Guide About spellcosts, intelligence, and wynn 2.0

2022/08/08 UPDATE: As of patch 11, many spellcost items have been nerfed, and mana has been rebalanced a bit! :pray:
While the specific numbers (and some of the complaints in this thread) have changed, the concepts remain as relevant as ever.

If you or a loved one is confused at the latest item patch nerfs and have some time to spare, do give this thread a read!

Disclaimer: The following analysis assumes that spellspam, and variety in spellspam builds, is desirable in Wynncraft 2.0. If this is not the case from a design perspective, everything goes out the window.*Footnote 0

Recently, with the release of the Wynncraft 2.0 changelog and item changelog, there has been a lot of discussion about the state of spellspam, spell costs, and intelligence. This thread gives a brief overview of these changes and presents a method for analyzing the effectiveness of various factors contributing to the existence of spellspam (or lack thereof). We will also use this method to analyze spellspam in 1.20.4, as well as how it has changed during the release of Wynncraft 2.0 hero beta and subsequent balance patches, providing a critique of the changes made and providing some suggestions for how I think game balance can be improved.

Spoiler: TL;DR, and table of contents

• Chapter 0: Cost reduction, particularly intelligence and raw spellcost, can be reframed as mana regeneration.
• Chapter 1-3: Just some history.
• Chapter 4: Many of the current spellcost providing items in wynn2 are extremely overpowered, providing 2-3x the mana value of existing items with comparable other stats.
• Chapter 5: However, strong spellspam in wynn2 is actually possible without abusing any new items, or even intelligence.
• Chapter 6: The Item Team’s ability to balance the game is severely restricted by the presence of locking mana cost reductions and mana abilities present in the ability tree.
• Chapter 7: I believe there are ways to fix this. They will require a lot of work and sweeping changes.

There is also a companion video by @Saya on this topic! It hits most of the key points I go over in this thread, but in video format. Watch this if your eyes are glazing over from too much text, or for an extended TL;DR :)


Before we get started, here's some basic terminology that will be used throughout this thread:

wynn2: Wynncraft 2.0 (beta servers)
1.20.4: Current wynncraft (live servers)
ID: identification (Item stat)
MR: mana regeneration ID
MS: mana steal ID

In this thread, “spellspam” will refer to both MR based spellspam and MS based “spellsteal” – we are only concerned with the raw numbers for now, not so much with playstyle specifics.

Enough introduction. Let's dive right in!

Spoiler: Chapter 0: But, How Do We Analyze Everything?

To properly analyze the effect of mana, spell costs, and intelligence, we will need a way to quantify their effects. For this thread, we will make an assumption of a “rate limited spellspam build.” Here’s how it works:

Suppose you are a warrior in 1.20.4, and you attack by casting uppercut and bash once every second. Uppercut and bash cost 9 and 6 mana respectively, so your raw mana consumption is 15 mana per second.

This means, in order to support spellspam warrior, you will need to supply 15 mana per second (otherwise you will lose mana over time, and eventually run out.) Luckily, there are many different sources of mana in the game. The four that we will consider are intelligence, raw spellcost reduction, mana IDs, and natural mana regen.*Footnote 1

By far the strongest source of mana in 1.20.4 is intelligence. Fundamentally, even though intelligence behaves as a percent spellcost reduction, under this method of analysis it behaves identically*Footnote 2 to an absurd amount of mana regeneration. For example, using the same example as above (9 cost uppercut and 6 cost bash, once per second), at 105 INT (67% cost reduction), the spellcosts are reduced by 6 and 4 respectively, saving you 10 mana per second. This is equivalent to a whopping 50/5s MR!

The second strongest source of mana is raw spellcost reduction. Raw spellcost is deceptively effective. For example, consider Dragon’s Eye Bracelet: It has only -1 raw 3rd spell cost, which, in our above example, saves you 1 mana per second (since uppercut is cast once per second). This is equivalent to a full 5/5s MR!

Imagine if this was what dragon's eye bracelet looked like ingame.... because that's how strong it is.​

The above two points are the most important takeaways of this entire section. Cost reduction, particularly intelligence and raw spellcost, can be reframed as mana regeneration. This will enable us to analyze their potency, and the effect of wynn2 changes.

The third most potent source of mana in 1.20.4 is the MR and MS IDs. They give you some mana over time, or when you attack mobs. For the rest of this article we will be analyzing assuming mana steal is “100% effective”, i.e. 1/3s MS = ⅓ mana per second. This is usually an optimistic estimate, for your own analysis you may want to reduce or increase the weight of MS depending on the build or scenario.

