July News/Discussion

[TheDragoon]

The problem is they are fixing it at the wrong end. As Pete essentially said, they are "cater(ing) to the incomptent, ignorant, casual gamer." The more simple you make the game the less fun it is. Agree? Potions are broken for one reason and one reason only: The cost. The fix for this is stupidly obvious: Adjust supply.

Right now I can fly around on an epic mount for 5 minutes and collect little more than 3 or 4 felweed if I have bad/average luck. THAT is where the problem comes from. If it took me 5 minutes to farm up the mats for something, I'm not going to put it on the auction house for 25 silver. Make it 100% of the time a herb contains a stack of 3 and that can look more like 9 to 12. Supply goes up, price goes down.

The auction house is a great facet of this game and controls these better than a direct nerf ever could. Plus it keeps the profession useful and the game interesting. People pick up a profession because they want to make useful things they can sell and use. Diminishing instead of fixing the game is not a change I welcome.

While it appears that we agree that there is a problem, I don't think we agree no the problem. I see the problem as three things:
1. It is possible to chain-chug potions in raid encounters, so Blizzard has balanced around the assumption that people will do that.
2. It costs time/gold to farm up the materials to chain-chug potions during raid encounters, providing an unneeded time tax on raiding.
3. Just clicking the potion button every time it is available is boring, dumb and requires no strategic thought whatsoever.

In that light, Blizzard's decision to limit potions to a one-time-use in a given encounter makes a lot of sense. This change reduces the time needed to farm up materials since you know you're only going to go through 1 potion per attempt. It also makes using your potion more of a strategic decision. Do you use it to help out your mana supply, do you save it for a health potion in case it can save you from death, or do you save it for the appropriate armor, attack power or spell damage potion? This certainly involves more thought than the "Oh, the icon lit up, it's time to click it again" thought process that is used right now.

Add in the fact that alchemists will now get more benefit from their flasks and elixirs in addition to their potions and I think a pretty good system is in place that will ensure that you want to stay an alchemist. :)