I don't think the overall issue is the cost to acquire that pink bar (gimmicky shit like Loatheb aside), but it's size. The simplest solution seems to be to nerf what crafted consumables can give (along with wiping world buffs, which I think most everyone has agreed on).
Look at a mage. Figuring hit and crit to be worth about +10dmg, Arcanist gives +158dmg, and Netherwind gives +234dmg, an upgrade of 76. A Greater Arcane Elixir gives +35dmg, almost half the upgrade from a full tier of raid gear. Stack an Elixir of Greater Firepower (ignoring the fire immune b.s. around this gear level) and a Brilliant Wizard Oil and the total from buffs is +111dmg, or 146% of that full tier upgrade! Add a Flask of Supreme Power and it's +261dmg, or 343% of that tier upgrade.
There's just really no excuse for consumables to provide that big a buff relative to gear upgrades. Not only should all of those buffs not stack, but they should all be smaller (assuming the solution of making gear upgrades bigger isn't workable, which I believe it isn't). Limit the elixir slots, make flasks and elixirs take the same slot, whatever you want, but whatever total benefit you can gain should not be more than one tier of gear, if that much.
edit: Looks like a similar argument was made above by Stimulant...
Also I'm an alchemist and would gladly accept the nerf to the utility of my profession. I've always felt I got more out of transmutes than making my own potions anyway.
Tangent: I also hate class buffing. It slows down the raid greatly and is a constant annoyance. Can't we get a "super gift of the wild" that lets me push one button and buff the whole raid wherever they are, for an hour, lasting through death?
What about having a limit to the bonus consumeables can give you? ie: no more than 10% of what your gear gives you. Just using a random 10% here for example only.
If I had 500 spell damage, then I can get at most 50 more damage from consumeables. Thats a greater arcane elixir/elixir of shadow power combo, no point taking anything beyond that. As my gear got better it may be cheaper and easier to just use flasks rather than stack smaller more expensive consumeables.
This would limit the ammount of consumeables people need and that content is balanced around. World buffs could be changed and included in this 'consumeable buff limit' too. As gear improves, people can move from smaller consumeables to flasks. They could make flasks cheaper and easier to make too as they are no longer such a massive power gain over other items.
edit: You could add in other items like leather workers drums or jewelcrafting consumeable party buffs. That would give people several ways to reach the limit, although it would cut into my alchemists profits!
I don't see how pushing a button on the wall, or having a chest with a ton of potions in it, or increasing herb spawn rates to 10 per pick solves the underlying problem. It doesn't. The problem is consumables are too powerful, hence the need to farm them. Take away their relative power compared to everything else, and the need to farm drops accordingly.
A few have have mentioned that dps or regen consumables are fun now and then, so I'll say no more on that. As far as why have them, I can't tell the difference between allowing mana tide totems or blessing of wisdom and mana pots aside from the cost. I'd say using health pots takes about as much skill as mashing the shield block button after a big hit (or whenever a tank is supposed to, I don't really know). Mana potions and demonic runes are a mana management task roughly comparable to downranking in the sense that you just set up how you plan to do things and then you go and do it. The question of why they exist seems similar to the question of why abilities with long cooldowns exist.
But at this point, I think we can admit that Blizz isn't going to just ditch all the software components for consumables that they've developed, so we've been trying to brainstorm solutions that Blizz might consider.
You innately have things like Mana Tide, Blessing of Wisdom, etc. The game is balanced around things you have. The problem is consumables provide a boost so substantial that most serious raiding guilds would use them. Thusly the bar is balanced around having them. They exist SOLELY to maintain their own existance. The entire game can be broken down into the "simple" task of pushing buttons, it's not a question of how taxing it is to press keys. But abilites exist to get things done, consumables as a standard exist because they're in the game and people are going to use them. So it's always assumed you will in order to not trivialize content
Can we agree that the challenge doesn't lie in any one button press? Chain chugging consumables because the encounter is designed around a standard that simply can't be met by gear due to a lack of capacity or output isn't quite the same as relying on class abilites. The entire problem lies in that characters are always considered at a limit that factors in consumables, necessitating them for a very long time. I'm inclined to agree with gutting alchemy if it meant I didn't have to spend so much of the game preparing to do a single attempt. I'm already going to wipe, it's part of the learning experience, having to spend tons of gold and time to get that gold or the items is not enjoyable, and obviously it's a cause for burnout.