Last but not least, we have natural mana regeneration. In 1.20.4, this natural regeneration contributes 1 mana per second, meaning it is equivalent in power to 5/5s MR. Not too much, but definitely a significant source of mana.

Spoiler: Basic analysis example, using a wynn2 build

We can use this framework to analyze builds and see where their mana is coming from. For example, take this build from @touhoku:
https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/build...TN0OM09a-Y171r1J-Y1g000010069IzzDIJ+-ldNMIsjT

The base spellcosts are 30/30 (bash/uppercut), and we will assume that the player casts each spell once per second.

Code:

Mana consumption:    30 + 30                   = -60    mana/sec
Intelligence:        60 * 0.441                =  26.46 mana/sec
Cost:                -5 1st cost, -9 3rd cost  =  14    mana/sec
Mana Regeneration:   89/5s                     =  17.8  mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:                            =  5     mana/sec
-----
Net mana over time:                            = +3.26  mana/sec

There is net mana gain per second, which means the build can sustain spellspam.

Another interesting perspective can be gained by analyzing how much each component of the build contributes to the final mana totals. Using the same build, we can record how much mana value each component of the build is contributing:

Fun fact: Pro tempore is actually a net negative mana item! Also, accessory mana is balanced. Yeah.​

From this analysis it becomes obvious just how critical intelligence is to this build functioning: Intelligence and natural regen alone provides about half of the build’s mana sustain! The rest is split among the armor and accessories, with Anima-Infused Cuirass contributing by far the largest share. (Remember this! It will become relevant soon.)

Spoiler: Chapter 1: Spellspam in 1.20.4

In 1.20.4, most classes attack by alternating their 1st and 3rd spells, which usually cost 6 and 8 mana*Footnote 3. Most endgame players can cast about 2 spells per second, so we will continue using that as a reference point, meaning we have to account for the 14 mana per second consumed.

Among high intelligence builds, it is fairly common to build to 105 (67%) INT, reducing the spellcosts by 4 and 5 respectively, and then add a grookwarts accessory for an additional -1 raw spellcost. This gives a breakdown like so:

Code:

Required mana:      -6 + -8  = -14 mana/sec
Intelligence:       4 + 5    =  9  mana/sec
Raw cost:                    =  1  mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:          =  1  mana/sec
-----
Unaccounted mana drain:      = -3  mana/sec

This leaves 3 mana/sec left to be accounted for by MR/MS, which can be filled fairly reasonably (Diamond Hydro Bracelet and Eyes on All both supply 1 mana/sec, just to give a sense of scale.)


For those a bit more familiar with the meta, you may know that Demon Tide and Orange Lily are two extremely popular items for building with lower intelligence. Using our framework, we can evaluate just how powerful these items are!

Spoiler: Demon Tide Analysis

Suppose you have a build at 68 (50%) intelligence. Intelligence reduces your costs by 7 (-3 1st, -4 3rd). Demon tide reduces these further, giving -39% 1st spell cost (-1.17, rounding down to -2) and -32% 3rd spell cost (-1.28, rounding down to -2 again). Running the same analysis:

Code:

Required mana:             = -14 mana/sec
Intelligence:       3 + 4  =  7  mana/sec
Demon tide:         2 + 2  =  4  mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:        =  1  mana/sec
-----
Unaccounted mana drain:    = -2  mana/sec

Even with only 68 intelligence, adding Demon Tide is even more potent than pushing intelligence to 105 and adding a spellcost item! This is the power of medium intelligence Demon Tide builds – 2 mana/sec can easily be accounted for in accessories and armor, letting you stack damage and more offensive/defensive skill points instead of intelligence.

Spoiler: Orange Lily Analysis

Suppose you have a build at 68 (50%) intelligence. Orange Lily gives -3 raw 3rd spell cost and 2/5s MR. So, we have:

Code:

Required mana:             = -14  mana/sec
Intelligence:       3 + 4  =  7   mana/sec
Orange Lily cost:          =  3   mana/sec
Orange Lily MR:     2/5s   =  0.4 mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:        =  1   mana/sec
-----
Unaccounted mana drain:    = -2.6 mana/sec

And we haven’t even added a grookwarts accessory!

A popular build method is to take 68 intelligence Orange Lily, and add Draoi Fair, which adds another 1 mana/sec. This leaves only 1.6 mana/sec left to account for, which is easily achieved with the 4 free armor slots and 3 free accessory slots left. With an extra 37 skill points to throw around in offense or defense, Orange Lily punches well above its weight class compared to other endgame legendary weapons.

