[WoW]End-Game Raiding Budget

[Tuco]

(Note: This post is made at personal risk of being called '2weak2raid' by the people who enjoyed farming VT keys and want non-instanced content, but I think I speak for the majority of post-patchwerk raiders)

In early raiding, gold was not a heavy concern. BOE epics could be sold to non-raiders, expensive consumable-rich fights were not as prevalent, bosses dropped decent gold, and repair costs were mild. Someone could farm lightly and sustain themselves even while learning MC and Onyxia.

Fast forward today, where the exact opposite is true. Raiders can incur 50g a night repair bills while learning encounters, tanks always use a flask, mana users need to use manaoil/nightfin shit/mana pots/demonic runes to keep mana up, tanks pop +armor pots every 2 minutes, on some encounters(Patchwerk/Loatheb), raids need to be heavily flasked.

Currently there is an epidemic where guild banks are suffering through massive downfalls of their previously rich coffers. My guild is in a bit of a crisis, where in the forseeable future we won't have enough gold to use enough consumables to do encounters like patchwerk/loatheb. We are internally revising our gold-getting process, and will essentially force people to farm for mats, or use cheap tricks such as bringing outsiders on a raid to pay for BoP epics.

The main issue is that encounters are built with consumables in mind. Gothik, for example, all-but-requires that you chug consumables, or else you won't get anywhere without the perfect strat. Some encounters are not consumable heavy(Anub/Raz/Gluth) to learn, others you need them or else you won't be able to tell if your strat is wrong or not. It could be that raids need to spend time gearing up in Naxx before they can continue, which is all very well and good, but the problem is that raids have the option of forgoing that period, and instead spending enormous amounts of resources to offset their lack of T3 with consumables.

I'm not asking for consumables to be removed from the game, nor am I asking Naxxramas to be nerfed so that raids don't need to spends thousands of gold per night on certain encounters. I'm looking toward the future and asking developers to keep the raider's future in mind.

In TBC, will there be upgrades to Flasks? Will major mana pots be upgraded to "Mega Big Gulp Mana Pots"? Will repair costs continue their exponential climb as we reach ilvl 100? Will there be no in-raid way to replinish monetary losses with BOE items? If the answer to these questions is yes, TBC raiders will be hard-pressed to continue raiding without heavily farming for each raid. While this may not seem so bad on the outside, I don't want to spend my Saturdays picking flowers and killing green mobs so I can stay competitive.

[Malakriss]

Will dreamfoil not be required in making every fucking potion

[Vard]

My guild transfered to a 3 month old server.. it kind of sucks because there is no economy and no hardcore farmers here. There's never anywhere near enough herbs on the AH for us to buy so our ENTIRE raid has to farm ALL their mats on their own.

Gonna hate to see what happens when all our current hardcore farmers start back into school and we're sol on consumables.

[Qhue]

You are supposed to just pay $$ for the gold in order to maintain the large number of gold farming accounts.

You didn't think that mass banning of a few paltry thousand was really intended as anything but a publicity stunt do you? Every account that exists purely to farm shit that produces the gold you need to buy for your "end game" is another Chipotle burrito for Tigole.

[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...

[Fris_Leafshadow]

what happened to finding herbs in instances? why would it be so crazy to put a few dreamfoils and black lotuses in BWL+ zones?

[Tuco]

Oh, and since I don't like complaints about a problem without the complainer offering a solution:

1. Keep Naxx/consumables like they are.
2. Don't upgrade stat consumables in TBC(Flasks, oils, mongoose, stonepots, etc).
3. Give any new new consumables in TBC(Mega Mana Pots etc) a 10minute cooldown so someone can't use them repeatedly.
4. Put 400g on each 40man raiding boss in TBC.
5. Put BOEs off trash/bosses that are slightly worse than the BOP gear in that instance. Make enough drop such that there are around 10 per clear.
6. Make any food consumables relatively easy to farm.
7. Scale down repair costs ( Keep in mind non-raiders will be seeing some of the high ilvl epics in TBC, and it will be easy for a non-raider to pay 2g per death in TBC)

[FoghornDeadhorn]

I seem to remember bringing this up in another thread recently.

The solution is simple for the long run: look at the potion situation now, and DO NOT recreate it in TBC. If you never make a new Flask of the Titans or Flask of Supreme Power or bigger GN pots they will eventually become not really worth using. That's eventually. How to fix it in TBC without jaw-dropping mudflation? Nerf.

Let.

Raiders.

Raid.

Thanks.

[Nakilos]

What we've needed to do lately is ensure farming of AQ20 for spells and otherwise folks just need to farm. With Major Mana pots at 25g/5, its all rather costly. Stoneshields are actually really useful for some encounters too, and the problem is the potions which don't persist through death. Because of the latency on Thaddius on my server, all the damage potions are practically required to compensate having 1-3 second lag on instants and cast spells.

Its really not worth discussing, since its pretty obvious by now there is no plan to change this design. I would prefer alchemy be removed from the game or potions just add little retarded gimmick effects.

There was another thread which mentioned all the above mentioned points, and people were basically told l2p and stop whining about the costs, so I expect that to happen in this thread too.

[Crimsonjade]

Originally Posted by Fris_Leafshadow

what happened to finding herbs in instances? why would it be so crazy to put a few dreamfoils and black lotuses in BWL+ zones?

Expanding on that, why not have some sort of encounter that pays out the mats required for consumables. Make it require 20 people and have a 1 week respawn timer. That way guilds can "raid some pirate ship's stores" for the mats. That may be counter-productive to the economy though...

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Counterproductive? Casuals are getting rich and raiders are fucking poor. Is that how it's supposed to be?

[Dyscord]

I hate gothik with a passion. If you even want to see if your strat is working, you need to be fully pot'd up. There's no way to even test to see if your strat is working without having everyone pot'd to the gills for dps purposes.

Remember how instance runs and raids used to be forced to stop because of repairs? Well repair bots fixed that. Now ushers in a new era, where we have to call the raid because we ran out of potions.

Me? I detest consumables with a passion. I only use them if the fight is absolutely dire. Then again I'm a druid... mana oil and I'm good to go. I feel sorry for our rogues though.

Sharpening stones.
Mongoose.
Elixer of Giants.
Major Health.
Fire Resist.
Nature Resist.
Firewater.

I'm sure I'm missing some too.

I'd personally like to see more BoP epics to sell. But these need to be placed on those mobs around the outer ring. That way only the 'serious' Naxx raiders have access to them. Otherwise they become common and worthless being how easy the front trash is farmable.

[chu]

We've had more than a few healers quit the game because the only thing they could think of outside raids is how will they get the mana pots for the next raid. I don't mind flasking the tanks and using stoneshield pots on the tanks but having the rest of the raid chug potions as soon as the timer is up is absurd.

[Wodin]

I'm starting to run out of money, and am at the point where I'm honestly considering passing on pieces of my tier 3 set because it costs significant amounts of gold per piece(for example, the rogue shoulders take 50g in addition to the materials required). AQ20 Money runs help some, but their profitability is entirely dependent on the skillbooks that drop. That, combined with our new high population making collection of significant amounts of herbs untenable, is very frustrating. Thank god I stocked up on Silversage.

[Crimsonjade]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Counterproductive? Casuals are getting rich and raiders are fucking poor. Is that how it's supposed to be?

I only said counter-productive because it helps seperate the link between raiders and casuals. From what I hard read, this goes against their "vision".

It is is getting ridiculous. We are starting to advertise for mats (sup EVE?). We are trying a system of people CoD'ing us our buying rate listed on the forums/website.