Mana Regen Changes

One of the changes introduced in the recent patch was a tweaking of the mana regen formula for casters. It changed the formula so that the intellect stat improved the effectiveness of spirit in regenerating mana. I believe the reason that this was done was to make intellect a more desireable stat for healing classes, who had generally been stacking spirit and avoiding intellect.

This buff to the intellect stat appears to have had a fairly significant effect on raid consumables. Up until Patch 2.4, an Elixir of Major Mageblood was the preferred guardian elixir for healing casters. It gives 16 mana every 5 seconds regardless of any other contributing factors. Elixirs of Draenic Wisdom were generally considered the poor man's Guardian Elixir - only giving 30 Intellect and 30 Spirit.

The changes to the mana regen formula appear to have reversed this, at least for serious raiders. The general consensus appears to be that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs give the better regen results for a geared raider. Given that the Draenic Wisdom elixirs are taught by trainers and the Major Mageblood elixirs are taught by an expensive world drop recipe (300-400 gold is usual on Blackrock), along with the fact that the Mageblood ingredients are rarer, this is rife for interesting results.

So, how are these two different products selling at the moment?

Mageblood elixirs are going for slightly above 3 gold, while the average price of the Draenic Wisdom appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of 2 g 60s. Unfortunately i don't have historical data on these products, but i would be surprised if they were usually this close in cost in the past.

The ingredients for these 2 elixirs are also quite interesting at the moment. The mageblood elixirs are made from Ancient Lichen and Netherbloom. Both of these ingredients are reasonably uncommon, especially the Lichen which is only harvested in instances or rarely 'skinned'. The Draenic Wisdom elixirs are made from Felweed and Terocones. Both of those herbs are reasonably common, especially the ever-present felweed.

Strangely, ancient lichen are now selling for about 75s, compared to the terocones which are going for about 1g 40s. Given that both of these ingredients are used in a number of other recipes, and that ancient lichen is by far the rarer of them, I am surprised that the lichen are as cheap as they are. Given that lichen are used as ingredients in a number of DPS-enhancing elixirs and flasks, i expect their price to go up once more raiding guilds start getting serious about the Sunwell raid instance and the huge levels of DPS required.