Based on the above analyses, we can see that both Demon Tide and Orange Lily contribute extreme amounts of mana value to builds they are included in (4 and 3.4 mana/sec respectively). Compare this to Aquarius: A chestplate with 110 INT requirement and a whopping 7 mana regen contributes… a mere 1.4 mana per second.

For the rest of this thread, we will ignore Demon Tide and other percent spellcost based items, for two reasons: the percent spellcost nerf and rounding changes in wynn2 make it mostly irrelevant for wynn2 intelligence based classbuilding because they are simply much weaker than raw spellcost items.*Footnote 1

Spoiler: Chapter 2: Wynn2 Beta: The Death of Spellspam

With wynn2’s release, Salted said this:

Spoiler alert: It was every bit as dramatic as it appears.

Let’s take a sample 1.20.4 build, an Infidel build from @RenZenthio:
https://wynnbuilder.github.io/#4_0D80K70JL0tv0K20TQ0OJ0Ji09a0U0y1r1Y001g00001006CI

Applying our mana distribution analysis to this build, and assuming that the player casts 2 spells per second, we find the following:

Code:

Required Mana:      -6 + -9  = -15   mana/sec
Intelligence:       4 + 6    =  10   mana/sec
Raw cost:                    =  1    mana/sec
Mana Regen:         10/5s    =  2    mana/sec
Mana Steal:         5/3s     =  1.67 mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:          =  1    mana/sec
-----
Total:                       = +0.67 mana/sec

This build sustains spellspam, by a decent margin (which is good, for accounting for missed melees for mana steal, etc.) Notice that intelligence takes up 10 mana/sec of the required 15 mana/sec!

Lets see what happens if we apply the intelligence changes, ignoring everything else!

Code:

Required Mana:      -6 + -9  = -15   mana/sec
Raw cost:                    =  1    mana/sec
Mana Regen:         10/5s    =  2    mana/sec
Mana Steal:         5/3s     =  1.67 mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:          =  1.71 mana/sec (INT boosted)
-----
Total:                       = -8.62 mana/sec

This one is… not even CLOSE to sustaining spellspam. You will run out of mana in under 5 seconds, even accounting for the 70% increase in total mana pool size.

Spoiler: But wait! Didn’t wynn2 add more mana and costs in the ability tree?

Yes it did! If you run battle monk you can get lower spellcosts.
A simulation of this scenario is here: https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder#7_0D80K70JL0tv0K201wCI-10000MDraoi Fair Prenerf024054080UThe Order of the Grook0I010K0L010K0M010y0O010P0Q010P0o0103D0z0109d1B013360OJ0Ji09a0U0y001Y001g00001006CIzzDIJ+-ldNPvTok0

where 0 intelligence was assigned because INT does not affect mana costs.
Running the calculation (using wynn2 mana values):

Code:

Required mana:      30 + 30  = -60    mana/sec
Raw cost:                    =  6     mana/sec (Pre-nerf Draoi Fair)
Mana Regen:         50/5s    =  10    mana/sec
Mana Steal:         25/3s    =  8.33  mana/sec
Natural Mana Regen:          =  8.55  mana/sec (INT boosted)
-----
Total:                       = -27.12 mana/sec

Hmm. Odd. Still can’t even spellspam for 10 seconds. Notice that the entire build only provides 24.33 mana/sec from raw cost and mana IDs, meaning that to get this build to cycle, you would need to double the mana sustain from IDs. Quite a drastic move!

For high INT 1.20.4 builds, intelligence alone accounts for about ⅔ of the entire build’s mana value, much much more than could be provided with item IDs. This massive discrepancy is, in a nutshell, the reason why this intelligence nerf would have required changes to basically the entire item pool, or extremely strong mana support from the ability tree itself – none of which were present.

Spoiler: Chapter 3: The Intelligence Partial Revert

Whew. we've been here for awhile. This is going to be a text-heavy section, so enjoy this meme for a change!

IMs saving the playerbase from intelligence balance changes (2022 colorized)​

Basically the intelligence nerf was not workable. Not without sweeping changes. Not fast enough.
So a compromise was reached: Intelligence would be nerfed, but not that severely. Instead of capping at 80.8% spellcost reduction, it would max at 50% spellcost reduction at 150 skill points. This allows for some spellspam but it is still pretty limited.

For example, @touhoku provided this build (same build as in Chapter 0):
https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/build...TN0OM09a-Y171r1J-Y1g000010069IzzDIJ+-ldNMIsjT
which manages to sustain spellspam at 2 spells per second, just barely. (See Chapter 0 for the full breakdown.)

