There are like 3 alchemy items that can be sold for profit, so there is no market for alchemy stuff out there. And those items are Flask of Relentless Assault, Flask of Mighty Restoration and Flask of Fortification. Everything else is impossible to sell for profit.

Ah, transmutes. I haven't used might transmute in days, since it's worth zero gold on my server, mights go for cheaper than primals separately. As does every herb and potion reagent.

Hmm I sell lots of things for profit, even such mundane things as super mana pots. Maybe server economies just vary this wildly? If there is an abundance of herbalists and alchemists on a server this would make sense, with both collecting and crafting markets over-saturated and the buyers market reduced (because too many are actually sellers or just have no need).

That's the best idea I have ever heard for mana potions timers.

While current content may not be tuned to support it, I too think it's an excellent idea and something for Blizzard devs to work towards. In a 10-minute fight, Super Mana Potion is reduced from an average maximum of 100 mana/5 to 20 mana/5. That's a reasonable but not overpowered gear-gap power gain. Timers for other combat consumables like protection potions could be moved to a separate timer as well, with a similar use constraint.

One obvious scenario that needs to be considered if such a change were to occur is a hunter's ability to feign death to get out of combat.

Revisiting old issues here, bear with me.

The reason for the timer being that long is so that people with the flasks cannot run around the game world constantly flasked. Permaflasking would lead to the power level disconnection experienced in WoW Classic between raiders and nonraiders, only this time around it would be between people with flasks and people without flasks.

As for the earlier Jewelcrafting being functionally invalid comment, I suppose it does look like a whole different ballgame from the melee perspective. From a person who plays a caster and a healer alt, Living Ruby Serpent and Talasite Owl are very alluring trinkets.

Many people here seem to forget that they represent a minor fraction of the player base. Blizzard is a business and as such they do (and should) care a lot more about the majority of their customers.

If they'd remove flasks, as some suggest, from the game to satisfy a few of the hard core raiders they'd upset a much larger number of non-raiders who couldn't care less how flasks and consumables "affect" others raiding experience. Many non-raiding alchemists "make a living" from their products and finance their mounts, crafted gear, etc etc.

Also, there are many more small guilds who lack the Naxx gear and experience they never had a chance to obtain. Why take away some of their toys to feel good and beat some encounter?

And yes, I do understand your concerns, but many of the suggestions here have a selfish feel to it. Some posts seem to convey a message like "get rid of stuff so we can have an even bigger gap between us and the mere mortals in lesser guilds".

I know what I am talking about as I have been in both extremes and speak from experience. Before TBC I was raiding Naxx 5-6 nights per week until we hit the Four Horsemen (all other wings clear, so yes, I was there for the Loatheb madness) shortly before TBC release.

After TBC I changed main (my priest was sick of healthbars) and moved to a very small "casual" guild. We can field one Karazhan group (working on Shade of Aran at the moment), raid 3 nights per week and don't have enough people willing to try Maulgar.

So I have seen both sides up close and can only say that some of the "demands" and "suggestions" here seem to forget that there are other people around as well.

I would agree there - mine is also a 3 raids a week guild, and we're now in the process of keying up for SSC. our most hard core players are those with all the pots and potions - it's our more time restricted players who are at most risk because of the policy of "flask or die" that seems to be inherent to TBC raids.

Also Caryna, I have to say, despite what you said - your post comes across as a bit "one sided" as well. No-one is complaining about flasks and potions in Karazhan - I think everyone here would agree that apart from mana potions, that place is perfectly balanced, and being able to use flasks & potions to push over the edge in a fight you are having difficulty with is exactly the sort of situation where they are viable.
But what happens when your little guild finishes Karazhan and kills Gruul? Because right not, that's *it* in terms of TBc content. End of the wall - you aren't going to be able to pot and flask for every raid post those fights, as you're in the same boat as I am and play to a much lower playtime than the more cutting edge guilds.

Just because something is balanced in one instance, doesn't neglect the fact that they aren't balanced anywhere else - and sooner or later, you are going to run into the same wall everyone else is hitting and wish that it was fixed. Blizzard can't direct the entirety of TBC content balancing based purely upon one 10 player zone.

