I have to agree. The fact that we're actually worried about our guild bank running low before we kill Kel'thuzad makes me worried, because it's clear we need to ramp up consumables more and more per boss. At this point we're about to start Loatheb (as long as we finish dancing with Heigan tonight!) I simply dread the amount of gold we have to burn to kill him. We already buff quite a bit for kills, and I'd be surprised if any guild is doing Patchwerk without flasks and Stoneshield before the expansion. I don't have a problem with buffing up for first kills to get that edge, but when we need that edge to beat the encounter, it becomes sort of unpleasant. People already say things like "the encounter isn't worth the gold" because of how much they spend to beat it, is that honestly okay with the developers?

sure does

Well, thats the problem that Blizzard has cornered themself while making encounters. If you tune it so that it will be challenging without consumables, it will be much easier with even basic level of consumables (for some reason that sounds familiar very familiar :). Basically they have onle one real choice - nerf all major consumables and buff. As you can see they are already doing it with several outstanding ones. We can only hope that in TBC that problem will be rebalanced

An example of our guild bank (We're only on 2 bosses in Naxx), we have it dynamically update on our website so there's both transparency on what the guild officers are doing with the guild bank, as well easy requesting items for the active members.

http://kupo.stacked.co.nz/bank/?sid=


(with everything displayed)
http://kupo.stacked.co.nz/bank/?open...1:3:11:9:5:4:6

The problem here is: if you do have a regular workday, you won't have that much time for farming. We haven't yet tried the hardcore consumable fights but as a raid that is traditionally lazy in terms of consumables I can see great problems arising pretty soon. I don't want to have to go online and farm or raid exclusively. I always liked to be able to do a bit pvp or just hang around with my mates as a diversion to a very raidheavy weekend (we raid saturday and sunday from 15-23+ and wednesday 19-23).
If I as the officer in charge of the bank have to provide significantly more than 10 flasks a week on a regular basis, our raid will hit the wall pretty soon.

It's not a question of >10 flasks a week -- I wouldn't say you need that at all. It is, however, a question of having every rogue and warrior come with mongoose and giants/juju, mages with wizard oil and GAEs, etc., healers and even casters chain-chugging major mana pots, etc., for even learning attempts beyond the additional "let's figure out what he does" parts. It's not the big stuff like flasks; it's the little stuff times 40, per attempt.

Some fights aren't like this at all -- you can practice and learn Gluth quite nicely with fairly minimal expenses. But when you spend a night wiping to Patchwerk or to Gothik, it's pretty brutal.

One of the guilds that sell MC epics on our server has the buyer in question stand at the entrance until the boss is downed, then they ML it to them if it drops. Cuts down immensely on the possibility of a wipe (Geddon bomb anyone?).

Course, the effectiveness of this would depend on how many buyers are at each run...

In ochat we call it potioncraft now. Some ofthe encounters are just getting absurd.

Widow is a 'great' example. Going in dry on this fight is stupid. On our crappy server you can count on getting hit with 3-4 waves even if you are out of range in 1 second. Everyone prepops a firepot. Get hit with rain(almost certain atleast once) drink another firepot. Sissy clothies? Better prepop a nature pot.

Any guild can kill widow without crazy pot chugging when things work out ok or if the server is not laggy. Or you can just blow 300g worth of protection pots and do away with her immediately.

Many encounters are not even feasible anymore without flasked tanks. This is not some cutting edge trick that only the best guilds use anymore. It is a straight up mandated raid tax for your friendly gromsblood/lotus farmers.

Futhermore there are starting to be too many issues with max buffs on tanks and complications on figuring out which buffs stack etc. What if there are 3 new pots in expansion for +parry and +dodge and +block. Do we start blowing 100g per attempt on potions for the tank?

In my opinion they should just do away with titans. Then they should make the potions much more powerful but have a hard limit of one active potion at a time like flasks currently are. A stack of said potions should cost 5 gold in mats, no more of this black lotus + 40 dreamfoil crap.

Does that work? I thought you had to be in range of the boss to get items MLed to you. Maybe FFA loot would work with the waiting at the entrace idea?


MC runs selling epics seems to be a great way to make some gold, especially if you can get 500g for one epic.

Dunno about that, Grand Widow requires a Flask on the MT and maybe a Fire Protection Pot on the Priest Mind Controlling, beyond that I wouldn't waste consumables.

Also, of course you have a choice to not kill bosses, but realistically are you really going to tell your guild "hey let's not do Loatheb because the guild bank is broke"?

Server hardware simply does not allow this for us. Maybe if we raided on weekday mornings we could get away with that but you can usually count on getting hit with 3 waves reguardless of how quickly you leave the area of effect.