However, there are two properties of this build that contribute to this: First, the base spell costs for the build are actually very low – thanks to taking nearly every spellcost upgrade on the ability tree, the build starts at a mere 30 cost Bash and 30 cost Uppercut (20% lower than the equivalent mana cost in 1.20.4). This in itself is already restrictive – it forces the player to specify their ability tree a certain way if they want spellspam, which somewhat defeats the freedom that is otherwise granted by the ability tree.

In addition, you may notice something funny about the mana distribution if you look at the per-item mana contribution:

When the imposter is sus (but its extremely obvious) (and the imposter is a hive item)​

Anima-infused Cuirass is providing an absolutely bonkers amount of mana value – as much as two or three high mana pieces of gear!

For comparison, here’s some other high mana value items (in wynn2 units):
Chain Rule: 14.33 (costs + mana steal)
Electro Mage’s Boots: 12 (6+6)

yeah no kidding theres like literally only two other ones

Really only Chain Rule and Electro Mage’s Boots compare with Anima-Infused Cuirass, and both of them come with a very high non INT skillpoint requirement. Anima-Infused Cuirass even explicitly locks out STR, which makes combining it with Chain Rule nearly impossible; combining it with Electro Mage leads to mediocre builds in practice due to low damage values. In summary, all existing high mana value items are pretty restrictive when it comes to building.

Here’s some other highish mana value items:

Brainwash: 13.87 (pre-nerf), 9.27 (post-nerf), (mixed mana)
Paradox, Galleon: 8.67 (all mana steal)
Phantasmagoria: 8.07 (mostly mana steal)
Resurgence: 7.8 (all mana regen)
Guillotine, Deux: 6.93 (mixed mana)

From this list, Brainwash and Paradox severely limit the builder’s options by locking out intelligence, Phantasmagoria forces you to play without defence, Galleon and Resurgence are both mythics, and Deux/Guillotine… don’t really compare to Anima-Infused anymore tbh. In addition, every item on this short list (except Resurgence) relies heavily on mana steal to make up its high mana value.*Footnote 4

While it is possible to build spellspam using weakened intelligence, it requires a very narrow combination of ability tree configuration and item selection, centralizing the meta onto a few limited items. This leads to more limited variety in spell builds, and a stagnant meta.

The above statement is actually untrue, but for all the wrong reasons. I'll touch on this more in Chapter 5. We're getting there.

Spoiler: Chapter 4: Oops! All Spellcosts

Let’s rewind a few days. Amidst all the hype around item changes and hero beta, the IMs started teasing, and then releasing, new items and item changes. Things like this:

touhoku new EA spell item​

And nobody batted an eye. We were all taken for fools.

I honestly don’t know why people did not seem to realize this sooner – perhaps classbuilders were caught up in the excitement of new items, or in “touhoku EA spell item”, or just seeing cool uniques get uses like Condensation, Scaldsteppers, and Steamstone. I myself only realized how insanely overpowered these new items and changed items were like, 4 days ago or so.

A quick glance confirms that each of these items is a mana value powerhouse: Aphotic gives 9 mana value, while also giving tierdrop and high spell damage; Wasteland Azalea, Condensation, and Scaldsteppers weirdly are all high damaging boots with 8 mana value. Steamstone is probably the most balanced but still sits at a comfy 7.67 mana value, along with some skill points and damage IDs.

Behold, the worst offender of them all:

mmmmmmyes anyone got an anaerobic on HB? can i haz​

12 mana value (on par with Anima-Infused Cuirass). High air damage bonus. High HP. Skill Points. Relatively unrestrictive skillpoint requirement. It also has great elemental defence and four powder slots. This item has absolutely cracked mana, damage, and defensive stats and basically zero downsides. Anyone who looks at this item now and thinks it is any semblance of balanced needs to get their head checked.

I honestly don’t particularly fault the IMs for this kind of stuff – the forums/discord mob yells at them that spellspam must be revived, in the face of intelligence nuking, so they do just that. And these items certainly revived spellspam, but at a steep price: the introduction of many items that are far more powerful than other comparable items currently in existence.

In 1.20.4, the existing “mana batteries” were largely balanced due to being separated by their skill requirements – you couldn’t effectively use Brainwash together with Anima-Infused Cuirass, or with Chain Rule. This kind of item design allows individually overpowered items to act as the “centerpiece” of a build, and can work to some degree as long as it is impractical to combine these centerpieces together. However, this challenge becomes much more difficult as more centerpieces are added, as would be required to promote diversity in build making – or else you risk having the same 3-4 items appearing as centerpieces in any spellspam build.

In short, many of the current spellcost providing items in wynn2 are extremely overpowered, providing 2-3x the mana value of existing items with comparable other stats. They are also an item balance nightmare – as they exist right now, they can hold entire builds together, but to create variety would require adding far more centerpieces while ensuring they cannot effectively be used together, a task that becomes exponentially harder the more centerpieces are added.

