They could just be giving us Alchemist's Stones again.

I'll be interested to see how or if they will try and balance two handed weapon enchants in light of Fury warriors with Titan's Grip. Or if they will just accept the fact that TG specced warrioprs can get 2 x 2handed enchants is part of the bvenefit of TG.

I don't think this is a concern at all, since Crusader, Mongoose and Executioner are all usable by DW classes.

We know the 2H-only Savagery is getting an update in WOTLK, but since Mongoose is already better than Savagery, I don't see how dual Greater Savagery is going to be a problem

That sounds fairly likely. Hopefully tiered with upgrades for scaling.

The power of it would still be greatly diminished since you can only use 1 potion because of the potion sickness...

Or would it be magnified a lot because of potion sickness, relatively?

It's neat but not a huge benefit. I mean, the current Alchemist stones are replaced very early (my guild is still doing SSC/TK) and I do not use it anymore. Unless they boost the new Alchmist stones compared to other content I do not imagine using it for very long.

What the devil are you talking about... The healer stone (at the least) is easily best in slot if you're pot drinking.

For healers, the current alchemist stone is the most powerful progression trinket in the game. Period.

The healer trinket may indeed be best around, but the other 3 trinkets are not. Very good for early progression, but later they are surpassed easily. I'll let others talk about their trinkets effectiveness, but I have never used [Guardian's Alchemist Stone] on a boss fight. In fact, I only have it for if I have to tank flames one day (I MT Illidan always) or for a passive crushing-immune set which I've never used on a boss. Plus I can't remember the last time I used a health potion in a raid; its ironshield or nothing. I have 5 trinkets I'd wear in front of this one.

The fact is, the bonus to potions isn't effective to alot of classes currently because it doesn't affect haste, ironshield or destruction potions. It doesn't affect magic-school protection potions either (such as fire protection). The benefits of the profession depends on using this trinket, and when its not the best and you don't wear it, whats the point of being an alchemist on your raiding main? Do they want only healers to be alchemists?

I hope they make large changes to the alchemist trinkets such as making them upgradable to keep up with gear and making them affect all potions, not just healing and mana. The static bonus needs to keep up with "best in slot" to make them worthwhile using. Doing this without making them overpowered is a difficult proposition; if you make them easy to aquire they will be overpowered and required, however if you make them too difficult to attain (boss drop) they won't be used unless RNG is in your favor.

Just for clarifcation, runic mana potions are 3240-5400 (average 4320), so on average your potion trinket will increase this by 40% or 1728 or 48mp/5 over a 3 minute fight, 24mp/5 over a 6 minute fight or 14.4mp/5 over a 10 minute fight. Thats not spectacular by lvl70 standards, let alone at lvl80. Right now, chain-chugging mana potions has this at an average of 40mp/5.

I did some more checking into Bleached Parchment scrolls and enchants:

The enchant checks the level of the scroll like it would check the level of the gear it was put on for BC enchants that require a level 35 item and Wrath enchants that require a level 60 item.

The scrolls are level 1, so only enchants with no level requirement can be put on them. This might be a bug, or it might mean that there are higher-level scrolls crafted a higher levels of Inscription which are not in the game yet.

Blank scrolls stack, and so do enchanted scrolls with the same enchant.

Cloak enchants go on armor (Bleached) scrolls.

This seems like a slightly ridiculous argument, given that Tailoring, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, and, to an extent, even Jewelcrafting suffer from the same issue of being of limited use for most classes/roles.

Mixology seems to be their current notion on how to make Alchemy give the same sort of stat bonus as the other professions. They're tuning the bonus (and obviously, it's got some issues right now, judging by it not working with flasks, etc). They might be exploring Alchemist Stones along with it, and they may not - either way, they'll find a reasonable balance. Worst case, people will prefer to have Alchemy on alts. Is that really so terrible? (That question goes double for Alchemy if they keep it so that it doesn't require raid reputation / drops for recipes.)

