PsyBomb

The big distinction with Health versus Prot potions is that Health does less and recovers damage recieved, while Protection does more and stops the damage from occurring in the first place.

A Super Healing Potion won't save you from an overwhelming spike of damage, though you KNOW you'll always be able to make use of it when you chug it. I prefer Protection potions on any fight where I can be assured of their value.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Wizeowel

If the whole point of the thread is maximising consumables then the use of either a health or a protection potion is questionable. Surely dps should be using their pot cooldown for haste/destruction, tanks for ironshield and healers should be drinking mana pots? Even a tank using health/protection potion when tanking an elemental is questionable since it'll mostly likely just add to the overhealing.

Please don't misunderstand me. Lightening the load on healers is useful, commonplace and often necessary on many fights. However, if we're talking about gathering rare buffs and using little-known tricks for some extra boost on a raid boss, then likely we aren't going to waste potion cooldown on something that isn't our primary function.

 

mclem

They seemed to; our first few kills of Morogrim and FLK were aided by those, and as far as I could tell the mobs did indeed recieve the debuff. Didn't crunch the numbers to verify if it was reducing damage, though.

 

Anedris

You are correct that using shadow protection potions on RoS is pretty useless, since the amount of shadow damage being output is both enormous and regular, and is going to have to be healed through since the potions won't save you for long.

Basically, don't use protection potions to save healer mana. Healer mana is almost never a concern, and protection potions don't absorb enough to have a noticeable impact on it. What they are good for however is to mitigate burst damage. So on RoS you can use nature protection potions to absorb spite, on Shahraz you can use shadow protection potions when FAed, on Illidan (as mentioned above) you could use shadow protection potions for dark barrage or enrage+parasites (or fire protection potions for enrage+agonizing or late duration agonizing+flame burst), and on Felmyst you can use arcane protection potions to mitigate encapsulate.

 

• Chicken

I disagree with this. The thread is about the extra edge you need to win. While talking about Fire Protection Potions on, say, Brutallus would indeed not fit, mentioning it on fights where your primary concern is surviving because the encounter isn't that DPS/Healing/Physical damage mitigation dependent definitely fits.

Essence of Anger might seem like it doesn't fit in there, but if the actual edge you need on the encounter to survive is having a Nature Protection potion it will provide a larger damage boost than a destruction potion does, even if you get a combat rez if you were to die from Spite, simply due to how the aura of anger mechanic works.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Daedalix

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Your argument is similar to those who brought 20 mages to Ragnaros instead of [Large Rope Net] and [Bag of Marbles]. While I don't disagree with you, the spirit of the thread is to go "out of the box" and find unique ways to beat aspects of encounters rather than simply brute force/burn everything down.

That aside, I really think Blizzard should look to re-balance Protection Pots again. They removed the hassle of having to farm 100x mats but their usefulness is, as you pointed out, trivial compared to other available consumables that have more recently come onto the raiding scene.

 

Wizeowel

I think you missed my second paragraph.

It makes me think about my rogue friend. She uses health pots to keep herself alive. Which means she's not using haste pots. Which means her dps is lower than the other rogues. Which means, when there's aoe damage coming in, our healers will tend to target the other rogues first because they are 'higher dps' so more valuable to save. Kinda catch-22.

 

Sevaar

Have your Healers and/or Elemental Shamans use [Greater Ward of Shielding] on AoE heavy encounters. It always absorbs 4000 damage and does not put your Mana/Destruction Potions on cooldown

Also useful for tanks in RoS Phase1

 

Mideci

And to be clear, that predictable damage is -- to me -- when they are never useful. It doesn't do anything meaningful to lighten healing load when a predictable mechanic is slightly mitigated once every 2 mins. But it does put every other potion on a 2 minute cooldown. That's not the winning edge. I think a later post cited some good examples of when protection pots might be useful (e.g. Dark Barrage to save yourself from getting gibbed before the heals land). But, flame burst is going to keep coming on Illidan. Protection potions will outheal a healing potion, but I'm not using that on the flame burst that everyone is ready for. I'm using the healing pot if I'm forced to kill a shadow demon that's going to gib a tank healer and am potentially about to be dead if my health isn't a bit higher right now.

