From what I've seen most of the flasks (if not all) require 10 mana thistle to make. Lots of other alchemy recipes (including some Major Protection potions etc) require mana thistle aswell. In Naxxramas days was quite normal that whole raid flasked for some harder encounters and seems that this will persist into TBC raiding aswell. But here comes the problem which many non-herbers might not realize.
Mana Thistle grows only on spots which you can reach only by flying. If I remember correct there are about 6-8 spots where you can find it and always maximum amount of 2 nodes. I've tested it last night and in 2 hours of pure mana thistle farming I gathered about 26 pieces total. Thats not even 3 flasks and noone else was farming those spots as it was quite early in the morning. During the day, basically all the spots are perma empty unless you get lucky. Theres absolutely none mana thistle in AH (or sometimes 1-2 pieces for 5-10 gold each) and raiding progress on my server is VERY slow. I really cant imagine how this will look like when lots of guilds actually starts some serious raiding with need of flasking and protection potions etc.

Anyone can tell how the situation looks on another servers or if theres something im missing with this? Kudos in advance

When demands will grow bigger then there will be alot of MT on AH :)
Tho it will be highly overpriced.

Hmm i only know 5-6 Spots: NW Shattrath, NW Netherstorm, SE Shadowmoon Valley and West Blade's Edge Mountains (spread out over a large area), West Nagrand, SE Terokkar...

The spots all have 8-12 spawn locations of which 2 will spawn every 6-7 minutes (after they got looted). Since you get 1-2 Mana Thistles every time, it should be possible to collect 25-30 per hour without changing the spot. The problem is that the spots are so far from each other that flying to the next one takes longer than just waiting for the respawn. So real "farming" is not possible.

What I do is every time I log on and off, I visit the Shattrath spot. Basically every time I come to Shattrath or I leave it.

If I am just talking on TS and have nothing to do ingame, I sometimes just farm a spot for 1-2 hours.

So far I've got around 600 Mana Thistles on my bank char and I wont sell one of them. ;-) Be prepared until the china farmers hit the spots when primals lose worth and more and more raid guilds advance...


For flasks: I think most will continue to use the old flasks for a long time.

Well, I think there isn't much differences on other servers. This is very rare herb with 5-10 minute respawn CD. The problem is its only 1 spot for zone usually, so it's very time-unefficient to farm and almost impossible to farm during day/evening.

But if you count price of one flask(Flask of Relentless Assault f.e.) it is 70-80 gold. Bear in mind gold inflation and you will get that price on this flask at this moment is the same as price Flask of Titans or Flask of Supreme Power before TBC.

Situation with Mana Thistle when serious rading start will change though. Price on this little herb will rise significantly.

There are 10 places these herbs can spawn, however 5 of those areas are actually one long strip in Blade's Edge, and each of those areas can probably only support one spawn, not two, so it's a total of 15 spawns at a time, total. Reports on node respawns put it between 5 and 10 minutes; this seems generic and is probably slightly randomized, so let's assume an average of 7.5 minutes for a respawn.

If Mana Thistle was totally farmed out - 15 mana thistle every 7.5 minutes = 120 mana thistle per hour = 2880 mana thistle a day, or 288 flasks. Flasks can be duped via Elixir spec now, remember, so the actual theoretical max is higher still. Mana thistle is required for all major prot potions as well, but you can use the crappier variety, and fel manas, which are admittedly very nice. BTW, the Flask of Fortification (Titans #2) requires an outrageous 20 Ancient Lichen, which is way worse than the Mana Thistle bottlenecks. Lichen nodes exist exclusively in Coilfang and Auchindoun dungeons, apart from a 2% droprate when herb-skinning Boglords.

At the moment, Tichondrius has ~200 mana thistle on the AH for about 2g average price, and absolutely no Ancient Lichen at all.

I don't see this being nearly as big a problem as Dreamfoil, however. Mana thistle is more likely to be farmed since its locations are all highly centralized and therefore easy to check, especially with epic flying mounts; and it's also used almost exclusively in flasks, unlike Dreamfoil which was not only required in greater quantities, but was used by a greater spread of potions: a single dps caster could easily drink more than 50 Dreamfoils worth of potions in a raid - this is an impossibly large number for Mana Thistle, and we get to dupe pots now, too. Mana Thistle is used exclusively in PvE endgame potions, and nothing day-to-day, and could therefore actually get extremely devalued if nobody is working on cutting-edge raid content,

I still think consumables suck, and the obvious answer is to put a bunch of herbalism nodes into endgame instances.

You can solo-farm Lichen easily at 70. Slave Pens always has 1 available Lichen any level 70 can get to without stealthing. You can reset and do this 5 times per hour.

I'm mostly worried about Primals, particularly Fire, now that the Elemental Plateau has been nerfed to oblivion.

