Mana Guide

[qwerty3.14]

The Mana Guide​

How much should I invest my build into Mana? How poweful is this mana accesory? Should I use mana potions or let my mana regenerate? This guide hopes to answer these question and any others you may have.

Mana Potions​

Mechanics
When a mana potion is consumed you recover mana instantly, you are also given 5 seconds of mana sickness, if you are already under the effects of mana sickness when you drink a potion 5 seconds will be added to your time. Mana sickness caps at 10 seconds. Mana sickness reduces magic damage dealt by 5% per second remaining. The damage loss from mana sickness is multiplicative.

So if you drink a mana potion and let the sickness run out you lose an average of 12.5% damage. If you have a weapon that takes 10 seconds to deplete all the mana from a potion then you spend 5 seconds with mana sickness and 5 seconds without, so you lose an average of 6.25% damage.

Now let's say your weapon drains the mana from a potion in 4 seconds, well eventually, if you keep using the weapon and consume the potion when mana runs out, you will reach a point where you fluctuate between 10seconds and 6 seconds of mana sickness. This averages out to 40% damage loss!

So what does this Mean in practice?
Let's say you're in pre hardmode using the standard (100 mana) potion. This is a graph of how much damage you lose from mana sickness if you constantly fire and consume mana potions to restore mana. The red dots represent specific pre hardmode weapons. MPS is mana per second

You may notice a big jump in the middle of the graph, this is a term I've called the mana sinkhole effectively if your weapon consumes your mana potion's mana faster than mana sickness will run out mana sickness will build up.


Here is a table for the pre hardmode magic weapons:
MPS- mana per second.
Damage Loss- % damage lost from mana sickness.
PME Damage Gain- The benift to having a perfect mana economy represented as a % damage increase.
Sinkhole Time- If a weapon consumes mana too fast this is how quickly it will reach max mana sickness.
A weapon is marked red if it consumes enough mana to sinkhole.

Now Let's Talk About Hardmode

A very important change happens in hardmode, you gain access to much more powerful mana potions! Greater mana potions can be purchased from the wizard but the what you really want are super mana potions. Just in case you don't know about them this is how they're crafted.

Super mana potions are litterally 3x better than the junk you've been drinking pre hardmode restoring 300 mana. Now 300 mana is more than the default mana capacity you get from mana crystals, so where do you get extra mana? Simple hardmode armor pieces and clairvoyance. Clairvoyance is easy to get simply buy a crystal ball from the wizard, place it, then right click it. It is effectively free on your build since it consumes no armor/accesory slots. Hardmode head pieces are something you will want to use anyway since they have very good magic stats.
So hallowed headgear, admantite headgear, titanium headgear, and chlorophyte hat get you at least 300 mana when combined with clairvoyance.
Forbidden armor also reaches 300 mana when combined with clairvoyance.
Palldium headgear and spectre mask only come with 60 mana so when combined with clairvoyance you'll have 280 max mana, this is close enough that it isn't a big deal.

In the graphs and tables below I'll assume 300 max mana, super mana potion, and 2% mana reduction (from clairvoyance). Unlike in pre hardmode where a good chunk of the weapons were in the sinkhole, there is only 1 pre moonlord magic weapon hungry enough to sinkhole. With what I consider a 'minimal' mana economy gear.

Here is a table for the hardmode magic weapons:
MPS- mana per second.
Damage Loss- % damage lost from mana sickness.
PME Damage Gain- The benift to having a perfect mana economy represented as a % damage increase.

Sinkhole Time- If a weapon consumes mana too fast this is how quickly it will reach max mana sickness.

Dark Green- Weapon consumes so little mana that greater mana potions are sufficent to keep it out of the sinkhole, a good option if your armor doesn't give you mana.
Light Green- Needs super mana potions to avoid the mana sinkhole
Yellow- With the setup mentioned there is less than 1 second between when mana sickness runs out and mana runs out.
Red- Even with basic hardmode armor and super mana potions this weapon still falls into the sinkhole

The Mana Flower

You can push the quick mana hotkey to consume mana potions, but some people think that's to hard to do in the middle of a battle. I've made some graphs that turns the mana flower's effects into a % damage bonus so you can decide whether or not it's worth using.

