Negg

It's a matter of tuning, nothing more. People will use anything available to them, anything, so when designing an encounter you have to take that into consideration, or you just made an undertuned encounter that will be a push-over, not good It's just how it goes.

I tihnk he meant that the difference is "forced to" and "free will", consumables fall under the first category, which we can all do without.

Problem here is again that players will do anything possible, 10 unique pots ? k, I eat em all in one fight and then get new ones. Potions Give 50% less mana ? Well I better use a potion absolutely every time I can. It just doesn't work.

What you say would be the best, for raiding, but it would also hurt the none-raiding world.

 

Smurrf

It would mitigate it somewhat if they split the PS into two varying brands. If they did not do that, however, (especially with reduced amount of HS's that will be around), DPS'rs and Tanks may very easily be forced to keep their pot cd reserved for if the healers get hosed. As well, neither one answers the problem that once a DPS pot is gone, it's gone for good for the fight. Popped a pot because Death & Decay, Fire, or an Ice Shower just landed where you were? Too bad. I will say that in a longer fight, they might be situationally useful, at best - if there's some sort of gimmick that allows it to be so. That's about the best I can say for it.

Edit for Negg (and whats really sad is that I may know where your name comes from): Those are ideas, nothing more. They're not meant to be firm answers. But it just shows that there are other avenues that could have been explored first before this.

 

Sydane

I still just don't buy the concept that taking a second or third potion in a 4 to 6 minute long fight is the difference between pushover and balanced. Mana Potions are over itemized. They always have been, and that's probably the biggest problem with potions. Per item point, a haste pot is barely any better than buff food. Do they need to tweak things to reduce class dependence on Mana Potions? Absolutely. But this isn't 10 stacked elixirs or countless world buffs doubling the power of your character, it's an incremental improvement that at most makes the gear checks slightly less strenuous.

If Sunwell is balanced around chain potting it is only by a trivial amount. If potion sickness was patched into the game today, every encounter would still be beatable by basically the same raid groups with basically the same amount of difficulty. Some very specific classes/specs would have issues, and some gear setups would have to be changed (healers overstacking haste for example). I still contend that the concern was too many health potions would make it impossible for them to lower the healing requirements for 10 mans in WotLK without trivializing the encounters.

I honestly don't think potion sickness in the current form will make it live. I expect a diminishing returns system, or a longer cooldown, to be what is used in the end. It's too radical and poorly designed in the current form.

 

Denogran

Why is this a bad thing? I think it's far more interesting to reactively hit a pot than to just preemptively spam them when the cooldown is up.

Right now drinking pots is not interesting, it's not fun, it's not compelling. It's boring, it's silly, and it's a major pain in the ass to farm up for.

( Case in point: I'm sitting on around 7 Ironshield potions right now. I was out of town for the weekend for a wedding, and will probably be trying Brutallus tonight, in which case I'll need 4 more stacks of potions to be prepared. Work's kinda busy, I'm hoping to play tennis this evening, which will give me all of an hour or so this evening before the raid. Ironshield and Ancient Lichen are rarely on the auction house, and are exorbitantly expensive when they are. And I know all of two people that have the recipe, only one of which is a potion master, and neither of which are on consistently. How is any of this enriching my play in any way? )

 

Sydane

Why do people expect raiding to exist in a vacuum where you can be successful by simply logging on to raid and nothing else? Yes, farming is an aspect of the game. Yes, you do actually have to have gold to get by. Guild planning and coordination are required as well. Not every aspect of the game is instantly fun, though I would argue that there are countless ways to make gold and get items in this game that are quite fun. If you're pushing progression content and need Ironshields, and knew you were going to be gone all weekend, why didn't you tell your guild that before you left and have them accumulate some for you?

If potion sickness is put into the game it's going to be for balance issues and nothing more. It's not going to be because people don't like chain potting, because countless people play this game successfully without chain potting. If you want to be bleeding edge, on the top, an "elitist jerk," you have to pay the price.

