mek

That's simply a failure of imagination. Add a new skill for every class with a mana bar, trainable at level 10, called Meditation. Stuns you for 4 seconds and restores a percentage of base mana, scaled appropriately so it is exactly equal to a super mana potion at lvl 70. 2 minute cooldown.

Now the only advantage to super mana potions is the lack of a minor stun; this is significant enough to give them the edge on the latest boss you are trying to defeat, but negligible enough to be eaten on any other content. DPS classes will continue to use mana potions in small quantities, for that extra boost (since stun is particularly bad for them) but raid healers can mostly rely on the new Meditation skill.

 

Plea

In a combat where casters have to keep chugging potions; so should the others. The marginal benefit from the money I put on a str potion I get is a lot lower than a mage gets from a mana potion, the benefit from the str pot is half an elixir and definitely not four times a flask, nbut they are four times as expensive for sure. If they were cheaper / more powerful, then every warrior/rogue would gladly be chain chugging potions too. While I understand that mana users have this problem to deal with, others dont even have a reasonable potion to cry about.

Oh, and this was the dps point of view; tank consumables possibly will not be discussed as most guilds supply them. But some do not, and it hurts more than you think it does.

 

Tacitus

So, you actually want melee to suffer from chain-chuggin as well? Where's the logic in that, given that we're discussing how broken the mana pot chugging is.

Not that it matters to me, I chugged my last pot like a month ago >_>

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

• constantius

What about the destruction potions and haste potions? Do those compare in terms of the dps they allow you to put out with mana pots for casters?

 

Zerakor

Interesting idea, I like it. It probably wont happen as it would diminish alchemy even more, but as a raid healer.. Well yeah!

 

Larisroth

One alternative would be to just remove mana pots, and perhaps health pots while you're at it. Yeah you'd need to buff regen / balance fights, but is that really that much of an issue? How about you take the mana pot mp5, then have that as a base out of rule regen (while in a caster form, don't want to OP ferals), and if you're in the 5 second rule then you regen at half that rate. That way casters could afford to take combat pots that actually enhance their toons rather than maintain their dps.

I'm not sure why people think of nerfs to aspects of alchemy as such a big deal. The very fact that you continually need the products of alchemy, (transmutes, flasks, elixirs, some combat potions), will always ensure it has a healthy following.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

lazerpewpew

I know that many people are going to hate me for saying this:

Have you guys realized potion mastery really relies on mana pot to be useful? Yes I am an alchemist.

 

Plea

If you say so. When I started the game every consumable was taken as a bonus; when a healer had to use a mana potion he would complain. Nothing in molten core required any dps so we could field another healer if we lacked any. Eventually, like flasks and elixirs, mana potions became the norm as the dps trend came up. First it was for the healers, our mages used their first mana potions at ebonroc, and later on they sticked on pots too.

But there was no melee dps potion on a 2 min timer except the sucky rage potions so it was never an issue. All Im saying is, if they lower the price of the new potions, or money inflates a bit more; guilds may as well force melee to use the appropriate potions just like they force casters.

No, I am not really complaining about completing the night using 2 flasks only; but I would like to have the opportunity to buy 20 fireballs worth of dps in a 10 min fight too; so yeh, I want melee to suffer(!) from that too. If mana potions didnt exist for mages, then they would be using lower rank fireballs, which would then bring them to our level of consumable use. They would of course do less dps, which is the point.

Where's the logic in this? If you still want to believe chain chugging wasnt intended, then there isnt. But mana potions obviously are not changing; so why not bring the rest to that line? Give the melee a 500 ap potion for 2g each, I doubt any warrior/rogue would complain.

 

Larisroth

Okay, I hope you're trolling. In any case, last time I checked almost everything created by alchemy with "potion" in the name is a combat potion with the same shared 2 minute cooldown as mana / health pots, and many of those could be potentially useful in a raid situation. As far as I know, all those battle potions would proc the mastery.

Yes, it would make the alchemy trinket kind of pointless, but quite frankly that needs to be nerfed in some way.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

Plea

Insane strength potion is 60 ap for a warrior if you chain-chug it, and 30 for a rogue; definitely not 500. Haste potion is roughly 10% haste when chained, a lot better; still not 500 ap; also expensive.

You might say that mana potions are too powerful once again, maybe they are for dps classes; but for the sake of healers they are not likely to be nerfed.

 

Larisroth

As a feral druid, I don't believe I'm suggesting this but, better yet half energy / rage regeneration, and have rage / energy per sec potions on a 2 minute cooldown

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

Anedris

I agree that chain-chugging is silly. It's not that it's intolerable, it's just silly - I knock back my potion each two minutes, no particular thinking involved, no reacting to events, just hum-dee-doo drink my mana so I can keep healing for another two minutes. Almost-free zone-specific potions is a clumsy solution (though it is a solution of sorts).

