Manathingies - Dainn's Mana Skills and Abilities

[Gaiety]

Term lovingly jacked from Silky.

Basic facts about Dainn's mana capabilities are listed here. I have also included my opinions of how many points should be applied to each. Please note that these are opinions, and ultimately your SP distribution among the manathingies should be based completely on your playstyle and existing INT equipment. PvP opinions are based on 1v1s only for now.


Basic manathingies
Natural passive MP Recovery - 1 MP every 2 seconds, or .5 MP per second
S-Charge - Recharges 1/7th of your MP, at an increasing rate. The first "tick" of S-charge takes about 1.5 to 2 seconds.


Skills

Mana Recovery
Passive: Gives you an additional <Skill Level> MP per second on top of your natural passive recovery.
Level 1: Recovers an additional 1 MP every second (60 MP per minute of less-than-full MP)
Level 8 (Max): Recovers an additional 8 MP every second (480 MP per minute of less-than-full MP)

Stage: Your point dump, but usually left at 0 or 1. Mana Increase, Mana Extension, S-charge, and scattered potion drops from mobs should keep you running.
PvP: Still your point dump, but pvpers will find more use in it than stagers. Generally, you'll want to run low or no Recovery if you have Extension, and high Recovery if you find your self running around quite a bit. Most useful when you're under the minimum MP to Fire Orb, Ice Wall, or Hand -> IA so that you can regenerate enough MP for you to use a skill that assists in S-charging or casting Extension.


Mana Increase
Passive: Increases your maximum MP by a set value.
Level 1: +100 MP
Each additional level: +80 MP
Level 8 (Max): +660 MP

Stage: Max. Dainn's S-charge recovers a set 1/7th of your total MP, meaning a higher start value will increase your MP charged per "tick" for those rush situations where you can't charge your MP to full.
PvP: Get 1 for the 100 MP, more if you need a higher start value so you don't run out of mana before putting a good dent into your opponent's HP. If you're running wtfhaxpro INT equips, you could even opt for 0, especially if you need that point elsewhere. Typically, you'll want enough MP to Orb, Fury, do a combo or two, BCB, then either Wall, Orb or Hand-IA to give yourself enough time to recharge or use Extension. If, however, you are running neither Extension nor Recovery, you might want to max it without further thought.


Mana Extension
Active: A buff that uses reagents to increase the maximum AND current MP of you and your surrounding party members.
Level 4
Reagents: 1 Huckleberry
MP: +700
Level 7
Reagents: 1 Huckleberry, 1 Mountain Ginseng
MP: +1300
Level 9 (Max)
Reagents: 1 Huckleberry, 1 Mountain Ginseng, 1 Black Pearl
MP: +1700
Reagents generally should not be a problem, since we should be getting the Voucher NPC soon.

Stage: 0 or 3. Having to recast it every 3 minutes can be a pain, but there are certain times where you won't have the luxury to S-charge for MP. Casting the buff on party members can be both good and bad, as it can't be overwritten by lower level buffs, commonly Light Shield and level 3 Magic Defense. Buffs can, however, be canceled by equal-skill-level buffs, which makes level 3 the recommended level for stages should you choose to get it.
PvP: 4, 7, or 9. Provided you're good enough to burn your mana before dying, Mana Extension outshines Mana Increase, even at level 4, especially since your lives tend to last under 3 minutes. Also replaces Mana Recovery for the most part, since the most useful period for Mana Recovery is when your MP is too low drive your opponent away long enough to recover MP. Since Mana Extension takes no MP to cast, and takes slightly less time than a 1-tick S-charge, getting your Extension in shouldn't be too much of a problem.


Concentration
Passive: Grants a chance to reduce MP cost when using a skill by 100%, i.e. a chance for each skill casted to cost 0 MP.
Level 1 - 3% chance for a skill to use no MP when casted.
Level 8 - 10% chance for a skill to use no MP when casted.

Both Stage and PvP: Unreliable, skip. Frankly, level 1 is too low of a chance for it to do anything drastic, and level 8 takes too many points for it to be worth it.


Special Thanks
sentythee
Everyone else listed in my other gui-oh wait, that's everyone, huh.


/end



v0.1
Just a quick write-up for now, I'll prettify it later. Feel free to reply with comments/criticism/whatever.

v0.2
Fixed S-charge value from 1/8th to 1/7th, clarified Mana Extension.

v0.3
Some more structure and base or something.