Drinking pots is not interesting because there's not enough quality choices (enchanting has the same issue). Limiting those choices even more makes them less interesting, not more.

 

Nezralix

This doesn't make any sense. It's like you've rolled two arguments into one; you suggest that this change doesn't make any difference, but then turn around and say that the change is too drastic. Which is it? Do you even know?

Blizzard appears to be sending a very clear message that the intent of potions is aimed primarily at solo play and, to a lesser extent, small group content: You pull an extra mob while questing -> you chug a health potion to stay alive. You start a pull at low mana and then get mana burned -> you chug a mana potion to stay in the fight a little bit longer and hopefully come out victorious. You've got to kill three monsters at once for some quest -> you pop Blade Flurry, Evasion, and a haste potion and hope that extra damage lets you pull out and unlikely victory.

Hardcore players have had it mashed into their heads for so long that abusing potion mechanics is somehow a good thing that there's this bizarre outpouring of desire to keep them in the raid game as an every-X-seconds consumable. That's not fun, Blizzard clearly doesn't think it's fun, and their solution works fine to that end. Potions still retain some limited usefulness in raid scenarios if applied at the correct time, and aren't some raiding workhorse (which just happens to be the reason why flasks exist). Alchemy will still exist and be profitable and be beneficial to its practitioners.

You just need to acknowledge that not everything in the game is aimed at raid bosses.

 

Smurrf

Perhaps my position is not being made clear enough.

I agree that currently, potion use is not the best in the world. Speaking for me personally, I do not use potions in the manner that is optimal. I am intelligent user of potions, for the most part. However, I also understand that the current nerf is a direct result of people overspamming the button, and raid leaders taking players to task for not spamming the button, even if they didn't need to. I see this as a failing of players to be intelligent in their choices, not a failure of the mechanics of the game as a whole. Regardless, once began, it cannot be undone without changes made to the system as a whole. The genie's out of the bottle as far as chain-potting goes, which is kind of sad, really.

So yes, I do see the point that you shouldn't necessarily feel like you should spend 'x' number of hours farming herbs, or leveling an alt, or whatever. Hence, my earlier suggestions. Please, go back, read those, and view them in light of attempts at changing the drawbacks of usage, rather than an attempt to save Alchemy specifically. If those happen to not make sense to you for whatever reason, then come up with something else that does - something other than the current incarnation of PS, because this simply feels broken to me.

 

rhea

I think you are right here
And I think it's a good solution (retaining 2min cooldown). It won't downplay potions because they become more essential saving your raid or pushing that extra percent. Those potions aren't for staying above a certain point but to raise you above that point when and if it's needed.
It allows for more powerful potions and there won't be a need for huge amounts of them (makes elixirs relatively "cheap").

 

Sydane

I guess the idea of potions as a "solo experience only" option has a certain amount of merit, though it would be disappointing. When I say potion sickness is too radical an idea, it's because instead of balancing potions to be useful and interesting, they are simply removing them entirely. Seems far too much like throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think the change is too drastic from a design standpoint, not from the standpoint of the effect it would have on raiding.

If we really honestly believe that they can balance Sunwell so well that it accounts for chain potting, don't we also believe them capable of balancing the game to not require chain potting, but still have potions exist in a meaningful and fun way?

 

Jebraltar

Even so, looking at my character running about, plucking flowers or doing odd jobs so that I can afford to keep going is enough to drive me mad. Worse, it's the stuff that drives in-game gold sellers, since the more you have to farm to keep doing enjoyable tasks, the more you start to consider it a waste of your time.

Aren't raids pretty close to that point, compared to open-world stuff? The open-world stuff is balanced around the assumption that you're alone, it has no scaling difficulty past whatever the appropriate zone is for the level cap, and the assumption is that, no matter how much content they add, people will have experienced all of it within a week or two.

