So they were do-able without pots, but made much easier with pots... how is this an argument in favors of consumables?

Is this a serious question?
How can something optional (read: doable without) cause a dilemma?

Is this a serious question?

If so, then the answer is that trivializing content for people with the time and patience to buff their entire raid out of the ass is inherently bad, and ultimately is unhealthy for the entire WoW community.

I'm pretty low on whiskey... you lazy flasker!!

I always thought the purpose of consumables wasn't to pot and flask up every encounter (titans for tanks excluded), but to let guilds practice encounters until the execution was perfect and then pot up to beat the encounter. If Blizzard tested encounters with no consumables first then with full consumables, I think they would have a much better idea of how to tune encounters and consumables.

Just like the vast majority of WoW 1.0, encounters should be doable without any consumables. Hopefully the new consumable nerfs will but things back to this state.

But really (and my previous post at the end of last page elaborates a lot more on this) it never caused a problem before, so why is Blizzard getting obsessed about it now? Is it really needed?

You are contradicting yourself.

And sorry fo the patronizing tone. Got carried away.

Why? Serious question.

The difference really is that Blizzard apparently doesn't like the potential for their content being trivialized. Because of that, they have to design with consumables in mind, otherwise the potential is there that their beautifully balanced content for a raid using no consumables gets ripped to shreds very easily with the use of consumables.

There's a few ways of dealing with it for Blizzard, the designers will most likely want to keep the encounters challenging in all cases for a guild that's expected to do it, so making changes to consumables is a logical choice; if you can stack less consumables, the amount of difference they make is also logically smaller, allowing for a more natural progression of consumable usage versus gear levels. Currently the amount of consumables as well as the level of the gear upgrades (Or lack thereof as some would say) basically means that it'll take a very, very long time before someone gets into the 'Consumables are optional' part of doing any of the later raid encounters.

Of course, lowering the impact of consumables might also mean that Blizzard can balance encounters better along people simply never using consumables, assuming guilds have spent the time doing the previous content. That way consumables turn into something trail-blazing guilds will be using, while more casual guilds that take more time gearing up will also have less need for using them.

The issue in general really is simply within the power of consumables... Though I'll add that unless more is revealed the hammer is missing the nail quite a bit, while it's annoying to have to use a lot of individual elixirs, a lot of the power of consumables really lies within the 2 minute cooldown potions.

Edit: I'm trying to look at it from a designer's point of view; personally I wouldn't mind consumables being kept as they are as long as content gets retuned to not needing them. But I don't see that as being as attractive an option for a designer as it is for a player.

The raid endgame changed quite a bit from the Molten Core days, to BWL, to AQ40, to Naxx. The encounters have gradually gotten more complex, and the margin for error has gradually decreased, and the raiding player base has become more and more competitive amongst itself as the game has matured. Over the last 2+ years the raider player-base has become better at the game in general, and Blizzard has responded by creating more and more challenging encounters. At this point any edge that is reasonably available and offers a significant advantage to raiders will be used, whether it's a mod or a consumable.

The problem from Blizzard's perspective, with making the current encounters easier (so people don't feel compelled to use consumables) is that of course at this point many guilds would tear through most of the content, and probably use consumables anyway to absolutely trivialize encounters.

Because before Blizzard never balanced raid encounters around fully flasked/potted guilds and now they are. This combined with the lack of gear progression means that guilds will be forced to flask and pot for every encounter until the gear they get is better than the buffs. If t4 or kara loot was high enough quality to make Gruul, Mag, and SSC doable without a crapload of consumables, no one would be complaining.

People seem to be skirting around a pretty basic dichotomy. If you have meaningful consumables, it makes creating a challenging raid very difficult because your boss will either be too difficult without them, or too easy with them. If your consumables have only a marginal effect on your raid's performance, then you can tune content much more finely and focus on rewarding execution rather than farming power. But in that case, why really have consumables at all?

I wouldn't mind that much if they abolished consumables entirely (well, I'd have to find something other than Herbalism as a source of income, but never mind). If they wanted some fun mechanic that required using very specialised consumables at a certain key point in the fight, make them craftable by an NPC with mats that drop from the zone or something.

Because the optional thing affects the economy for everyone else? Driving drunk is optional; I don't have to do it, but other people doing it sure as hell can cause a dilemma for me.

I'm not contradicting myself. It's inherently bad because, by all accounts, Blizzard seems to want these encounters to be challenging on their own merits to people at the expected level of equipment. Stacking consumables is practically just bypassing this check entirely, and essentially letting a guild full of herbalists get a free pass on many aspects the game (i.e. completely circumventing the standard "is the tank tough enough, are the DPS classes doing enough damage, do the healers have enough longevity, are the groups arranged to maximize benefit" aspects. Yes, clicking the cube at the right time and not standing in front of a laser beam are important skills to have, but they should have to go along with successfully executing the standard practices of WoW.