My own preference would be to make the potion cooldown (or at least the mana potion cooldown) not expire until combat breaks (so if you take a potion you can't take another one until the fight ends). This would make your potion a true last resort and eliminate the incentive to drink it early (and obviously prevent you from ever using more than one in a given fight). Of course, encounters would have to be completely retuned to deal with the decreased longevity of all the mana-using classes.

Probably not an issue that will be addressed before the next expansion. (Hoping it will be addressed then, however - a new level cap and new raiding content would be the logical time to do it.)

 

lazerpewpew

Do you consider anyone with different opinons "trolling"??

I mean the only useful potion that a potion master can make and sell in AH is the mana pots.

 

Anedris

Most professions just give one or two useful items (for BSing you get a weapon or a piece of armour, for engineering you get a hat and some stamina trinkets, for JCing you get a trinket or two, for enchanting you get a couple ring enchants, and so on) so just add in a couple new trinkets/items/whatever under alchemy and it'll be fine as a profession. You can even change your mastery nowadays (they did implement that didn't they?) so if potions mastery no longer appeals people can just switch to something else.

 

Larisroth

No, differing opinions are fine, I don't consider them trolling. Poorly expressed and thought-out one-line statements on the other hand are dangerously close.

As to the point in question, whether or not you can make easy money on the AH doesn't really matter. I suspect the amount you can make on mana potions has dropped a bit anyway with all the new ways you can get them, although you might stand to make a bit more when more guilds get to T6 content.

There are other combat potions guilds need. Sometimes they are required for certain fights, whether they be ironshield and protection potions or rage pots. Furthermore, if the content is sufficiently challenging, people will find things to use their 2 minute cooldown with, most probably some of the short-term enhancements that melee is free to use in ways that casters aren't.

As others have said, perhaps we don't need to remove mana pots, just lessen the effect. The big problem with them is that the amount of mana they give you is excessive compared to the mana regen effects on gear.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

lazerpewpew

For blacksmith, you get quite a few cool and VERY profitable recipes. I am not too familiar wiith other crafting professons, but I think they are pretty much on the same page with blacksmith. (Leatherworking can make leg armors and tailors can sell clothes too)

What do you get for alchemy? Nothing at all.

At least they should make alchemy a bit more fun.

 

Teenee

My priest-alt dropped tailoring (had full Frozen Shadoweave), just to get alch and be able to supply my main (a mage) with mana pots. She is potion spec for mana pots alone, I don't think she's ever made anything but SMPs (and unstables before SMPs got cheap). I can't remember the last time I consumed a destruction/haste pot.

Even with a shadowpriest, I will often choose to use Flame Cap on the conjured cooldown, and SMP's on the other, as SMPs have a far greater return then mage gems (and more importantly, they have a constant return, instead of diminishing returns like mage gems). 2xFireball -> Fireblast has a fairly high mana consumption rate.

As others have said, the price paid is beareable. I'm also a fairly hardcore player (as in hours), so I can sustain a 20-30 SMP per raid, as long as it's not every single day (which it isn't). Consumables are over all, very bearable. That's not to say it's fun. 20-30 SMPs will still run you a good deal of gold, probably 60-70g on my server.

Managing cooldowns is amongst the the most intuition driven aspects of playing a mana based DPSer IMO (I'm not sure how it relates to Warlocks, certain specs seems to have virtually eliminated maan as a concern). You need to juggle 2 concurrent cooldowns. Items in each cooldown may have individual cooldowns (such as Flame Cap on a 3 minute cooldown), and I almost always carry some Unstable or Greater Mana pots, making the choice harder. I do enjoy this aspect. It's hard to theorize on this aspect, as mana returned may not be constant, hugely dependent on raid makeup, and so forth. Making quick judgements in the fight, as to which consumables to go for, is definently a very interesting aspect.

I don't think we'll see any changes to the mana system soon either. It's probably just too complex to mess around with.

However as a mage, it just never sits "well" with me, that I deprioritize spirit (and to a certain extent int) in favor of more offensive stats spell damage stats (dmg, hit, crit). In a way, it feels like you're ignoring a core aspect of the class by more or less eliminating the regen abilities that mages are blessed with. A potential 45% in-combat regen is very big. Yet I almost never use Mage Armor these days. Another reason I'm trying to move away from Spellfire is this aspect. It's lack of stats simply makes me feel bad about my class. And damn deep fire for being so good.

Anyway, what IS broken about certain classes/builds being reliant on mana potions is that their cooldowns will not be free for a healing potion, and with mages needing the second cooldown for gems, mages get doubly screwed. And this impacts survivability directly, for an already fragile class. No melee class chains healing potions. For them it's a reactive tool, but nonetheless a tool. If the rogue opts to use Haste or something, then that is his choice, however few mages can opt to not use mana potions, and remain competitive (and thus deserving of a raid spot).

