They fixed that. At one point dark runes took into account your +dmg gear and such like and they could crit. I'm certain they fixed the +dmg bit, and I think they removed the ability for them to crit as well.

Nightfin soup- it's slightly more addictive than crack.
Mageblood is actually not worth (seriously) the inventory slots for me on anything but the 'big boss' we're working on/stuck on. I'd save an inventory slot for Distilled Wisdom before this, simply because mageblood stacks only to 5 and wipes on death. It's benifical, no doubt, but I'm going to hesitate on using it so much I'd rather take another 5stack of major mana pots.
Brilliant mana oil is great. I just don't find the mats all that bad, and the benifit is nice.

I also keep a 20stack of AD or AV water on me, in case the fight 'could' use a boost but isn't worth even Nightfin (I have over 200 Nightfin floating around among mailboxes, so that's saying something).

Rank 6 pots are fantastic- since they're 100% guarenteed to be in stock, they're cheap, I pop them like pez on any hard fight as soon as I'm down enough mana, then decide mid cooldown if the fight will justify a Major mana (6g on my server atm...and I'm down to 80 of them). Of course, depending on your gear level/server pvp activity these can be hard to get/maintain, but you'd be amazed how little pvp rank 6 actually is. I have successfully addicted my entire guild to this, I'm proud to say.

I have a 10stack of demoinic runes and I run scholo 3-4 times a week and hand off the dark runes to those lazy lazy bastards who don't run thier own thing- but I honestly rarely use these. Not becuase of the health hit, but it's rare that I'm actually -that- strapped for mana and it'll make a difference if I'm not. As for those who think I'm nuts for running scholo that much, I'm the rez bitch for a certain guildie mage who wants to figure out how to kill every single boss in scholo solo (he keeps getting stuck on the Butcher, evade bug).

It's a personal balncing act to me. I really hate to use up consumables, so I check raid composition, how we as a raid are doing, ect. It's worth mentioning that the only consumables you have to use -before- the fight starts/you get a sense of how it's going to go are food (nightfin...god how I love you nightfin), so popping something 20 seconds in isn't really going to hurt you. As usual, ymmv but I don't know of any fight my guild has won because the healers popped consumables (okay, one nef with 6 priests, 4 shaman, 0 druids, 3 times he did shaman call followed by a priest one, but how often does -that- happen?)

Uh, Maniq's sig occurred last weekend. Yes, they don't get +dam from gear anymore. But they can still crit. And if you have damage multplier effects on you....

Emps before they fixed the totem+bug issues (and after, when your[mine] guild was too paranoid to start using them again). Good times.

Hm. Assuming Flask of the Titans works the same way as Distilled Wisdom (and I'm pretty sure it does since I remember using a FotT right before a pull and noticing my HP was still at 100%), would it be better saved as a 2nd/3rd Last Stand/Lifegiving Gem on a fight where you'd probably use one anyway?

It does.

Except that the fights that absolutely require one (Emps, Patchwerk, etc.) are, by their very nature, fights where you might go down before you ever even get to use it.

Also, Loatheb, but for an entirely different reason.

You mean, just use it as a glorified healing pot?

Basically. :) Though, Warriors sometimes don't have the luxury of being able to use HP pots due to Stoneshield potions and whatnot. If anything, I guess it would give me another "oh shit" button.

Wait a minute, Flask of the Titans has the 3-second "buff potion" cooldown, no? And using it restores 1200 HP?

Loatheb + about 30k gold = win.

Every first kill, ever, of a non-trivial boss (well, not Vael..). In terms of farmed bosses, probably just Hakkar. He wasn't fun with 5-6 healers without much BWL gear, and we basically needed the healers to use every timer possible for a while.

But in general, consumables are pretty unnessesary most of the time. I'm able to afford to carry around huge piles of them because for most bosses there's really only a few attempts where going max consumables is benefitial.

Ooh, good point. Hadn't thought about damage multiplier effects... Too bad about the crits then. Hasn't happened to me in ages, thought they'd "fixed" that. I remember getting 1-shot dropped by a big crit when I was far less geared than I am now. (Lots of +dmg, very little stam... Bad combo for Demonic runes.)

Well that kinda sucks then. Demonic Runes are one of my favorite consumables.

runes can crit, pots can't. In 2 years of playing WoW, ive never heard of or experienced a "pot crit"

What class are you? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess a non-caster.

Pots work off your spell crit. Try potting on Loatheb:

After reading your assertion, I went out and bought one. This information is *completely incorrect*. The lily root shares a cooldown with Demonic Runes/Whipper Roots/etc. Please do not post misinformation.

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=19125

Still could be useful on fights where demonic runes aren't really usable, as it's better than everything else it shares a cooldown. Not exactly worth the cost, though.

the fight i had in mind when thinking of healer consumables was nefarian. i've never done the fight (guild is starting BWL in a few days, 2 bosses down in aq40 and MC/Ony on farm) but it seems like a marathon. mana conservation seems key for healers. or am i mistaken?

Not really. At least personally, phase 1 is a burnfest, where mana conservation is secondary to making sure none of the silly rogues die. Once you get past that point, Nefarian himself is basically Onyxia with harder spikes (oh hi 7k shadowflame on warrior call). Assuming you haven't lost too many healers, you'll be able to rotate out and regen mana easily. And if you're really in a bind, this is an ideal place for GDS.

A fight like Chromaggus is much more taxing, since you don't really get a break (if you take one, people start complaining loudly).

Nef should only need 7-8 healers on the MT at a time (unless you burned through BWL or had bad luck with Wrath), so as long as you have some people get past Phase 1 with mana (and they aren't all of a class that gets called right away), you're fine.

Firemaw and Ebonroc were the main consumable fights for me while learning them. Firemaw because he has the potential to do stupidly high amounts of damage to the MT if you're unlucky, and you will be losing some people to flame buffet at first. Ebonroc just because our first kill took about 20 minutes.

Chromaggus is pretty different for horde and alliance. Alliance you have paladins cleansing, so priests have a lot of chances to take regen breaks.