An idea I was throwing around was perhaps changing the "herbable" and "minable" mobs to skinning exclusively. But never the less, we need either A) skinning into LW so we can pickup a better gathering prof or B) Make it so skinning can get you motes (along with the above change possibly, because as it stands now; getting 350+ leatherworking requires 4+ primals -per point- and it only goes up the higher it gets.

Also, I liked the idea of the 375 sets being upgradeable, that would certainly be a huge perk.

EDIT:
@ Dragkhar, increasing the drum range would be awesome, especially since most of the time hunters are buffing or being buffed my melee classes and we're (hunters) often at max range/out of drum range.

Skinning would benefit it its scope was broadened. Instead of "Skinning", it could be "Scavenging" or "Collecting".

Using it on beasts would give leather, humanoids cloth, elemental stuff motes, mechanical engineering stuff. This would make a great farming profession which balances it with mining (because mining doesn't involve killing creatures) while not devaluing tailors (since their materials don't need a gathering skill)

Counterargument is that a Tailor just needs to kill mobs to 'gather' his materials and gets the same degree of side-drops. It's like 'cloth-gathering' was already bundled into Tailoring.

Alchemy changes actually make things worse. I knew they'd fuck it up. The problem is people who work at blizzard and make these decisions are probably not spending hours a day farming for the mats for potions in a raid. And the QA people almost guaranteed are not doing it.

This post sums it up best:

So we can still flask our raid, and thats considered a fix? Stupid.

Thats another decent way to fix it too, however it would most likely end up being 'too' good, however it would allow non grinding classes the ability to get these items from helping their dps buddies questing and in instances ^^.


As to Quigon, the flask thing is an unknown currently so thats not even valid, we KNOW however it is going to be changed in someway however, so we have to hope its a big thing.

Potions not being looked at too are also a bad thing, god knows why they decided not to look into that as with the flask nerfs coming into play there will be more heavy usage on them instead.
ie currently I have the choice of 'Chain Mana Potions' or 'Flask of Mighty Restoration', its very rare I would need to use a mana pot while having the flask up, so simply nerfing the flasks will mean I have to just take the potion route more often.
Sadly the only way to fix this would be to have a way for healers to get mana back on healing (think JoW on a tank instead of a boss), or severly nerfing the length of encounters which have high healing requirements, although if DPS requrements are nerfed enough then bringing extra healers is also viable.

One of the more unknown issues that will effect this is the balancing changes on raid bosses, when they come down from being a necessity to just being a perk things should calm down, the only issue will be with the ability to 'brute force' a boss down, however having more fights based on mechanics, co-ordination, & execution instead of numbers should help there too.

Wowhead has drums listed as 10 yards.

I don't see why drums even need a range. Sure, realistically speaking, it may be harder to hear drums the further you are away from them, but these are consumables with a two minute cooldown. I don't think they'll be overpowering in the least if they affect every party member on every charge. Drums of War would already cost about 1 gold per charge (ignoring the cost of the leather).

Making farming miserable for non-DPS classes seems to be basically in line with Blizzard's goals. Why should this be any different? Also, as has been mentioned skinning is the only gathering profession that requires you to kill stuff. Which is not fun, easy or time-effective as a healer or tank.

My idea for a solution: in addition to the normal skinnable mobs, create critter-type mobs that wander around outdoor zones. Minimal HP, limited spawns, drop guaranteed Knothide + motes.

edit: And I agree absolutely with the crappy radius of the drums. Good news is, as a Shaman I'm used to paying attention to positioning area-specific non-mobile crappy buffs

The solution, to me, seems simple. Keep herbing the same, make alchemy combines give 4 potions per combine, 8-20 with a mastery proc (any pot, including flasks), and make potions stack to 20. This way they can balance raiding around consumables while removing most of the tedium from farming herbs. 1 Terocone and 2 Fel Weed would net you anywhere from 4-20 major agility potions. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

That just makes consumables required for every pull. I think you're going in the exact wrong direction.

You have to do something like have bosses ignore offensive consumables entirely.

LW needs a couple of desirable trainer recipes and a couple of desirable (and preferably farmable) dropped recipes. Where's our version of spellstrike and battlecast to profiteer off?

Making drums of restoration at least farmable would be a good thing. I have had a large bounty out on that pattern since day 1 TBC. It has never been on the AH on our server, nor as far as I am aware offered for trade or made available in any other way. For all I know, it has not dropped at all for the Horde on Shu'Halo (OTOH, every world drop epic pattern has been through the AH, some multiple times). If it has, it's being used by someone without the brains to offer their services to all other LW for a fee

Skinning upgrade was necessary, but at this point really the horse has bolted. Leather supplies was only really a hassle up to 375, and even then the truth was that supplies of stuff like clefthoof leather and primals was more of an issue. I suppose it'll make 375 easier to get for re-rollers and latecomers. Still wanting some kind of side reward for skinning the same way that there's side-rewards for mining and herbalism.

Edit: Rolling it into LW wouldn't be bad. Then I could pick up herbing so I can collect my own flask mats, since unless there's further changes in that direction to be announced the solution is basically "well, at least you'll only need to make a flask plus other elixir now!". And hey, that's great news for ele shaman since there's grater firepower, frostpower and shadow power pots but no +nature damage pot, so this does reduce the gap at full potting
It's also great news for healing, which will probably just flask and be done with it instead of flask, mageblood and healing power.

It has been sold once on my server, but back then I wasnt sure how much it was worth or what it dropped off and I was totally unwilling to spend 500g on a green pattern for leatherworking.

They need to reduce pots significantly so that a dry raid is comparable to a fully potted raid. I don't know about you guys but I really enjoyed the time in MC/BWL/AQ40 (I'm not a tank) where consumables were optional.

