast it and switch to the next spellset than wait for unity to finish casting. i.e its fluff After a rez ? Raidsetting: you have a spellset with lich in it anyway and then unity is useless as you will get shaman buffs. Group: Same as raiding except you will maybe use this between mobs to get your hp buff back up Then you have added mana cost for the extra buffs you did not want. Not much mana (lich/hp buff). i.e still fluff To make this useful the casting time needs to be cut down dramatically to at least 1/10 th of what it is currently.
But nobody says you HAVE to use it, its your own choice to use or not. I like it because i do not have to change spells.
No one says you need to use it. But for some classes, this casts like 4-5 spells. Thats a huge change in time and annoyance factor.
It appears all Unity AA have some sort of cost albeit a small one. Paladins get an AA nuke and from day one that has had a mana cost, although it was hiked up a while back as part of what I as a player/customer would call a nerf. However this pales into insignificance to the super nerfing of Wizards last year, when all of their mana free nukes were given a mana cost. Dev's realised that mana-free nukes would allow Wizards to have some role in mana sapping events and that was allowing some raids to be completed with less than the 80% of personnel dead or dying. Or at least that's how I remember it. We were doing Maestro at the time, because we were suffering low numbers and Maestro was about all we could manage. It appeared that this change and I think a change to bards also meant that it became much more difficult to do with a small force - some Leet Crew were probably grouping it, and that was that. No more raiding for us. We would call it here in the UK " Moving the goal posts". Was anyone exploiting things? No. Was it a fair change? No. Did they re-tune any events after the change? No. Back to topic - there are some classes that still have mana free nukes, but it would be unfair to mention them, lest the trolls and troublemakers see fit to meddle, or a Dev has his pen and pencil handy. That said the unity line was introduced with a mana cost, so it hasn't been something we got for years and years for nothing then had a cost added, so it hardly warrants much in the way of dissatisfaction. As a Pally Ive been able to cast it with the little bit of mana you get once rezzed. As a necro you shouldn't have any problem mustering enough to cast it, post raid rez.
This AA line as a SK is the best thing ever, I click it every 2 hours or so or after I die and it saves me the hassle of loading my buffs and individually casting them one by one. Other classes may not be as useful but any class that has 4-6 self buffs you have to keep up on yourself its great, I don't care about mana cost it's worth it.