Many of the high end potions could probably be gutted because quite frankly they exist almost exclusively for the purpose of raid buffing. Again as they've become part of the standard line for difficulty nothing gets broken by removing them and reevaluating for their removal. At this point it's more an issue of how to make more standard items like mana pots which are easily getting to the point of the assumption that your healers and casters are chain chugging them to down a boss, without making them worthless and effectively crippling alchemy entirely.
As mentioned, almost every other profession gets to deal with sucking at the high end, being a glorified one person needs X profession to make all the resistance gear for their armor type, or items that require raid materials that by the time you gather aren't actually worth making because something dropped better then what you can make. Alchemy remains almost completely free of that problem, and even nerfing raid pots wouldn't change that. It's useful ALL the time, it makes things easier, forever. The consumable nature makes it arguably the most profitable profession in the entire game. Things get used up. Even in TBC, other professions are only seeing a shift towards what alchemy has with consumables, and kinda arbitrary restrictions in order to make you want to keep a profession (ie, BoP Blacksmithing items that require you to have the various Master Smithes to use).
At this point this thread is starting to repeat itself a bit. We have almost 100% of people agreeing on that the consumables and worldbuffs need to be nerfed and that Blizzard should take action asap, because introduction of TBC is the right moment to correct balancing issues.
On top of that we have tens if not already hundreds of propostions ranging from making consumables almost free (removing the timeconstrains and really assuming its part of the game to manage them) to limiting buff slots to only few buffs so that players couldn't, even if they wanted, to use too much time gathering buffs.
Player base has spoken, now who would deliver the message to the game balancers / designers? This is probably the point where a private email to a right person inside Blizz could do miracles...
I don't see how pushing a button on the wall, or having a chest with a ton of potions in it, or increasing herb spawn rates to 10 per pick solves the underlying problem. It doesn't. The problem is consumables are too powerful, hence the need to farm them. Take away their relative power compared to everything else, and the need to farm drops accordingly.
It doesn't solve the problem. However I don't see Blizzard taking drastic steps to limit the power of alchemy buffs, look at TBC - the pink bar actually keeps growing. I think we all agree that decreasing the power of consumables would be the best, but is Blizzard actually going to do it? Doesn't look like it, quite the contrary, so I'd settle for the bandaid solution of consumable resources being provided through raiding.
While I agree mana pots/runes are overpowered, I am confused why many people here mention that they need to farm pots for bosses on farm status as a healer. I'm really curious which bosses are plaguing the healers to require full pots/mana pots/runes. I know after the 4th Patchwerk kill or so, I stopped using Major Manas, and for a while now, many healers don't use any buffs/pots at all. Thaddius, after the 1st kill, required no more than one superior mana potion (one below major). Sapphiron changes heavily on buffs; hakkar heart means at most two superior mana pots and maybe a NDB, while a tower/rocket buff means two major manas. KT is the only fight I chain pot on atm.
Are you Alliance?
On Patchwerk, did all your healers stop using MMPs, or only you? I know for us at least, I still am going full out with MMPs, Brilliant Oil, NDBs, Mageblood, spi/mp5 food, and I still run dry on Patchwerk for the 5+ min of non-trivial continuous healing.
I don't see how pushing a button on the wall, or having a chest with a ton of potions in it, or increasing herb spawn rates to 10 per pick solves the underlying problem. It doesn't. The problem is consumables are too powerful, hence the need to farm them. Take away their relative power compared to everything else, and the need to farm drops accordingly.
It doesn't solve the problem. However I don't see Blizzard taking drastic steps to limit the power of alchemy buffs, look at TBC - the pink bar actually keeps growing. I think we all agree that decreasing the power of consumables would be the best, but is Blizzard actually going to do it? Doesn't look like it, quite the contrary, so I'd settle for the bandaid solution of consumable resources being provided through raiding.
That sounds kinda short sighted doesn't it? Nerfing items isn't feesable, but opening a flood gate of potential consumables being easily accessable the day a boss is on farm status without them is? Putting required items on the boss before is like an admission that the system is flawed, it's not a bandaid, it's just bad design. It's too temporary a solution. Pushing for the items to be nerfed, either in whole or in raids, seems more reasonable, and more likely to happen then bosses dropping dozens of different sorts of every potion. The thought of getting flasks off bosses is kinda funny, actually...
