What Malan is saying is true. I was in those pug AQ40s.

What he fails to mention is that the hosting guild was the only Horde guild to kill c'thun. The pugs also consisted of some very good and experienced players. (most of us had at least done up to twin emps)

We also used consumables which a pug wouldn't do. It wasn't some random LFM AQ40 etc.

As I've said in the other thread, the problem isn't consumables, it's one consumable: the flask. That's the one which provides by far the biggest boost and takes by far the most money to buy. Just remove flasks and tone down encounters.

My view on consumables and encounter placement have changed somewhat this week

I still think gruul is fine, obviously without some consumables for HP help; but aren't necessary. The dps requirement leans towards consumables in large proportions for the DPS classes which I like because it means the fight will stay hard even when your tanks 'out gear' the need for a flask but your dps will always look to improve with less non-standard buffs.

Now mag is a different kettle of fish, phase 1 is hard as nails - adds that do all sorts of schools of magic along with melee, summon adds and heal! Phase 2 should be easy but as soon as you see how hard he hits the MT you realise theres going to be some raid wide damage, this damage is dependant on alot of things going right - especially when the last add is up.

Phase 2 will be easy to learn but to get to phase 2 in a position to learn something useful requires enough dps to down phase 1 and then you need the survivability to make phase 2 smooth.

As Gurg already said, this fight is clever and a really nice idea but to learn it is absolutely the most unforgiving fight since cthun, only the chainbeam that kills everyone on the pull happens 10 minutes into the fight after everything else has gone perfectly.

The bar is certainly high and I cant say Im enjoying the cost of learning the hard way.

I'm sorry, I don;t really understand this sentance. Are you actually saying that you enjoy the fact that some classes will continue to have to pot & buff up on this fight to make it doable? (or raid stack).

That's a really nice sentiment coming from someone playing one of the classes that doesn't have to pot up...

The flask is the biggest culprit for sure. If 40 people can "flask up" you've solved nothing really.

We've had some progress on this but it was pretty futile doing unbuffed attempts and getting past the first two adds down because warriors getting hit for so much and dps lacking on the adds so much. Where as full pots allows 3 adds down before release and the rest to follow before the 2nd channel, unfortunately as you've said Gurg its pot or don't bother there because the dps requirement for the fight to be managable is insane.

And I will state again the flask is the best consumable and its the five million other elixirs and chain potting you can drink at the same time which are the biggest culprit.

My point was that dps classes make and break this fight, this will come with upgrades so they use less consumables. For example our raid leader and super active rogue has his tier2 blacksmith weapon and a load of kara gear, if we took 18 classes with his gear in a month we'll be a whole lot closer to doing gruul completely 'dry'.
This im my mind makes the encounter cool as even though the tanks will start mocking gruul for hitting like a girl, he can and will grow to levels where he will hit the tank for six whilst his healers move from a 7k cavein or all get silenced - IF the dps dont do their job fast enough.

I understand your point that it is better by far to pop one Resto flask for 2 hours than it is to drink 10 Major Magebloods on 10 wipes during those 2 hours. No argument there.

Flasks, however, also have the largest distorting effect. Maybe stacking elixirs for DPS classes are different, I will concede.

But for a healer or a tank, potions > flasks > elixirs. Chain-chugging Super Mana pots is more mp5 than a flask by far. Chain-chugging Ironshields will help tank survivability in almost all cases more than a mere flask that takes his max hp from 16k to 18k. A Flask of Mighty Restoration in turn does more for me than every other non-potion consumable I could dig up. When flasking gives me 70mp5, how am I supposed to outgear that? I sure as hell am not going to find 70mp5 worth of upgrades to my raid gear, that's for sure.

Here's how I'd like to see consumables work:

- Leave oils/stones/poisons/food/healthstones/tubers/NDBs as they are. Easy to get, not expensive, and provide some buff capabilities for non-alchemy tradeskills.

- When you apply a flask/elixir/pot, you get a debuff (lasting 2hrs/60mins/2mins, respectively) that prevents you from using another one of any of those items. The latter two debuffs clear on death. Flasks still last through death, as does their debuff.

So, you get to pick. Either a flask for 2 hours while you're learning the fight and expect to die a lot. Or an elixir, which is easier to lose, provides roughly the same buff as a flask, and is correspondingly easier/cheaper to make, for use when you expect to not die, or not die more than a couple times. Or you can chug pots, allowing you flexibility during a fight to mana pot, or fel mana pot, or dreamless sleep, or invuln pot, or any of the others.

It's clear, it's simple, still provides utility for alchemy, each has a distinct tactical advantage/disadvantage, limits the total buffage of any given player to ease the tuning of fights, and prevents mass consumable farming from being necessary.

