I can basically agree with all of that. I can already tell that somebody is going to quibble about the numbers specified though, and possibly bring up the fact that SMP's are relatively cheap to make. I will add that (a) no matter how you slice it, the cost per hour is much higher than an hour-long consumable like an elixir, and (b) even if they cost one copper, it still remains a horrendously flawed mechanic that unnecessarily penalizes mana-using classes, some more than others.

There are a number of different possible approaches to this that could result in fruitful game elements, but until the fabled spirit revamp comes through, we have to presume that Mana Pots will remain unchanged. I do think that Mana Pots current position is kind of odd, as a healer whose guild tries to keep him in pots.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to see Mana Potions go to a level based percentage of total mana effect, and go on a longer cooldown. A Super Mana Pot could restore 60% of a level 70's total mana, and be on a 5-10 minute cooldown. As you level past 70, this value would decline rapidly (Blizz can do this; look at Thistle Tea). That would make them very useful as emergency buttons. In this case, MP/5 granting flasks/Elixers would likely have to be signifigantly improved (at least 50 more mp/5 from them), or class mana regen improved to prevent it from going from 'Chain Chugging' to 'One Pot Per Fight', Every Time'.

I haven't fought Akama so I can't really offer a point of view on that but I think what I meant didn't come across very clearly. I wasn't attempting to compare mages to shadow priests (or priests as a whole) in any way other than that you should, on average, have three times as many mages (of any spec) as shadow priests simply because one is a class and the other is a spec. Completely disregarding the viability of any class in any way. I'm not arguing that mages are useless or anything, I'm just saying that when you're wanting to bring three shadow priests to every raid in addition to two holy priests that perhaps that is as ridiculous as taking eight fire mages to Naxx. Blizzard needs to look into why the raid stacking is happening and prevent it. For mages it was rolling ignites, and that was nerfed, and for shadow priests it is providing the difference between forcing a mage to chain gem, pot and evocate and running out of mana at 15% on Morogrim and just gemming and still having 20% mana at the end. The synergy Shadow Priests is fantastic, agreed, and I think the game needs more synergy, but at the moment a mage without a shadow priest is essentially screwed, and a mage with a shadow priest has no mana concerns at all, essentially obviating the mechanic entirely. That's why mana regen needs to be looked at.

FWIW, I've done Morogrim as Arcane, Frost and Fire and the fight was more or less exactly the same as each, with my contribution being much the same, too. As frost I could ice block out of the tombs and I use blizzard instead of AE, but that's about it. On the other hand, our holy and shadow priests do tend to share the unholy ability to be instagibbed on every murloc wave. Good thing we raid with six druids =P

There are a couple of things that need to happen, because the seemingly single issue of chain-potting is actually a couple of issues rolled together at once.

First, there is no disadvantage to chain-potting. Similar to how raids used to have to be balanced against full world-buffs and fifty bajillion elixers until they finally made it impossible to stack all of them together, even if they're not "necessary" or if their effect gets cut, the fact that it's an option will mean that raid content has to be balanced assuming that you're doing it. If you don't address this issue, you either have to give classes infinite mana anyways or nerf chain-potting into oblivion.
My suggestion is to reinforce potting's position as an oh-shit button by making them 'borrow from the future.' Use a pot: get 3000 mana now, but suffer at reduced regeneration for the next two minutes, to the tune of 4000 mana total. Or maybe just lose 3000 mana in 30 seconds, similar to last stand. The basic idea is that the long-term benefit is nil or worse, and it's a short-term increase only. Perhaps old-school-style potions could be retained as alchemist-only, that would be rather funny.