I don't see why it's such a terrible thing for someone to be able to focus on whatever they enjoy in the game. I've seen this argument used countless times to justify greater PvP itemization, lowered PvE reward scaling, and an increasing number of new items acquired from outdated content. Yet, when it's suggested that raiding's logistical requirements be lowered somewhat, the response is often "You just don't want to do anything outside of raids!" That's true, I don't. I've already done every single quest in Outland on my Paladin. I didn't get Exalted with SSO because I didn't have as much time as I did when I got Exalted with Netherwing and Ogri'la within a week, and because the mobs tend to mana burn or do something else that's nasty. All that getting gold means for me is dedicating myself to going and doing something for 15-20 minutes that's not fun. Sure, Ogri'la was fun at the start, but by the time I got Exalted, the fun was dead. Ditto Netherwing.

The only content that hasn't been "ho-hum, already done" for me in the game has been raiding. Sure, I've got a few more reputations I could take to Exalted (SSO and Sporeggar on the Paladin for TBC factions), or I could keep pushing up my Rogue, but they all boil down to the same "do the quest you've done a dozen times already another twenty times" or "grind mobs until the M*A*S*H theme song starts to make sense." I don't mind playing outdoor content when I have new content, but telling me that I have to keep doing outdoor content that I've already done to death, content that is considered moreso a stepping stone to raids/PvP, so that I can do the actually enjoyable part of the game?

They could make me sit in Shattrath for an hour a day, with some sort of periodic check to make sure I wasn't AFK, to ensure that I remained a part of the community, too. ("Peace of Shattrath: Your HP is increased by 100% for the next four hours" as an imaginary buff gained by doing so.) All that would do is the same thing: Irritate me.

Short of them making Marks of the Scourge so incredibly common that no one could ever possibly run out, along with making Flasks unequivocally better than elixirs, raiders will still need to either go pick flowers or buy flowers from those who enjoy picking them. Short of blue and green drops, along with Primal-esque items, etc, becoming so common inside raids that guilds can always provide all of the materials for enchantments, people are going to need to run five-mans or buy enchanting materials from those that do so. The same goes for minerals and pretty much anything else you can think of. They've not made any effort to do any of these things. (Marks of the Illidari reduce the desire for flasks, which has helped bring their prices slightly down. All the same, it's still necessary to buy flasks if you're going for any reasonable sort of uptime.)

Many of those have been explored. The similar-type lockout is already used, which is the whole reason we refer to "potions" cooldowns. Separating them further means that we'll just expect people to use more potions, increasing the money/time sink. Potions being Unique (10) is actually the worst imaginable solution, since it would just lead to people hearthing away and being summoned back in order to get their potions through the mail or off the AH. Having a potion give a spike effect is exactly what Haste and Destruction potions do. (As well as Nightmare Seeds.) It would force reactive use for mana/HP potions, but it boils down to doing the same thing as Potion Sickness for mana potions. (For health potions, if you would use more than one per fight, there's a distinct tendency toward you being dead before you can use the second.)

More noticeably, cheaper NPC potions has been done in multiple places! Ogri'la Ogre Brew, Cenarion Mana Salves, the Zul'aman vendor that sells Super Mana Potions (ymmv), and even, arguably, Tempest Keep's TK-only super-common potions. (Also, mana/health potions you get through PvP are arguably an attempt to let you do something enjoyable instead of picking herbs or grinding gold.) All of them just served as a bandaid for making the "hit button every two minutes to sustain useful status" mechanic less aggravating. We also shouldn't forget that daily quests were introduced for two simple reasons: to artificially prolong outdoor content and to provide a faster way of making gold, especially for characters with poor damage. (Thereby lowering the time cost of potions.)

(The only one that you've said that has not been tried is diminishing returns, which were explored earlier in the topic. The idea behind Potion Sickness is that potions become reactionary. Diminishing returns keep the "repeatedly hit button to stay useful" mechanic and add an irritating "plan your usage" mechanic.)

