Taken from official forums (Eyonix) -
'New raid encounters will be tuned with the new elixir limitation in mind. If problems are identified for existing raid encounters, as a result of this change, we will make the appropriate tuning adjustments.'

I would like to know what 'new raid encounters' means

People bring up over and over again that they are no longer able to overcome the need for consumables through gear upgrades.

So isn't this a itemization issue? Why are we looking forward to a overhaul of consumables instead of itemization improvements?

Because:

1) The sheer quantity and quality of performance increase offered by consumables has increased exponentially.
2) Even a somewhat reasonable gear upgrade path (which we don't have, and is indeed an itemization issue) pales in comparison to the amount of performance upgrade we get from potting up.
3) Encounters are basically tuned with the expectation that the raid has potted up. Only much later and after much outcry has some nerfs come down the line and only on the initial "entry level" boss fights so far.

Because, currently, popping Major Agility, Flask of Relentless Assault, Strength food, and Onslaught Elixer, I (a druid) pick up 500 AP and 2 crit. No amount of gear upgrades will equal that, and IF they somehow do, the consumables will still be there to add on.

Basically, Blizzard has to balance encounters around consumable use, or they're trivialized when you do flask/ pot up. Either that or every boss is Garr...

Isn't this mostly due to the fact that Blizzard found it needed to "upgrade" potions with newer versions, however the item budget system never changed and thus the practical point-per-itemlevel upgrades for gear also never changed?

e.g. You got +X Stamina from going Y ilevels higher before, you still get +X from going Y ilevels before. Pots used to give +Z Stamina, but now they give +Z*2 Stamina... as such, the relative power of consumables has increased.

That's the issue as I see it, anyhow.

Blizz avoided mudflating items but decided to mudflate consumables. I do feel the problems is with itemization, though. A little mudflation is not a bad thing, especially when half the population is staring at epics wondering something like, "Why did kill Aran to get to get +1 int and +1 spell hit rating?"

While I can feel your motivation (I hate to farm for pots as much as the other player), I feel this change would be for the worse. I really do.

Raiding to me was always about:
knowing boss abilities,
developing a tactic for you raid,
executing it and
*being prepared*.
(I leave the social fun aspect out of this context ... this comes without saying ^^)

The first two are one time preconditions only.
If you reduce the consumables significantly the last point gets reduced to having the correct gear ... which is a one time purchase also.

Thus raiding would be reduced to just executing the known tactic.
For me, that would sorely feel lacking.

Just to clarify: consumable use as seen today is too much. It should be reduced ... but all the kneejerk reactions (hope this is not seen as inflammatory) about banning elixiers and flasks and all ... this would (IMHO) take out the "being prepared" part out of raiding. Just feels wrong.

No offense meant.

If itemization issues were fixed, then Blizzard could for example tune SSC with a raid in T5's in mind. Until the raid gets geared up, they will have to pot/flask/eat up to account for the gap in stats AND have the extra "oomph" required to minimize the effects of any execution errors that occur while learning the encounter.

The relative value compared to your pool, yes... but the relative value to gear upgrades? I wouldn't agree.

You're still only getting 1-3 points of Stamina for a step-up gear upgrade in TBC non-tank, yet easily accessible/farmable Stamina food as gone from +12 to +30. (I won't bring up the fact that most T5 sets actually have -less- Stamina than T4 sets... since it's silly itemization that will probably change in the next patch.)

The relative power of ALL upgrades has decreased relative to the "pool"--but consumables less so versus gear as they were actually upgraded while gear progression was not.

"Being prepared" used to mean showing up with a stack or two of bandages, some health or mana pots depending on class, and maybe sharpening stones, then having the guild provide a stack of fire resist pots EASILY farmed from running the instance itself.

I wouldn't mind going back to those simpler happier days.

In fact, I would think that that was what people were expecting to be able to go back to for the start of TBC raiding. What we have now is ridiculous and it is well past time for some proverbial babies to be tossed out with the bath water.