 

Smurrf

Since the ZA Timed Event thread has been closed, redirecting my question here.

Is it possible to use an Infernal in ZA? If so, upon the end of your intended use, can you simply banish the infernal and ride away, leaving it to despawn? Or does being in an instance mean that it will survive to hunt you down?

Reason I ask is because my group is this short of getting bear mounts, and I'm trying to think of any and all things possible to speed us up, before I go in and find out that I'm doing more harm than good. (No, I've never really played with infernals all that much.)

 

PsyBomb

Technically? Yes, you can do this. If you're using it in a situation where the Infernal would survive the 5 minutes, though, something is off. Also note that this is only plausible for Destro spec, having already sacced their own pet.

The 1-hour cooldown makes it rough, I reccomend planting an infernal on Jan'alai's dragonhawk hatchlings, if you're going to do this.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Grizlor

The infernal actually does some semi respectable DPS. Using it on the dragonhawk would be perfect, because it's immune to fire damage and hits fairly hard (500+ on a sundered mob, last I checked)

 

Stopokingme

Correct, I always save my fire elemental totem for that one, works great for dispatching all the little dragonhawks as well, since it doesn't seem to be affected by the diminishing returns for aoe.

 

PSGarak

Any time that a health potion would have been worthwhile, an absorb potion is better, if it could have been used. There are very few situations nowadays where health potions are useful, and fewer still among those where an absorb potion is viable, but the point still remains that they are strictly superior for a small class of situations, mostly emergency situations like healer death. They were certainly more useful pre-TBC where they lasted an hour and there weren't DPS options for the pot cooldown. It's worth at least asking, is there any situation where the whole raid stacking absorb pots could let you get away with one less healer?

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Lucinde

Maybe Na'jentus.

It might also help in getting Kalecgos down to 8 healers instead 9. That arcane buffet can get ugly on healer swaps.

 

Starfire

Arcane Protection would be better on Kalecgos. Or hell, just using a Rejuvenating Potion.

 

Ja7us

I wonder if there are any fights where [Restorative Potion] or [Purification Potion] might be useful?

 

Stopokingme

Didn't Blizzard give them a chance to fail to remove any effects above level 60?

 

Mideci

Purification Potions are useful backups for grip removal on Archimonde.

I'm done beating the dead horse on protection potions, which I don't agree are superior to health potions. They are entirely different. And I'm not putting my health potion on cooldown for some alleged benefit provided by one.

 

Tymir

Anecdotally the chance to fail has been quite high since they were patched.

 

Azzuro

How about the buff from BFD to frost mages? I'm pretty sure it lasts through death. Obviously frost isn't the top DPS spec for raids, except in perhaps early Kara, but I am just throwing that out there in case it hasn't been mentioned.

 

Ja7us

There are a number of spellstealable buffs scattered throughout the world that could potentially be quite powerful. They range from the relatively inocuous (Power of Kran'aish - Thottbot: World of Warcraft) to the downright ridiculous (Steal Magic - Thottbot: World of Warcraft - stacks up to 10 times!). The trick, of course, is to get your mage into a bossfight with a decent amount of time left on a 3-minute buff. What other mob abilities are there that can benefit your raid?

I remember ages ago we used to use a +fire resistance buff from a mind controlled mob in Blackrock Spire to help fire resistance on Ragnaros. It no longer works, but there might be other buff spells usable with mind control that persist outside the areas or instances where they're found.

 

dill

wowhead says that you can mind control those mobs in Terrokar to buff yourself with Power of Kran'aish for 5 minutes

 

evisania

Blessing of Blackfathom increases Intellect by 5, Spirit by 5, and frost damage by 15 for 60 minutes. I don't think it lasts through death.