Does anybody know the formula for mana per gem? I have some suspicions, but before I submit a bug report, would like to ask others’ input.
I think there is a floor, or that there is some sort of diminishing returns for increased mastery, and that it caps at mastery/10 mana per matched gem.
I also think that there is currently a bug where increased mastery from gear and citadel isn’t taken into account. From unequipping/reequipping rare gear, I do not see a difference in mana gain, although the mastery level changes. The same thing happens when I increase mastery in the citadel.
Without more testing I can’t confirm if I the limited testing I’ve done just hasn’t done over breakpoints where mana increases, or if it might be a bug.
I have not done significant testing but I was looking at this recently and responding to Jolenia in game chat so I will share the results here. I just did some basic 3-and-more gem matching at different masteries and this is what I found (this was all done on yellow mana):
At 11 Mastery I was receiving 34 mana on a 3 match and 67 mana on a 6 match (an increment of ~11 mana per +1 match
At ~50 Mastery I was receiving 41 mana on a 3 match and 81 mana on a 6 match (an increment of ~13.5 mana per +1 match
At my highest mastery currently (182) I was receiving 49 mana for a 3 match and 99 mana on a 6 match (an increment of ~16.5 mana per +1 match)
I did all matches from 3 through 8 on each of these mastery levels and the increments bore out. From this cursory data it looks like there is significant diminishing returns on Mastery. Clearly there is a “starting formula” for mana per match (base 0 mastery) but increase to mastery looks like a downward slope of return the higher you go. This would at least suggest that at higher levels it really doesn’t matter what color gear you have; you should focus on bonuses and traits.
EDIT #1: I offer the caveat that I don’t know if certain elements of the game are working/not working as intended and to the best of my knowledge I did not have any gear equipped that gave traits/bonuses that effected the mana collection based on gem match
EDIT #2: Based on @Tresk 's question below, I revisited the loadout swapping and confirmed that changing between the 3 loadouts does not seem to auto update the numbers in the Stats screen. However when I swapped characters and then back to the +0 Light Mastery loadout, the stats screen did update and my Light Mastery was 168 instead of 182. Also swapping out specific pieces of equipment also seemed to be updated in real time to the stats page. Ultimately however, the mana gain barely changed as noted further in this post
Does this mean that changing loadout from +14LM to +0LM does not change your hero mastery number, it doesn’t change the actual mana accumulation while playing, or neither? It seems like you are saying neither. Just want to be sure.
So I went back and looked at this again because I was surprised as well but I think I see what happened. When I was “switching” between +14 Light Magic and +0 Light Magic, I was using 2 of the 3 loadouts. Apparently the Stats page doesn’t auto-update though when switching in that way. When I actually switched characters, and then switched back with the +0 Light Magic loadout active, my stats page updated and my Light Mastery was 168 instead. So with this loadout, I went and tested in a skirmish a 3-match and a 4 match. The 3 match yielded 49 mana (same as when my LM was 182) and the 4 match yielded 65 mana (compared to 66 mana when my LM was 182).
Thanks for the question; that helped me think about it once more and clarify.