The problem with world buffs is obvious. They do too much, too well, and they scale fantastically. I do not want to be farming Hakkar in order to kill Illidan a year from now. Don't nerf them at this point. Just make them zone-limited in some form -- either Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms only, or stripped upon entering any raid zone.
I would like to point out that the ZG trinkets (renataki for rogues and hunters more than any other) are exceedingly useful, and will probably be in demand for a very very long time. So it is quite possible that it will be cleared regularly. As for the ony head buff, I tend to think that blizzard putting something in which keeps wow's first raid and key questline from being completely forgotten and skipped by new players is more good than bad.
One of the problems I saw with EQ was that every expansion, the stuff from the previous one was mostly forgotten, and I'm in favor of blizzard leaving incentives to keep old content from completely rotting. Unfortunately, I think that they mostly failed--ZG will probably be run for rogues and hunters, as well as ony for head buffs, but I don't think many people will go to the trouble of getting a karazhan port-stick after TBC is released, getting their 'unique' BWL class trinkets (some like the NAC are actually useful, the druid rune however...), completing the AQ sceptre quest line (which is really a fun chain), collecting the 'scaling' set-bonuses from AQ20 stuff (+5% to pet damage from the hunter 3-piece), and of course 'luckfury'.
Blizzard tried to put in things which would 'last', in the hopes that they could create a complete 'world' rather than a series of expansions which are played through and discarded. I think that world buffs, as well as the level+3 nature of bosses and miscellaneous 'never-obsolete' items reflect this philosophy.
I agree with the post above*, just wondering if not the nerf to ranking heals used by addon was an attempt by blizzard to fix this with out "compromizing" them selves...
Edit som posts above
Do not matter how much you play, you will never get the carrot.
There are inherent conflicting interests when you want to lower consumables.
On one hand, Blizzard presumably wants to keep alchemy a viable profession and on the other hand you want to lower the dependency on alchemy for (trivial) raiding. No matter how you go about doing the latter, you will impact the former as well as a lower demand for alchemy products.
One thing that I was thinking about is the whole idea about consumables and the thing that was obvious was that they should/could be a "crutch" to allow you, at a cost, to beat bosses that would not otherwise be beatable with your current gear level, but as your gear level increases your dependency on consumables for those fights should deminish and eventually go away.
An obvious way to achieve this would be to make consumables scale "backwards" with gear (better gear means diminishing effects from consumables), so your character would only be able to achieve power level X which is sufficient to beat the encounters in the game at any given time, either by having power level X from gear alone, or power level Y from gear and Z from consumables. In effect, code the consumable so that if the cumulated effect would be higher than X, then use X.
On one hand, Blizzard presumably wants to keep alchemy a viable profession and on the other hand you want to lower the dependency on alchemy for (trivial) raiding. No matter how you go about doing the latter, you will impact the former as well as a lower demand for alchemy products.
Amount of potions you do with alchemy is not that significant actually. Major manas would be just as powerful as now, but you just wouldn't burn 5 stacks of them each night, because 1-2 stacks would be enought. I much rather craft 5 potions than 50 anyway.
Increasing for instance dark rune cd and making it unusable if the user already has nightfin soup and mageblood up or something like that wouldn't change alchemy at all.
(Damn you math test and already passed course via earlier midterm exams. Linear Algebra just forces me to refresh EJ forum page to get something else to read than my math notes)
Alchemy can still be a viable profession regarding transmutations and reactive potions. If the mana potion bullshit and the 5 different minor consumable buffs went away, many would be happy. I don't really mind flasking up as that is something the guild can cover and it actually lasts through one wipe. They can balance fights around fully flasked people if that's the only buff, as we can outgear this. You can't possibly outgear Loatheb right now.
I don't see how pushing a button on the wall, or having a chest with a ton of potions in it, or increasing herb spawn rates to 10 per pick solves the underlying problem. It doesn't. The problem is consumables are too powerful, hence the need to farm them. Take away their relative power compared to everything else, and the need to farm drops accordingly.
It doesn't solve the problem. However I don't see Blizzard taking drastic steps to limit the power of alchemy buffs, look at TBC - the pink bar actually keeps growing. I think we all agree that decreasing the power of consumables would be the best, but is Blizzard actually going to do it? Doesn't look like it, quite the contrary, so I'd settle for the bandaid solution of consumable resources being provided through raiding.