A positve mistime means you drink a mana potion before you run out of mana.

A negative mistime means you run out of mana before you drink a potion.

The horizontal dotted lines is relatively how strong putrid scent is, if you have no dps bonuses putrid scent increases your damage output by ~10%, if you already have 100% damage and 95% crit putrid scent gives you ~5% more dps. (we're talking multiplicative)

This is crystal storm, since its mana cost is so low the mana reduction on mana flower doesn't help here.

Well unless you're already using admantite armor, the extra mana reduction from the flower is just enough to go from 3 mana to 2 mana, this is probably as much as the mana flower's mana reduction will do.

Here's the Venom staff it's more mana hungry than crystal storm so drinking several seconds early will sinkhole it.

And here's nebula blaze which is extremely mana hungry.



So I'd say that for timing mana potions try to drink them right before you run out of mana, as long as you can drink them after mana sickness runs out and before you run out of mana you shouldn't need a mana flower. If that's too hard for you the fine... use the mana flower.

Mana Regeneration​

The Mechanics
When you stop using a magic weapon your mana will automatically regenerate after a short delay. How much? Well I could show you the complex equation on the wiki but I think this graph will explain it much better. This graph assumes the player is moving.

This graph pretty clearly explain how necessary the mana regeneration potion is if you want to rely on mana regeneration.
From now on every graph and analyisis of mana regeneration will assume use of this potion.

Mana regeneration scales with mana capcity; if you use the mana regeneration potion and no other mana regeneration items then it will effectively take 2.85 seconds to go from 0 to full mana, regardless of capacity.
Band of mana regeneration's effect doesn't scale with mana capacity so it looks relatively weaker with higher capacity.


Mana Regeneration VS Mana Potions
So when you inveitably run out of mana should you pop a mana potion or let your mana regenerate? Well it depends.
Here's a graph, the X axis is the consumption rate of your main weapon, the Y axis is how strong a sidearm (what you use while mana regenerates) has to be relative to your main weapon for mana regeneration to beat out mana potions.

So from this I'd say that mana regeneration is clearly the better option in pre hardmode. Pre hardmode mana potions can't keep up with with dungeon and underworld weapons, to the point where even if you don't use a sidearm mana regeneration is better, even though pre hardmode has the 1 magic weapon that consumes no mana (space gun) so even on a pure mage challenge you have a sidearm.
In early pre hardmode you won't have enough damage bonuses for you magic weapon to be twice as strong as some bow you pick up.

I hardmode its a much closer comparison, with most weapons you'd need a non magic sidearm that does 70%-80% your magic weapon's damage to be competitive with mana potions.


Extra Sources of Mana Regeneration
So you're already using a mana regeneration potion, how useful is it to increase regeneration further?

The band of mana regeneration also reduces the regen delay when you stop using a magic weapon.
Ok? So what does this actually mean in terms of damage output?

The better your sidearm is the less severe it is to be in regeneration mode which directly weakens the effectiveness of the band. This is why the X axis is how strong your sidearm is.
The vertical dotted line represents roughly how strong a sidearm has to be for mana regen to be competitive in hardmode, if you're on the left side of this line you'll probably not be using mana regeneration anyway.
The dot represents specificly the relationship between using flamelash as your primary and space gun as a sidearm. Since they're both magic weapons the relative strength of those weapons remains fairly consistent. Also since it's pre hardmode you won't want to be using mana potions.
The two horizontal dotted lines are the relative strength of putrid scent again, just like with the mana flower graphs.

And here is star in a bottle, you're lucky if this thing contributes 1% dps in hardmode. If you ever cap your buffs this should be one of the first ones to remove.

Other Mana Accesories
​

We will convert the mana economy effects of the celstial magnet, magic cuffs and mana cloak to %dps.
Best case scenario equiping an accesory grants 'Perfect mana economy'. If you remember the charts from back in the mana potion section there was a column 'PME damage Gain'.