The only reason they can "make a living" selling flasks is because Blizzard is forcing raiders to pay out the nuts for consumables. They are making a living off of the grind that is boring, awful, and killing us. I for one couldn't give a hoot if they removed flasks, raiding was less tedious, and the non-raiders ceased to get as much blood money from us.

Slight derail - my guild too has a mixed level of consumable usage. We flask our tanks, spot our healers a few Super Mana Potions, and beyond that it's every man for him- or herself. At a typical raid, we range from a rogue with Relentless Assault, Major Agility, Mastery, Agi food, and Rumsey Rum, to some of the more casual players who only have Stam food and Rumsey Rum. Of course, a couple of people in the guild are avid cooks and bulk Rumsey Rum importers, and we don't mind spotting some of the more casual players. We make public each person's performance after each boss, and it definitely shows who potted out of the ass and who did not. Some of us are hoping some of the more casual players would step up and would at least pop an Adept's or an Onslaught for a pull, and we hope those players would motivate themselves after assessing their own performance, but we never require it.

With that said, I agree using consumables should be a power trip, not a necessity.

Raiding used to be "Oh sweet! Look how awesome I'm doing all juiced up!" and now it's more like "Ok guys, everyone pot up again, and let's have another go."

I highlighted the keyargument which has been sorely overlooked in this debate.
Having more options is a good thing. Can you imagine balancing encounters do be demanding, yet managable but never trivial for both, the more hardcore and casual raiding guilds? Being able to pot IMHO(!) is from a design perspective a very clever thing to do ... because it allows lesser geared/experiences/skilled raiders to overcome this gap by "bruteforcing" so to speak.

As long as they are optional pots in all flavour are good.
Problem is at the moment they are not that optional anymore but required. To repeat myself (sorry for that): balancing is the root of the problem ... not the consumables.

Yet I acknowledge that balancing an encounter to be difficult yet managable without potting could make some encounters trivial when potted. The question remains if such encounters (usual DPS races) are not by themselves poorly designed. Aran is a perfect example how this can be achieved otherwise.

What if the buff duration from elixirs and flasks was tied to the instance in which they were used, lasting as long as the instance was active? (30 min soft reset = buffs gone.) That addresses unintended cross-over into battlegrounds and world PvP while still reducing the overall quantity of consumables needed to raid each night.

No no no no no. No.

Huge stacking consumables are fun in a single player RPG, one where you can hit the Save Game button right before you drink all your various concoctions and rub your various charms and call forth the spirits of your ancestors and then spend a few hours flying around the world smiting evil.

Not in a game that (evidently) purports to be a competitive endeavor. Who the hell wants to play a game where success is determined by weekly time investment in tedious activities? I'll come right out and say it: Idiots and losers, that's who. Everyone *else* wants this game to be based around execution and, to a lesser extent, a feeling of *permanent* character improvement, and are willing to put up with a reasonable amount of tedium if it lets them engage in the part of the game that they enjoy. A reasonable *and* predictable *and* class-independent level of tedium.

Blizzard can't design this game around jerks whose life goal is to one-up and guilt-trip their teammates over how much "grind time" they put into a game whose basic structure is already very time-consuming by the standards of anyone with gainful employment or other real-life responsibilities.

Sorry, I dont buy it.
Did you flask your whole raid in MC/BWL/AQ or Naxx?
At that time the pots gave no lesser adge than they do now.
Cost was a very effective way to prevent that happening. As long as potting was not really *needed* it was purely optional. Proof for this lies in the history of the raiding game.
(Correct me if Im wrong, but Drama flasking the whole raid for Nef Firstkill was a grave exception ... world firsts usually follow entirely different rules)

It's an old argument, and doesn't really work in practice within the current schema of consumables.

"Brute Forcing" things is not really a design option, because the best of the best will always be willing to do this, thus trivializing content not designed around it. Had SSC and TK not been broken and buggy and tuned around a raid using no consumables, the DnT of the world would have already cleared them weeks or months ago because they would just overpower it all almost every time. The moment you can brute force something is the moment guilds will do it and plow through content, and thus it must be designed around the assumption that you are fully potted. I'm not sure brute forcing can really be an option if you don't want consumable usage to spiral down to the level we are faced with today.

