Cite, please.

Vihermaali: I don't see the increased capacity for regen through abilities combined with regular potion use being a bad thing. It seems to me that it would adjust the need for raid consumables without depreciating their power. A player whose mana-management skills are poor will still find them to be a necessity, while a player with good mana-management skills won't necessarily need them, but will have them as a luxury or a safety net. This system would be rewarding skilled players for grinding consumables without forcing them to do so if they want to progress, or making the fights too easy if they do grind.

Example: let's say a Healadin can obtain enough mana to see out Brutallus by chain-chugging mana pots or using a full Divine Plea. The fight won't be made appreciably easier if he can do both - it just means he finishes the fight with 60% mana instead of 10%. Alternately, he could take advantage of his skills to pop a health pot (or a haste pot during Stomp) and make the fight that little bit less stressful.

If they go this route, they can never make an encounter that is challenging because of the mana management aspect. Because if more mana makes it easier, people will chain-chug mana potions on every pull until the boss is dead. It doesn't matter how weak or powerful they are - if using a consumable every two minutes improves someone's chances of winning, progression-oriented raiders will do it. And hate it.

Regards the Brutallus example, suppose the paladin does both and is able to chain a higher rank of holy light the entire fight, allowing his guild to take one fewer healer and one more DPSer. His guild is thereby able to beat Brutallus with weaker gear than would have been required had they needed 7 healers. Or another aspect - healers with extra mana (who can thus afford to spam higher ranks) can make up for an undergeared tank.

The consequence of this is that to make an encounter truly challenging to the bleeding edge (and Blizzard has shown a desire to do this, first in Naxx and then in Sunwell) this consumable use will be required. Because it's there, and if it wasn't required, poor players (the paladin who doesn't know how to sneak in his divine plea) would be able to beat the encounter simply by using the consumables.

That's my opinion. Consumbles are needed because they exist. I for one would rather have them removed and boss encounters retuned accordingly. Problem solved. Perhaps that would also "force" them to adress mana efficiencies of certain classes or specs, if those cannot simply be avoided through chain-potting?

OT: sorry to have to ask about this but how does one get to post new threads? I've searched through the rules, FAQ etc. and can't find out. I have a PvP thread I'd like to start.

The mana efficiencies seem to be being sorted through addition of abilities (i.e. paladin "evocation" style ability), a rework of particular talents for raid synergy (i.e. chance for mana back on rejuvenation ticks), changes to particular talents to make regen stats more desirable (i.e. shadow priest talent for 30% spirit -> dmg), and changes to the spirit formula.

It would appear that potion sickness is confirmed as not working as intended in the current build. I would expect that it will be fixed in the next push, so as per Juices post lets leave that topic alone for the moment and leave this thread for discussion about professions in general.

The posting issue is covered in this announcement.

Remember that Leatherworkers will still have drums. You won't be able to keep them up constantly with 4 drummers in your group, but they'll still be useful.

BlizzCast Episode 4

Highlights-

But this affects everyone in your group. It's hardly the same as an extra glyph or better gems or enchants... It's group utility, not (purely) personal benefit. As such, it shouldn't be measured toward what LW gives the player alone. So far, we get just the leg armors.

...Then again, those armors are pretty substantial upgrades from what I'm seeing.

It will also contribute to people wanting to keep multiple versions of the same gear around for different situations, as the variety of unique new on-use and on-proc effects will have people wanting a set of boots with stats, and a set w/ runspeed or whatever - being able to do so without significantly gimping stats by wearing an underpowered blue (as is the case in TBC) is going to encourage this in a big way, and will probably help to reduce the amount of sharding that goes on hopefully.

It's still raid DPS you're adding, just as much as if you had some personal enchant somewhere. It's not sexy because you don't just help yourself win the e-peen meters, but it's still helping your group. To say drums aren't a positive reason to take a leatherworker to a raid is like saying bloodlust isn't a reason to take a shaman.

You can't use them in arenas which is a drawback compared to the others, but talking purely PvE, you have to take drums into account when talking leatherworking balance vs the other professions.

You're not talking PvE, you're talking pure Raid-PvE. What you miss is the whole part of soloplay or small groups play where you don't necessarily use drums all the time.

So drums are still a great help for the part of the game that is called Raid-PvE, but they are useless for PvP, quite useless for solo-play and seldom used in 5-man PvE.

While I enjoy LW, while I enjoy Raid-PvE and while I am looking forward to the cool BoP Leg Enchants, I DO whish very much that there will be more for LW than just Drums and Leg Enchants ... well at least Armor sets are to be expected, and they'll hopefully be better than the ones in BC.

Make the tokens exchangeable for materials needed for that profession as well and it sounds like a dandy idea. Flood the market with Herbs and reduce their price.