So for example, if accessory completely prevents having to use super mana potions for the following weapons this is how much dps it adds.
Life Drain: 10%
Rainbow Rod: 10.9%
Blizzard staff: 10.8%
Laser Machinegun: 9%
Razorblade Typhoon: 4.73%



The demon scythe is too mana hungry for mana potions to handle so comparing it to mana regen with no sidearm, an accessory adds this much dps if it eliminates the need to regenerate mana.
Demon Scythe: 61.8%



The Celestial Magnet

This is what the best case scenario for the magnet is.

You're unable to collect mana stars normally, but by equipping the celestial magnet you get enough stars to where you no longer need mana potions.

Ok so I think that when you use demon sycthe against WoF is when the magnet is at its best. WoF has a lot of hungries which can drop mana stars but you're usually unable to pick them up as WoF runs over them. The magnet here is a perfect mana economy accessory and demon scythe is at just the right stage of progression to where both mana potions and mana regen struggle to power it.

Another time I see celestial magnet approach becoming a perfect mana accessory is during the old ones army. Since enemies will often walk over stars before you get a chance to pick them up. Although keep in mind for the T2 and T3 you have access to mana potions that don't suck. So it's like a 10% damage boost.

During invasions the but you'll likely be able to pick up a lot of the stars without the magnet anyway, so the benefit to using the magnet won't be quite as strong. As my PME calculations assume that you would exclusively use mana potions without the magnet.

I did some testing with the magnet during the pumpkin moon and frost moon and found that I still needed to use mana potions on some of the later waves since the minibosses don't die quickly enough for mana stars to power everything.

TLDR: Infinite mana if fighting weak enemies, but that's usually only about equates to about 10% more damage. It's most useful during the WoF fight since late pre hardmode weapons are so mana hungry and stars are usually present but inaccesable during that fight.

Magic Cuffs

Magic cuffs when equipped will restore mana whenever you take damage; it's equal to the damage recieved before it's reduced by defense. Best case scenario for this thing is when you're face tanking. This thing is not that useful if you just use it causally. In contexts where this accesory causes permanent mana economy its fairly mediocore, so if it's not providing perfect mana economy its kinda bad.

Mana Cloak
The mana economy of the cloak effect is just straight up worse than the cuffs. You're getting 50 mana per hit and in hardmode basicly everything does at least 50 damage before defense. Not only that but you have to pick up the star which might not happen when running.
Also you can't sit on a spike to get mana.
Like even when face tanking I have a hard time reaching perfect mana economy with this.

You can do some funny things with the minishark, exploding bullets, and star cloak, but that's not related to mana in any way.

Mana Reduction​

The Mechanics
Mana reduction is a stat that reduces the cost of magic weapons, this should not be confused with the mana reduction on weapon modifers as that's applied seperatly. That's the reason I've treated mythical weapons seperatly on my tables.

When you reforge a weapon the game will round off to an integer mana cost. It rounds 0.5 mana down which is why weapons that cost 5 mana can get mythical and get 20% reduction, even though mythical is supposed to be 10% reduction.

Ok so now you got your weapon, you may or may not have chosen to get it a prefix that reduces its mana cost. Now let's talk about the mana reduction from gear. These mana reduction bonuses act cumulatively with each other, for example if you have 2% reduction from clairvoyance and 19% reduction from admantite armor that totals to 21% reduction.

Mana reduction rounds down, if you have a mythical razorpine (4 mana base) and the only source of mana reduction is clairvoyance (2%). The game will round down 3.92 to 3 mana. If you want to reduce the cost to 2 mana you need 26% reduction, which requires at least 2 pieces of gear.

But what does that actually mean in terms of dps?
Well hallowed headgear has the best damage/crit bonuses of any magic headpiece. Is it worth using slightly weaker pieces in exchange for mana reduction?

This table converts the mana economy benefits certain builds have over hallowed into dps. Keep in mind this is only counting the mana economy of the armor pieces.
Super mana potions assumed.
The 'Max Reduction' column is chloro hat + dark artist robe + nature's gift and all its upgrades + clairvoyance.