Second, classes need to be able to stand on their own without chain-potting. Current classes seem to have their longevity mechanics based around the idea of chain-potting. Nerfing potting (or at least its long-term effects) is a really bad idea without buffing certain classes to be able to live without them.
I'm not entirely sold on the idea that shadowpriests are the solution, either. They're one spec of one class and while they're ubiquitous in modern raiding that's an effect, not a cause. There's really no other cross-class synergy that absolutely requires the presence of a 41-point talent from another class to function. The closest thing that even comes close is windfury totem for ret paladins, but that can be supplied by any shaman, not just a 41-enhancement one. I'm also hoping that whenever they get around to looking at priests, maybe maybe maybe they'll be good enough at healing that there will be an incentive to have some as holy spec or, god forbid, disc spec in a raid. TL;DR: it's silly to expect enough shadowpriests to go around as a fix.

I really think that the problem right now is quantitative, not qualitative. Classes lose effectiveness by not "whoring" consumables for all they're worth, and that is how it should be. The problem is the stark difference between full-consumables and no-consumables. For some it's minor, and for some it's literally the difference between awesome and useless. I will reassert again that I think warlocks are a good model for this: because of lifetap and its cost in global cooldown, the cost of not using consumables is more on the order of 10% effectiveness (probably less--chain-potting isn't enough to sustain us anyways). It makes chugging go from a necessity to an option, which is what consumables are supposed to be according to the game design. I pity other classes that don't have that decision to make.

Another added side affect that is annoying, to me at least, is the fact that outside of Fel Mana Pots, Super Mana Pots and Mad Alchemist's Pots, there are no options for healers. No "decisions" or "timely pots" to use that can increase our HP/S, or how many we can heal, etc.

Haste pots for healers (also removing GCD) on a 15s cooldown would make Gurtogg significantly easier, add an element of planning to the use of various pots (maybe all overheal becomes a "chain heal" type effect for 20s), or make all of your heals add a HoT to that target, or a buff ala Tier 3 set bonuses.

Anything, instead of spamming one flavor of pot every single CD. Raiding as a Paladin is boring enough as is.

The first is an excellent suggestion. The problem with "mana potion as last stand" is that while it fixes one problem, it breaks mana potions when soloing (which doesn't matter to raiders but is an intrinsic part of the game) and it doesn't address that chugging still becomes viable/necessary at 0 mana. The same is true of "mana potions only at 20%".

Mana potion: +3000 mana, -Xmp5 for Y seconds where XY/5 = 3000 works brilliantly in this case, because there is never a reason to chug at high mana or low mana, only in an emergency (you're at 0 mana, boss is at 5% or a wave of adds just arrived, or whatever). It still functions perfectly well when soloing.

Of course, this would need to be combined with intelligent thought overall on spirit and mp5 to make sure the gain/loss works out correctly.

You could make a similar change to health potions with little ill effect for consistency, or just not because they're not broken.

Honestly, this is a silly conclusion. If anything, the power available through mana potions is what's enabling raid leaders to bring fewer healers, and reducing that power would force them to not skimp on the healing contingency. It's extremely confusing to me that you arrived at the idea that eliminating chain chugging would let raid leaders bring fewer healers. I just don't see how you made that logical jump. It's true that healers are the first thing to be cut as equipment and execution improve, but consumables are unrelated to that problem.

You just listed three classes who require mana potions, and one that *uses* haste potions. I say "uses" because haste potions have nothing near the power of the 140 mp5 granted from mana potions, and thus have an extraordinarily marginal effect on power output. They certainly shouldn't buff them; they fill a role right now where only the extremely hardcore (i.e. crazy) players are driven to use them consistently, and everyone else uses them very occasionally for specific tasks like during vulnerability phases. Mana management is such a core issue that any form of "restores X mana" consumable is extremely uncomfortable to ignore for healers and impossible to ignore for DPS classes. Mana management belongs in the domain of player execution, player equipment, and raid synergies. If Blizzard insists on a fairly weak non-emergency chugging model, then they need to phase mana potions out in favor on +healing and +damage short-duration potions that favor intelligent application, and that don't have an overwhelming effect on the outcome of even farm status boss encounters.

For the life of me I can't figure out what point you're trying to make here. You say "raid synergies are important" and then you lead into "consumables need to be more powerful". Seriously, you need rethink your argument and try it again when it makes some sense.