All of these need to happen:

1) Nerfs on bosses and trash all up and down the line, from heroics/Karazhan through The Eye, similar to what happened with Romeo and Juliet and Gruul. Mechanics can be fun to learn, but overwhelming numbers that you have to min/max raid composition and pot to beat are grossly overused.
2) Gear upgrades need to be more exciting. Disenchanting first kill drops is depressing.
3) Herbalism needs to be dethroned as the king of moneymaking professions. Complete removal is an option I'd entertain.
4) T4 tokens on 25man bosses need to double in drop rate. No excuses.

Right now, raiding sucks. In fact, actually playing this game beyond level 70 blue 5mans sucks. (In fact, for a tanking warrior, even the blue 5mans suck.) This needs to be fixed posthaste, not lumped into a patch introducing yet another untuned buggy endgame raiding instance that no one at all is prepared for.

Progression raid guilds may say "it's fine l2p" but their turnover rates speak to a different story.

I was always 'prepared' back in WoW, I had a couple of flasks, atleast 10 of each potion, 2 stacks of each poison, foods.. They tended to stay in my bags for several months however and only occasionally would I use any of them at all.
I also had my resist gear, a couple of repair bots, several spare items (ie non dagger weapons), raid-zone specific items (sand, keys, scraps) too.

Preperation is not equal to farming 10+ of each pot per night of raiding.


@ rawrz I hope not, Naxx was an exception because it was ment to be above normal level, raids should be tuned for the best people will be going into them with and then a tiny bit above.
So for SSL you would assume the whole raid in T4 and perhaps a handful of SSL level gear tossed in, Vashj could be easy to assume a slightly higher level of gear too. Thus you start off having it 'hard/normal' then when your raid is fully T5 geared (assuming it gets decently buffed) I would expect it to become 'normal/easy'.

I agree.
But suggestions like "removing all flasks from the game" are the other side of the (extreme) spectrum.
As always: middle ground should serve best.

No, it most certainly does not. Flasking up a tank because of a gear lack for Patchwerk, that was reasonable, similarly with flasking up some healers to provide the longevity/power to heal through such a "only once a week" fight. Adding a flask for every single role you can perform in a raid was just asking for trouble because as we see, it only led to a slippery slope where pretty much every other encounter was tuned with it in mind with no consideration paid to the fact that farming for that amount of shit per encounter is drudgery of the worst kind so overwhelming that it's driving people away from the game in droves.

Yes, even the possibility that a raid can temporarily buff themselves up that much should be removed.

Prior to TBC, we raided though MC, BWL, AQ40, and Mid-Naxx (before the pre-TBC demotivation kicked in) and thus never hit Loatheb. At all those points in the game, basically consumables looked like:

MC: FR pots on Rag for the first month, a few crazy Rogues that liked being #1 on DM
BWL: Flask on MT for Firemaw and Nefarian for the first couple months, a few crazy Rogues/Mages that liked being #1 on DM
AQ40: Flask on MT for Huhu+, a few crazy Rogues/Mages that liked being #1 on DM, mana potions for healers past Huhu
Naxx pre-Patchwerk: Flask, Ironshield, max elixirs on MT for Maexxna, occasional mana potion usage for healers

...either way, until Patchwerk, you were looking at consumables playing a highly limited role. The primary consumable uses was, as someone noted, bandages. The only people who potted regularly were DPS classes that really loved trying to edge out the other ones and loved maxing DPS--however, we would have survived without it.

Flasks were basically there to give the MT some extra buffer on new encounters or for Mages that liked padding DamageMeters. That's about it. Too bad that isn't the case nowadays.

I dont see why people think even flasking your tanks is "Ok".
Do you like farming? Do you enjoy it?
Because i most certainly do not.

Alot needs to be fixed.

Right now, in order to raid, you have to pot up for several encounters. You could argue that you don't "Have" to. But its moot, because it behooves you NOT to pot up. Alot of boss's while having "neat" abilities are still poorly designed around the --Enrage Timer--. Im sorry but i fucking hate this mechanic. Its like you see dev's sitting around the room at thier table trying to think of a way to make a boss harder, and there is like this 1 guy at the end of the table who's sole job is to say "Lets add a Enrage timer to it!". He prolly makes 40k a year.