That sounds kinda short sighted doesn't it? Nerfing items isn't feesable, but opening a flood gate of potential consumables being easily accessable the day a boss is on farm status without them is? Putting required items on the boss before is like an admission that the system is flawed, it's not a bandaid, it's just bad design. It's too temporary a solution. Pushing for the items to be nerfed, either in whole or in raids, seems more reasonable, and more likely to happen then bosses dropping dozens of different sorts of every potion. The thought of getting flasks off bosses is kinda funny, actually...
As I said, we all agree that the system is flawed. The real question is, what solution is Blizzard more likely to implement to fix it? TBC being the perfect time to do an overhaul to the system, it's painfully clear they did not do it, even more they actually increased the power and number of consumables. So are they more likely to nerf consumables or to work around it with the mentioned bandaid? I'd rather have the bandaid rather than nothing at all. Temporary as it is, they could fit it in for Black Temple - I don't think consumables will be a major headache before that - since everything before Black Temple is already designed and balanced for. And they could introduce a real fix to the system in a patch after it or in the next expansion.
As much as we'd like Blizzard to fix the actual problem, what are the practical chances of the long-term solutions (nerf consumables) being introduced with TBC launch? In my opinion, very low, so as I said, I'd rather have a temporary bandaid than nothing at all. Assuming they actually acknowledge it is a problem and World of Consumablecraft is not meant to be so by design.
Isnt the issue of resistance pots atleast being vaguely adressed by buffs being available for the fights in the actual instance? Sadly i cant remember the name of the TBC instance (it could be slave pens) but its just near the waterfall before the massive Nature damage boss, you can get a rather spiffy 190 nr buff off of the NPC you needed to keep alive, that negates the need for res pots in the actual fight to a large extent. To me atleast this seems a reasonable way to cut down the ammount of pots atleast that need farming i dont know/think this is introduced for other such res encounters but it would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Tangent: I also hate class buffing. It slows down the raid greatly and is a constant annoyance. Can't we get a "super gift of the wild" that lets me push one button and buff the whole raid wherever they are, for an hour, lasting through death?
I personally don't have as much trouble with the buffing itself as the related mana cost. Do I really have to spend 1700 mana for 70 stamina on one person, or 3400 mana on 5 people? If the mana costs were lower it'd feel a lot less painful, especially in cases if there is for some reason a low amount of your class in the raid.
Originally Posted by Ayr
Originally Posted by Lumi
While I agree mana pots/runes are overpowered, I am confused why many people here mention that they need to farm pots for bosses on farm status as a healer. I'm really curious which bosses are plaguing the healers to require full pots/mana pots/runes. I know after the 4th Patchwerk kill or so, I stopped using Major Manas, and for a while now, many healers don't use any buffs/pots at all. Thaddius, after the 1st kill, required no more than one superior mana potion (one below major). Sapphiron changes heavily on buffs; hakkar heart means at most two superior mana pots and maybe a NDB, while a tower/rocket buff means two major manas. KT is the only fight I chain pot on atm.
Are you Alliance?
On Patchwerk, did all your healers stop using MMPs, or only you? I know for us at least, I still am going full out with MMPs, Brilliant Oil, NDBs, Mageblood, spi/mp5 food, and I still run dry on Patchwerk for the 5+ min of non-trivial continuous healing.
I could before the recent patch manage myself with a Brilliant Mana Oil, Sagefish and a Major Mana Potion and Demonic Rune over the course of the fight. Without Innervate or being grouped with a Shaman. Spam-healing strategy and usually one of the highest on the raw healing done, so it's not like I'm skimping there either. Though that was usually when I was healing the first HS tank, on the MT I usually used slightly more as I healed in a slightly different version (Occasionally using PW:S or Flash Heal if Patch got one of those lucky strings of hits).
No experience with after the recent patch as we've been raiding less and are currently suffering from tank issues (Only two tanks right now whom are active who would be capable of doing any kind of tanking at Patchwerk, which isn't good enough).
I've been an alchemist/herbalist since beta, so I've had a long time to form an opinion about this topic. For the most part I agree that there are some pretty large problems with the current consumable/world buff situation. Large enough to cost Blizzard a noticable amount of money if they don't do something about it in the next few months.
In my opinion the problem isn't that consumables are required for some encounters, or that the difference between using consumables and not using them is gigantic, the problem is that they are far too tedious to farm, and we have to farm far too many.