Initially, yes. Then people will say "Well, I'm not making money," and they'll leave. The same thing happens with every profession every time that there's an increase/decrease in how much it makes. Eventually, the supply finds some acceptable medium with demand. (Let's not forget that they're adding Inscription, which will also consume herbs.)

Wowhead has the average cost of a Haste Potion at 7g, and a Spicy Crawdad at 1g, 40s. You also need to take a Haste Potion once every two minutes, instead of once every half-hour. Both are wasted if you die. That's at least as important to consider as the size of the buff.

A Brutallus tank losing 2000 armor is a huge impact, even disregarding the fact that Paladins and Shamans have enormous returns from Mana Potions. (Particularly Paladins, who currently have zero regen and are balanced around efficiency making them take as long to drain completely as other casters - for them, an extra 100 mp5 is an insane buff.)

Probably, but is it worth their time to do that? I'd rather have to pay for one potion than seven, even if paying for seven would mean that I get to play the fun game of "health potion for AOE segments" or "haste potions for weakness segments," or, the really fun game of "health potion for AOE segments OR haste potions for weakness segments?"

 

Negg

What is a more intelligent way of using a potion then hitting it as soon as the cooldown is up or your mana bar has room for it ? So I am really curious what your "intellegent" way of using a potion it.

And what do you expect ? That guilds/raid leaders praise the guy that slacked through an instance and used 2 mana pots or the guy that chained the pots ? Using consumables is a virtue in raiding, which it shouldn't be.

 

Denogran

So why do raid bosses drop gold? Why do trash mobs drop Marks, greens and blues( As well as gold )? Why can't raiding be done in a vacuum? Why does the progression of content from solo->small group->5-man->10-man->25-mans require me to return back to the solo->small group aspect in order to further the progression 25-man aspect? Why doesn't farming BT and Hyjal while we're progressing on Sunwell, or SSC/TK while doing BT/Hyj, or even farming Karazhan while trying out SSC and TK count as farming? It sure feels like farming. Monotonous, boring outside of the social aspects, mostly worthless loot. Why don't these count as farming? Why do I have to spend additional time in the solo scene? Been there, done that, why can't I move on?

 

Hypatia

I guess I feel the opposite, here. Why should Blizzard spend a lot of time thinking up complicated ways to make potions work when a really simple solution (you can only take one potion per "combat session") might solve the problem very easily? It makes a lot more sense to try the really simple solution first, and then look into more complex solutions later if it turns out not to do what you wanted it to.


As far as chain-chugging goes? Yeah, I'm not really happy with the current situation. Adding 3+g per minute of boss-fighting to the cost of being a tank is bad enough—but if things go poorly some night and I run out of ironshield potions mid-way through the night because I wasn't expecting us to be wiping repeatedly on stuff we've already learned? At that point, having to go waste everybody's time and scrape up another few stacks of potions (or mats) is pretty un-cool. And worse, it makes me cranky at my guildies for slacking off (even though I know they mostly aren't slacking off) and making me waste both my raiding time and my farming time to replenish money and supplies later. So, I'm very glad when I think about potion sickness. I'd much rather have a potion that's a really great "get out of jail free" emergency button to save the fight than a potion I've considered macroing into all of my hotkeys to make sure it stays up. And that's even if the fights are still tuned to make me use a potion in every fight.

 

YaoiNeko

Because a majority of the fanbase doesn't know what chain potting even means and Blizzard doesn't want to alienate them by completely taking their pots away because of a problem that doesn't affect them.

Personally I really like the idea of having different categories of potions (Like Battle and Guardian elixirs) that each have a separate potion sickness debuff. It solves the problem of having to balance around people chugging haste/mana/ironshield potions on every cooldown but doesn't have as much of a heavy-handed ONE POTION ONLY FINAL DESTINATION feel.