Hydross (the real way) i mean if your guild does this the real way and wins, do you HONESTLY need a 10minute or your fucking boned timer? How many guilds use the pure Nature phase now??? I know we do, it saves us time, potions, flasks and headache's. I know Blindelf and Snake-man have 10min enrage timers. We first started seeing these timers i think in AQ40. To put an end to guilds dinking away at bosses till they died. Im just curious, but if you fixed Hydross to where you have to do switchs' and removed the 10 minute timer, would he still not be difficult? Hell im sure he'd still kick a good 2/3rds of Wow's entire player population.

Blizz has proven that they can make unique encounters that are challanging that dont require a time limit. Sometimes i can live with a Enrage Timer but it shouldn't become the Norm to force a wipe after a certain period of time. Take for example, Gruul, Vael and a few others i can't think of because its 5am.

Back on the Consumable fix. I am not sure its going to actually fix anything. I dunno, i personally have gotten to the point where i truely hate farming and making pots, so i can raid during the week. Part of me enjoys the boost i get from consumables during the raid, the other part of me wish's every boss was Garr.

Stormni

Just remove all the elixir/flasks from the game and make mana/health pots BoP and reduce their effectiveness. Would greatly decrease the use of alchemy, but that would be better than what it is in the current state.

And then slowly improve it to a balanced state that doesn't require mind numbing grinding.

Making mana/health potions BoP would be the single most retarded change I could ever conceive anyone making. It would force every caster to become an alchemist unless you nerfed them to the point of uselessness.

That's the point.

Enrage timers are certainly overused. I don't mind them when they're a non-issue unless things begin to go wrong - I liked Hakkar's enrage for example (I was a little late to the raiding scene so that's not as long ago as it is for most of you) but you sure didn't need consumables to beat it. It only became a factor if you were badly undergeared or if you let him heal too much.

The enrage timer should be used sparingly. There are other options - Ragnaros for instance doesn't have an enrage but I don't think any guilds opted to outlast him - the Sons phase was so taxing that you didn't want to see two of them, but if Rags submerged at 5% or less you could try and scrape through a second one to finish him off. Another way to prevent healer-stacking is to give the boss some ability that while avoidable has a good chance of mucking up everything. Prince Malchezaar (at least for us) is like this - sit out on that terrace for too long and bad infernals will happen.

Scrap flasks, allow us to take one mana potion per combat (cooldown doesn't expire until combat breaks), and heavily restrict elixirs (one of any type per character, lasts through death sounds good to me). Since a huge part of healer longevity comes from consumables you'll have solved a portion of yourneed for an enrage timer just by restricting consumables. Healers can no longer heal forever and the prospect of oom looms once more. Then throw in adds that must be controlled, adds that must be DPSed down before they do something bad, or some clever "you-don't-want-this-fight-to-go-on-forever" mechanic to prevent stacking a raid with healers and you're fine.

I'd be completely happy if the only consumable allowed in a raid instance was a heavy netherweave bandage. I much prefer measures of "preparedness" that only have to be done once - resist gear is okay with me. Chain-potting is not (and my guild hasn't even reached the point where flasking beyond the MT is necessary).

A funny thought that just came to me.

Isn't alchemy the only profession where the real high-level goodies of the profession are not BoP? Seems with the recent move to BoP high end BS, tailoring, leatherworking and engineering (soon more). Jewelcrafting shows that by trinkets and figurines going BoP at all levels there seems to be a move to make at least part of the profession personal utility only (the way engineering feels probably a tad too much).

How would herbalism feel if flasks and top end elixirs were BoP, ala JC consumable figurines? It's an interesting thought because if that would kill all other professions it's kind of clear how out of tune the profession is with the rest.

The only profession alt I'm currently pampering is my alchemist for obvious reasons. Virtually anything my alchemist produces has broad utility and a persistent market.

Yeah but doing bop-only for top end alchemy just will result in everyone being alchemists. The utility alchemy provides is quite simply completely out of balance with any other thing you can do in this game.

hyjal/black temple.


typical blizz logic as i said in my useless post earlier. looking forward to the hard bosses in scc and tk after buffnerf..........................