The way things are right now, consumables are basically an additional repair cost. They don't add anything fun to the game at all. Repair costs are needed to combat inflation but people need to farm consumables so they aren't exactly combating inflation.

And it's not just alchemy. Enchanters had oils added to the profession. They added spell damage food in TBC. They also added war drums with leatherworkers. Who knows when tailoring, engineering, jewelcrafting, new professions in the next expansion down the line, etc. will get their own consumables that will be required in raids.

There is a certain excitement and fun in totally potting the f*ck out and finally pain-training that boss you've been working on for weeks. The problem comes when you need to do it for repeated kills or even realistic attempts. I don't think any serious raiders object to using consumables...hell, to compete at the cutting edge you've needed to flask up your tanks and have your healers slam pots since BWL. We used our first world buffs on a Horde-world-12th Nefarian kill a LONG time ago. The difference is, as Gurgthock says in his recruiting post, the DPS races. Used to be tanks and healers were all you needed, with the DPS races we've seen since AQ40 (well, really since Vael and Nef Phase 1) a whole new dimension has been added to consumable use. The implementation of DPS flasks was really the tipping point. DPS races are fine, as they require everybody in the raid to contribute at the top of their game. The consumables that add 2+ tiers of gear are not fine when that gear doesn't exist.

I think part of this problem with needing pots to raid started about when BWL was released. I remember doing MC it wasn't all that hard, but for a first timer not easy. Got very very boring very fast. I remember finally getting to Domo and them Rag and actually seeing something that need more coordination than all the other fights, but again got old fast. Then I remember my raids first day of Razorgore and thinking "WTF? This fight is insane! How can we possibly do this?". Of course we killed razorgore with much relief in finally tackling that monster. Then came veal. He truly is the guild or better yet raid destroyer. I noticed that the harder the bosses got the more raid leaders harped about getting pots. Pots in MC were an afterthought. In BWL they started to become a need. What I'm trying to say is I think this mass comsumable problem started when bosses actually got challenging and weren't just kill him once and then he's cake walk. Then players looked to consumables to pull the slack. So then the encounter started getting tuned around that. Which led us to where we are now.
Just a thought I had on this whole thing. Hope this change to elixirs does some good.

I have heard it said from people that have yet to be wrong that a Flask will occupy both the Offensive and Defensive slots. Thus you can have 2 Elixirs OR 1 Flask at any one time.

Well,

About alchemy, these changes don't promise major and significant changes to be honest. As far as i can see, all the effect will occur on physical DPS classes: Rogues and Hunters.

For example; tanking warriors will still use Elixir Of Major Defense(Guardian) + Elixir Of Mastery(Offensive, as mentioned) + Flask Of Fortification. Elixir Of Mastery still can be replaced for Elixir Of Major Agility for choice.

Physical DPS-wise, the result of this service will be a decrease of performed DPS, where i won't be allowed to make a combo of Elixir Of Major Agility + Fel Strength Elixir + Elixir Of Mastery in addition to Flask of Relentless Assault. Since all these 3 are offensive elixirs, i'll be able to use only one of these. And this means, well you know... I don't know what "Guardian Elixir" to use, and i don't know if there be any useful for me.

I respect somehow Blizzard shows effort to make its product better. But these upgrades, are not gonna change any of the problems pointed by the major raiding crew. The massive timesink on farming stuff under the tag "preparation for the raid" will still lurk around, and maybe in a worse form. Elixirs are not going to last thru death, which means the same amount of the farming for the future. And pointing back to Gurgthock's "Consumable Report", they are still overpowered, without a change on their current forms

As a hunter, my priority is gonna be the Fel Strength Elixir, normally. But there are rogues, DPS warriors and shamans who are going to fly over the skies just to radar a small yellow dot named "Nightmare Vine", and fight against the undead warlocks to gather that quite rare, "Seed Giving", yellow, beautiful, pretty herb. Terocone has never been a problem, but gathering Nightmare Vine seems as going to be a real nightmare.

Rolling skinning into LW would be sweet, especially if they just made the skill of the combine equal your current highest skill in either.

that would be sweet for a Skinner/Enchanter Elemental Shaman like myself... Not that I'd guess my case is terribly representative.

Wow never thought I'd meet another Skinner/Enchanter.






Hello!

This would be ridiculous. Can you imagine 5 people in a healer group, all using Drums of Restoration? That's 155 mana/5 for the whole group, with very cheap costs. Drums are fine right now, though I'd appreciate more options, a longer effect on Drums of Panic and a large effect radius for the buffing drums.

My bounty on it is higher than 500g due to how sodding long it's taking to get hold of it. I may need to end up splitting the cost with other people- it's too good a consumable not to have available in a lot of cases, and once the pattern is acquired it's really cheap to churn the drums out by the truckload.

I'm curious to know what fights in particular the posters here feel that potting to the hilt is required for. My own guild is currently working on hydross, so I'm curious as to what fights you are specifically talking about.

While I agree that the alchemy situation is a bit excessive if it is required, and that the changes don't solve the fundamental problems, my question more appropriately is at what point have your guilds ran into a situation where you simply couldnt get past something without spending an excessive amount of time or flasking, and those were simply the only two alternatives.

Yea, I thought the same thing. I mean, elixir stacking was a problem, but basically this will just limit your choice to one or two elixirs (if the guardian elixir is useful for your class role or not). You will still pop flasks, use weapon oil/sharpening stone, food buff and still chain chug mana/stoneshield pots.

Unless they really reduce boss HP a lot or otherwise retune bosses, i don't see how this elixir change addresses the consumables issue at all >.<