 

Smurrf

Then why even have potions in raids to begin with? This is the question I'm asking myself.

What I see is that the current iteration of PS is only a half-measure. A hard one, but still only partially addresses the issues at hand. Heard of the phrase 'use a hammer when a flyswatter will do'? A hammer will work, but you'd better damn well hit the friggin' fly if you're going to use it. This does not.

What people aren't taking into account is that people will still have to pony up for potions, just for a reduced number of them. The absolute only thing that's changing here is the number of potions that will be used during a fight. For those guilds that EXPECT people to chain-pot currently, they're still going to be expected to use that pot every single serious fight attempt. The first time a raid leader glances at a WWS, and sees that in 5 attempts at a boss, the raider only used 1, that person is getting the axe. How is that any different from now? Oh look, you reduced that number from 2 or 3 to 1. For those guilds and people who this nerf is aimed at, this changes nothing about requiring a specific number of potions per any given fight. All it does is reduce that amount. And in the meantime, it punishes those of us who wait for the right time to use potions (say, during a Heroism that should be timed for a weak spot to maximize effectiveness, or perhaps when my priest's mana is at 1/3rd and I know I need the mana, rather than 30 secs in when I can use OO5SR to regain the half-pot's worth of mana to top me up again) but still would like to have a safety net in case a healer goes down, or a quick moment of aggro-pulling, or whatever.

Take another look at what I'd suggested. You're still intended to go out and do stuff so you have one of several of the following: Lots of blues/greens to shard for DE mats, lots of cloth to either sell or send to a tailor to make B's/G's, lots of herbs, minerals, and leather to sell for profit (at least, what you don't use), lots of some other commodity to sell for profit (again, whatever you don't use), or just plain lots of money to buy stuff you need to go out and raid. No, this doesn't fit in a lore setting - however, it DOES fit in a game that is intended to keep you in your seat and logged on for months, if not years, on end. Keep in mind, this is not a free game. Timesinks are built in, specifically to ensure that average players don't zerg through content faster than developers can churn it out, because then there's no more paying customers. I accept this as a matter of course. Don't like timesinks? This isn't really the game for you, then.


Everything I suggested takes this into account. The changes that I made were all intended to be something that would still allow you to gain a decent benefit from potions, while doing stuff that the design of the game is saying you should be doing anyway. It's intended to reduce the amount that you have to spend doing other things, but it's not meant to eliminate them totally. With that in mind, yes, I'm looking for different solutions than the hackjob that I see presented to me. And once again, none of my suggestions were made as firm, must-have alternates. They aren't finished products, they aren't balanced, and I haven't really sat down and given out exact numbers.

The intent of each and every one, though, was to toss out ideas and brainstorm, and if it's a broken idea, then to see 'Well, I think that won't work for this reason, what if this were to be thrown in instead?', leading to a nice dialogue that would hopefully get the creative juices flowing and better ideas coming up than simply 'No, I don't want to do anything other than sit inside raid after raid after raid all day.' To me, THAT'S boring.

Again, yes I see that current potion use is broken. I agree with this. Period, full stop. But no one has convinced me yet that the current Beta solution is anything that fixes the problem at hand, and doesn't cause problems of its own; so for this reason, I would much prefer to see other suggestions made. Don't tell me I'm wrong and leave it at that. Tell me I'm wrong, then come up with a better suggestion, because PS is just not cutting it here in my view.


Edit: If potions were made to ALL be actually worth using only 1 at varying key points in varying fights, that would be enough, I think. But nowhere have I seen the case. Given the current look of potions, they don't even begin to approach that.

 

Shakes

Because we play a game and we expect it to be fun? Having to farm to support the part of the game they find fun (raiding) doesn't enhance the enjoyment of the game for most people, in fact it detracts from it. As such, as game designers, blizzard should be looking at removing things that aren't fun.

