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.

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").

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?

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?"

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.