It seems Adamantite's set bonus is barely strong enough to prevent meteor staff from sink holing with mana potions.


There are some armors you may consider using that have worse mana economy than hallowed (Palladium for regen, Crystal assassin for dash, spectre mask for lifesteal). How much worse are they?
This charts how much % dps you LOSE if you use armors with a weaker mana economy than hallowed.

The only pre plantera weapon that seems to perform noteably worse with CA's low mana capcity seems to be flower of frost.

Conclusions​

• In pre hardmode mana regeneration is better than mana potions.​
• In hardmode you need a sidearm that's roughly 70-80% the strength of your main weapon for mana regen to be competitve with mana potions.​
• When using mana potions make sure you aren't drinking them while under mana sickness, this will lead to a lot more damage loss.​
• When timing mana potions it's better to drink them too early than too late as long as you don't do what's above.​
• Mana accesories tend to be bad, even if they give you inifite mana that usually only translates to a moderate damage increase.​
• Sacrificng damage for mana reduction is not worth it.​

 

[J Bame]

This is going to be INCREDIBLY useful for new players. It really shows how irrelevant mana is to DPS, when 50% more maximum mana and a 20% mana cost reduction is in most cases only 2-3% more DPS.

In hardmode you need a sidearm that's roughly 70-80% the strength of your main weapon for mana regen to be competitve with mana potions.

This makes Mana regeneration just unviable in general, right? If a non-Magic sidearm has 70% or more DPS than an invested magic weapon... wouldn't it be better to change class and use the sidearm as your main and just forget Mana?

 

[qwerty3.14]

This makes Mana regeneration just unviable in general, right? If a non-Magic sidearm has 70% or more DPS than an invested magic weapon... wouldn't it be better to change class and use the sidearm as your main and just forget Mana?

If your build is 'class neutral' like with crystal assassin I guess you could pull it off. This number also assumes that both the main weapon and sidearm basically act the same. Maybye you could for example use a chloro bullet gun when a boss flies out of range of your Main weapon. You could also use a sidearm to inflict ichor, but you don't need to use a ichor sidearm for 3 seconds if you use mana potions.

However these things are all fairly situational, mana potions are better overall in hardmode.

 

[Shyguymask]

I'd assume Crystal Assassin armor involves using weapons from other classes for its very poor mana economy to have almost no impact. Make sense, but I'm surprised this guide doesn't explore Forbidden Armor with this in mind. How does your DPS look like in boss fights if you burst damage with high mana cost magic weapon, then during downtime you spam whips with Sanguine Staff or something, then do burst damage with Magic again when your mana finishes regenerating? The bonuses by the armor alone are very good, the only disappointment is the lack of magic crit chance. Another thing is that with the way the sand tornado benefits from both Magic & Summon percentage bonuses, accessories like Avenger Emblem and Moon Stone will give their damage bonus to the tornado twice (according to wiki). The Moon Stone itself also giving increased Melee speed for whips. If accessory slots are a concern especially in Expert, there's always Gelatinous Pillion.

 

[ZJ]

thanks for this.

 

[J Bame]

I'd assume Crystal Assassin armor involves using weapons from other classes for its very poor mana economy to have almost no impact.

It doesn't, and it really isn't that surprising when you see in the previous chart that the most dedicated mana economy gear only adds like 5% DPS in total.

How does your DPS look like in boss fights if you burst damage with high mana cost magic weapon, then during downtime you spam whips with Sanguine Staff or something, then do burst damage with Magic again when your mana finishes regenerating?

Your question is answered by the Mana Regen vs Mana potion chart. If your whips have less than 70% of your Weapon's DPS then you are better off just popping a Mana Potion for the Magic weapon, if they have more than that you may just be better off using a dedicated pure summoner build instead of Forbidden.

 

[qwerty3.14]

Make sense, but I'm surprised this guide doesn't explore Forbidden Armor with this in mind. How does your DPS look like in boss fights if you burst damage with high mana cost magic weapon, then during downtime you spam whips with Sanguine Staff or something, then do burst damage with Magic again when your mana finishes regenerating?