Spoiler: Chapter 5: The Spellspam Was In You All Along

Enough about the new cost items. What if we ignore them entirely?

Take a look at this build:

https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/build...N0Ji0Qw1f2C-E11001g00001037cCzzDIJ+-ldtbopaz2

It is a 0 intelligence build, in wynn2, using zero new items, which manages to cast spells continuously with an uppercut-uppercut-bash spell cycle.

Spoiler: Detailed calculations

This calculation is slightly more involved than before, because the spell cycle no longer fits neatly into a single second. Instead, we will assume uppercut-uppercut-bash occurs over 1.5 seconds (using the same spellcasting rate of 2 spells per second as earlier).

Starting from 35 Bash cost (+5 due to spell repeat penalty) and 30 Uppercut cost, we see that the total mana consumption per second is 63.33 mana/s. (95 mana, consumed over 1.5 seconds.)

The effect of 1st/3rd spell cost reduction must be handled differently. Over 1.5 seconds, 1 bash and 2 uppercut are cast; this translates to ⅔ bashes/second and 4/3 uppercuts/second. This means that each -1 bash cost will only save us ⅔ mana/s, while each -1 uppercut cost will save 4/3 mana/s.

Combining all of this information, and calculating as before:

Code:

Required mana:      (35 + 30*2) / 1.5             = -63.33 mana/s
Raw cost:           6 * 2/3 (Bash cost)
                      + 18 * 4/3 (Uppercut cost)  = 28 mana/s
Mana Regen:         17/5s                         = 3.4 mana/s
Mana Steal:         82/3s                         = 27.3 mana/s
Natural Mana Regen:                               = 5 mana/s
-----
Total:                                            = +0.37 mana/s

….
which means the build can theoretically sustain spellspam, with some room to spare.

Here’s the detailed mana breakdown of the build. There are three main things I want to point out:

1. Thrundacrack and Chain Rule alone make up nearly half of the mana value requirement for the build. Such is the power of raw spellcost.
2. Besides Chain Rule, the other three armor pieces all have both high damage and high mana value. Brainwash especially retains a very high mana value, even after its nerf. Empirically, meta items / meta adjacent items in 1.20.4 (most of which carry over to wynn2) tend to skew towards being mana steal instead of mana regen focused, especially items with mana and damage stats, for some reason.*Footnote 4
   
3. Mana steal’s inherent theoretical mana value is way higher than that of mana regen, especially when you account for rollable items. For example, compare Unspeakable to Contrast, or Moon Pool Circlet. Also, an item like Bete Noire, with base 10 mana steal, contributes a much higher mana value (4.33 mana/s) than, ex. Seipodon with base 10 mana regen (2.6 mana/s)

How to spellspam with no INT: Spam high mana value damage items everywhere!​

Oh yeah did I mention that this build has access to Rhythm of the Seasons for healing power? That’s also a thing.

Notably, a build corresponding to this one also existed in 1.20.4. However, builds like these used to be more restricted because mana in 1.20.4 has a more “bursty” nature, with mana steal not guaranteed to trigger and mana regen occurring in bursts every 5 seconds. This behavior makes a build that relies on high mana steal/regen perform poorly in practice when compared to a build that gets its mana value from spellcost reduction, whether from intelligence investment or from spellcost IDs.*Footnote 2

In 1.20.4, there was a tangible difference between mana value gained from cost reduction and mana value gained from mana steal/regen; that distinction is much less important in wynn2. This enables builds that stack mana IDs and damage, especially mana steal heavy builds, to exist – even in the complete absence of intelligence.

Spoiler: Chapter 6: Driven Into a Corner In Design Space

The build in Chapter 5 (and some variations of it) were found, somewhat unintentionally, while touhoku and I were discussing possible ways to address item balance issues. We were unsatisfied with the new cost items being much stronger than existing spell items with respect to mana value. It was clear that those new items needed to be nerfed back so they do not totally dominate old items; item balance then becomes a question of how you make up the lost mana value.

Two of our best ideas were to either blanket buff mana regeneration across all items, or to decrease base costs of all spells by ~5 each. The idea is, essentially, to apply a blanket buff to all spellspam builds to allow them to play without using a few select super strong items. However, both of these ideas in isolation would end up buffing any builds like the one shown in Chapter 5. And that build absolutely does not need a buff.

The existence of “mana+damage stack” builds is problematic because they remove blanket mana buffing strategies as a balance tool. The one shown in Chapter 5 is especially worrying because it does not even use INT – meaning that it (and builds like it) won’t be affected by future INT mechanics changes. This means that rebalancing INT alone is likely not enough to restore game balance.

