[Sancus]

Pre-Naxx I would've felt that the consumable situation was pretty reasonable, and guilds had no reason to complain.

Naxx, though, is getting a little out of hand. Multiple encounters requiring you to flask half or more of the raid isn't really acceptable, and I, as a Mage, am burning mana pots on a regular basis. I can't imagine how bad it is for the healers who don't have nearly the same level of mana regen.

But I think this is inevitable - Blizzard has a design problem here. Consumables are too powerful. You can't really design, for example, an endurance encounter without assuming that people will use Major Manas, because they refill 1/3 of your frickin' mana pool every 2 minutes. Elemental Protection Pots literally ward you for 50-80% of your hitpoints, etc.

I sincerely hope that there are NOT more powerful pots in TBC. There doesn't need to be. The relative power of existing pots and flasks needs to be cut by 50% or more so that they aren't forced to become a requirement for any encounter designed with extreme difficulty in mind. This is completely ignoring the fact that, if they implement serious ladder-based competitive pvp, top pvp guilds are going to be forced to burn consumables just as fast as the raiding guilds.

Really, the strength of consumables in this game is way out of hand. I mean, holy crap, I have about +600 damage gear, and I can increase that by _50%_ by using all the available consumables. I should not be able to increase my power level relative to my existing gear by 50% with fucking potions. And those are just the potions I use BEFORE the fight starts...