I'm 1 hop from a blizzard dev and its not going to happen. The game is not designed by committee or suggestion box, the lead designers have some very strong philosophies and ideas that carry through the entire game.

The simple flaw in your idea is that it doesn't allow Blizzard to design end-level bosses (Kael, Vashj, BT wing bosses, etc) with consumables in mind. Yes, many are also skill based fights but many will also be farm-based (resist gear, consumables, itemization). No one is going to run a 25 man raid without a few priests, pallies, mages, druids, etc to give the baseline buffs so its kind of silly to say "well... flask is there in case you don't have a pally!". Flasks/elixirs should be there in case your players aren't 100% PVE spec, good, geared, and class-comp balanced.

I think people are way over-reacting to these changes. I saw a demo of 2.1.0 internal build earlier this week, SSC and TK are tuned to be a lot better. My WoW sub is currently cancelled because I have no desire to spend more time farming herbs than raiding, from what I saw I'll probably renew my sub when 2.1.0 hits. BT and Hyjal are beautifully done and definitely have more the Naxx style of raid design than the shit that is SSC (ok the bosses are decent but the trash is obnoxious). IMO this is really a good time to check out LOTRo free, have fun with its lore, etc and then come back to WoW in 1-2 months when 2.1 hits. I really have no idea why anyone would subjucate themselves to SSC right now other than perhaps some S&M rp guild.

The idea behind this change seems to be reducing the absolute power gain that a raid can achieve from consumable use. I suppose that my question/concern is the same as that expressed in other places:

The flasks are just too damn powerful.

So my suggestion was more about toning down their effects (take them from +20% power gain to 5%).

Essentially - consumables getting tuned down or gear getting tuned up (or both) is fine.

I don't mind a touch of farming - and I admit that I like being able to buff my character - I can't imagine farming up 6+ flasks a week for each person. And if that's what this change means - it fails utterly.

This would be a really stupid idea on blizard's part, with these changes they should balance the content on the two elixirs, allowing people to then flask to push over the top for their first kills and then drop to the average after that.

But Flasks and elixirs are not the only problem either. Potions are going to be a pain in the ass. What is the average for Super Mana Potions right now? About 10g per stack of 5? I think they sell for even higher then that on my server. Healers are required to chain chug these things. Hunters like to even go for the Fel Mana Potions which are even more expensive.

But lets not forget these little magical things called Ironshield Potions...according to Wowhead, 10g is the average AH price for 1. Imagine any encounter where the tank is required to chain chug these a la Patchwerk.

Consumables all across the board are out of hand.

Blizzard seriously needs to address these issues.

I've read this post 4 times now and I can't decide towards which game your agenda leans, but it permeates this post and makes me distrust you. This post screams shill.

Even assuming that Hyjal and BT are the bee's knees, you forget that we will all have to struggle through SSC and TK to get to at least Hyjal. Stop telling us there's a light at the end of the tunnel. There should be no god-damned tunnel to begin with.

This game has been out for 2+ years now. The fact that every single instance they ever release has to be tuned and retuned after release smacks of borderline incompetence. I understand it is quite the undertaking to design and balance a raiding instance, but for christ's sake, this should not keep reoccurring over and over, especially given the long and documented recommendations of hundreds if not thousands of the most avid customers that seek nothing more then to help in the creation of their own fun. Resources are not a question for a company that makes millions of dollars a month in subscription fees.

Please don't feed us lines about how the developers have their own vision of the game and this is unbending or unyielding. There is instance after instance of reversals under intense public pressure, not to mention non-publicly triggered design flip-flops. Please show me those strong philosophies still at play from launch, because at this point, knowing what we know, the excitement of going further in the game is next to nil. This game is slowly turning into the very game it sought to redefine. Instead of the leveling treadmill, we have the raiding treadmill. Instead of simple, summon and go instances, we're back to overly demanding keying processes to simply enter places. We were promised clear and fun tradeskills to augment our playing, and now we're turning into the same kind of slog that crafting in EQ was. Virtually everything that was fun and unique and drew everyones interest is either being slowly bled out of the game, or replaced completely with old, outdated and unfun mechanics. The sole highlight in all of this is the Arena system, which has been a rousing success, but the model was already there from SC/War2/3, so there really was little original about the system.

When you can provoke white-hot rage from one of the most level-headed intellectual players in the game, you know something is terribly, terribly wrong. I don't think I'm out of place when I believe that guild morale virtually world wide is generally pretty low at this point. It doesn't have to be this way, and many of us miss the old feelings that this game used to give us. Perhaps they're just fated to be gone forever, perhaps not.

2 years is a very long time to consistently deliver content, and in many cases the game has been moments of absolute brilliance in the genre and in game design in general. Perhaps it is the fate of all giants to eventually rest on their laurels, I just remember when WoW had a chip on its shoulder and was trying to prove something to the rest of the gaming world. Now that it's become an institution onto itself, it almost seems like any decision that is made is made in an echo chamber where people reassure each other of what a good idea things can be.

