Stacking AOE Spells Phantasm VS Cloud of Bats VS Acid Cloudder=0>

[Smash]

You will not have mana problems if you cycle through your mana recovery moves such as Honored Guest, Rain Dance, and Swallow Your Soul. You will need at least two unless your equipment and passives are allowing you to get mana in a different way.

I've noticed that these moves are best used in conjunction with some kind of snare.

Problem is, you rather want your emergency spells ready when needed for they main purpose "Saving your butt".

[vileguy]

Problem is, you rather want your emergency spells ready when needed for they main purpose "Saving your butt".

Exactly this. I was a big fan of vision quest, until I actually played nightmare and hell. If I'm using siphon and healing journey on cooldown to sustain my mana spam, then I can't count on them to save my life. It's much better to be consistent with cheap spells like splinters and roll the bones and have 4 useful spells on demand.

I dream of a day when I can get mana regen and play with cool spells - I miss using locust swarm and firebomb together - but for now I am forced to play in 1 way. Locust swarm with mana per target hit is actually not bad for some situations, but getting so close to cast it isn't really worthwhile. Splinters is just so amazing and firebomb is good range and damage per cost.

[Deadsmell]

I just got to hell now and had to rethink my skills because I was running out of mana all the time. Now I use the following:

Spiritual Attunement
Blood Ritual
Rush of Essence

Primary: Widowmakers
Secondary: Phantasm
1: Devouring Swarm

The passives help me regen a lot of mana, and I immediately hit a group of monsters with Devouring Swarm and some widowmakers to bring in the mana as soon as it starts going down. This way I can spam phantasm as much as I like. I was also a fan of Vision quest but in Hell it just becomes too risky having 4 skills on cooldown. It's also too much to keep track of what's coming out of cooldown, and staying alive at the same time.