The thread on what auras to use to preserve mana reminded me of another question for the Devs (although I realize that SoE did this). I bought the Darkwater Mindlock robe awhile back, and was totally stoked having just beat Calix for the final unlock. Fortunately I looked at the spell effects before I did something like tribute the Flowing Etheric Robe thinking it's all an upgrade. My first thought was, "Oh goodie, we got 2 seconds off our nerfed self-rune recast," then I noticed the Effect differences. That ruined the high for the whole evening. After working through five raids to get it unlocked it's less valuable on a raid than the last one. Flowing Etheric Robe (According to Allakazam, Lucy, etc) Effect: Cerebral Intrusion 1: Empathy 2: Limit: Resist (Chromatic allowed) 3: Limit: Minimum Mana Cost (10) 7: Increase Poison Counter by 1 10: Decrease Magic Resist by 10 According to the Robe description: Spell effect: You invade your targets mind and sap their willpower, lowering their magical resist by 10 and increasing chromatic damage received by 2500. The stolen willpower is channeled to your group, restoring 2500 mana per tick. Darkwater Mindlock Robe (According to Allakazam, Lucy, etc) Effect: Cerebral Acumen1: Add effect: Form of Mana 7: Increase Current Mana by 1840 per tick Form of Mana 1: Illusion: Arcane Scrykin According to Robe description: Grants your party members new insight, replenishing 1840 mana every six seconds for 0:00:30. Testing it, the effect on the Darkwater lasts longer for a bit more mana, but wth? Why would a robe that takes five raids to unlock have less raid value than the one from the last expansion??? Now I have a new robe and another clickie to stow in the bags and take up a space on the hot bar. If I don't keep it as a clickie I lose a debuff, additional damage, and a higher group mana per tick. I had a friend test the mana regen and he says that Cerebral Acumen returns a little more mana over the period of effect, but I don't see that as all that significant as it's less than I can return in other ways. There's nothing about the illusion on the robe description, and even if there was it's never proc'd that I've noticed because if I had I'd have blocked it since I detest that illusion. And, of course, they're both on the same timer. I doubt anything will be done about it, but I sure hope that the next expansion isn't going to be worse than this one.
Cotf T2 Robe is 2333 mana/tick for 2 ticks, or 7k mana total (counting phantom tick). TDS Robe is 1840 mana/tick for 5 ticks, or 11k mana total (counting phantom tick).
I thought about this for a bit, and came to this conclusion. I do not have to have a mob to click on for the TDS robe, and it is a tad more mana. I carry both, and use the Cotf robe for raid dps. I am just happy to be able to play to the level we can right now. They have been on a role with unannounced, untested, unexpected nerfs so I'm just hoping they run out of energy tinkering with the class.