Your conclusion is silly. More mana available to one healer (i.e. if you eliminate chain chugging, you have to buff something to make up for the difference or nerf every single encounter, which means you'll still chain chug but with less healers in the raid) means you need less healers overall to do the same job. They sure are related - having an extra X number of hp healed over 7 healers as a result of consumables means the raid leader can cut the 8th healer. That's pretty basic stuff. Nothing changes the fact that raid leaders are going to max out their raid, and bring as few healers as possible to do the job. This includes making healers chain chug. Raid leaders will always make their healers chain chug. This has been going on since the beginning of time, and short of an entirely game-integral reworking mechanic change to every fight in the game, will continue always. I don't know what is so 'confusing' about that.

This discussion has been all about individuals within a raid, and how to change it so that the individual can chug less, when in reality, a raid has nothing to do with individuals. Raid leaders make decisions and whatnot based on the entire raids' worth of healing or DPS. Your individual chain chugging doesn't matter whatsoever. Chain chugging isn't about 'Waah, I have to chain chug mana pots and someone else doesn't, QQ.' Forcing an entire team of people to chain chug is all about maxing out your raid.

So, knowing that healers hate chain chugging and knowing that raid leaders will always make them do so, in order to max out their raid, the compromise is, buffing consumables so that healers *dont* have to take as many and raid leaders can still max out to their heart's content.

You can't possibly argue that mana potions, or any chuggable potions, are any more necessary for one role over another; either consumables are integral to everyone or they aren't. Healers work mana potions into their rotations and make them integral but by no means are they any more integral than the rogue who makes haste potions integral to his or her rotation. Under no circumstances do any healers have to chain chug in the current environment.

Will not chain chugging make them useless to the raid leader? Possibly, sure. But that's totally irrelevant. You don't *have* to chain chug to make it by in the current environment; raid leaders make it that way, not Blizzard, not the game developers. If you have to chain chug, it is because YOUR raid leader chose to form your raid that way, not because Blizzard forced him or her. You have to place the blame firmly where it belongs: on raid leaders that choose to max out their raids. An extra DPS over an extra healer puts the burden squarely on the healers' shoulders, whereas if you brought an extra healer, the burden (consumables-wise) would be put more on the DPS classes, by not having that extra slot open for DPS. There is nothing in game mechanics that says your raid leader can't bring 10 healers taking no mana pots to a Gurtogg fight when 8 or 9 chain chugging can do the job. Nothing whatsoever. Healers chain chugging is not a symptom of a problem created by Blizzard or the game developers.

Therefore, the compromise would be, again, made between the healer and the raid leader: buffing consumables. More bang for the buck. It would solve the problem on both sides.

Putting buffs in certain groups during particular situations is part of maxing out your raid. It's been done since the beginning of time. So I guess you need to 'try again' and explain to me how that 'makes no sense' to you because I can't figure out what point you are making. Maxing out raids has always been done, and always will be done. This includes consumables. Buffing consumables would allow raid leaders to max out their raid, while still making chain chugging less necessary by providing more bang for your buck. More mana per mana pot would mean less mana pots overall, while still allowing raid leaders to max out their raids.

Ailetha this is only true for guild starting t5 content. On t6 level most guilds run raids with 8 healers, 9 on some encounters. Mana isnt a problem on any boss (except for mother sharaz), its pretty rare for me to drink more than one mana pot, on half of boss fights i'm not drinking pots at all. What you really need is HPS and control over the fight. It cant be achieved by chain using mana pots (no matter how big you will buff it) and bringing less healers. I do agree though that healers need more consumables that are not mana regen related.

Sigh. Here we go.