The ability tree itself is also a source of contention. As an endgame player, I value diversity in my builds and playstyles, and I think it would be a shame if the end state after wynn2 release is that all spellspam builds getting relegated to a single ability tree setting. At the moment, there are abilities/archetypes which very strongly favor spellspam builds. For example, Half Moon reduces uppercut’s cost by a full 10 cost; Backstab, and Phantom Ray reduce their base spell’s costs by 5. Backstab and Phantom Ray are the worst offenders in this respect: Backstab actually reduces your multihit damage and locks you out of some upgrades; Phantom Ray shuts down the entire “boltslinging” part of the boltslinger tree. Half Moon uppercut also feels bad – it reduces your total damage and converts a significant amount to water damage, though it gives back some much needed range so is almost a must-have for spell warrior anyway. Mage is the most free class in this regard, but also the most problematic: Arcanist mage can spellspam with basically anything, and all mage archetypes also get access to Manastorm – with enough intelligence, effectively a -10 spell cost reduction to every spell cast – which can give a whopping 20 mana value at 2 spells/second.

Spoiler: The abilities in question.

half moon swipe more like eighth moon swipe amirite​

The discrepancies in mana value availability between classes and even between archetypes within the same class makes balancing items to be used by all classes exceedingly difficult.

Spoiler: Chapter 7: Possible Paths Forward

NOTE: this section is just my opinion and educated guessing! I am not a CT member, this is just what I believe to be true based on my analyses.

So what options do we have left?

Unfortunately, I don’t see an easy way out of this one. I do have a few ideas, all of which will require sweeping changes, but the combination of which may help bring the game to a balanceable state:

1. Nerf the newly added cost items back to “baseline”, whatever that baseline is. (Ingame as of patch 11)
They should be comparable in power level to existing items. Some “centerpiece” items can stay – for example, Conduit of Spirit or Chain Rule can probably live with small nerfs; Anima-Infused Cuirass I’m not as worried about because it is inherently restrictive. However, something has to be done about the massive influx of 8+ mana value items.

2. Nerf high value mana steal meta items.
While discussing and preparing for this thread, I ran some statistics on endgame items in general and found that, in total, mana regen and mana steal items tend to have about the same level of damage bonus attached to them; however, looking at a shortlist of meta items, it is apparently that mana steal is far stronger in the meta.*Footnote 2 This will require a lot of IM work/guesswork, and manual tweaking, to execute.

3. (Optional) Apply a blanket nerf to mana steal. (Ingame as of patch 11)
This one goes hand in hand with point 1 – although I think it is a good thing that MS is stronger than MR due to the inherent risk and skill requirement factor, it has no business being 67% stronger. Maybe a /4s instead of /3s, or just dropping the base values by 20%. I haven’t done the math on this one yet.

4. Remove locking mana value from the ability tree, and transfer their mana value to base spellcost.
By this, I am referring to the abilities referred to in Chapter 6 – spell upgrades that give -10 mana cost, and Manastorm. Making cost more accessible can help increase build diversity without adding much game balance risk, since the cost was already accessible in the ability tree anyway.

5. After applying nerfs, apply any blanket mana value buff. (Partially addressed in patch 11)
After nerfing everything, you gotta restore some mana value somehow, or else spellspam stays dead/undiverse. This can come in many forms – either a blanket buff to mana regeneration or a reduction to base spellcosts of spells, or even an increase to natural mana regeneration. This can be hand tuned to taste.

That concludes my TED talk. Before we wrap up, a few closing notes:

• Don't harass IMs over things they don't have direct control over. More often than not they are aware of these issues. It's not their fault that item balance is off, in its current state I'd argue the game is nearly unbalanceable.
• Expect changes. We're still in BETA after all. Don't be disappointed if, or when, your favorite spellspam item in HB recieves a nerf -- because it probably had it coming.
  
• Expect changes (2). New building in wynn2 is going to look different than building in 1.20.4. If your build broke, that is a) very unfortunate but also b) expected tbh; a build not breaking through upheavals like wynn2 is a minor miracle.
• Shameless plug: I encourage anyone who is worried to play with the wynn2 items and ability trees over at https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder/, kept up to date by our wonderful team of devs. You'll probably learn a lot about how wynn2 building works. I definitely did!

Thanks for coming, and happy classbuilding!

Spoiler: Wynnbuilder team/credits

@ferricles
@Neptune
@blankman
@iTechnically
@aspiepuppy
@NamesAreHard
@touhoku

additional shoutout to @dr_carlos for helping out!

