I have started to put together a guide to Inscription, based on features available to characters within the beta. No random data file extracts, or meaningless UI screenshots: Things that can actually be done in-game. There are still a few holes in the research, but it should be fairly robust:

El's Inscription - WoW Inscribing Guide

Obviously it comes with a big "Not Yet Implemented" caveat, but I think it is useful to see what the designers are thinking at this early stage. The guide explores some new approaches to areas like profession-specific gear (Tarot cards), gives some initial numbers that allow an assessment of herb volumes required (for anyone that really wants to "jump the starting gun" - I don't advise stocking up just yet), and hopefully resolves any confusion about basic mechanics (Milling, Pomaces, etc).

I'd welcome any feedback, corrections, additional information, or general discussion.

Notice:
... it appears that you can't cast a "requires a level 35+" enchant on those items. So they are strictly for vanilla lower-levels enchants. Presumably, Parchments and Vellums suitable for higher level enchants appear later.

For that matter, let's bring back the Flaskotaur they have on PTR's! hmm, no. Unless the buff is exotic, having stuff handed to you just seems so boring.

It depends really. While I would disagree with it on the basis of buffs you can procure without having someone who can provide it in your group or raid (Or in other words, flasks and elixirs), if buffs are powerful enough it could be valuable to provide alternative means to them as it means encounters can truly always be balanced around the buffs being there without needing the class there as well; at least in 10 mans that'd be a good thing, for 25 mans it's very reasonable to expect at least one person of each class being present.

Blizzard seems to be covering this though. With the various buff scrolls being brought up to the level of what the comparable buff provides prior to talents; and of course, these scrolls being craftable through Inscription now.

Blizzard will have to balance the game now around no chain-chugging of mana pots. They should have done that in the first place. They don't really even need potion sickness if the game is balanced as if it existed. People won't chain chug mana pots if they don't have to, it's that simple. It isn't just a matter of competitive advantage (like Ironshield Pots), there have been times and classes where it has been flat out required. Mana pots have always been overpowered compared to all the others.

If Mana pots become a non-requirement, then the potion cooldown becomes something you can either use to maximize dps, or save as an emergency option. If they keep potion sickness, then they need to make potions actually worth using as that emergency, something like shield wall in a bottle, lay on hands in a bottle, and so forth. Because a health potion that gives you 20% of your max hp back isn't worth much of anything. It's also impossible to balance a class around one mana pot in a fight, so all classes will have to be balanced to not need mana pots at all, or you're still in the situation where it is required, even if just one.

Also, at no time during the development of this game has Blizzard balanced professions around the idea of people profiting from them. In reality, the profitability of a profession is largely outside of their control. So I don't expect them to start caring now that alchemists won't be able to make money, because you can already make a strong argument that virtually all the profit now is eaten up by the herbalists anyway.

I'm still concerned over the benefits of potions being varying based on encounter length.

Part of what also sticks in my mind is the fact that there are an absolute ton of specialized potions in varying spots; CE had them for Coilfang Armaments (CE use only), TK instances all dropped them (TK use only), Ogrila has some, the Spirit Shard vendor has them, there's some for BG's...the list goes on.

I have two alternate scenarios for potion use that do not involve Potion Sickness:

#1 - All WotLK mobs have a chance at dropping a token that allows you to purchase a potion equivalent to one Alchemy can make, at a somewhat decent rate. In other words, if you go out and do a full day's worth of dailies, you could expect to get not only your normal mana & healing pot drops at their normally rare rate, but also enough tokens that it will make a decent impact on the amount of potions you'd have to get through other means. This just takes the idea of the Apothecaries and extends it to potions, on a broader basis. These potions would be usable anywhere potions would normally be allowed. (If you really want it to require a bit more work, you can have it linked to whatever faction Dalaran belongs to - but not as onerous as the Apothecaries were, say Honored, *maybe* Revered - not Exalted in three different ones.)

#2 - Each WotLK raid instance has its own faction, if for no other purpose than to allow consumable purchases (potions, reagents, ammo, and perhaps food/water) for a small amount of gold outright. Your reputation with that faction allows you to buy potions (for that raid instance only) that are of a reduced efficacy than that of Alchemy potions, but the better your faction reputation, the more beneficial the potions are. (So if Runic Mana Potion remains at 3240-5400, you would be able to purchase a Naxx Mana Potion that would only do 60% of that at Friendly, but go up to 70% at Honored, 80% at Revered, and 95% at Exalted.) This still allows those who want to get every last drop to go to Alchemists. This, however, will also allow those who don't want to spend huge amounts of time to farm mats to still get their consumables at a reduced cost, for the price of reduced benefit.

For both scenarios, potion purchases would apply to all potions able to be made from WotLK level Alchemy - so not just mana/healing, but haste, destruction, stoneshield, etc.



**I understand that potions are supposed to be push-on-demand buttons, not pop-on-cooldown buttons, but I really dislike seeing my options for potions reduced to next to nothing. I don't typically have a huge potion use currently, but I like options, blast it all - not 'welp, you popped your mana pot 45 secs in after your tank got hosed, you're screwed now.'

___

Edit: I see two arguments against the current TBC usage of pots - not wanting to farm for hours pre-raid, and the idea that pot usage should be more reactive. I can't say anything about the second, but regarding the first...look to the left. See 'Warlock' under my name? Think 'Soul Shards'. Now, not all, but a lot of arguments I've seen against the Soul Shard mechanic are very similar...with the added deficit that if there's no trash, a bag gets depleted fairly quickly. And what I've seen many times is 'if they'd just put it on a vendor, it'd be perfectly fine.'