You've somehow made the implicit assumption that removing the utility of mana potions in a raid environment would somehow result in the entire game being nerfed into triviality. Or proposing that players would magically be awarded with a free 300 mp5 from the void that would make the removal of mana potions seem like a gift from up high. Not only is this assumption totally unwarranted, but it's quite likely not what they do. What would probably end up happening is that DPS classes are reworked to allow a constricted DPS cycle with some downranking, or a more liberal DPS cycle if they properly account for raid synergies. Healers might receive some small mana regeneration bonus to account for the loss of potion chugging, but not necessarily to the amount that was awarded by potion chugging. Healing is more flexible in its mana requirements, and as is always the case, future content would be tuned around the expected number of healers healing within the confines of the game environment they seek to conquer. Absolutely nothing about this suggests that healers' jobs will suddenly become easier, nor does it suggest that their jobs will become harder. All it suggests is that something will change and the game and its players will accommodate it.

You keep bringing up this idea that raid leaders have been strong-arming their players into consumable usage forever, and that's not true. Chain chugging didn't really become a common state of affairs really around late-AQ40/early-Naxx. The only reason you claim it's been around forever is that you assume it's been around forever. You assume it's been around forever because it's been encouraged and nearly required for all of TBC content, because these days everybody knows how extraordinarily powerful it is when the encounters start to become challenging.

The next expansion is not beholden to current content, so they're free to make whatever mechanics tweaking they see fit.

All of these questionable assumptions are killing me.

Sheesh. What a load. How much damage is an out-of-mana mage doing? How much healing is an out-of-mana priest putting out? They're contributing astronomically less than a rogue who's not using haste potions. The brand of relativity that you're promoting here just isn't valid. Not that a rotation even exists for a healer, unless you're specifically referring to some kind of "potion rotation", which is a concept that, by its very existence, would suggest that the potion situation has gotten quite corrupt.

It's just plain ignorant to suggest that Blizzard designers don't consider the effects of consumables when they create their content. You act as though Black Temple was sent down from the heavens in pristine form for the purpose of being conquered by heavy-handed raid leaders and their minions. Not the case. You would be likely be quite shocked at the numerical analysis that goes into the design of these encounters. The solution you propose is horrendously flawed, because it creates exactly the sort of consumable gap that existed in the initial release of TBC, where the capacity for consumable stacking required them to up the difficulty of encounters to make them non-trivial. The larger the power of consumables, the higher the bar has to be set if Blizzard has any desire for all raid content to not be destroyed within days by the most ambitious players. Moreover, the more potential for consumable abuse, the more the game starts to reward not just ambition but also free time.

You also give players extremely little credit. I don't know how your guild is run, but some players dictate their own consumable requirements, and amend their approach if their performance isn't up to their own expectations. In any case, it's true that whatever the circumstances, competitive guilds and players are going to take advantage of whatever beneficial game mechanics are supplied to them. That's why it's Blizzard's responsibility to ensure that the supplied mechanics are fun and reasonable. Mana potions are neither.

Well, the guy who is agreeing with you hasn't even been into Karazhan, looking at his gear, and I, who am disagreeing, has been through half the t6 content. So I'd say maybe that the whole 'it's true for this tier but not for others' doesn't really work. Our disagreements are sheer proof of that.

I am a raid leader whose guild has recently broken into t6 content (have downed the easy 3 in BT and up to Kaz'rogal in MH). I'm also a healer. In my experience raid healing is, with few exceptions such as Kaz'rogal, not limited by healer mana, it is limited by available throughput. I personally rarely pot and end most fights at 30-40% mana, but I can't drop another healer because I can't heal two targets at once.

I think the philosophy of "bring as few healers as possible" is one that has for many guilds gone by the wayside in t6, where there are many many fights that are primarily about control and keeping people alive (Naj'entus, Archi, Gurtogg, Council, Shahraz, Illidan) and bringing more healers is very beneficial. The t5 content, except for Morogrim and Karathress, generally favoured a skeleton crew of healers and as much DPS as could be brought. The t6 content, from what I have read, is mostly a different beast (some exceptions, like Reliquary, apply) and while a heavy DPS makeup is an option, many raids will choose to go with the added security (because sooner or later things will go wrong) and bring some extra healers.