Spoiler: Thread Credits

@touhoku discussion and inspiration, proofreading
@RenZenthio providing build (@Iboju providing build but wasn't used since i was lazy ;w;)
@ferricles proofing
@Saya idea bouncer, proofing
@ Wynn discord #class_builds, and Atlas Inc discord members, for bouncing ideas off and compiling items
@ Wynnbuilder dev team for keeping me sane!

Spoiler: Changelog

2022/08/08: Added changelog, patch11 notes, top top notice

Editor's note: half of these footnotes could be made into their own threads lol, so much is just being glossed over

Spoiler: Footnote 0: Applying the method

Though, if you want to design for something other than 6cps spellspam, you can actually apply the same analysis -- just tweak the starting numbers (spells/sec casting rate, etc) to match.

Spoiler: Footnote 1: Percent cost reduction

For most of this thread, we are ignoring percent spellcost reduction because it is not as relevant to wynn2 balance (as of this writing). This is for a few reasons:

• It is more difficult to analyze. Percent cost reductions multiply with intelligence reductions instead of adding like MR/MS and raw cost.
• Percent spellcost items in 1.20.4 rely heavily on rounding effects. For example, take Demon Tide: Its maximum -39% 1st spellcost should only reduce a 6 cost spell to 3.66 mana, but because of rounding it ends up reducing it to a flat 3 mana cost. These effects account for up to ~30% of the power of percent spellcost items in 1.20.4, and are not present in wynn2.
  
• Percent spellcost got a flat nerf by 30% which further reduced its effectiveness in wynn2.

Spoiler: Footnote 2: On subtle differences between spell cost reduction and mana regeneration

As pleasing as it is to equate cost reduction and mana regen, the two mechanics behave differently on a fundamental level, in two main ways: Capping, and CPS scaling.

For cost reductions, any percent cost reduction beyond 100%, or raw cost reduction beyond the cost of the spell itself, is "wasted" in most combat scenarios. In 1.20.4, there is also a cap on mana regen and mana steal -- any mana regen or steal value over 20/Xs gets burned because you can only regenerate 20 mana at a time.

For this thread, we chose to analyze the builds shown at 6 CPS (2 spells/sec casting rate) somewhat arbitrarily, but also because empirically most endgame players seem to be able to cast at this rate consistently. There are recorded instances of players casting faster and slower of course. While mana regeneration does not scale with CPS, since it happens over time, cost reduction does scale with CPS -- the faster you can cast spells, the more important cost reduction's contribution to your mana value will be, compared to raw mana regen. A full analysis of the effects of cost and mana with respect to CPS is... beyond the scope of this thread, so I purposely do not touch on it -- this thread is complex enough as is. Might be room for a followup analysis accounting for these effects.

Spoiler: Footnote 3: Class spell discrepancies in 1.20.4

Why is uppercut 9 mana
why
WHY

also mage can cycle 1/3 (6+8) or 3/4 (8+4), shaman can do 3/3/.../2 (8+8+9+...X+1) or whatever nonsense.
The specifics don't really matter -- you can apply the same analysis to any cycle.

Spoiler: Footnote 4: Discrepancy between the power of MS and MR meta items

While preparing this post, a point was brought up in somewhat related discussion about the supposed abundance of high MS and high damage/high value items, compared to relatively weak MR items in the meta. This was somewhat common knowledge among classbuilders, but as far as I know, nobody has done a detailed analysis on this phenomenon. So we did one!

The format:

Code:

<Item Name> (mana {secondary} / sp / raw / % {secondary}), Elements

Spoiler: MS meta items with high damage (32)

Code:

Magnet Repulsor (3/5/270/0), TW
Adrenaline (4/12/221/22), WF
Struggle (3/10/0/40), T
[Dawnbreak (4/0/0/35), TF]
[Galleon (5/0/0/47), EW]
Bete Noire (3/40/0/39), ET
Unravel (3/9/289/35), A
[Stardew (4 {-2}/0/407/46), TW]
[Revenant (3/0/0/52), EA]
Phantasmagoria (4 {1}/20/0/48), ETWA
Efteling (3 {-3}/0/195/65), WA
Tailwind (3/8/0/51), A
Umbral Mail (3/17/0/37), eTW
Silkweb Mail (3/9/0/39 {26}), EA
Abyss-Imbued Leggings (4/0/265/20), EWA
Blind Thrust (3/10/0/40), E
Myelin (3/7/215/23 {13}), TW
Gaze from the Snowbank (4/0/0/40), E
Nychthemeron (3/20/0/33), ET
Crestfallen (3/0/221/13), EA
Tesla (4/13/241/52), T
Conduit of Spirit (3 {1}/0/0/45), A
Petrichor (3/14/0/29), EA
Polyphemus (3/8/182/17), ETW
Fishscale (3/0/228/20), WF
Sapphire (3/10/182/0), EW
Sine (3/30/0/15), TW
Ahms' Remains (2/8/205/27), E
Beetle Aegis (2/18 {-12}/0/42), ET
Sparkling Visor (3/0/0/40), T
Obsidian-Framed Helmet (3/0/0/15), ETF
Paradox (5/20/0/31), ETFA