This guide focused completely on converting mana economy to dps, forbidden armor from this perspective is just 80 mana. The reason I focused mostly on mana potions this guide is because there's a lot less variation. I was originally planning some in game tests but this guide is so long already I decided to just stick with math.

As for that build specifcly I think it might be better to just whip every 4 seconds then pop a potion when mana gets low. The base dps of whips is fairly low with only the firecracker wanting constant whipping to work off its tag, and I'm not sure if firecracker is worth using without obsidian+feral claws.

At the very least you should use forbidden treads, even excluding the minion slot they have the best magic bonuses of any pre mech leg slot.

The bonuses by the armor alone are very good, the only disappointment is the lack of magic crit chance.

I usually swap out the head piece for a titanium/admantite one for boss fights. The tornado can't really keep up with the twins, and I get better magic stats.

 

[Shyguymask]

As for that build specifcly I think it might be better to just whip every 4 seconds then pop a potion when mana gets low. The base dps of whips is fairly low with only the firecracker wanting constant whipping to work off its tag, and I'm not sure if firecracker is worth using without obsidian+feral claws.

That's why I'm thinking about if Blade staff would be better for this instead. You set up two or three Summon Tag whips then burn your mana while those + Ichor are in effect.

It doesn't, and it really isn't that surprising when you see in the previous chart that the most dedicated mana economy gear only adds like 5% DPS in total.

Even looking at the whole post I don't see how it adds up to CA barely having lower DPS. The max mana is low to the point you have to drink Mana potions more often thus get affected ever so slightly by mana sickness much more often, and dedicated Mage armors have higher offensive boosts to Magic than CA does.

 

[qwerty3.14]

Even looking at the whole post I don't see how it adds up to CA barely having lower DPS. The max mana is low to the point you have to drink Mana potions more often thus get affected ever so slightly by mana sickness much more often, and dedicated Mage armors have higher offensive boosts to Magic than CA does.

If you look at the last chart CA loses about 1-3% dps for most pre plantera magic weapons compared to a 'normal' armor's mana economy. Unless you end up drinking mana potions while you're still sick, having to drink mana potions a bit more often isn't a big deal.

The idea with CA is that you free up an acceory slot from not needing SoC anymore however in this case CA is probably more of a defensive set, since there's only like 2 percentage based damage accesories pre mech. So there's a farily high likelyhood that the slot you free up from no longer needing a shield gets used by a survival accesory.

 

[J Bame]

Even looking at the whole post I don't see how it adds up to CA barely having lower DPS. The max mana is low to the point you have to drink Mana potions more often thus get affected ever so slightly by mana sickness much more often, and dedicated Mage armors have higher offensive boosts to Magic than CA does.

This thread shows that a theoretical item that gives infinite mana would be roughly a 10% DPS increase for most weapons, so the lower max mana REALLY isn't a big deal.

Also note that the last few charts only look at the DPS added by the mana economy of the armors and that they ignore damage and crit bonuses.

 

[CrimsHallowHero]

Poor star in a bottle... so worthless.

The guide is definitely useful to make a general idea of how mana affects damage output. However, I would be more careful about equalizing "damage increase/decrease" and "DPS increase/decrease" since defense on enemies is a thing. The same percentage penalty from mana sickness could result in different percentage DPS decrease when applied on attacks against enemies who have different defense stat. Considering magic weapons' various mechanics (and magic weapons are famous for their mechanic diversity) brings a whole new dimension to compare DPS changes caused by mana sickness in.

 

[FalloutGuy645]

Wow. That’s a lot of work.
So, based off of the evidence you found, would you personally recommend people going mage to have a sidearm?

 

[qwerty3.14]

Wow. That’s a lot of work.
So, based off of the evidence you found, would you personally recommend people going mage to have a sidearm?

In pre hardmode mana regeneration with sidearm is better, in hardmode mana potions are usually better.

Of course using a sidearm to inflict ichor is nice to have regardless of class, but it likely isn't worth using the whole time your mana regenerates.