Cooldown to mana Ratio

[Ender]

Hi, I am trying to determine how much mana one second of cooldown is worth. I would like to hear your personal opinion on the subject.

 

[Xonok]

Hi, I am trying to determine how much mana one second of cooldown is worth. I would like to hear your personal opinion on the subject.

Firstly it depends on the map.
In normal maps it seems to be about 10 mana per second. I'm not sure though, I haven't actually calculated it. Compare blizzard vs flame strike.

 

[Kitabatake]

Really depends on the map genre.

If you have a ton of units with active abilties (an RTS map), you can have long cooldowns.
If you have a map where players only control a single unit, you're better off with short or no cooldowns at all.

 

[muzzel]

who says cooldown has to correlate with manacost :O

 

[Ender]

who says cooldown has to correlate with manacost :O,

when calculating how good a spell is, it is very important. Think about it this way, what would you prefer, a spell with 100 mana no cooldown, or the same spell with 50 mana and 5 second cooldown.

 

[Arhowk]

when calculating how good a spell is, it is very important. Think about it this way, what would you prefer, a spell with 100 mana no cooldown, or the same spell with 50 mana and 5 second cooldown.

thats not a question to be answered without background.

in my map 100 mana would be absolutely atrocious because you can only use it 10 times before running to town (pots wouldnt restore that fast)

 

[WaterKnight]

Think about it this way, what would you prefer, a spell with 100 mana no cooldown, or the same spell with 50 mana and 5 second cooldown.

Situational. Some spells are designed the way that you can burst them very hard but they are expensive. If your spell is a non-stacking dot like Acid Bomb, the low cooldown won't be too advantageous for it. If it is a simple additive instant heal like Holy Light, a lower cooldown will multiply its effectiveness especially if you are drawn into quick fights.

 

[muzzel]

I agree with WaterSlut, it all depends on the situation. Sometimes simply having two spells that do the same (even if one is worse in every aspect) can be useful, assume some spellcaster in a RPG - using both spells he has higher burst damage output.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Are you talking about a method to restore colldowns faster (at the cost of mana)?
Or are you talking about the average mana drain per second of a skill?

 

[muzzel]

Hes talking about some magical nonexisting ratio of a spells manacost and its cooldown.

 

[Ender]

Are you talking about a method to restore colldowns faster (at the cost of mana)?

actually its kind of similar to this, what i am trying to determine is how much a spell costs, in cooldown, casting time, and mana. I am using mana as the unit of measurement.

@Arhowk you are right, it depends on how much mana the usual characters have.

edit: @ Muzzel how is it nonexisting, what would you rather have a spell that has 50 mana cost or a ten second cooldown? I guess what it really turns into is how many times you can cast a spell per minute.

 

[ap0calypse]

You could try to create such a fixed ratio, but there are many spells where this ratio may not be the deciding factor.
Such spells include summons, shields, morphs, Banish-like abilities, Wind Walk, Channeling spells, ultimates and maybe more.

If I look at the Warcraft spells excluding the ones mentioned above, the average is probably around 12 mana/second.
Still, there are more exceptions than spells that do fit in this category.

Personally, I think cooldown should depend on the kind of spell, certainly not the mana cost.
Mana cost is an indication of how strong the spell is, not how long it should take to cast it again.