Personally my own problem is that healers have the highest attrition rate of any role and I can't find enough competent ones. I would be delighted if I only needed 4-5 healers to run a viable raid.

I would suggest that mana pots are a bigger issue for DPS classes than they are for healers. As a healer I can do "enough" - once no one is dying, I don't need to push any harder. This means that I will use only a couple potions on an entire night of farmed content. By contrast there is always an incentive to kill the boss faster, so a DPSer who wishes to maximize her or his potential is always chain-potting (unless the encounter is so short that running oom is impossible even with a maximum DPS rotation - hi bugged Shade of Akama).

Heh, well, if Frostbolt was working with Judgement of Wisdom right now it would be a lot easier on me, but I'm being conservative (aka I'm cheap) and only going through 3 stacks of SMP's per raid.

As a hunter, I really like what Aspect of the Viper *implies*.

If it comes down to it, Aspect of the Viper + chugging pots on a 2m cooldown timer once I'm OOM(reactively not proactively) allows me to just keep up steady shot spam, although I'm losing damage from not having Hawk, and survivability from not having Super Healing potions available. (And the potion is more than I need. Viper alone is providing a pretty substantial buff if I'm actually < 10% mana)

I've got some basic rotation that I can sustain indefinitely, and I can up my DPS (changing aspects) if I get more mana (judgment of wisdom, etc). Of course, I try not to rely on that - I chain chug in advance so I can keep my DPS up the entire time and delay the moment I'd have to use Viper. But I feel like at least it's an option, and one that every class should have. Some aspect/aura/whatever that reduces DPS/HPS by say 10-15% but lets them keep it up "forever". Warlocks have it with Lifetap, Hunters almost have it with Viper(I still have to drink mana pots or get some raid buff like JoW or shadow prierst) Blizzard could do away with SMPs as they stand and then add something like that to the other classes.

Right, it's a pretty good model and something they absolutely should expand on. Infinite mana *is* okay under some circumstances for DPS classes, assuming a reasonable rotation (i.e. not Arcane Blast spam).

Also note that nominal downranking should probably be an option for DPS caster classes. Considering mana loss over time is equal to (mana expenditure - mana gain), longevity of the mana pool quickly scales upward as mana expenditure goes down. In other words, considering that infinite mana is the point where expenditure == gain, then if the infinite mana point is the point where the mana cost of your damage spell is 60% of the max rank, then you'd still possibly increase your effective mana pool by 4x or so by going with the 80% cost spell. Mechanics should probably be in place to not penalize downranking quite so much.

Moreover, there should probably more Fire Blast-like spells, ones that offer a slight damage boost by incorporating them into the rotation but at the cost of mana efficiency.

Ailetha, I think the mana regen model overhaul being suggested by most of the posters here is not: "Let's increase mana regen so much that you can cut more healers out and have the rest STILL chug pots." Rather, it's more like: "Let's do away with potting effectively giving you free mana and make it more of a situational use that gives you no net gain."

Right now, a healer chain chugging pots has no incentive to NOT do so - it's free 100-140 mp5. Who doesn't want that?

Take a look at the concept of "borrowing from the future": Gain a thousand mana RIGHT NOW, and lose a thousand mana worth of regen over the next 2/3 minutes. This would eliminate chain-chugging concept by removing the actual gain of chugging a pot. You drink it because the tank is about to die RIGHT NOW, and you hope the fight will be finished soon afterwards.

I ask you, if pots worked like this, how would your "we'd cut more healers and the rest would still keep chugging" concept be realized?

That's exactly the point. Right now mana pots are still in the pre-battle/guardian elixir stage, in that encounters are still being balanced and attempted around the concept of players always having them and always using them.

Even if every caster suddenly got a free 100mp5 upon hitting 70 with no charge, people would STILL be drinking pots and passing the "savings" onto healers (up to the limits of HPS).

Mana potions do not add value to the game when they're used so often you'd think it was a default character ability, but costs significant amounts of money to supply.