I'm sure there are some people out there that find farming up a set of resist gear for the entire raid fun, or farming up the mats for every elixir in the game like you used to have to, but most people find that a major pain in the arse. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Blizzard's "why did you quit" box is full of people saying "I don't have time to stuff around for hours preparing to raid" and they're taking action to try to keep subscriber numbers high.

It's the same reason that they're adding 10 man raids: people want to be able to play when they want how they want. The old days of MMOs being able to get away with being a massive time sink are over, as they continue to get more mainstream and gain more subscribers the fact that most people wont put up with that kind of crap is forcing them to change. This change has nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with people not finding farming fun.

People complained about the old PvP system being all about time and not enough about skill. Blizzard changed that with BC. Would it really be so bad if they did the same thing in WotLK for raiding, where you really did only have to log on to raid and nothing else? There are top arena players who say they only play 15 hours a week, I'd love for top raiders to be able to say the same.

 

bv728

I suspect we'll see some Potions become Tinctures or something to take them off the Potion Sickness debuff; things like Haste could be taken off because they're already reactive and situational.

Personally, I like the overall change, but mostly because it bespeaks a specific a basic design assumption that your mana pool and regen should be large enough to push you through most fights, instead of the TBC endgame assumption which seemed to be that you needed an extra 6-13,000 mana. IF Blizz moves to that assumption, that will hopefully mean tuning on the assumption of Elixers/Flasks/Potions - Choose one, instead of choose two.

 

Denogran

But this isn't actually the case. Blizzard isn't making more money if I play more hours in a month, in fact it's the exact opposite. Their goal is to keep me as a subscriber while I play the least number of hours possible. Netflix is a great example of a similar subscriber service. They'll actually rate-limit your movies if you use too many in a month. It's not in Blizzard's best interest to make me farm potions to raid. I won't churn through the content any faster if I don't have to farm potions.

All it really does is burn me out a bit quicker. I play more hours a month with less average enjoyment, how is that good?

I guess I don't see how the current Beta fix doesn't solve the problem of chain potting either? One potion, to be used in an emergency, is sorta how I always viewed their purpose. Something to save your ass by. I guess I do find the debuff to be a weird fix, why not just extend the cooldown even further?

 

Scurn

I have a quick question that I haven't seen asked yet. If you drink a potion while not in combat do you still get the potion sickness debuff? If so how long does it last before fading? The reason I ask is you could still have a tank pre-drink an ironshield and wait for the debuff to fade then start the fight. Same thing with all the other potions that provide a short term buff or elemental protection.

 

rhea

Must be pretty stupid raid leader to look at potion usage when there's potion sickness? I think he would look at death lists and see where people actually died... Yes, it will reduce potion usage and balance it. No, it won't be expected to use potions every attempt (excluding situations when you are expected to use).

2+5+10min cooldown incremental. I don't think it would fix the problem (chainchugging). Probably would end up as 2 pots + healthstone + 1 pot chainchuggage. Speculation but what can I do?

"Free" pots for everyone? Kill the potion mastery? It doesn't change chainchugging which is anal but just encourages it more.

10 min cooldown. No flexibility.

I think balance is to have potions as meaningful quick boosts that can turn the tides. Not something you just spam. Potion sickness seems the best option as it is to me at least.

 

Ethelber

I agree about the fact that the emphasis on raiding should be inside the raid instance, rather than outside. The change regarding "potion sickness" will basically mean that farming outside, and the sheer amount of materials required will be vastly reduced. It'll be interesting to see the economic hit that this will take on Alchemy.

Will it be more viable to shove all those herbs into Inscription? Rather than the ever-popular Alchemy. I'm curious to know what is in store for Alchemy; the Alchemist's Stones won't be half as attractive as they were, now we can't chain chug. I'm aware of the increased buff to potions/elixirs/(flasks?) you know, but what about those Haste/Destro Pots-type recipes that many alchemist's didn't know the recipe to, but still used.