Perhaps it is a failure in leadership, but if one looks at the design decisions of much of the last few months, one comes to the inescapable conclusion that there is no consistent design theory. One needs only to look on the ceaseless waffling on druid design to see a prime example of this.

"Is this fun" used to be the design creedo and marketing buzz phrase that drew so much interest in the game. You took the game and every single part of it and asked, "is this fun?' and if it wasn't, it was imperative to redesign the mechanics in a way that made it fun. Vanilla created a world where leveling and even making money and crafting never felt like chores.

So with that in mind, I wonder, if the company still has that design vision in their head, and still asks:

Is this fun?

The lead designers have also shown a tendancy to be completely stupid on occasion.

Meetingstones? Fractured server communities by making factions unable to communicate with each other? Consumables? Rampant, joy destroying, consumables?

They have also demonstrated a strong desire to hold on to ideas far beyond the time they have been proved silly, damaging, or just pointless.

The basic premise of consumables is the problem. If using X is a notable gain then you must either tune around X and make it a requirement or tune around the absence of X and make the encounters trivial. Blizz is forced to tune around X because trivial does not a challenging and rewarding endgame make.

The suggesting (that you implied certain devs would dismiss out of hand) would solve this but making the risk v reward for a 25 man group marginal, and thus not necessary but instead optional. Yet at the same time outside raiding they would be just as powerful as they were previously. Surely it might have flaws when you put it's through its paces, but it's not an idea that deserves to be dismissed out of hand.

As for the person above; don't worry, level grinds will be back next expansion! It will be lots of fun rerolling once the level cap goes up again!

Good post, sums up pretty well how I feel. The sad thing is watching a game with so much potential be marred.

Having been detached from raiding for a while, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at people's reactions sometimes. There was a time when the idea of flasking whole raids would've been thought simply absurd. Now that we'll "only" be required to do that, I see cheering of all things.

So far the sweeping consumable changes are going to save a raiding healer a mageblood elixir and an elixir of healing power per try, totalling 16 mana / 5 and 50 healing. That still leaves a flask, manapots, dark runes(why are these even usable on 70?), mana oils, food and booze buffs to worry about and a gain of about 250 mana / 5s from consumables. Not quite the sweeping change I'd have wanted to see, so far.

It'll actually be interesting to see what happens to the server economy. I expect to see the amount of people using flasks rise as people who formerly sticked to using elixirs will be turning to flask users. Mana thistle seems to be going at an affordable price of 100g per stack atm on my server, can't wait to see how it'll be a couple months from now.

See, you get to a problem here. Large population servers, more people will be farming the herbs. Lower population servers, less people will be farming the herbs.

On one hand, you can either get really expensive herbs due to large demand and you have a hard time being able to farm them.

On the other hand, if you aren't an herbalist on a low pop, herbs will be expensive due to lack of people farming them.

Sigh...a single profession required to raid an end game does not make.

For guilds that are behind the curve slightly like mine (working on magtheridon and getting people their SSC keys), our morale is fine since we're not beating our faces against insane content in SSC/TK25, hats off to you folks at the level and dealing with it. But.......that in no way makes it right at all. It's only a matter of time before an even larger number of guilds get into SSC and see what everyone is really up in arms over. The only relief in sight is 2.1 going to the PTR and players being able to test and give feedback. The longer the gap between now and that happening the more turnover will occur in top end guilds.

EDIT: Just saw a commerical (investment firm i think) that shows 2 peope inspecting a dam. One of the inspectors notices a small but noticeable leak and plugs it with the gum he is chewing. "That oughta do it." Thought it could have easily been followed by WoW Patch 2.1: Coming Soon.

Sure the few leatherworkers that are still around want that. I direct you to the first part of this threat. But the truth is that there are almoust no lw around that still care enough to post/complain/get there profession fixed.

[e] Not complaining about 300->350 skill (the ilvl 95 lw epics), I'm complaining about the uselessness of lvl'ing your lw from 350->375 which requires a huge cost and has zero rewards (in fact all my 350+ skilling has been living dragonscale helmet's and some other epic recipes I got 'lucky' enough to find in ah for absurd prices)

I'm sorry if i overlooked some post already quoting this but by scanning the last three thread-pages I didn't see anything regarding the following official post.

LINK

Here one major clarification took place which imho is very very essential for the ongoing discussion about consumables stacking:

This, in my eyes, is just awesome and really really reduces the strain on farming. For new encounters or really really DPS-strong Bosses you get your flask. For "not so easy Farm-Bosses" you use your elixiers. Or maybe you use a Flask for a bunch of Farm-Bosses in a row.

Let's just hope the other changes mentioned will be realized in 2.1.0 as well and not be postponed to 2.1.1, namely