Honestly, potion sickness in it's current form isn't all that problematical, assuming they make the neccesary adjustments to potions. If they're one-per-fight additions and were rebalanced as such, you could - with relative ease - make a tactical potion management "minigame" out of a previously quite boring system. Take the WotlK equalent of [Major Dreamless Sleep Potion]. Tune it properly to make it actually compete with the regular mana potions, and the decisionmaking involved in which one to use would actually be a decision of tactical importance. Similar approaches could be made to all potions - currently, haste potions must be balanced around what happends if you chain them, but no more. If the debuff is accompanied by the appropriate potion balance, it will make the game more enjoyable to play, because what potion, and when, to use it will go from automatic chore to important tactical decision. That's a good thing.

The moneymaking impact on alchemy is also fairly slight. The most popular potion is a no-limits vendor recipe, and thus available to each and every one who had the tenacity to level at least one alt - and nowadays, they practically level themselves - which means that the impact of that particular loss of consumable isn't likely to hit "real" alchemists as much as it is going to hit the profession alts. A system in which there are multiple items with a market is way better than a single item with a big market for the "real" alchemists. Doing potions right, you might actually end up making more money as a hardworking WotlK alchemist selling potions. 'course, it's worth noting that I'm an elixir master myself, and I certainly havn't seen anything yet to make potions (or transmute mastery for that matter) look like they're even on the table in WotlK. But potion sickness alone does not rule out the financial viability of potion mastery, or alchemy as a whole.

The most serious concern in my mind about potion sickness is - and someone did mention it earlier - the reduction in non-healers ability to look after and manage their own health. Not exactly a huge issue, and having no real experience of raid healing, maybe not an issue at all, but I still think it's worth bringing up again.


Having said that, there are two disturbing trends in this thread I'd like to comment on;

First, the cavalier disregard of profession balance. Crafting, if done right, can be a huge beneficial addition to the quality of gameplay. Leaving it unbalanced "because it's easy to switch profession" is not doing it right, anymore than leaving a class in the gutter because "it's easy to switch". Arguing that it's okay to leave alchemy wanting because it's easy to level is every bit as inane as saying shamans should be more powerful than hunters because hunters are easier to level. You could do it, you could probably get away with doing it based on this thread, but it sure as hell isn't good game design. And most importantly, looking at upcoming, past and concurrent MMORPGs, it's not a good business move. Crafting has a place in MMORPGs and there's absolutely no reason for Blizzard to let competing MMOGs score free points of a crafting system. This isn't the most engaging and deepest crafting system known to the genre, but there's no point in not working to at least fullfill the potential it does have.

Secondly, while having to farming consumable materials is hardly the best solo-content this game has to offer, the fact is that it is a part of the solo-content this game has to offer. With PvP being either hardcapped or on strict diminishing returns, the "Making Pretend Money" minigame that lost some (though far from all) of it's charm with increase of dailies, the rep grinds no particularly major hurdles,logging on to my character - a character of the same class as the one I originially started the game with - for solo-content is rapidly losing it's appeal. I mean, I log on, I look around, and then what? There are no raiding preparations that I have not already done. There are very few single-player things I have any greater interest in doing, I have not yet done. To put it into perspective, I recently ground out the Justicar title (honour capping myself doing pug Arathi Basins, now there's a serious pain) and I'n now toying with the idea of a Winterspring frostsaber or Deathcharger's Reins. Of course, the latter would require me to respec from the raid spec, which puts a bit of a dampener on the whole project.
Anyway, the point I wish to make; I did not roll a warlock because I wanted to "finish the game". I rolled a warlock because it was the playstyle that held the most appeal to me, and still does. I have a lvl 70 druid alt, and I enjoy it too, but it's not my class, nor is it my character, it's my alt.

Again, I'm not saying that I don't think potion sickness isn't a good idea, I'm not saying I will particularly mourn lessened farming for an uninteresting mechanic as potions has largely been up to this point.

But I will - and to an extent, do already - mourn looking at my character screen, seeing my character, and knowing that there's no point in logging in on that particular character, because the things I have left to achieve on him are either ridicolously boring or provide very little in the way of actual "character advancement". Raid preparations done in single-player mode is one way to keep that character active, and removing those because they "take too much time"... I have a hard time seeing anything that makes my character less desireable to play outside of raid hours an actual improvement to gameplay. Even if farming isn't exactly the most amusing aspect of the game.

Healthstones are already essentially 1 per fight given that they are now unique across all ranks and Mana Gems are a built-in part of Mage's mana longevity. (Did Blizzard change Mana Gems to allow non-mages to use them?)