I'd still be complaining because it's stupid that eating my wheaties is more relevant than equipping my sword.

FFS did blizzard get bought out by a cereal company while I wasn't looking? I know vivendi has some odd holdings, but I was fairly sure they weren't nabisco. (although the thought of an MMO devoted to killing the kibler elves has some legs).

Perception is a huge part of this - you lose the majority of your buffs on death, and many fights are vastly easier for juiced/stacked raids to the point of ridiculousness. I think my largest complaint about the tbc endgame for pve is that the variance in difficulty based on composition and consumable use is magnitudes larger than the variance due to gear.

*Shrug*

As for gruul - If you are defeating the encounter in any fashion other than unbuffed and reacting to ground slam tosses, I'm willing to say you are in some fashion or other abusing a broken portion of the encounter. Obviously, he's not really feasible with current gear with the "go in, spread out, react correctly to ground slam" approach by the vast majority of the playerbase at this time. That implies further tuning is required.

We can dicker about the various levels of shenanigans - be they invuln pots, or dreamless sleep, or standing just so on this rock that isn't quite rendered, or the mysterious "our main tank spun in circles pressing his triangle button and gruul stopped ground slamming" etc etc etc - but the truth is that it's sketchy.

Top to bottom, every kill I've seen of gruul is sketchy. That irritates me.

I'm willing to accept that there's going to be some of this shenanigans business going on to get world firsts (omg the fame and glory of internet geekdom) but it feels sad that it's an accepted and expected part of raiding when the second 25 man encounter in the expansion actively encourages you to go get your game genie.

I'd be happier typing Up Up Down Down....At least there's some nostalgia.

As for the consumable dilemma? They need to not work in raid encounters. Some limitted karazhan type books, maybe. Nothing more than that though, and those better be zone-bound and drop or sold in zone. If you want an emergency button for mana: make mana gems tradable like healthstones (via mana wells) if you have to, but get rid of mana potions/flasks/elixirs from the raid game - the raiders won't miss them.

Yes, this means alchemy needs a rework - but given the bitching going on about it generaly, and it's relative power compared to other professions, that's not surprising.


EDIT - Lastly, while some sort of valid argument can be made for consumables allowing you to "catch up" to progression if you start late - this is the start of the race, not the middle or end, and that sort of thinking doesn't really apply here. I don't think anyone's going into gruul in level 65 greens (barring technician bracers I suppose) and using consumables to close the gap.

30 MP5 and about 170 +Healing and some general stats would of been a moderately realisitic goal before TBC however from say MC < AQ40, or BWL < Naxx.

Its just now the best you think you will get from Kara/Gruul < TK25/SSL is about 5MP5, 30 +Healing and a rearrangement of stats... aswell as the added cost of re-gemming several slots to achieve this.

Note: yes I know im going from 2 tier difference to 1 tier, however even doubling the 1 tier does not come close. and yes these numbers are not 100% super correct, just a thought/general feeling.

Edit: subbing in some basic numbers

Full T1 + Aurastone + offhand -> Full T2 + SWFS (all unenchanted mind you, no necks/rings/trinkets/cloak either)
Resulted in:
Sta -12
Int +39
Spi +8
Healing +161
MP5 -3

And generally I would say the +Healing is equal to about half of the new flask, the stats being a moderate upgrade, calculating to a total value of about 60-65% of what a Mighty Restoration is. Guessing on a Full T1 level setup vs a Full T2 level (ORBS too) its probly more like an 85-90% valuation comparison.

Nether Sickness -- 3 min. duration -- You have consumed too much arcane energy recently and receive no benefits from elixirs or flasks.

If only.

If itemization were to be improved, then flasks are a legitimate part of the game, although their power level could stand to be toned down a little. If people were getting clear and present upgrades from each piece of new gear, and if encounters were dropping gear like they used to, then flasks become the cost-efficient solution for a guild that wants a significant edge (which will eventually be rendered obsolete by newer gear) and is efficient enough with their learning nights to make flasks straight up more cost-efficient than using elixirs each attempt or chain-chugging potions. Right now I can use a flask instead of using all my other DPS consumables for 8 attempts, get more of a benefit, and save money. Sounds like a deal to me.

Another thing to remember is that Onyxia dropped five pieces of gear per five days per 40 people. That's .025 slots per person per day, or 40 days to get everyone in the raid a piece of gear. Gruul drops two items per seven days per 25 people. That's 87.5 days to get everyone in the raid a piece of gear. Consider Gruul and High King Maulgar together and it still takes longer to equip your entire 25-man raid than it did with one Onyxia and a 40-man raid.

