Picking insane mana pool or insane mana regeneration

[Tlthon]

Typed out in a rush, think of it like this, ROB gave you the user two numbers, a 10 (ten) and a 10,000,000,000,000 (ten trillion). Then he gave you two slots; one is for mana pool and another is for mana regen (x mana points per year) to put the two numbers in, each in one slot. So either you have a mana pool of 10 that regenerate up to 10,000,000,000,000 mana points in a year (or 317,098 mana points per second) and excess is considered a waste or a mana pool of 10,000,000,000,000 that takes a trillion years to fill up if completely emptied (or 36.5 days to get one mana point back) .

Low tier spells like fireball can cost up to five mana points while the highest twelve tier spell Karsus's Avatar that turns the user into a god (for a time frame I supposed) might take up the ten trillion at one go. Do not worry that the small ass mana pool can't even cast a low tier spell, it can.

How many spell can I cast per second.
Is it possible to cast 63,419 fireball in one second.
Since fireball can melt metal it is not as weak as we might thought. If it is too weak to be use to fight proper enemy, the fireball can still be use in normal mundane task such as electricity generation and other stuff.

Furthermore fireball that stack well enough (assuming you can cast multiple fireball at the same time that is) might be hot enough to melt enemy itself.

 

[gogo7966]

the age old burst damage vs sustained damage.
the correct answer to this question depends on the context of the fighting you're doing and how beefy the opponet is

 

[Temple]

Go Konosuba route. Mana pool large enough to cast one strong spell a day. Should be fun to make scenes and plot the story with that. There are already a lot of stories with super regen.

 

[NotaNuffian]

How many spell can I cast per second.
Is it possible to cast 63,419 fireball in one second.
Since fireball can melt metal it is not as weak as we might thought. If it is too weak to be use to fight proper enemy, the fireball can still be use in normal mundane task such as electricity generation and other stuff.

Furthermore fireball that stack well enough (assuming you can cast multiple fireball at the same time that is) might be hot enough to melt enemy itself.

 

[ModernGold7ne]

If there's chanting involved, then bigger spells equals to longer chants.
With that in mind, I choose regen, high dps will do wonders to the enemy.
Sometimes, a simple weapon is better for the task.

 

[Cipiteca396]

Most of the things I want magic for are small scale. Daily chores. Having to wait a month to get enough mana to cast a single spell would make me hesitate. Do I really want to waste months of effort on this thing?

Large scale magics would basically be out of the question, unless I spent hours going over the details to see if I could save on costs by using a different spell. It's tedious. With that same amount of effort, surely I could figure out how to chain multiple small spells together to get the result I want.

Not being able to cast bigger spells isn't great, but infinite regen frees me up to cast whatever I want, whenever I want to.

 

[NotaNuffian]

If there's chanting involved, then bigger spells equals to longer chants.
With that in mind, I choose regen, high dps will do wonders to the enemy.
Sometimes, a simple weapon is better for the task.

No chanting cuz no casting time.

Also no cooldown.

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

Regen because it’s gonna be like piss. Its small but it comes out fast and piles up quick

A question of big balls or a lot of piss

 

[DutyInternal]

This is a discussion, NOT A WRITING PROMPT.

So I was planning a poll between skilled but weak and strong but unskilled, featuring skilled being able to know how not to fuck up your punches due to fist placement, location of attack and etc. The notion of weak and strong being your body being frail like a starving child in Africa and strong as roided up gym fanatic, so it means that the two answers for you to choose is either a battle tactician who has brittle bones versus a barbarian berserker who only rush B. This type of comparision disregarded growth and purposely polarising traits that could synergize with one another, like being Batman or being someone both weak and unskilled, so I decided to not do that poll.

Instead I decided to do a poll that ask whether you want a large mana pool but with regen rate slower than the download speed from old LAN lines or a tiny ass mana pool that never seems to run out. Also, things that replenish and/ or store mana does not exist, so no cheating with chugging gatorade while casting nuke or pouring mana into a stone to cast nuke. Furthermore, no future growth in size of mana pool or speed of regen rate.

For context as a DPS, limited amount of nukes versus unlimited fireball works.

For another context as a healer, limited amount of resurrections versus heal spam.

I think It comes down to the reason why megumin is useless lol. Definitely high regen

A question of big balls or a lot of piss

a big ball will choke you, but you only get one chance. infinite pis will definitely drown you one day

 

[Werelure]

Technically, this question boils down to decision between limited resource in huge amounts and unlimited resource with limited transfer rate. In short term perspective first one is definitely better as it could be used to to resolve any situation immediately, but in a long term second option could be preferable, depending on what exactly is expected to be accomplished.

Other things to consider:
Storage items do not exist, but what about transferring mana to other living beings?
What bout overlapping multiple small spells in one place? Potentially with activation delay to manipulate if those spells hit target all at the same time or as an endless stream.
Is small mana pool enough too cast buffs? Do multiple buffs stack on the same target or override previous buff of the same type?

 

[Kilolo]

would you want a ten million dollars at once, or a daily 1k to your bank account, but your bank account cannot exceed more than 5k.
it's the same energy.

i would choose the high mana pool.

magic is about control and how you using it, not about quantity and spell spamming.

 

[Amok]

Large pool. Claim an area, raise mountains and mazes of stone both beneath and above the earth. introduce colonies of various beings savage, bestial as well as civilized. the closer to your inner domain, the more mechanical traps there are and the more loyal and fearsome your minions. use your magic conservatively, casting long-lasting runes traps and wards to obscure your true location and nature from prying eyes. always have an exit strategy, never take undue risks. pursue immortality.

 

[greyblob]

I actually went with extreemly low manapool and insanely high regen(from a potion-like item) for my novel. mc can "charge" spells by laying down the foundation so to speak and gulps down potions to regenerate and chain link his manapool. there's a limit to how many times his manapool can regen and if he goes beyond it or overfloods his manapool, he blacks out and could possibly die.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Regen. There's always ways to circumvent quantity but not so much for quality.

Depending on the kind of magic you could just carry around a dozen or more 99%-finished spells and blast away while remaking the used presets.

Sure, a planet buster may be the easy way to nuke your problems but what happens when you miss or didn't hit everything?

Even a spoon can dig through a bone if you try hard enough, but almost nobody would use a nuke to kill a cockroach

 

[CarburetorThompson]

If you run out mana you aren’t doing your rotation correctly. No need for more regen just have the mage drop a table and use food or a pot. Manage your cds better if you keep running out of mana.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Btw, I want to add something to my reply. I answered with regen, and I'm going to stick with my choice. However, if you asked me to choose between being roided or skilled, I would've picked being roided. Or, as you said, I would've chosen to be a barbarian instead of a tactician.