I would say that something like that is probably the most likely solution to occur if they changed mana potion mechanics, essentially that's a "Last Stand" effect for mana. You get mana close to the end of the fight, but if you need mana beyond that you're out of luck. You still potentially run into issues with that; one of these is people still being forced to use them at the end of the fight. Another of these is people specifically timing their mana potion usage so that they can run nearly OOM, use the pot, go OOM again, use their Innervate/Mana Tide, repeat. Certainly preferable to "pre-chugging", but a little bit gimmicky in terms of how it works with skills that regenerate mana.

The basic premise, I believe, is that any solution Blizzard arrives at will be extremely simple. Partially because I'm not sure if they take this issue seriously, and partially because this is a big enough part of the game that making it overly complex would run against Blizzard's usual approach to game design.

What I consider most likely to happen is for the changes to potions/elixirs to occur just as the OP had experienced. Then for Bliz to tweak the economy by either: a.) Cutting the respawn timer on herbs down (Maybe by half?) b.) Cutting the materials required to make "required" potions/flasks. This would make the potions much easier to attain, and would make it much less onerous to farm the consumables needed for raids.

I seriously hope they take another look at the Major Protection potion recipe requirements as well, before tuning any fight to require anything more than Greater Protection Pots. The current requirement of 1 primal per potion is just not reasonable. Thats like 10-15mins of farming per potion, which is just not reasonable. Add to that, a street value of ~30g for many of the primals, and there isnt a person on the planet who is gonna ever use one. If something doesn't change (Make it 1-2motes per pot IMHO), the next Loatheb style encounter is gonna be alot more agrevating than sitting outside of SM for hours at time.

Of the suggestions here, my favorite is probably the "make Herbalism a secondary profession". Its not the Alchemists that are profiting. Just like any trade profession, most will give away their services or charge a nominal crafting fee if the recipe is rare. Herbing up a stack of Nightmare Vine/Terocone/Netherbloom/Lichen in 30mins, and then listing it on the AH for 40g a stack is much more profitable.

Though I would completely agree that the use of consumables is at an all time high, there is something to be said about having your raid use something of value as a means of motivation.
In my own experience I have noticed quite a few raidmates who appear to put forth greater effort, pay extra attention and "focus up" when they know that there are 24 other people using expensive potions, and that they themselves have X value of gold riding on success.

I am all for a "tone down" in the over-potting that seems to be scaling with no end in sight, but I personally think the easiest and most appropriate places to fix this would be through both itemization and encounter tuning. Then end result I think everyone is really looking for is the accessibility factor. Simply toning down pots will solve this for edge of progression guilds, but still leave "lesser" guilds behind, leaving that argument to, right or wrong, pop up once again soon. I still like the idea that the option is there to over-pot when appropriate to cover some weakness in my raid, just not be forced into it. There are legit times where a few flasks over extra elixirs could make or break a fight for a good number of guilds who don't have 60 man pools sitting waiting to raid stack, and having the option to edge at your own discression is always nice.

The point that everyone is making is that this "option" shouldn't be improving your raid's effectiveness by 20-30%, thus forcing Blizzard to design raid encounters around heavily-buffed raids.

I hear that, but I don't think blizz is forced into anything at all. If the enounters they design sway back away from cranking out pure dps/hps and more towards user skill and execution on a skill level, not a numbers level, this wouldn't be a giant issue. Look at encounters like Gothik, C'thun for reference. Potting really doesn't cover for people breaking cc's, walking into beams, etc. It sure helps but not in the extreme as a stand still and spam button X style encounter.
I guess I just have always wished for more of these encounters in the first place, as they seem to be more creative and overall more pure challenge than most of what we see as raid bosses. More of these fights, and less of the concern for pots being overpowered.

There are certain elements of most or all encounters that boil down to a numbers game no matter how execution-intensive you make the fight. Some moreso than others.

Im still personally a fan of non consumable consumables as suggested by myself and a few others.

However, I also like the idea of vendor bought potions. I dont see why we cant have last raid teirs potions and flasks now available on a vendor so we can pot up that way.

Dont put Ironsheilds on there, as thats what alchemists are making for the high end, but why not have stonesheilds? No super mana but superiors?

It doesnt 100% fix the issue, but it mitigates it signifigantly, you can buy your 80% as good potions cheeply, like your buying regents, and if you really need that oomph to get over the last bit, then sure get the real good stuff out of the cask and go at it.

I still think that if you change a lot of the regen pots / mana pots, there will be massive retuning needed on bosses (and problably even classes, but blizzard would either not see class problems or just ignore them. When it comes to class balance, blizzard is pretty bad).

A lot of the fights rely on lengthy fight time to make them difficult (at least in part): ie, longer fight, more time to make mistakes. Without consumables, or with nerfed consumables, those long fights are no longer feasable. In fact, all fights problably have to be shortened by some degree. And if you start to shorten them too much, they lose their difficulty. Plus, blizzard rarely makes huge sweeping changes like that, even when it's needed.

I really like raiding and honestly it's the only reason I still even play this game. Consumables are time sinks in the worst way: you pretty much do it solo outside of a raid. It's horrendously boring WORK. I look at a fight like Maulgar and I love it...Then I look at a gruul and absolutely hate it. Can't blizzard tell the difference?