That's thinking from the viewpoint of the current 1800 to 3000 mana potion. Blizzard can't make these any more powerful because again, there's no downside to using them. Imagine a Super Mana Potion able to restore 4000, 7000 or even a given percentage of a player's mana, in exchange for an equivalent amount of mana stolen from reduced regen rates. You could easily keep casting for another minute or so, just the ticket for finishing off a raid boss that's at 20% and dropping.

You know, people are still using flasks and elixirs. Its not required and powerfull as before, but still very usefull and its "free" stats. You see the difference?

My suggestions is same: introduce more consumables for healers that are not regen based, so you can have choise. And probably cap mana gain from potions at super mana pot level. All new mana potions that will come with Wotlk need to be same mana but with positive side effects, or more mana but with negative side effects (ala fel mana potion).

The difference between potions and flasks/elixirs though is that a flask is 25% as effective (25mp5 versus 100mp5 assuming no alch stone) and it lasts 2 hours. Potions effectively last 2 minutes and provide four times the benefit.

Personally, I think potions should be restricted to one use per instance of combat. Give all classes regen options to compensate.

Then you have to give all classes (both dps and healing) the same efficiency. Rogues and warriors are balanced around the fact that they have a steady intake of rage/energy and that dictates what they can output in damage. If you do that for casters then all it will boil down to is what is the most efficient spell for the fight that you're doing that will leave you as close to 0 as you run out. While right now other more expensive rotations can be used because you pot to get a bit of extra dps. For PVP for me that would be a great change, since my mana is not sustainable like a warlocks.

There would have to be a lot of rebalancing done. You'd have to change specs/abilities not just to make sure people don't go out of mana and stop doing damage, but also that if they have a lot more mana (like through a Shadow Priest) that they can't convert it into damage, because if so all you're doing is promoting the use of SPs even more than it is now. Without a SP, using mana pots full time is about the same as not using them when with one.

So honestly don't know if it is worth the massive changes and rebalancing that would need to be done. Maybe just make it that super mana pots are cheaper would be fine. I do like abilities like AotV, that allow you when OOM to sacrifice a bit of dps to maintain a solid dps rotation since your mana regen is increased when mana is low.

There are thousands of changes they could make to the game to give players the fixed 140 mp5 that they currently get from potion chugging, and thus enabling to do *exactly what they do now* at less personal expense. This does not imply drastic game design changes, certainly nothing as significant as increasing HP pools by 50%.

My guild is not as advanced as many of you but I can safely tell you that our healers don't do anything remotely resembling chain chugging mana potions. And I'm not convinced that if they did across the board the death count would fall, the # of healers required would fall or our progression would increase.

We have some healers use some mana potions some of the time. That's obvious and for certain. This is especially true when things like Karathress' Leeching Throw happens. I'm sure on our Vashj kills some healers pot some of the time. But our most mana starved raiders or our shadow priest (and playing one of those as well in a secondary raid team I empahtize strongly) and our survival hunter. I suppose others could be mana starved and less whiny about it. But there simply is nothing resembling chain chugging of mana potions in out healer corps nor some maniacal effort to minimize the healer headcount on every encounter.

I bring this up to suggest that there is a gigantic pool of raiders beneath the top end that might see the game ever so slightly differently than the top end does and perhaps Blizzard continues to face the dynamic tension of balanacing it around all of us, instead of just some of us. I'm not sure how you remove the current mana potion mechanic to stop the chain chuggers without allowing groups like ours to have slightly less geared, slightly less optimally spec-ed people clear the content. For example we have two disc spec priests in our raid. One because he enjoys it and heals a ton and has always played that way. One because they think the first priest is a model to emulate, even though its not appropriate. In many of your guilds, neither priest would get a raid invite. That's neither good nor bad, but it's true.

My guild, however, is facing Kael and getting ready for Tier 6 content. I'm not sure how entirely out of balance things are, at least with regard to healers.