Spoiler: MR meta items with high damage (19)

Code:

Anamnesis (5/29/0/72), W
Capsid Frame (4/10/0/46 {39}), WF
Neuron (3/7/0/40), TW
Ophiuchus (3/0/0/40), WF
Pro Tempore (3 {-2}/10/169/26), TW
Pisces (3/10/0/36), EW
Gaea-Hewn Boots (3/0/0/25), EWF
Vacuum (3/0/202/20), EW
The Ephemeral (3/14/0/34 {18}), WA
Seipodon (3/14/0/26), W
Stratosphere (3/4/0/46), TW
Capricorn (3 {1}/24/0/20), WA
Seagazer (3/8/0/29), W
Elder Oak Roots (2/0/0/35), EW
Ehoole Drakeskin (2/0/218/20), wA
Aquamarine (3/14/137/0), EW
The Courier's Cape (3/10/0/30)
Dragon Dance (4 {1}/20/189/27), TWFA
Ornamental Plate (2/5/190/12), W

Credit: @touhoku for running stats on all the items. I made the list with the help of people in #class_builds on wynn discord, and in atlas inc discord.

Notice just how many more MS damage items there are than MR damage items, and how much better overall they usually are.

There's a few mixed mana damage items:

Code:

Brainwash
Guillotine

There's also a short list of "honorable mention" meta items that provide high value other stats (health regen, lifesteal, etc):

Code:

Curador boots (MS)
Resurgence (MR)
Phage pins (MR)
Soulflare (mixed)
Silt of the Seafloor (mixed)
Hepha boot (MS)
Anima (MR)
Gemini (MS)
Sparkweaver (MS)
Deux (mixed)
Sano's Care (MR)
Cranial Panel (MR)

The distribution here is a bit more more evenly spread.

 

sheesh guess who delayed the thread by 1.5 hours

 

:pray::pray::pray:

 

And some says hppeng was never the same again...

(nice writeup)

 

=)

Very good thread, salted please fix

 

God tier thread

 

wtf I look away from the forums for one hour and hppeng posts an insanely useful thread

 

i dont understand anything but i strongly agree 1!1

 

well made. by far the greatest limiting factor on anaerobic is that It is impossible for me to find on beta since worlds crash before and SE chests can fill up :(

 

Also, now that spell costs are mostly a rollable stat, this narrows the builds even further and makes spellspam even less accessible just because some builds might require perfect costs to have positive mana sustain to even work.

 

also, are we going to see an effective mana stat shown on hppeng builder because of this? that'd be pretty cool

 

Can we all just get an F in the chat for spin attack spam or just the death of spellspam in general

 

This thread is excellent—very well done. (How many words is this??)

 

absolute banger by hppeng

 

Too many... currently 5806 according to wordcounter

fixed a bunch of typos since yesterday:

Spoiler: Changelog

1.20.3 -> 1.20.4 (lol do you even play wynncraft)
Some minor clarifications (should've kept track / remembered, oops)
Manastorm only available for Mage, the wording seemed to imply it was for all classes

Also realized that wynn2 mana mechanics were never explained; might come back to this at some point.

 

continuing the atlas legacy of massive essays about mechanics let’s go

 

Six proofreaders and none of us caught the version issue lol

Anyway good thread yes hopefully this helps people understand the situation

 

Great thread, very nicely written.

This is the wildest part to me. This exact scenario already happened three years ago during the elem revamp beta, where we all analyzed the causes of meta centralization and disuse of damage items, and yet now a nearly identical mistake has been propagated.

 

It is much, much more nuanced than that, druse clues. There's so much more than item balance at play here; mana mechanics and capping behavior changed, spellcost capping behavior with respect to natural mr changed, there are build-independent sources of spellcost and mana at play, base spellcosts changed drastically, intelligence was hard-nerfed and then unnerfed a little, floating point mana leads to a removal of rounding, etc. Portraying this as the "exact scenario" from the past where the "identical mistake" was made is at best disingenuous and at worst disrespectful. In many ways the large-scale point of this thread is to show just how much is wrong in this situation beyond item balance.

 

AIn R&D division deserves a budget raise