TBC alchemy was mostly a healer profession, just like smithing is mostly a melee DPS profession.

I doubt that we'll see alchemist stones in Wrath. Likely alchemy will get a new trinket with a completely different effect, since the current potion-boosting effect is being given to all alchemists as a passive skill.

Has anyone else noticed how little the stats have increased in enchanting? With conversion rates effectively doubled between TBC and WotLK, the gains seen so far from enchanting indicate you get less back.

For example, consider the following from a hunter/rogue/shaman/druid perspective:

(TBC) Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility: 20 agility, or 0.5% crit.
(WotLK) Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility: 26 agility, or 0.31% crit

(TBC) Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility: 15 agility, or 0.375% crit.
(WotLK) Enchant Gloves - Major Agility: 20 agility, or 0.24% crit.

and so on..

Consider from Vanilla WoW to TBC, the enchants nearly doubled, I would have hoped to see the same thing in WotLK.

It doesn't really matter though does it? Enchants are just a tax - everyone buys the best ones and the bosses are tuned around the expectation that everyone has those enchants. (There are a few choices, like dodge versus defense on cloak for tanks, but very few.)

Enchants could be really weak, and everyone would still buy them, or very strong, and everyone would still buy them. As long as they're about equal - for example the rogue enchants aren't far far more powerful than the mage enchants - it doesn't overly matter.

(The BoP ring enchants are different, of course, since they have to be measured against the BoP benefits of other professions.)

I was thinking that maybe new alchemist stone trinkets could have an on use "Remove Potion sickness" kind of thing to it in addition to whatever else they are doing.

If they did this, everyone would be forced into being an Alchemist for raids and having the stone.

Depends on the cooldown, doesn't it? They could even do a "Inflicts Potion Weakness (50% decrease in effectiveness, cumulative) on use" part, and remove any cooldown, effectively limiting you to the power of two pots in one fight which should not overpower it. Having a "until combat is over" cooldown would also make it work similarly (at the benefit of just consuming two pots). Or perhaps an "On Use: Duplicate the effects of the last potion used."

It is quite an interesting idea, given the right constraints.

Depends on what sort of raid fights they design. Twins (sac first) Phase 1 is ~3 minutes. Being able to use two ironshields then instead of one would be a pretty big deal. Its still an interesting idea with the right constraints as you said - but even something as seemingly innocent as 'Use: Allows the wearer to consume two potions before getting potion sickness." could have a large affect on some encounters.

To minimise the aforementioned issue, you could separate 'potion sickness' into several types of sickness: Reactive potion sickness (health/mana pots), proactive/buffing potion sickness (ironshields, destro pots etc) and allowed 1 of each per fight.

The new Alchemy buff (called Mixologist) only affects elixirs and flasks.

Which doesn't address the fundamental issue. Blizzard are trying to reduce consumability dependence, which isn't itself a bad thing, but the way they're going about it is reducing the moneymaking potential of crafting professions by reducing the number of things you can sell. That isn't healthy. If there's not enough items worth making for profit, it inevitably leads towards people taking professions for the minimaxing perks - which is exactly what Blizz are trying to negate with effects like Tinnitus.

My take on potion sickness, if it's going to be included: the debuff should be temporary - between 3-5 minutes; I favour towards the lower end of the range - and instead of preventing potion use entirely it should reduce the effect (or duration, if it has one) of potions by 10%. If you drink another potion before the debuff wears off, the duration is refreshed and the debuff stacked. This would make chain-chugging less desirable, but at the same time not screw you completely if you have to take a second pot for whatever reason. And if you can hold off on your pot for long enough, there's no drawback at all - thus encouraging players to manage their resources more effectively.

Honestly, what makes you think they want potions in the raid game at all? They've obviously been more of a burden to raiding than anything else for *years*, when it's plainly obvious that they're designed as more of a situational "oh shit" sort of thing. Why the burning desire to shoehorn them into the raid game?