As a note here, if Blizzard's goal is to remove money from the economy (which it seems to be,) then there's a much better way they can do that with raiders.

Take an example, say that Bosses no longer drop any gold whatsoever. Replace that gold with an equivalent amount of herbs/consumables at average AH value. Hell, make it equivalent market value +25%. Two things happen.

One, money stops going into the economy through raiders.
Two, due to AH 5% cut, money is actually drained from the economy.


There's one assumption i know i'm making here, and that's that herbs/consumed items would actually enter the economy/casual player base, and not just get eaten up by the raid force. There may be others that i'm making, if anyone can see them i'd be glad to hear it.

Net effect is money leaves the economy, dispersed over a very large playerbase instead of being so direct. One downside is this MAY have the effect of placing almost all the wealth into raider's pockets. Against that particular aspect, to my knowledge raiders have the highest operating costs.

Because more money in economy means inflation, and that is kinda bad ?

mmm, never mind me. I thought he meant Blizz wanted to remove money from the game, as in stop using it. Funneling money out of the economy is needed of course.

Before the release of Naxx, there was one guy in our guild who had bought gold and was made fun of regularly because of it. Right now, probably 1/4 of the guild has and more are considering to do so all the time. That really just says it all. When the endgame either straight out requires you to have no job or buy gold, something is wrong. And we have always been very consumable heavy when raiding, ever since BWL we've really not hesitated with spamming consumables.

Personally, I partly love consumables, I love the power boost they give me as a healer, because you can heal so much more, and something like just spamming it away at Twin Emps is the best healing experience the game has to offer. But the reasonable part of me agrees that the power of consumables is way out of whack. Instead of giving more power than a full new tier of gear, being fully buffed should be more like 33% of the power of a new gear tier, which still would give an advantage but not as ridiculous as they do now.

I could see this coming though, and this is why we chose to refund t3 materials from the guild bank. Even if alone t3 mats would be trivial to get, added to repair costs and consumables, the load is simply too much.

Personally I'd like to see mana/health potions, runes, and tubers go on something like a 10 minute timer. Those kind of consumables should really be an "oh shit" backup when you really need it, not something you incorporate into your strategy. That or they need to put in something like the NPC they had in Naxx during test and revamp it for live. Basically sell cheap, BoP, and "only usable in X instance" consumables on an NPC that you can't access without either the right rep, progression (like the armament/regalia NPCs in AQ40), or some kind of attunement. Diablo had spammable pots, but it didn't matter because you could just buy them fairly cheaply anyway so it was always about using what you had on you wisely, not being able to get your hands on a supply.

Then they need to greatly reduce stacking like they did with food/drink buffs. Getting elixirs and firewaters and giant growth potions and whatever else all stacking is a bit rediculous. I'd think flask/food/drink/elixir/potion in addition to weapon buffs is already stretching it, but I don't think you could make it any less with how consumables are right now. Making them last longer and through death wouldn't hurt either, but they seem to be moving away from that with the zanza change.

We had a shaman in our guild who never grinded, all he did was play the AH and while waiting for instance groups in org. Guy was a great healer and was there for us in early MC many months ago. He got the first lionheart plans on the server.. and stronghold guantlets.

He made a kill, not to mention half the things on the AH was from one of his many alts. The ammassed a huge cache of just about everything, and when it came to craft our first thunderfury, even tho the guy no longer raided with us, he dug up all the arcanite needed in about 10 minutes from his alt.

And when we transfered, and he had to spread alot of money out within the guild so he could do so, the horde economy nearly died. AH went to hell.



But we still herb our own pots, make our own flasks farm our own arcanite for t3 and cure our own hides with the many transmute bots in the guild. Everyone is responsible for their own consumables, and it is noted by the officers. (Which counts for something when they decide the loot.)