Herbs and other materials used in consumables should be available from the raiding zones that require their use. An example of this, even though it's not associated with any particular tradeskill, is Hourglass Sand for Chromaggus. Imagine if they did something similar for Loatheb. Instead of forcing us to spend countless hours farming Greater Shadow Protection Potions outside of raids, they could have given us an item to collect while we progress through the zone.
Anyone have a problem with First Aid? Nope. Know why? Because cloth is easy as hell to get because it drops from basically everything, including the mobs found in raid zones. Bandages are useful and require a certain degree of skill(however small it may be) to use properly, but are extremely easy to attain. This is the direction other consumables need to take.
Keep the dynamic and challenge of having to remember to use consumables and having to use them properly, but remove the tedious farming required to attain them. Herbalism was kinda fun while leveling up because I could do it while I was questing and it added a little bit of flavor to the game. Let it be fun again by allowing me to do it while raiding.
Also, Elixirs need to last through death. This alone would cut the required farming down to bearable levels. One stack of an elixir would last through an entire night of raiding.
I've thought for a long time that they need to get away from elixirs and start pumping out more potions. Atleast potions are capped by a timer, and many of them require skill to use properly(such as the previously mentioned Limited Invulnerability Potion.) Elixirs require no skill to use whatsoever.
World buffs simply need to vanish upon entering any instance. I do not want to be farming Hakkar, Onyxia, Rend, and Dire Maul once I'm level 70 in the expansion. Infact I don't want to farm them now.
In short: Make the materials used in consumables available from inside of the instance they're required in, make elixirs last through death, and make world buffs vanish upon entering any instance.
I don't think the overall issue is the cost to acquire that pink bar (gimmicky shit like Loatheb aside), but it's size. The simplest solution seems to be to nerf what crafted consumables can give (along with wiping world buffs, which I think most everyone has agreed on).
Look at a mage. Figuring hit and crit to be worth about +10dmg, Arcanist gives +158dmg, and Netherwind gives +234dmg, an upgrade of 76. A Greater Arcane Elixir gives +35dmg, almost half the upgrade from a full tier of raid gear. Stack an Elixir of Greater Firepower (ignoring the fire immune b.s. around this gear level) and a Brilliant Wizard Oil and the total from buffs is +111dmg, or 146% of that full tier upgrade! Add a Flask of Supreme Power and it's +261dmg, or 343% of that tier upgrade.
There's just really no excuse for consumables to provide that big a buff relative to gear upgrades. Not only should all of those buffs not stack, but they should all be smaller (assuming the solution of making gear upgrades bigger isn't workable, which I believe it isn't). Limit the elixir slots, make flasks and elixirs take the same slot, whatever you want, but whatever total benefit you can gain should not be more than one tier of gear, if that much.
edit: Looks like a similar argument was made above by Stimulant...
Also I'm an alchemist and would gladly accept the nerf to the utility of my profession. I've always felt I got more out of transmutes than making my own potions anyway.
And the same thing with Stimulant's argument that relative to Shaman Tier sets potions offer a huge benefit, well if you're a mage wearing just a tier set you deserve to need to use consumables. When considering gear you do have more than 8 slots (and even in those 8 slots you can put together a +255 or more spell damage set from 20 mans, better than T2!). If you add the rest of those slots in we require +150 spell damage before allowing you to bring your caster to a MC run, +350 spell damage before you could go on a BWL run, +550 before going to AQ40 TE+/early Naxx. You can have well over +550 damage +5% crit +5% hit from just AQ20/ZG/MC/BWL. Stop using your tier sets, start using the best gear available per slot. The set bonuses are nice in some situations (theat sensitive fights 3pc NW, AoE fights 5pc NW)
As I've said in earlier posts on this thread its also about execution, if you have ~+500 spell damage and a good fire spec you'll average ~1350 damage per fireball (or 450 theory DPS against even target). If you lag/hesitate/don't just mash your fireball button and waste 0.3s between each spell cast your DPS drops to 410 -- MORE THAN A WHOLE TIER OF GEAR UPGRADES! (Sorry I couldn't resist) Yeah this is the reason a lot of people are sad about fastcast if they play on a high latency connection, another tangent for another time.
As far as healers chain drinking mana pots, how many guilds really have a true organized heal rotation maximizing mana regen? Do you really need all 15 healers going all the time in long fights (if so see the execution/gear selection stuff again) or can you have 3 rotate out to regen and then fill back in after their mana is up letting another 3 regen. Consumbles aren't a problem, lazy raid leaders are a problem and they allow the fact that MMP exist and that their healers can chug them to let them be lazy with setting up the healing properly or requiring that all 15 of the healers are actually good enough to keep tanks alive.