[Gatts]

Maybe not call it manathingies, maybe call it mana guide? mana management guide?

[Gaiety]

Nah, "Manathingies" is the title of the guide. Not changing it <_<;

[sentythee]

N> less opinions and more facts or more/better... padding.

Also, Dainn's mana skills are the most heavily dependent on equipment, which you didn't mention at all in your guide. Someone with +1500 mana from equipment might want to consider ditching that one point in mana increase. It's a somewhat extreme example, but it's enough to show that this guide is about as accurate as PE=mgh.

Other things that may or may not be included:
PvP Dainns should only put enough points into mana increase as is needed to not worry about running out of mana while not wasting points. "Enough" should be however much is needed to pull off a "full" combo + usual non-combo skills + BCB + whatever you use you recover mana * 2 + Hand of Earth + LGF + ice wall. The "*2", hand of earth, ice wall, and LGF because Siegs can use MD to stop you from recovering mana the first time. "Whatever you use to recover mana" refers to something like fire orb, which just buys some time.
If a PvP Dainn doesn't plan on stopping to recover mana, he should strongly consider getting level 7 or level 9 mana extension, otherwise level 0-4. The extra mana from 1-4 can be used to recover more mana (for example, Ice Wall --> Mana Extension --> Fire Orbs).
You should mention that having a level 7 mana recovery gives around 1300 mana every 3 minutes. Even if people see the 8mp/sec at level 8, the magnitude of the effect would be lost to too many people.

[Gaiety]

Thanks for the input, senty.

Added some stuff last night, expanded some stuff, still pretty bare-bones imo.

Also added lolconcentrate, for completion purposes >_>;

[sentythee]

That's better =3 But still not enough on equipment. Mana Recovery, Increase, Extension, and lolConcentrate are the four skills most dependent on equipment, and their levels are almost entirely dependent on equipment. Here's a short... thing... on equipment that should be easy to expand on:

For people without mana extension that don't plan to s-charge, this won't work well for spammers:
Your mana pool size should be dependent on your Vit and Dex. Strength/Damage doesn't affect any mana costs, so we can throw that out for now.
As you get a larger mana pool, you'll want more vit (for the hp) and dex (for the dodge) to live long enough to use your mana.
You don't want more mana than you can use, so we'll work the other way around and choose int based on Dex and Vit.

Before we go farther, let's find out a player's effective hp (approximate damage you can take, taking dodge into account).
Effective_hp = HP / (1-dodge_rate)
You'll get +1% dodge per 33 dex
dodge_rate = dex/3300
Effective_hp = HP / (1 - dex/3300)

For ratios (in balanced mode), pure comboers deal about 1.5 damage for every 1 mana point (melee damage has a ratio of x hp for 0 mp, so we'll ignore that). Pure spammers would deal about 4 damage for every 1 mana point, plus 0 damage per x mana for every missed spell (which is why this guide won't work for spammers). Taking Fury, Orbs, and Resets into account, the ratio would be closer to 2.25 damage per 1 mana point for most experienced Dainns. These are just estimates, we can get closer estimates once lunia comes out. These ratios will change by the level of the player (since mana cost is constant, but damage changes every level). 2.25 is the estimate for most level 58 players.

Mana per HP = Mana_cost/Damage_you_deal * Damage_you_deal / Damage_you_take
This works out because Damage_you_take is equal to your total HP.
To find the best value for damage_you_deal/damage_you_take, assume that damage_you_deal = damage_you_take. Why? Because if your opponent is better than you, you'll end up with leftover mana. If your opponent and you are equally skilled, you'll end up with no leftover mana. If your opponent is worse than you, you'll run out of mana after your opponent dies, and you'll still win the match.
New equation:
Mana per HP = Mana_cost/Damage_you_deal
We're using that estimate from earlier...
Mana per HP = 1 / 2.25
Mana = Effective_hp / 2.25
So if you have 5000 HP in balanced mode with 165 Dex, your effective_hp would be 5263, and you would want to aim for 2340 mana.
________________________________________

It'll need some cleaning up, but it should be accurate.
And I forgot to add in lolConcentrate. In the end, replace Mana with Effective_mana, which is equal to MP/(1-concentrate_%). The final equation should be Mana = (1-concentrate%) * HP / (2.25 * (1 - dex/3300))

Again, this is for people that don't want mana extension and don't want to S-charge.