When you have a tremendous reward like this for stacking consumables, along with virtually no restrictions, then you're placing a very strong demand on all guilds to do this. And thus forcing some kind of "quartermaster" aspect of the game that virtually nobody enjoys. You create a situation where many people start to think to themselves, "yeah, I guess we could beat this encounter if we went out and farmed for a few hours before the raid, but I don't think I want to do that... maybe I'll just not go to the next raid instead." Never mind things like dying to random environmental circumstances and realizing you just lost a bunch of money, that kind of shit tends to weigh heavily on the minds of people who like to believe they're playing this game for entertainment.

So because other people can make money off of our misfortune it is selfish to request a change in consumable usage? If that's the case we should allow all these buffs in Arenas too! That way they can really rake it in!

And for what it's worth the majority of people don't buy their herbs off the AH. Doing that would not be a sustainable method unless you constantly farmed gold another way. The fact is everyone in a raiding guild is either 1) herbalist 2) has an alt with herbalist 3) has a friend with herbalist.

Check out this parse of my guild and compare the different profession choices: http://wow.tachyonsix.com/armory/pro...-surge-30.html

My bad. Loatheb was not on my mind when I wrote that question.
As I already pointed out in this thread Loatheb and (IMHO) Gothik were the only pre Saphiron bosses in Naxx that really benefitted from potting of the whole raid.

If I may restate my question: Did you pot up your raid pre Loatheb somewhere? Even if it was neither for a worldfirst nor really needed?

To paraphraze: Did you ever pot up your whole raid to trivialize content? (Think Noth, Maexxna, Twins, C'Thun, Nef, ...)

Loatheb surely was Blizzards first sin in designing a bad consumable boss.

Toooooo sooooooooon.... You have awakened me too soon. Ragnaros and reliance on GFPPs was the original consumable cockup once people realized they could just use a few FR potions and keep their normal gear on otherwise and burn him down faster.

Hmm .. I was merely going by the meaning of the words.

"Dilemma" implicitely states something of a necessity.
"Optional" is the direct antipode to that.

Perhaps my understanding of the language is not fine enough, but that sure as hell looks like a contradiction to me.

As for your example I think thats a non sequitur. But lets disagree.

But no-one complained about that, because it was a cheaply made potion and you obtained half of the ingrediants from it by doing Molten Core itself. And because it was optional - Ragnaros was perfectly doable without it, but it makde things easier whilst you learnt him before you gave up on potions completely.
They also had the LBRS mind control buff nearbye as well, further "trivialising" the FR needed for that fight if you wanted to use it.

Ok.
But, why would a raid pot up (an action obiously hated by everyone as such threads show) for the simple task of trivializing an encounter?
Either the encounter was not THAT doable before or the potting was not THAT hated beforehand.
Or was it because potting to trivialize content sure as hell lasts for the nominal hour (lasting time of the pots/elixiers) and by that simple fact is a viable tool?

I dont know but something just doesnt match.

EDIT: Or could it even be that potting up was one of the "fun" aspects of the game? See: Patchwerk DPS thread
And you want remove that?

I assume most guilds were like mine and only uses GFPP's for the first month or two, then just went to killing him straight out? Same goes for Firemaw/Nef (MT) or most of the stuff in AQ40.

IMO the question is not, "did you pot up to 'trivialize' content" (which, let's face it, isn't very accurate because farming that many pots is, as we have found, non-trivial in and of itself...) but more "does it matter if people occasionally pot up to 'trivialize' content?"

From my perspective the answer is: "no, it does not really matter."

Does anyone particularly care that the world first C'thun kill shot basically had every buff in the universe? I really highly doubt it. Does anyone care if Scrub Guild #487132 full-flasked to kill Anub'Rekhan? I really highly doubt that too.

Why balance around something that is impractical, annoying, and time-consuming?

I find it funny that we can all admit that farming this much constantly is an overwhelming and annoying burden, then turn around and call it "easy and trivial" when looking from a balance perspective. I honestly don't CARE if a guild drops 3k gold to kill a boss easier, so long as all I have to do is bring a solid raid group that knows what the hell they are doing that is willing to learn the fight, wipe a bit, and eventually bring the boss down.

In that way, I likewise wouldn't really care if they further nerfed consumables to limit their potential impact...but, at the end of the day, the major concern for me is the ability (or inability, as it were) for my guild to actually do something if we refuse to go along with the whole flaskathon trend.

What about after your most "hardcore" players leave to join the guild that pots out for every encounter?

That's a pretty different issue that is rather irrelevant to this discussion.

I'd go so far to say it's MORE likely to happen with the current balance arrangement than less. The progress gain from using consumables when they are "required" is a lot higher than when they are optional. When they are optional, it's just a speed issue...when they're required, it's a brick wall.

People don't usually leave guilds over speedbumps, they leave guilds over brick walls.