This is what I'm trying to suggest. Balance around pot usage, then make it cheap to obtain - either through normal play + 30 secs to turn in tokens, OR through normal play, then cough up a bit of gold at a vendor (which, by the way, would make a shallow gold sink that would last the whole length of the expansion.)

Oh yeah, one last thing...I do not play an Alchemist. I simply don't like the whole concept of PS.

No, you don't understand, and here's an example:

As a Balance Druid, I have two major DPS spells: Wrath and Starfire. For simplicity, Wrath costs more mana, but has higher DPS. Taking as a given that blizzard wants my choice of what to do with my mana to be meaningful, i.e. my mana is not effectively infinite. With this in mind, they balance my class such that I can, without chain-potting, sustain 1000 DPS at a certain gear level. This is what you suggest they do.

I, being an elitist jerk, see that, if I gain 100MP5 by chain potting, I can sustain 1200 DPS by using Wrath instead of Starfire as my main nuke. There is nothing to stop me from doing this and, by doing it, encounters are all trivialized. I've gained 20% DPS simply by chain-potting, why would I not? I blow through content, defeating Kil'Jaeden an hour after the gate goes down because he's laughably easy. I cancel my subscription, Blizzard loses money, WoW dies.

All of that because Blizzard developers decided to balance classes and encounters with the assumption that, given the option, players will NOT chain-pot.

But that didn't happen, because Blizzard is not a bunch of idiots. They balance encounters and classes on the assumption that, given the choice between not pushing the envelope, and pushing the envelope, raiders will ALWAYS choose to push it. They tuned encounters around chain-potting, around people having every elixir up at once, around everyone being flasked. Because if they didn't, people who chose to go that route would laugh at content because it was easy. That led to people hating how much farming was necessary, so they made impossible for people to buff to the teeth by limiting flasks and elixirs. This is just the final step of that (or maybe not the final). They HAVE to do this, or people will continue needing to chain-pot to beat encounters.

No. That's not what bothers us. I'm sitting on 6000g simply by clicking buyout, create all, relist before raids. I don't do any dailies beyond cooking and the occasional heroic, I don't farm, and I know I'm at the low end of the spectrum for sitting on piles of gold. I wouldn't care if potion materials trippled in WotLK - costs would average out to about the same, but it'd still be an emergency button. What the whiny alchemist faction doesn't get is that most people objecting to chain pots are objecting to the concept, not the cost. Having to pot for mana you may or may not need in the fight just so your cooldown is ready later is dumb.

I should have been more clear, but when I say "have to," I mean in the context of this community, not in the general sense of the term. Even now, most people playing this game don't chain pot, or they use cheap pots, or whatever. For someone to "not have to" chain pot, it means there's no benefit to them, in the EJ sense. It means your druid who chain potted ended up with 7k extra mana. It means you can choose to use a haste pot, or save your pot cooldown for an emergency, which is what the case will be with potion sickness. For potion sickness to exist, the game has to be balanced so that mana pots are basically not needed.

The broken part is two fold. One, if a class has to chain pot to be at all viable. This is bad and is a class design problem, not a potion problem. Two, if chain potting trivializes content. Personally, I think the power of potting in regards to content is overblown. For most dps classes chain potting hardly means 20% increase in dps. There are some specific exceptions, but that's the general rule. The idea that the content in Sunwell is so perfectly tuned that everyone has to chain pot to beat it, and each encounter would be broken and easy if chain potting wasn't taken into account, I just don't believe. It's certainly a factor, but it's hardly on the same level that the massive amounts of world buffs, or insane elixir stacking, was. The biggest thing chain potting will do is allow an undergeared healer to perform at a higher level than his gear allows.

The biggest effect potting can have is to allow people to defeat encounters at a lower gear level than intended. For this to be possible, potions have to be exceptionally powerful in relation to people's gear. The only potion that comes close to meeting that requirement is the Mana Pot. Now, in WotLK, if they want to balance 10 man encounters around having 2 healers, health pots and healthstones start having the potential to be the same way. I believe that, more than anything, is why they introduced potion sickness.

In the end, I think the ultimate effect of potion sickness will be creating a required slot for a mana battery class in all 10 mans. Especially early on, if the mana management minigame plays a significant role in the gear checks for raiding, groups that can slot mana batteries will have a substantial advantage over groups that do not.

Thanks Ukerric. The game doesn't decide that the parchment cannot be enchanted until the cast-bar has run out... NYI indeed.

So logically, low-level Inscribers won't be able to produce items that are useful to those at or near level 80, but will still gain access to the twink market, where those vanilla enchants remain popular. If so, that's a nice compromise: It will improve the first 400-odd skill points of practically-worthless stuff that tend to characterise some other manufacturing professions; yet still give a reason to train the profession up to 450.

I hope that they're moving away from BoP best-in-slot items. The main problem with those is that the profession feels worthless if the item gets replaced by an upgrade, or even worse, the replacement item exists but is a super-rare drop.

The new model of a profession giving a bonus (enchanting rings, leatherworking patches) feels much better. The profession's bonus is constant throughout the end-game, as opposed to having insane spikes depending on your raid's progression and luck.