So they need to get us back in raid zones, where we should be spending more time than farming. Consumables need some form of a massive nerf. Or at least the farming process does. To compensate, bosses will need retuned and to some extent even classes; particularly mana regen.

First, does blizzard see that eventually this farming crap will drive people away? I already can't stand anything outside of raiding by this point. I have enough boring, monotonous work irl....I like the challenging puzzles and teamwork involved in raiding, not farming mats.

Second, can blizzard pull such a huge change off? Do they even care anymore? They are laughing all the way to the bank, imo...

In blade's edge you can buy unstable health and mana potions from this guy:
http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22099 he can be intereacted with after getting 5 scraps of costume cloth


And major mana and health from this guy:
http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=19837

limited supply, but it was a nice surprise

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=13444#M0z

This claims that you can buy unlimited Major Mana Potions from the Argent Quartermasters?

Not really. Just change the rate at which finite quantities are consumed (specifically, healing) - a lowered damage output means that conservation strategies are more viable even with the lowered regeneration. Longer fights from DPS perspectives shift a bit of benefit to rogues (if mana users can't support optimal DPS cycles, that emphasizes rogue's DPS sustainability) as well, which is arguably a good thing.

There's nothing inherently problematic about long fights with nerfed consumables - after all, 4H was pretty much the longest single encounter (at least if you split multi-phase encounters apart) and it definitely was not heavy on consumables.

(Maybe Sapph was the longest single encounter, depending on your 4H strat, but damn it, Sapph doesn't support my point, and 4H does.)

I don't see where that says anything about unlimited, I don't think Wowhead makes the distinction. I'm pretty sure you can buy Major pots from those quartermasters in limited supply (4).

It usually states the limited quantity, but in their case it does not, just the item itself.

they are not unlimited. I checked that recently; he had none.

This idea I like, would actually become an interresting way to farm potions, instead of running around and picking flowers, I like this idea the most since it wouldnt require me to ride around in Azshara just to farm my flasks :p

This NPC also sells a few herbs/Major protection potions and super healing/Mana potions: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=20989 , limited supply though, and takes along time for items to spawn. So long respawn time that it's not worth camping him or something, only if your lucky enough when you drob by sometimes.
A possibility is if your playing on two accounts though, park one char at the NPC then play on the other account, alt-tabbing every 15minutes or so and you'll get most herbs he spawn.

Tossing idea #41020 into the hat here, but if the goal of consumables is to make up for a lack of gear, and then get phased out, why not cap off the benefit? I.E., instead of Adept's Elixir:

"Use: Increases spell damage and healing by up to 24 and spell critical strike rating by 24 for 60 min."

Have:

"Use: Increases spell damage and healing by up to 24, to a maximum of 1100, and spell critical strike rating by 24, with a maximum of 26% spell crit, for 60 min."

You finetune the values so potions are USUALLY a benefit, but a lessened benefit as time goes on until your gear surpasses the potion. Then you drop Master's Elixir or whatever you off some gateway boss with a high drop rate. And so on and so forth. Alchemy is still the profession of choice for progression, but it's not something you still have to do for content you're starting to outgear.

Frankly though, mana pots are easy to come by. You run a 5 man as a healer, and you tend to get handed them when they drop, plus our guild's potion master just explodes with them. If it were the only thing to farm for old content I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Gurgthock's mana potion solution seems good, and they already have some mechanics that are analogous - I'm thinking of weakened soul. Chugging a super mana pot would give you a 2 minute debuff "Super Mana Potion Sickness" that suppresses mana regen by 100 mana per 5 seconds. (2400 mana / 120 second cooldown = 20 mana/second or 100 mp5.)


And I agree that putting hard caps on the effect of flasks and elixirs seems to be the least disruptive way to fix the the issue.

Rather than changing the mechanics of alchemy to suit the raid game better why not just have raid mobs drop potions and/or potion materials in large enough quantities to supply your raid force?

Say, 10 mana potions, 6 of each various melee dps elixirs, 6 of each various caster dps elixirs, some healing powers, and then a cache of herbs such as mana thistle, ancient lichen and terocone to prevent alchemy from becoming useless.

We kill mobs to get gear to make it easier to progress. Why can't we kill mobs to get potions and herbs to make it easier to progress?

That may not seem like much but once your guild has raid content on farm you'll see you're potion bank reserves skyrocket and then deplete a little once you hit new content and are learning again.

This keeps potions the same for those who like to farm a few and use them in 5 mans and pvp but enables raiders to drop herbalism as an almost mandatory raiding profession.

Edit: It will also help established and progressed raid guilds keep their bank stocked with gold where they will be able to sell excessive pots to cover repair costs. (Assuming a healthy raiding community and a larger server population, this wouldn't really help guild banks as far as gold is concerned on lower pop servers)

Coming from a management perspective, it would have to drop way more than 10 mana pots to compensate, maybe 100... and then passing that out, along with the hundreds of herbs it would have to drop also would be a royal pain in the ass.

Also, the problem isn't "using consumables to give you that extra edge" or "using consumables for a focused push". The issue is that if you have the option of going all out, many guilds will do this, and this will inherently trivialize the encounter, or, now adays, the encounter will have this consumable usage in mind - thereby making it a requirement, and making learning attempts trite.

Its a horrible circular pitfall, and it needs to be gutted, badly. Tuning should be reworked to match.