Mana management is not tricky. We all do it, and we’re all good at it. This post is going to go over a new macro that I believe could increase your damage throughput!
Right now, we melt face full throttle until we get the warning that our mana is low. It doesn’t happen every fight, but when it does, we can either pop a mana pot (thereby costing us 15 seconds of increased DPS if we use another potion normally), or hop into aspect of the viper. This is off the global coldown.
Aspect of the viper cuts your damage done in half. In return, you get a percent of your mana back every 3 seconds, as well as a fixed amount of mana per shot (based on your weapon speed, so if you have a 3.0 speed weapon, you get 3% of your max mana back). Your goal when you’re in regen mode is to try and get the minimum amount of mana needed to finish the fight. The closer you are to 0 mana when the boss collapses (/explodes/implodes/walks away a reformed man), the less damage you wasted in viper.
If you want to refill your mana bar quickly, you can just do your rotation as usual. Many people do this. It’s not a bad thing, however sometimes you don’t want to go full throttle regen- you just want to splash-n-go (like a NASCAR driver) that will get you to the end of the fight. Timing that is tricky, but I’ve found some macros (written by Ongor of the Nozdormu-EU) that help.
Change your steady shot macro to include this:
/cast [modifier: alt] !Aspect of the Viper
/cast Steady Shot
This will let you hold alt while you fire a steady shot to put yourself into viper. Do this when you can afford to fire two in a row, so you’ll also get the 3 second viper percentage tick. This little splash of mana should be enough to keep you going in your rotation until you are back down to steady shots.
You can macro all your non-steady shots in a similar fashion to get you back into aspect of the dragonhawk. The reasoning is that since all shots (edit: except explosive shot, which you can use for a massive blast of mana during viper) return the same amount of mana, you should use your cheapest shots in viper, and keep your heavier hitting (more expensive) shots for when you’ll do the most damage with them.
/cast [modifier: alt] !Aspect of the Dragonhawk
/cast Kill Shot (or whatever)
This aspect dancing will probably cost you DPS if you do it by hand because you can only move your fingers so fast. It’s also barely better than just staying in viper and firing your normal rotation until you’re at your target mana. The DPS increase is negligible, I believe, however the advantage of being able to get mana efficiently in such small chunks should allow you to finish the fight off closer to 0 mana.
Here’s the usage guide: hold alt when you’re about to fire a steady shot, and you’ll be changed automatically. After firing your second steady, hold alt while you fire one of your other shots to leave viper.
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
Can we just have Focus already? Geez.
Nice tips!
Focus = fail.
How would this go down if you just left of the modifier? That is, if you were in Viper every time you shot off a SS and were back in DH every time you shot something else? How quickly does that deplete mana (or does it deplete it at all?)
I’ve been meaning to experiment with that, but I haven’t gotten around to it. So I was wondering if anyone had done so…?
The only time that wouldn’t cost you DPS is when you happened to reduce your overall mana usage rate to exactly what you needed to finish the fight OOM. Otherwise, you’re just robbing yourself of half your steady shot damage for no reason.
I just use a cast sequence macro bound to F1, that toggles between dragonhawk and viper
I have one bound as well, but this allows you to change automatically.
Smart trick, but using a manapotion instead would be alot easier will not cost u that much dps (?)
Wouldn’t it be enough to have the alt modifier on steady shot and just have /cast !Aspect of the Dragonhawk without a modifier on every other ability?
That would work, but also would mess with those very few fights when you have to use aspect of the wild.
Its a nice idea ill have to try it out but when every I test mana pot of haste in a fight which I will run out of mana i always find i get the most dps with the mana potion. Also a trick I have found if not to use Rapid fire + readiness straight the way in a fight if its a longer encounter and you dont think you will get 3 readinesses out of the fight. Wait till you are like a little way into the fight but not to late. This will allow you, if you have 1/2 point in rapid recoup to get a bit of mana back instead of keeping it topped up at the start of the fight.
It should be clarified that this macro only works if you mouse click on your tool bar to cast those shots. If you are like me and key bound all your shots, alt + bound key will not work.
Not for me- unless I already have alt-whatever keybound
Amazing.
It takes a bit to get used to alt-click when you switch but testing it on dummies made me *extremely* happy. Marginal DPS loss with great mana regenearation. Much much better than what I was doing before (just switch to viper => rotate => back to Hawk).
This is actually just about the same mana per second as switching to viper and staying in until full, except it allows for you to manage it better. You can trade DPS for mana in small, efficient chunks, and never get more than you need.
Playing on a dummy I could notice a low DPS loss, compared to my typical sitch => rotation => switch. I just unloaded my mana until like 2-3% and kept playing with this macro to always stay at that value. DPS loss was marginal, considering the precise micro-management, and you end the fight with no mana (good thing).
I think it’s good because macroing the aspect switch withing shots makes your overall rotation faster.
The only suggestion I would make is to toss in a Viper Sting if the boss has mana.
I have done that, but it does cost DPS. Probably less than getting an equivalent amount of mana from Viper, though. The issue is that you can’t get it in small doses, which might lead to you finishing the fight with too much mana. I’ll happily use this on adds all night long, of course.