Without consumables, or at least very minimal ones, all you are left with is your skill and gear. And that is much easier to balance content around.

Maybe, but I'd be willing to chalk this up to a lack of knowledge about just how powerful consumables really were. I mean, in many stages of vanilla wow, even the best of us were noobs. Knowledge of game mechanics has increased significantly over time. I think they got away with not balancing encounters around consumables up until the Twin Emps or so simply because people don't realize how powerful they were, for one, and also because of the basic shifting design of boss fights - in MC and BWL, you didn't really have enrage timers, so the pressure wasn't there to optimize DPS at all times, which is where much of the potting issues comes up.

Forgoing stereotypes would help your argument.

It's not clever at all. It's a basic technique of RPG's stretching back dozens of years. Moreover, Blizzard's current system is anything but clever; practically the only thing they've done to make it anything less than completely trivial is (a) have a potion cooldown, and (b) make flasks last through death. Do either of these seem particularly clever to you?

Players have basically nothing to be proud of if they brute-force an encounter with potions. Why even bother to allow that path, given the consequences?

You keep saying this. The evidence you're offering comes far short of supporting this claim.

Personally, and excuse the fact that as a former main hunter I'm biased, I don't think hunters FD'ing to chug mana pots is really as gamebreaking as healers doing so throughout every single endgame fight. I mean you could even argue that that's an additional benefit to FD.

Oh, believe me, I'm not forcing it. It needs no forcing. I've come across these people more times in WoW than I could possibly have expected. I'm liable to hunt down the next person who uses "flask" and "lazy" in the same sentence and club them to death with a whiskey bottle.

So youre telling me that the DnTs and Nihilums of this world should be the design goal of WoW Raiding?

And as for designing around full potted raids.
I'd like to have some opinion of DnT or Nihilum members on this board.
Did you progress through AQ full potted?
Serious question.

I disagree. That would only result in an overly strict linear progression path regarding raidroster/gear and skill.

I already admitted that Loatheb was a poor encounter in that regard. Not much different to (prenerf) Gruul or Hydross.

Arguing with a poorly balanced encounter does not really counter my argument, me thinks.

BWL and AQ are proof enough.
Pots were (mostly ... forget about resistance pots here and there) optional there and no whining was heard.
BUT the consumable at that time had no lesser impact on your raid performance than they do now.

Is this really an issue, though?

a) Make technical fights where stats/brute force is less effective
b) When all else fails, don't get overly concerned what the top 0.01% does?

I mean, I'll give an example... My guild waited for the Gruul nerf before spending any time on him, simply because we did not support the notion of full-raid flasking at all. Another guild on the server had been flasked attempting him for 2 weeks with very little luck. On the day of the nerf, they went in full-flasked and beat him pretty easily for "server first", then talked about how "trivial" it was.

Our guild went in there 2 days after they did that and killed it the 2nd try without heavy raid-wide consumable or flasks usage due to pretty good execution after practicing the first night, and were perfectly happy with our kill. I didn't much care that another guild felt the need to rely on 3k gold worth of consumables to land a kill, and I don't think many others in my guild did either.

Somewhere along the line, it almost seems that the design shifted from making fun and challenging raid encounters to simply making well-calculated timesink roadblocks, meant to hinder the population for X amount of days/weeks/hours. I look at the current raids and see a distinct lack of emphasis on "fun" design. Gruul got 10 times more fun IMO when the encounter became possible just to concentration on the execution rather than skimming out every last point of damage from your raid via any means humanly possible.

I see it as a massive mistake to balance around the worst-case and get -so- concerned about what the max flasked/potted/etc. raids may possibly "trivialize." The problem is assuming that getting flasked/potted is trivial, which we all know it is not. I don't ever remember this being so much of a problem in classic WoW, and I rarely saw widespread abuse of consumables even if raids technically "could" do it.

Some guilds kill Curator on the first evoc, while I've seen plenty of other Kara groups struggle with even bringing him down before the 10 minute enrage timer. I think we should all be pretty used to the fact that different guilds clear content at different speeds, and honestly I wouldn't be bothered if Nihilum had already cleared out TK/SSC by now due to it being "trivial" for them when raid-flasked and buffed to the max.