I'm debating whether to lose Alchemy for Inscription, more information is needed from the beta servers before the decision is made, as I suspect many people will be thinking the same.

As to the question about the debuff working outside combat, it basically says something along the lines of "Cannot use another potion/elixir until you leave combat" so, no you can't get it out of combat.

 

• Haphnet

Perhaps we may see more "wave" mechanics a la Hyjal trash so the option would be there to take a potion during one wave and subsequently be able to drop combat and reset the debuff whereas a longer cooldown would still lock you out for X minutes.

 

Katria

This is the crux of the matter. Why have them? What purpose do they serve? Well, what purpose do any raid buffs serve? Elixirs/flasks, buff food, buff scrolls, weapon buffs, all of these are crap raiders farm mats and/or money for to buy. All of them give you more dps or survivability or improve your healing or otherwise give you an edge.

Pots do the same thing, just on a much shorter timeframe. They are essentially a short buff you can refresh every 2 minutes. And since raiders will use all available buffs to get an edge (see gathering world buffs and such insanity), raider will use them and encounters must be designed around them. So much like elixir stacking was nerfed, now chain-chugging is.

So now we get less of the potion buffs. And this, I think, is what Blizzard sees as the purpose of pots. And it makes some sense, actually. Raiders should have an assortment of pots, health, mana, dps, armor, etc. Then use the right pot for the right fight at the right time. Think the buff is too small/not worth it? Yay, you've just saved on farming time. Hopefully with the 1/fight mechanic, pots will be re-tuned to be made worthwhile. But then they become mandatory you say? You mean like any other temporary buff?

Since chain-chugging mana pots is out, Blizzard is free to play with the mana metagame without considering extra 100mp5, meaning casters can decide what pot to use instead of mindlessly chugging mana pots since the game design will work around the loss of chain-potting.

Pots, like any other consumable, are just another buff. Want to get rid of pots? Why not get rid of weapon oils/sharpening stones/elixirs/flasks/food buffs/etc. Blizzard could wipe all of those away and just design encounters without them, and you would only have to farm gold for repairs. They have decided that we should have the opportunity to pay for increased performance, and thus we have these temporary buffs.

 

Smurrf

Oh, really? Are you honestly telling me that if you didn't have to spend 1 hour farming for every 4 hours raiding, that you wouldn't raid 5 hours instead? And even if this (edit) doesn't hold true for you, does it hold true for everyone else?

PvP is different, in that the challenges you face ramp up and up as time goes on. One can still log on, get into some form of PvP, and expect a challenge at some point in time.

If raiders didn't have anything to do BUT raid, encounters would be beaten in even shorter order than they already are. What happens when a game is beaten? You put it down, and walk away. PvP, in contrast, is never 'beaten.' It's the reason why people might only play 40 hours or so of Halo in story mode, but will play the multiplayer for years. Again, not apples to apples here.

As far as the Netflix-like argument, wrong track. Timesinks in games, especially games like WoW, are designed to keep you paying for your account over a long period of time. Beating the game earlier than more content can be created leads to more people not paying for accounts. Hence, timesinks.

__


A longer cooldown on potions I could get around. Allows for one-time use in short fights, allows more flexibility in longer fights.

Varying cooldowns depending on potion types I could also get around - if the mats for potions were easy enough to obtain required quantities of. This is questionable though.

Tinctures is an interesting concept. Perhaps Tinctures could be created out of Potions? 1 Potion = 10 Tinctures, that do a very weak version of the Pot? (say, give 1k MP instead of 5k?)


And lastly, to Rhea - yes, it would be stupid...but then I view the current use of pots as stupid anyways, so it's pretty much a wash to begin with.

 

Maax

What if the changed mana potions so that instead of giving mana back they reduced the mana cost of abilities for a short period of time (20 seconds or whatever), like the Lower City Prayer Book. Would that solve the chain chugging issue without needing to add the potion sickness mechanic?

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.