Eh, no.

Healthstones and mana gems are completly different pair of shoes, because they are not sold or have to be farmed for. On the top of that, healthstones are always reactive measure (not preventive, like mana pots in TBC), while mana gems are one class only, so they can be easily balanced for it.

Like mentioned before, potion sickness is a good thing, as long as more then just 1-2 types of potions remain useful after that nerf. 1 use per fight makes sense for Mana/Fel mana (or its WotLK equivalent), probably for protection potions and armor improving one, but not so much for haste, destruction, healing or other, more exotic ones. If we assume 1 potion per fight, potions have to be adjusted to that change as well.

I don't quite understand why you're putting haste pots on the "no timer" list.

Healers are more likely to chain chug mana pots than dps is to chain chug their pots (mana or haste) because of the difference in role. For most fights, if your healer(s) run out of mana, you die; if your DPS runs out of mana or doesn't haste up, it just takes you a little longer to kill the boss.

Having said that, it is still the same mechanic. Haste pots are not reactive. When I am on a progression fight, I will chain chug haste pots. Why should that be treated differently than a mana pot?

You're missing the point. If the intent of Potion Sickness was only to reduce the amount of materials you have to farm, they could just make all the potions cheaper. The problem with potions is that they're a brainless mechanic - you push it, and then when it comes back up you push another one. The goal is to require a decision from the player - output potion (DPS/mana) or survivability potion? Which DPS check on a multi-phase fight like Kael or Kil'Jaeden or Illidan do you use your offensive potions during?

Diminishing returns on potions, removing potions entirely, changing cooldowns, none of these suggestions make the player think. Potion Sickness adds some depth to choosing which potion to use when, and depth is good.

You could also have a paladin using Beacon of Light while everyone groups up to receive that heal for every Inevitable Doom.

Sydane, I don't know your history of raiding or where you are at currently but your character is a warlock. Let me give you a priests perspective from Sunwell Plateau.

I don't drink a mana potion in Black Temple (unless something is going wrong), but when it comes to Sunwell I bring 4 stacks of [Mana Potion Injector], when combined with my [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone] is a very powerful tool. Any what I do, very religiously, is this. When my mana hits 70% I use a mana potion, then everytime the cooldown is up, I use it again. Rinse and repeat for all the bosses I have done in the zone (except Kil'Jaeden).

No matter the tuning of the fight, unless it is farm (like BT currently is), for a progression zone I chain chug. Not because I have to, not because I want to but because it is getting the most out of my character through the tools given to us as raiders. If Sunwell was not so mana intensive, I would simply gem purely for [Quick Lionseye], but instead I try to balance out the haste gems with regen gems. I choose items to balance the two, instead of favoring the haste. If the encounters were not as mana intensive I would still be chain potting, but I would be running around with twice the haste and half the regen.

The potion sickness buff is a good way to go, a great way in my opinion. But being an alchemist they will need to change our very useful trinket, perhaps give us the ability to have a second flask, or a third elixir or something along those lines that do indeed show that we are alchemists.

I didn´t read the whole topic, sorry if it has been touched already.

Considering we might get 2 talent specs to exchange on the run or on the trainer, we should also get 2 glyphs options associated with such talent specs, so when we change the spec we get the right glyphs. (we will have paid for them anyway, it would suck to have to "regem" the glyphs every time we respec).

This is a good point, but I don't think it's quite absolute. What needs to be true is that there are other potions that you might conceivably want more in a reactive situation. As an example, haste or destro pots for a burn phase or synchronizing with DPS cooldowns, or some sort of your-heals-give-shield-wall potion for healers. As long as it's least debatable whether giving up your oh-shit button for 3k mana is a worthy tradeoff, you're okay.

The problem is, if a mana pot gives 3k mana, then any other effect some other potion can give is basically a spell that costs 3k mana to cast. That's a fucking expensive spell. Of course, any spell that actually (eg) saves the raid from a wipe is worth the mana cost, but by holding off the pot you're basically saying that the option of casting the spell is worth 3k mana... except that 3k mana doesn't actually mean anything up until you OOM, so saving the option is penalty-free. And, if you end the fight with more than 0 mana, that excess mana effectively reduces the opportunity cost of the other potion.