WTB - New Caster Flask~

I dont really mind farming for a flask, it's not so bad with an epic flying mount and the mats arent that hard to get either. But when i have to go back to azeroth for just 150 spell dmg, it gets annoying~ There should be a new flask that requires netherbloom (only 2 pots atm that require it, mana / mageblood) ex : 10 mana thistle, 20 netherbloom 1 fel lotus and maybe.. 10 nightmare vine or something?

Flask of Mighty Spell Power - Increases players spell dmg by 125 and increases critical strike rating by 58 (2% crit).

Every flask got replaced except our spell power =\

Titans is now fortification.
Healers now have 70/mp5.
360 ap~ for rogues warriors and hunters.
But nothing new for casters =[

Your numbers are blatantly incorrect. Onyxia dropped 4 items (2 helms, 2 other) for 40 people, while Gruul drops 3 items (1 token, 2 other) for 25 people - which is 1/10 vs 3/25 or about 1/8. The overall gear per person is HIGHER for Gruul, and drastically higher if you include High King, who drops 2 items as well.

Titans into Fort is wierd
Healers had nothing useful before (Dist Wis is meh)
Nothing for melee/hunters before
Casters had their good flask at the start, and you were lucky.


As to Supreme power exactly, its annoying from not being able to fly, but atleast the competition for herbs there is almost non-existant, and we really do not Netherbloom to turn into Dreamfoil 2.0

Diminishing returns would would nicely.

The fundamental issue with consumables is risk versus reward; there's almost no risk and tremendous rewards.

Imagine a console FPS title where you could unlock an five-minute invulnerability mode by opening and closing a certain door in a certain room on a certain level one thousand times. Would this be fun and interesting game play? Not in my book.

Alchemy in WoW is not nearly that bad, but it shares something in common with that game design idea; paying a mindless and repetitive cost for a temporary benefit that takes almost zero play skill to use properly. You could train a monkey or dog to hit a button every two minutes, and that's all it takes to chain mana or stoneshield cooldowns once you've farmed the potions. It is shitty game design, and Blizzard is capable of much better.

Reducing the number of alchemy buffs or eliminating certain categories like flasks altogether just reduces the problem. It's treating the symptom and not the disease. It's just less mindless farming to obtain less pots and have less opportunity for mindless game play when you decide to (ab)use them. If I complain that you've served me a giant bowl of shit for dinner, and you replace it with a smaller bowl, should I be happy? It's still shit.

One of the reasons why Netherspite is a ton of fun (and why virtually everyone who sees the encounter really enjoys it) is that the beams provide a novel and interesting opportunity to balance risk versus reward. You get tremendous buffs that you have to balance against the risks of using them. That's good game design, and a lot of fun.

There's absolutely no reason why consumables couldn't follow that same general design plan, just on a smaller scale. Blizzard can make alchemy a mini-game where players have to balance different temporary buffs to against temporary debuffs, and increase the amount of fun that everyone can have playing this game.

And completely destroy Alchemy buffs outside of raiding. Keep in mind that quite a few of these suggestions seem to be taking raiding inside a vacuum. There is a game outside of raiding. (this is not casual vs raider, just saying you have to take into account the effect that changes would have on the other parts of the game, like BGs, Arenas, 5-mans and solo quest/farming)

I believe this is addressed in another thread (the mp/5 thread) and has been fixed.

This seems like the most reasonable change, as suggested by many.

Yes, alchemy has quite a vibrant life in the arenas, and people buff up and chug pots all through WSG matches. I also often see people with mana oils, adept's elixirs, and major firepowers questing in Nagrand.

Be realistic here.

I was speaking directly to the idea of eliminating elixirs altogether. That would hurt considerably outside of raids. Plenty of people (Alchemists for the most part, obviously) use elixirs and the like in questing; I typically had at least an agility elixir of some sort on about 75% of the time from 1-60,60-70. Consumables don't exist only in raids. Have no alchemists here never used an elixir in a 5-man, or passed one out to the hunter/mage for some fun?

Adding in Arenas was a stupid mistake, and BGs aren't realistic either :P

While you are correct that Gruul drops 3(he said 2) and Onyxia only has to drop 4(his number 5 was a possible extension on her table, kinda like Rag), he is considering the lockout timer.

5 pieces per 7 days for Gruul's Lair, vs 8 for 6 days in Onyxia's Lair. 1/5th for both.

35 days for Gruul/Maulgar to equip every person with 1 piece assuming perfect drops, 30 for Onyxia.

The inlying problem in a lot of this seems to be Karazhan being 10man and containing the t4 pieces. But that has been addressed so many times at this point so rehashing is meh.