I'm almost always the top mage DPS for my guild (and often the highest for all casters), and I have no doubt that this is purely because of my willingness to spam mana pots and, depending on whether or not I have a shadowpriest, gems (or Dark Runes, once the gems start to fizzle) or Flame Cap on the other cooldown.

 

Teenee

Except for an insane trinket that gives 40% extra yield on mana pots ... I can't imagine anyone using that trinket for 40% on healing potions. It might as well be without that part. It's pure awesome on a priest however. On my mage I'd prefer a offensive trinket I suspect.

Again, mana shows it's head, as that trinket is basicly only attractive to certain classes, namely mana based casters.

 

• Binkenstein

Increase proc rates for potions (I'm getting around 13 from every 10 I make atm) so pots are less expensive, and of course stack to 20.

Problem solved...ish.

 

Northerner

To be quite honest, I don't really care. A mana-gem well though would piss me off for two reasons:

One, it would do nothing for Mage mana issues which are myriad and troublesome. We kludge that by chain-chugging pots and sucking up raid resources in the form of shadow priests. Still, we used to be the mana-independent class for the most part and I'm still a little bitter about how TBC turned that on it's head.

Two, a "water" well should have come before a Soul Well plain and simple. I mean honestly, I am well conditioned to dispensing food and water and I've been so forever. Still, when it came to removing raid annoyance, the water one remains when all others tend to fall by the wayside. We are still stuck with a stupidly expensive buff and a terribly annoying mechanic for distributing out perk of free food and water. It's not unmanageable or anything, it's just a little annoying. Still though, if developers were to spend time on a gem well before a water well, I'd be pissed off.

That's about it really. If I can offer more to a raid group, then that is great.

 

◊ Anias

I think they should seriously revamp spirit, int and maybe even the 5sr to reflect what I perceive to be a design change. Mana is no longer a constraint, simply a different mechanic than energy with a different set of synergies.

Being objective - Running out of mana is not even vaguely a design constraint in any encounter I have experienced or seen theorycrafted in TBC. I think they've quietly "given up" on mana as a constraint that they try to balance against energy/rage for damage, and have largely given up on it for healing as well, instead viewing it as more of a different part of the "building good groups" raid leader rubik's cube.

Any fight I'm not aware of where "I'm OOM" means "Oh shit we wipe" instead of "You didn't eat your potion or your raid leader didn't build groups right."?

I certainly can't remember the last time anyone I know of cared about their spirit or int values.

 

Larisroth

The problem with casters and mana, is that any fight where you finish with most of your mana left, is a fight you haven't contributed fully to and as such you're not participating optimally, so could in theory be switched out for another raid member , yeah thats a bit simplistic, there are often fights where the middle part is the fight, but if all my healers have lots of mana, I could probably have switched them out for dps. Contrast this with energy, the final level you finish with doesn't really matter, because the regen is plentiful. Instead rogues are limited by cooldowns and swing timers, and energy cost. While casters shouldn't be the twitch class that rogues are, you could reasonably easily buff caster regeneration, and drop back mana pots so that they're only situationally useful. You'd probably have to scale down the effect of all spells and especially heals as well, but you could make it so that it was more a game of using the right spells and cooldowns at the right time.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.

 

Dukanull

I personally feel melee are already suffering in this regard. I chain chug insane strength potions, and Terocone costs alot more than dreaming glory. Flasks and food buffs are simply glorious since the change, and cost me a very small amount of gold to make sure I'm staying flasked for all encounters we are learning. On the other hand, dropping an expensive potion up to three times per attempt, on a night consisting of 5+ attempts gets strenuous.

 

Dakous

I think I've said it before, and I know a spitball idea is about as useful as the materials, but... wouldn't something on the order of changing SMP into basically 5 chain chugged SMPs (puts a 5 charge buff on the player, every 2 minutes consumes one of the buffs, netting the player 1800-3000 mana) manage, nicely, the two competing goals here? Yes, potions as a required tool for raiding so alchemists have a product, and yes, potions as revamped to be less painful (if you only had to use 1 SMP per mana user per raid boss that taxes your mana pool as opposed to the 5-6 now...).

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Larisroth

Yeah it gets expensive, but that's the trade off you should have to make, you get a boost of what would be 15 strength and 9 and a bit defence if you averaged it out over the entire encounter. Hardly game breaking, but potentially desired if you're going for optimal results. The other combat potions are similiar. Chain quaffing super-mana pots without an alchemists stone is 100 mp5, which is 10-15 times as much value by the itemisation formula. A more direct comparison with the destruction pot comes out at about the same value.

Most people tend to think mana regen is a weak stat to get at present, but if it was buffed by about that factor then it would in contrast be over-powered. As it is, on any encounter where casters have mana issues, chain potting mana pots will provide far more of a boost than anything else.

Healing potions and health stones on the other hand seem to work, because they fall into the situational use column, by more-or-less working as a buffer, before a healer gets around gets around to healing you.

The feral druid is a different beast altogether.