So, now that I've gone through a page of discussion on this on my own: It may look like there's no reason to wait to pop the first pop, but there's also no reason to do it early since you don't have to front-load the cooldown on the second one. So long as other potions are useful enough to carry in your inventory just in case, the optimal play is to wait on the mana potion until you need it, and use one of the other potions if you need that one instead. This caveat assumes that you've built your character to not need the mana pot, or that fights where a (eg) haste pot may be useful will not require a mana pot (ie fights with burst are easier on the endurance). The first situation is unlikely, given player psychology, but the second one is, and I would conclude that there will be at least some fights where the use of pots (type and timing) will be a non-uniform tactical decision, although not all fights.

You just lost me there. I want to play smarter, not longer, in order to beat encounters. Farming Kz so that I can be geared up for ZA is/was super annoying.

Well, okay: you and I have different play styles, as the evidence of the difference in how much time we spend playing and what content we do. That's not terribly interesting or relevant. What's relevant is: where is, say, 70% of the playerbase?

I suspect there are a lot more players like myself than like you.

That's a proof by assertion.

The issue I have is that people want their cake and eat it to. I know lots and lots of people that do nothing but log on and raid each week. They don't farm, they don't grind, they rarely have more than 500 gold, and they are perfectly content. Plenty of them know their classes really well, some read sites like this, some don't. There is nothing in the game that forces them to do more than that to raid, play, be successful, and have fun. Those people exist at the T4 level and the T6 level. But they certainly aren't farming Kil'jaeden.

I see nothing wrong with requiring those that want to be on the bleeding edge to have to work harder and try harder, and to have to do things outside of raiding to make their raiding successful. Should those things be fun? Of course, as much as possible. Do I have pity for a guild that can skip a month's worth of BT/Hyjal farming and kill Brutallus that much sooner because they chain pot and all reroll leatherworking? Not at all.

Reducing people's need to farm mats is the last reason they will put in potion sickness. Farming and grinding repeated content is an aspect of MMOs as a genre. If they've found that it's hard to balance encounters around gear levels that are going to be more incrementally tiered than previously, and that to do that they need to restrain potion use, it's understandable but unfortunate. I would hope that the current implementation is merely a stopgap, or signs of a larger change that will result in more interesting and dynamic potions. However I am skeptical that will happen.

I guarantee you, the absolute smallest segment of the playing population is the group that feels obligated to chain pot but resents the cost of it. The largest group right now is the part that doesn't feel obligated to chain pot. I'd contend the next largest group is the ones that do chain pot, and may not like the cost, but understand it is part of the game. Even on the highest end, people have contended that there's nothing truly difficult about T6 content, very few actual gear checks, and much more just a test of getting out of the fire. This is a direct contradiction to the idea that chain potting trivializes content. The problem with Sunwell is the difference between guilds that farmed Illidan for 9 months, and ones that downed him the week before release. One would hope that disparity won't happen again in WotLK.

WotLK introduces a parallel raiding structure that will be far harder to balance than BC was. If your 10 man guild farms Naxx for long enough to move to Ulduar, but realizes at that time it has enough people to do 25 man raids, where is their gear going to let them compete? Not good enough for 25 man Ulduar of course, because then people could get to there too fast by running both 25 and 10 mans. How much 25 man Naxx farming will they have to do? If they then drop back down to a 10 man guild after farming 25 man Naxx, will they be able to skip 10 man Ulduar and move on to whatever is after it? These are all significant balance issues, and the only thing that will keep people from leapfrogging content will be the gear checks (or attunements and broken content, like we saw in BC). Which means small things, especially in 10 mans, like health pots and healthstones, are going to have a bigger overall effect. Again, all chain potting does is allow you to undergear content. It may seem more complex than that, but that's it.

The overpowered nature of Mana Potions has long been the bane of the entire potion system. Personally, I think if they just removed Mana Potions entirely the game would be better off for it. Then they could make judgment calls over whether a potion sickness type ability is need. There's a lot of interesting ideas in potions that barely get touched upon, and potential for an interesting and complex system. However, I don't believe it is something Blizzard has the desire to dedicate a large amount of time and resources to.

Your hypothetical raider is a perfect example of the situation that Blizzard is trying to fix, IMO.

In your opinion, the best raiders should be those who are willing to put in ample farming time and effort outside the instance. They use this investment to buy consumables that give them an edge over more casual raiders.

But what about the time-constrained raider who is extremely skilled, but doesn't want to dedicate 25% of his game time to farming?

By introducing potion sickness and increasing baseline regeneration, Blizzard is decreasing the importance of gold and grinding in the raiding game while buffing the importance of PvE skill. And I think that's a very good thing.


Anyway, we are getting WAY off topic here. Maybe it's time for a separate "Potion Sickness" thread.