These encounters aren't balanced on people playing at 100% in 100% gear, they're balanced at well below that as some folks have said "I'm not even using MMP on Patch anymore, just Combat Mana". Up your execution, min/max your talent builds better, coordinate your healing more, min/max your gear instead of chasing Blizzards defined tier sets and all of a sudden the consumable usage of your raids will fall through the floor.
The fact that the end boss in many of the dungeons require consumables I think is cool (AQ20/40 notable exceptions) as it is that final challenge against the big bad guy. They typically also drop loot of a high enough quality to cover the cost/benefit ratio of going after the encounter. If you have the right talents/gear/execution you can get through even your current progression instance except the final progression encounter with a low amount of consumables.
Most people don't want to hear though that even though they're in Naxx killing 9 bosses that they aren't playing at the highest level using the right talents, gear, and execution. There is always room for improvement and as soon as you believe you can't get any better you won't.
The +255 damage blues/20 man 8pc mage set I referred to above:
Chest: Robe of the Archmage
Feet: Betrayer's Boots
Hands: Hands of Power
Head: The Hexxer's Cover
Legs: Leggings of the Black Blizzard
Shoulder: Mantle of Maz'Nadir
Waist: Belt of Untapped Power
Wrist: Rockfury Bracers
Anyhow, on topic the consumable issue is a fairly major one as I see it. It has effectively created a wall between the 'raiders' and the 'casual raiders' whereby the casual raiders can only progress so far before the cost associated with raiding becomes to great for them to continue. As (due to the power of consumables) they remain a relative 2 tiers of gear behind those top guilds who are using maxed out consumables to push for kills, they simply cannot compete. If the consumable use was limited to a lower number of pots (by whatever method) or consumables made cheaper, then i think we'd see a lot of new faces towards the top of the raid scene.
Looking at these decisions, does anyone think Blizz will actually make any fundamental changes to consumables and alchemy before raiding gets into full swing again? I dunno, it feels like everyone thinks these things are mistakes on Blizzard's part, yet to me they're something planned. Sorry, but it's not possible that blizzard forgot to look at GSPPs and consider the effort required to craft them when they designed Loatheb....and now we're seeing MajorPPs............
It's still possible for Blizzard to rebalance potions. Maybe not something as complicated as making raid instances different than regular stuff, but a simple plan...
1. Increase the cooldown on potions from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. Making them an emergency reactive item as opposed to a proactive requirement on PvE.
2. Remove world buffs if someone zones.
3. Link some potions/elixirs to the same buff slot so they don't stack as well. It doesn't even need to be just one slot, but enough that people have to make choices as opposed to downing anything that is relevant to their class.
There's still a month plus of tuning that needs to be done. Blizzard still needs to see how Paladin/Shaman interact in 25-man etc. There's ample time to work on consumables.
While I agree mana pots/runes are overpowered, I am confused why many people here mention that they need to farm pots for bosses on farm status as a healer. I'm really curious which bosses are plaguing the healers to require full pots/mana pots/runes. I know after the 4th Patchwerk kill or so, I stopped using Major Manas, and for a while now, many healers don't use any buffs/pots at all. Thaddius, after the 1st kill, required no more than one superior mana potion (one below major). Sapphiron changes heavily on buffs; hakkar heart means at most two superior mana pots and maybe a NDB, while a tower/rocket buff means two major manas. KT is the only fight I chain pot on atm.
Are you Alliance?
On Patchwerk, did all your healers stop using MMPs, or only you? I know for us at least, I still am going full out with MMPs, Brilliant Oil, NDBs, Mageblood, spi/mp5 food, and I still run dry on Patchwerk for the 5+ min of non-trivial continuous healing.
Guess my response got cut off too, but the better geared healers can get away with only combat pots also and I am horde. By the end of the fight, most of the healers have 20% ish mana left. We do, however, min/max spec with as many optimal (mana tide) groups as possible. I'd say our mages use more pots than the healers at this point. Its only Saph/KT that still stress the healers for obvious reasons (can't out gear them). I'd imagine Alliance can get away on Saph with no mana pots at all with good luck.
12/19/06, 1:13 AM
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