Water and Fire can be farmed in Skettis and Blade's Edge with an equal droprate, and can also be fished and mined, respectively. Air is the one that'll hurt the most, the Shadowmoon droprate isn't quite the same, and there is no tradeskill source.

well we had that situation (most flasks in AH for 70-80g) 1-2 weeks ago. But for some reason AH now is completely empty. No flasks, no mana thistle and when I ask those people who usually supplied those flasks, they say they got all except thistle cause they cant find it anywhere (and its pretty much true that chance of finding mana thistle during day or evening is almost zero, atleast on Bloodhoof). Its quite possible that someone is farming them 24/7 and makes reserve but well...

And tbh, I cant imagine the situation when 5-10 raiding guilds on server reach the part when they will need to flask up whole raid for 1-2 days straight or something. 5 raids with everyone in need of 1-2 flasks is about 1250-2500 mana thistle and I just cant see how the world could produce that together with the "usual" usage of it for various other pots, some random flasks for solo players and stuff like that if all the spots arent farmed 24/7. Im kinda worried how much we will have to pay for these consumables in future (and I dont doubt they will be needed).

Mana Thistle is extremely easy to get just requires you sitting over one of the spots with 2 nodes and a stopwatch. You should be getting a stack and a half on average per hour doing this.

Lets say you can farm a little more without stealthing in that instance.

Ancient Lichen & Mana Thistle is nowhere near the issue of Terocone which is used in every damn Melee Potion (its not really too hard to farm minus the issue I need several stacks of it at a time).

Not to mention the concentrations of Muck Surgers and Lake Spirits in Nagrand for water. Primalwise, the order of abundance seems to be as follows, from rarest to most prevalent: Air, Fire, Mana, Water, Earth/Life.

amusing that shadow isnt even mentioned ^^

I've found Shadowmoon Valley (the two Arakkoa camps) to be a far more reliable source of Terocone, as well as the scorched piece of land at the entrance to Shadowmoon, which has several spawns, usually having two up at any one time.

Whenever you are in Shattrah, head up to the Barrier Hills. I do this every time I'm in town, and built up a rather respectable stock. I also check in Skettis any time I'm heading to Shadowmoon, and any of the other spots when I'm in the area.

At least on Icecrown, the Barrier Hills spot is awesome for Mana Thistle. It's rarely camped, but there are a bunch of players who know about it and fly by whenever they are in Shattrath. I have about 8 stacks banked, with no intention to sell them.

About Ancient Lichen though- how easy is it to get more than 1 in Slave Pens? I haven't really tried solo farming it, but now that one of our elixir mastery alchemists has the +65 shadow elixir, I'll have to start getting a bunch made.

Personally I have stocked over 200 (10 stacks) Mana Thistles throughout the past 2 weeks while making a large amount of fel mana potions for our healers. Basically everytime I am in Shattrath I check the Barrier Hills, which has 2x Mana Thistle nodes, 2x Dreaming Glory nodes, 1x Rich Adamantite vein and 1x Adamantite vein that seem to spawn every 10-15 minutes!

Hopefully this helps out.

I occasionally vendor Motes of Shadow

?

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=55136

for what it's worth, we never flasked the whole raid for any fight. the closest we came was flasking the warriors + rogues for our kel kill

I'd say any fight that outright requires you to flask an entire raid is broken

The stuff is all over the Coilfang and Auchindoun instances. It's usually plentiful enough to get close to a full stack per instance run if you're the only herbalist around.

Nightmare Vine is my current annoyance. Available in only one region, and a heavily farmed one at that. It's difficult to fuel the Fel Mana and Dreamless Sleep habit.

Underbog is ridiculous for stealth classes to farm. Each reset will net you 3-4 ancient lichen spawns, 0-2 chests, and optionally 10+ sanguine hibiscus if you want sporeggar rep. I've been doing this for profit for a while and it's on average 2 stacks of lichen per 5 resets, along with an average of 5-6 chests.

If you're a druid you can only get 3 of the lichen spawns and 1 of the chests because of the 2 stealth-seeing sentry nagas. Rogues can get by them by sprinting through the left one mashing cheap shot, then vanishing a little ways down the corridor assuming you don't get dazed on the way.

Or the druid could just kill them really easily?

Alright I went and checked out Slave Pens. It's probably the best option for people who want to solo farm Ancient Lichen but can't stealth. In the first long room right at the entrance, there is always an Ancient Lichen up at 1 of 4 or 5 locations, all of which you can pick at 70 without having to fight any of the mobs.

Sometimes there is an Ancient Lichen at the start of Underbog, but it's not even close to guaranteed, unlike Slave Pens. And Shadow Labyrinth always has 1 node in the first room, but you usually have to clear several packs to get to it, which is a pain solo.

Does said stealth class have to be 70 to be able to farm? Just curious since i have a 63 rogue alt who is herbalism and that would be really nice if i could stealth farm underbog since right now i have to be really conservative in my lichen use and man are those major frost power pots addictive :P