Mana Potion usage?

[pajakulebrc]

I really dont understand this item.

It requires you to first generate some mana by other means, then use some mana in order to even trigger it.

You can technically trigger it by other potion below it, but then you would only get half the potential benefit, so some mana-consuming item is kinda needed as well.

It costs a total of 6 gold, takes up two spots, you can just get two blueberries and in a typical game, they would generate more mana and luck for you than the potion. Plus they are really useful for speeding up other food (especially thanks to the one backpack slot dimension).

The only usage for this item that comes to mind is if you intend to make a lamp build, but even then - yea the potion is good to give you mana and luck really fast at the start of battle, but unless you have some mana-sink, youre not going to get the self-activation, so you will need to place it on top two stoneskins to get the full 8 mana + 2 luck or something like that.

It just feels like a mana potion that gives you big chunk of mana would be useful to trigger expensive mana sinks like the lamp or book of light, but in order to trigger the potion you need small mana sink like spectral dagger or magic staff, which completely defeats the purpose, because these will eat all the mana before you get into the book of light range, so you need some continous mana generation anyways to outpace your smaller mana consuming items.

It would make sense if the trigger was when "something tries to use mana", meaning you could jump start it that way, but having to first generate mana, then consume it, that just makes this potion kinda useless.

[Bumc]

Would be much better if it was 5 mana, then you could have 2 heal pots under the same mana pot used as a safety net against burst builds.
Get to 10 mana -> pop book as soon as you take lotta damage to prevent 5 seconds losses.

[Bumc]

Update: a single mana pot still works decently well in a ranger build as an insurance.
I had a mana pot supported by 1 health and 1 armor feeding into a stamina pot and 2 blueberries for actual mana generation.

In short fights health/armor fired before mana and made sure I get book popped.
And in longer fights mana fired on its own and gave a bit more stamina push without waiting for fatigue.

[Hurkyl]

Mana potions have all of that multi-activation stuff potions do, so you can get a lot more than 4 mana out of it.

My assumption is that it would work best in a build centered around Magic Staff. It can be pretty mana hungry when hasted, and the potions would let you front-load your mana generation to ensure all of your early attacks trigger the effect.

Alternatively, 4 mana would trigger a critwood staff, so you could keep the crits coming.

Although the idea of rigging things to ensure an early book of light sounds useful too.

[GeXile]

the 1 luck you get is good enough as an argument for the pot if it procs multiple times in a doubble belt, even for non mana builds but crit builds i have used it as a multipop topfiller. not bad at all in my eyes.

[Bumc]

Upd2: manapot belt is bonkers in a wand build.
Regular wand, don't upgrade to critwood, immediately fires off to 30-40 mana and starts stacking damage without any need to ramp up.
Can jumpstart armor/shield setup as well without any need to use 6 bag slots on body armor.

[phantom]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Would be much better if it was 5 mana, then you could have 2 heal pots under the same mana pot used as a safety net against burst builds.
Get to 10 mana -> pop book as soon as you take lotta damage to prevent 5 seconds losses.

Mana potion looks more like something to support burst builds. You could just use a blueberry or any mana generating item if you wanted that book use though.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by phantom:

Mana potion looks more like something to support burst builds. You could just use a blueberry or any mana generating item if you wanted that book use though.

That doesn't help if you want the book(s) to trigger while the burst build is going off.

[Bumc]

You die before you get 10 mana from normal generation against any burst build.

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Bumc:

Upd2: manapot belt is bonkers in a wand build.
Regular wand, don't upgrade to critwood, immediately fires off to 30-40 mana and starts stacking damage without any need to ramp up.
Can jumpstart armor/shield setup as well without any need to use 6 bag slots on body armor.

Just tried this and was not impressed at all. Even if the magic staff is ramping from the start the damage is very far from "bonkers". But I tried this on Reaver. The mana pot enabling luck generation can be good for Ranger, but it doesn't really do ♥♥♥♥ for Reaver. I feel like the mana pot needs to be made more worthwhile for Reaver, if not also in general.

[Lucky_Star_Fan]

Same. I think blueberries do the job better, cheaper and faster. The problem with mana potions is once they activate they're gone. Wands are great, but scaling is important for them, which mana pots aren't going to provide.

I think mana potions can stay, but they should probably just be a 4g shop item, rather than a combine.

[phantom]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by phantom:

Mana potion looks more like something to support burst builds. You could just use a blueberry or any mana generating item if you wanted that book use though.

That doesn't help if you want the book(s) to trigger while the burst build is going off.

Why are you using books in a burst build?

[phantom]

Originally posted by TripSin:

Originally posted by Bumc:

Upd2: manapot belt is bonkers in a wand build.
Regular wand, don't upgrade to critwood, immediately fires off to 30-40 mana and starts stacking damage without any need to ramp up.
Can jumpstart armor/shield setup as well without any need to use 6 bag slots on body armor.

Just tried this and was not impressed at all. Even if the magic staff is ramping from the start the damage is very far from "bonkers". But I tried this on Reaver. The mana pot enabling luck generation can be good for Ranger, but it doesn't really do ♥♥♥♥ for Reaver. I feel like the mana pot needs to be made more worthwhile for Reaver, if not also in general.

I got lucky one round and a bunch of mana orbs for spectral dagger. it worked okay. probably would have been a lot stronger on Ranger especially with crit wood staff. (Unless spectral can't crit.)

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by phantom:

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

That doesn't help if you want the book(s) to trigger while the burst build is going off.

Why are you using books in a burst build?

The context was defending against burst builds.

But I use them in burst builds. For the same reason: defend against other burst builds. Especially ones that are also using books.

If I can't actually hurt them., it doesn't matter if I've built a bigger and faster burst.

[Jamie A. Rose]

I think that it would be a lot better if the mana potion went off right away. "Start of Battle: Generate 5 mana." In it's current state, there's no reason to pick mana potion over strong healing potion.

[Bumc]

Tbh I like the logic pattern of potions, the only one that doesn't make sense is pestilence as you cannot control it. Others can be stacked in all kinds of meaningful ways to adapt to situation. If you just throw "start of battle" cause it would nullify that part of optimization.