With NPC-purchasable flasks and pots, though, Herb/Alch move toward being supplemental professions instead of required, which is where they should be. The main advantage to alchemy becomes producing pots that aren't zone-specific. I would think herb prices would adjust accordingly.

At ... 75 rep apiece, it would take 560 armaments to take someone from neutral to exalted.


That's going to be a lot of mouseclicks, since you have to turn 'em in one at a time ... (Are there any auto-turnin mods for rep items? I know there's something that works in AV.)


EDIT: Bleh, must think harder. Only need revered to get into heroic SP to get that one quest. Most characters should at least hit honored, so 12k rep from honored -> revered = 160 turnins. Still a bit o' clickin' though.

I feel the exact same way, but yes it is somewhat sad

Thank god for this seriously. Really nice to see that they're listening to our concerns and addressing them in a somewhat timely manner. No one in my guild is really in an emo/burnout stage yet, but another couple months of this and I'm sure that'd have been the case.

Flask powers reduced? I'm sorry, but all this sums up to Alchemy being rather useless, or elixir spec and the flasks we spent tons of effort into acquiring.

Are you confident you can tune this correctly? You realize you are smacking down a profession to the brink of being useless.

Regarding the armaments, you'd only need to go from Honored-ish, which is easily achieved through quests, up to Revered to meet the heroic key requirements to do the heroic-mode key quests. It would amount to skipping the non-heroic grinding to get your heroic key.
Don't be surprised if those extra Aldor/Scryer rep tokens get a new lease on life. It would make more sense for them to continue dropping and allow zone-specific potions on turn-ins to a non-Aldor/Scryer NPC than to add a new drop that is a armament from a different zone.

Actually if done the way I would envision two elixirs might be a bit more powerful in some situations then one flask. So in those cases the two elixirs have the advantage of being more powerful and the flasks have the benefit of lasting through death.

Go back to the wow forums... please....

Saroz:
Even with these changes it will be by far and away the most used profession; especially longterm.

I don't see it being 'useless' but 'less useful'. It'll put it more on par with most of the other professions, where it is almost certainly a requirement now to have many alchemists, but you can get by with only a few enchanters, tailors, blacksmiths, engineers. Enchanting -- weapon enchants make or break, but the rest of the enchants are simply icing. Blacksmithing, weapons are the big bump, followed by stones, etc, but not a huge thing for a raid. Engineers.. fun trinkets, some good scopes, but nothing game-breaking for a raid to have.. Tailors have very little they get to do. Leatherworking for the most part, too. Leg 'enchants' from the various professions are also Very Nice Things to have, but nothing so near as critical as alchemy has been.

I think this is turning flasks into less powerful entities to make them less daunting. The idea is probably that you flask when you expect to wipe a lot, but you want just a bit of a bump to get past a hurdle of some kind. An extra 500-1000 HPs or something like that. Maybe a little extra damage. Elixirs/potions will now become a 'do I take X or Y'? You'll still have cooking (I assume) to help stack a little bit.

Of course, now the Alchemists are starting to sound like Engineers did when TBC's recipes came out a few months ago...

It isn't getting made into skinning. Pots and flasks and elixirs will still be useful, just no longer so overpowering that herbalism destroys all other options.

Based on the speed of previous replies over a few simple posts, I'm gathering that there are probably a lot of people just staring at this thread in utter disbelief and relief. What an amazing turn of events for the better for WoW raiding. I'm still just stunned. I think drool has formed at the side of my mouth, replacing the previous foam.

Indeed. We'll have to see what "greatly" means but I have to say alot of my cynicism has evaporated at least for now.