New hope for lightning skills?

[Kevin]

Chain gives Nova a run for its money in the mana suck department. I haven't really bothered too much with just lightning because I've been playing in a 3 char group with a magic arrow zon and a windlord druid. I'm a hydra and chain girl, and I won't really get the benefits of the synergies because for those skills mastery does more and that is all I will have points for. But Chain is definitely a mana hog. I pick up every blue pot that falls, have never put fewer than 2 points a level into energy (its gotten around 200 of my 360 total stat points so far) and I have still had to buy potions at times. Of course I haven't had a lot of luck find good plus mana items and still being able to maintain at least a 9 frame cast, so I still only have 620 odd mana at L71 (just finished nightmare, never did a leveling game, just played through the game in mostly /players 5 or 8 games). So, without twinking and trying to maintain a reasonable cast speed, 63% for 9 frames unless that change, mana can still be hard to get. Nova is worse, but it isn't that much worse since chain is now so much faster.